- Accidentally Correct Zoology: Some species described in the book were later described in some form in real life, although most didn't resemble Dixon's creations except in the most basic concepts.
- Dwarf island dinosaurs were discovered in the form of Hațeg Island dinosaurs and Europasaurus. Magyarosaurus dacus, in particular, was a dwarf titanosaur very similar in size and shape to Dixon's Virgultasaurus minimus.
- Long-necked, long-legged running pterosaurs like the Lank became reality once better remains of azhdarchids were discovered. They were, however, still carnivores as opposed to the herbivorous Lank, as pterosaurs lacked any means of grinding vegetation and likely had simple digestive tracts. With the possible exception of the tapejarids, all known pterosaurs were carnivores. The Lank is also depicted as walking on its wing finger, which no one thinks any pterosaur did.
- Small arboreal coelurosaurs, such as microraptorians and scansoriopterygids, especially the Nauger, which is depicted as using an elongated finger to fish out insects like real-life scansoiriopterygids did (although later discoveries suggest the long finger actually supported a wing membrane, which incidentally recalls another creature from the book, the Flurrit).
- Large flightless birds evolving in the presence of non-avian dinosaurs; Gargantuavis in particular is not too unlike the Tromble.
- Fur-like plumage on ornithischians (Tianyulong, Psittacosaurus, and Kulindadromeus).
- An Asian coelurosaur that glided with membranous wings: Yi.
- Filter-feeding plesiosaurs: Morturneria (the book's is depicted as being a baleen whale-like pliosaur however, unlike Morturneria, which was a sand-sifting elasmosaur).
- A pterosaur diving like a penguin: Alcione elainus (although the book's is more or less a reskinned penguin, complete with being flightless, while Alcione merely has shortened wings that could've been used for flapping underwater while diving).
- The dip is a fish-eating semi-aquatic feathered theropod, a concept now vindicated by the discovery of the goose-like Halszkaraptor.
- The zwim, an aquatic mammal with a paddle-like tail, evokes the Jurassic proto-mammal Castorocauda.
- The book's plesiosaurs are all shown with tail fins, something that would not become standard on portrayals of plesiosaurs until the 2010s.
- Subverted with the cribrum. It recalls a hypothesis from the early 2000s which suggested that ornithomimids were flamingo-like filter feeders, but which has since been debunked.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: The book has been out of print for years now, and used copies tend to run for very hefty sums, so most readers nowadays have to rely on digital copies distributed by fans online, unless they're willing to shell out a pretty penny or get very lucky at a secondhand store.
- Science Marches On: Even at the time, some of the depictions of dinosaurs were sketchy at best, but nowadays many of them are completely outdated after more than thirty years of advancing paleontology. To wit:
- The pterosaurs are often far too bird-like, standing bipedally on long digitigrade legs and capable of grabbing things with their feet. They also have many other errors, such as mammal-like heterodont dentition (completely unknown in pterosaurs, not even counting the fact there are no toothed pterosaurs known from near the end of the Late Cretaceous), incorrect wing anatomy (membrane is too thin, too many joints, no pteroid bones, folded incorrectly during rest) and aren't referred to any specific group, which may be just as well, since they don't resemble species from any known pterosaur groups. Ironically, the Lank, which was one of the most criticized designs of the book back when it was released, is actually the most accurate one.
- Some fish-eating pterosaurs are also depicted holding their wings upright, as not to get them wet. There was a belief that pterosaurs would not be able to fly if their wings were soaked (present also in Walking with Dinosaurs), but it's not considered likely anymore. Many pterosaurs were probably capable swimmers or even dove underwater for their prey.
- Many predatory pterosaurs, such as the Harridan, are depicted as hunting animals from the sky like birds-of-prey. Newer research has shown that inland hunting pterosaurs like azhdarchids (one of the most widespread and successful pterosaur groups at the end of the Cretaceous, but totally absent here) would have hunted on the ground.
- In the introduction, it's stated that pterosaurs evolved from gliding reptiles, which was the leading hypothesis during the 1980s. However, currently it's still highly uncertain whether this was actually the case, with more evidence leaning towards pterosaurs evolving from ground-dwelling animals, and relationships between gliding and flying called into question (since gliding animals and flying animals tend not to be closely related to one another).
- The Soar is depicted feeding its flightless young in coastal nesting colonies like a typical seabird, which remains a popular pterosaur behaviour trope, but a lot of more recent evidence indicates young pterosaurs were largely self-sufficient after hatching and might not have even eaten the same things as the adults.
- Megalosaurus being one dinosaur genus that survived into the present day, and on Madagascar of all places, is particularly odd. While Megalosaurus used to be a very inclusive genus, by the 1980s, its status as a former wastebasket taxon was well established and the genus had been narrowed down to the type species, the Mid Jurassic British Megalosaurus bucklandii. Fragmentary fossils described as Megalosaurus crenatissimus were indeed found on Madagascar and date to the very end of the Cretaceous, but by 1955, they were reclassified as Majungasaurus crenatissimus (more complete fossils discovered in the '90s eventually revealed that it was an abelisaurid).
- The description of dinosaur evolution is extremely out of date, as it states that the distinct archosaur lineages evolved from aquatic "thecodonts" (a group now considered a wasketbasket taxon and therefore useless for biological classification) and even implies that dinosaurs are not monophyletic, as it states ornithischians evolved from different thecodont ancestors than saurischians. By the 1990s, the use of "thecodont" classification was completely discarded. The description of Archosauria as being comprised of five orders (saurischians, ornithischians, pterosaurs, crocodilians, and "thecodonts"). Archosaurs were revised into a node-based clade in the 1980s, and most modern taxonomic classifications tend to discard the use of "orders" for being rather arbitrary.
- The introduction attempts to informally define dinosaurs as mostly large and land-living, emphasizing that dinosaurs were exclusively land-living. However, we now know some dinosaurs, such as Spinosaurus, were semi-aquatic, especially so when birds are included (even if you narrow it down to exclusively Mesozoic birds, there were the flightless, marine hesperornithes). Also of course birds, mostly being able to fly, also makes this statement inaccurate (even excluding birds, it's believed some non-avian theropods possessed limited flight, or at least gliding, abilities).
- It furthermore states dinosaurs are differentiated by hip-type, but subsequent studies indicate it's inaccurate to base their grouping entirely off of this, since some saurischian (lizard-hipped) dinosaurs evolved "bird-hipped" pelvises independently of ornithischians, most notably birds themselves (which are descended from saurischians). Saurischia and Ornithischia are also generally considered unranked clades now rather than orders.
- The book treats dinosaurs as being a completely separate group from birds, such as when stating the high Arctic is too cold for dinosaurs... and then showing two species of flightless bird that live there, the Tromble and the Whiffle.
- A large number of modern dinosaurs are said to be descended from "coelurosaurs" or "hypsilophodonts", but as far as it is known, generic primitive coelurosaurs didn't exist in the Late Cretaceous (with the possible exceptions of the strange South American Bicentenaria and the carnosaur-like megaraptorans), and, from the 2000s onward, Hypsilophodontidae is now generally considered paraphyletic. This is similar to Dixon's use of "insectivores" in After Man: A Zoology of the Future.
- The lack of differentiation beyond "coelurosaur" ancestry is also telling, as no specific coelurosaur subgroups are mentioned to have survived or focused on beyond "saurornithoids" (read: troodontids). This can attributed to the lack of knowledge regarding groups such as ornithimimids and oviraptorosaurs at the time beyond one-note stereotypes as well as tyrannosaurids still being considered carnosaurs.
- Many dinosaurs are illustrated in upright, tripod stances or have their tails dragging on the ground. The Balaclav, Lumber, and Pangaloon are heavy offenders.
- The Gwanna is almost certainly intended to be descended or at least inspired by Muttaburrasaurus (being the only Australian iguanodont known at the time). It's presented with prominent thumb spikes, but subsequent studies have indicated that rhabdodontomorph iguanodonts like Muttaburrasaurus did not have them.
- The text often makes reference to the "Tertiary", a geological period of the Cenozoic, but which has now been split into the Paleogene and Neogene.
- The opening introduction states that dinosaurs evolved around 220 million years ago. Later discoveries have found fossils of South American dinosaurs that are slightly more than 230 million years old, and it's probable that the very first dinosaurs appeared closer to 240 million years ago, during the Middle Triassic.
- In the discussion about mass extinctions, graptolites are listed as being wiped out at the end of the Devonian. This outdated two-fold; one is that a group of graptolites is known to have survived up until the end of Carboniferous, secondly, studies in the 2010s have found that the modern day marine invertebrate Rhabdopleura is probably a living graptolite, meaning they never went extinct at all!
- Ichthyosaurs are listed as having gone extinct in the Early Cretaceous, but later finds have concluded that they were widespread and successful up until near the beginning of the Late Cretaceous, around 90 million years ago, when a series of marine anoxic events wiped them out.
- It's stated that in the mid-Tertiary (as mentioned, a now-defunct geological classification), many "primitive" mammals died out and were replaced by modern forms. An example given is the "creodont" predator Sarkastodon. "Creodonts" are now widely considered a wastebasket taxon of unrelated fossil carnivorous mammals. By the 1990s, the group was reduced to just hyaenodonts and oxyaenids, and even then they were considered an evolutionary grade to carnivorans. Technically meaning creodonts never really died out and got replaced by carnivorans, they evolved into carnivorans.
- The introductory information states mammals evolved from "mammal-like reptiles", which is a term that is rarely used anymore because mammals are not considered to have evolved from reptiles under modern cladistic taxonomy (the umbrella of all living reptiles and their most recent common ancestor would exclude mammals), although “reptile” is still sometimes used in the old informal sense with “sauropsid” being used for the cladistic concept.
- There's also the issue of Dixon's
◊ cladograms◊ being rather out of date, even for their time (things like the coelurosaur-carnosaur dichotomy of theropod classification and pachycephalosaurs as ornithopods had been disproven by then, and some of the names of groups, such as "saurornithoids" and "segnosaurs" are now considered defunct). Other errors include the inclusion of "fabrosaurs" at the base of the ornithischian tree (a group now considered obsolete), the ceratosaurs as a short-lived group that became extinct in the Jurassic (ceratosaurs are now known to include the abelisaurs, meaning they survived, and were very successful, up until the very end of the Cretaceous), therizinosaurs being considered carnosaurs (like tyrannosaurs, they are now considered giant coelurosaurs, although Dixon was closer than some of his contemporaries who considered them sauropodomorphs), heterodontosaurids dying out in the Triassic (they're now known to have survived into the Early Cretaceous or possibly even the end of the Cretaceous if they evolved into pachycephalosaurus), triconodonts and symmetrodonts dying out at the end of the Jurassic (both groups are now known to have survived until the end of the Cretaceous, on top of the traditional symmetrodont group being considered paraphyletic nowadays), placental mammals and marsupials diverging in the Cretaceous (newer fossil and genetic studies indicate they split during the Early to Mid Jurassic) and "camptosaurs" being a distinct branch (Camptosauridae still only contains one genus, Camptosaurus, and is now considered a subgroup of iguanodonts). - The tree also depicts ornithomimosaurs diverging from other coelurosaurs during the Late Triassic or Early Jurassic, likely reflecting the fact Elaphrosaurus was at the time considered an early ornithomimosaur (it is currently considered a noasaurid ceratosaur with ornithomimosaur-like traits convergently evolved). All ornithomimosaurs are still currently only known from the Cretaceous, although their ghost lineage extends into the Jurassic.
- The way the different coelurosaurs subgroups erupt from the main grouping is utterly nonsense from the modern perspective, as it's very apparent they had no clue what groups were more closely related to which. Most significantly, it shows birds evolving from basal coelurosaurs in the Early Jurassic, rather than being closely related to troodontids and dromaeosaurs (shown as two different unrelated groups) as is the current consensus.
- Iguanodonts are presented a group that is separate from hadrosaurs and it's stated that hadrosaurs replaced iguanodonts in most parts of the world. The traditional iguanodont grouping is now thought of as paraphyletic; the hadrosaurs didn't replace iguanodonts, the iguanodonts evolved into hadrosaurs. Hadrosaurs and non-hadrosaur iguanodonts (specifically rhabdodontids) have also been found to coexist in Europe during the end of the Late Cretaceous, undermining the idea iguanodonts were "outcompeted" even more.
- One of the three crocodilian groups in the tree is listed as "mesosuchians". "Mesosuchia" was a grouping of transitional crocodyliforms between the more primitive "protosuchians" and the modern eusuchians (incorrectly labelled as "eosuchians" in the cladogram). Both "protosuchians" and "mesosuchians" have been abandoned due to the fact they are paraphyletic and misleading.
- The complete absence of several dinosaur groups that have been described since the book was published also help to date the cladogram, such as the abelisaurs, alvarezsaurs, megaraptorans, and elasmarians.
- Under the cladogram, it's stated that titanosaurs managed to survive over other sauropod groups because they were the most lightly-built sauropods. This couldn't be any more inaccurate, since titanosaurs included the most massive land animals to ever live (some species being even longer than the blue whale, though not as heavy), and had extremely wide and heavy builds among sauropods. The cladogram itself places them as being related to diplodocids (which actually were slenderly built), but we now consider titanosaurs related to brachiosaurs.
- During the introduction on flying animals, it's mentioned the largest pterosaurs "must have fed on carrion". This was a common hypothesis at the time for Quetzalcoatlus and other azhdarchids, but closer anatomical studies starting in the 1990s showed they were poorly suited for scavenging. By the late 2000s, the prevailing view is that they were most likely land stalking predators like huge herons or storks (that said, large storks such as marabous do quite a bit of scavenging themselves).
- Also underneath the cladogram, tyrannosaurs are described as only having appeared in the Cretaceous and megalosaurs as being the most successful and long-lasting group of "carnosaurs". Tyrannosaurs dating from the Mid Jurassic are now knownnote , while (rather ironically) megalosaurids are now the only group of giant predatory theropod (including spinosaurs, allosaurs, and tyrannosaurs) not known to have survived into the Cretaceous (a possible megalosaur tibia is known from the late Cretaceous of Antarctica but has not been evaluated in detail).
- Carnosaurs are described as having descended from "teratosaurs" in the introduction; this was the result of erroneously assigning prosauropod fossil fragments to a carnivorous Triassic archosaur known as Teratosaurus, leading to the popular notion in 20th century dinosaur books, such as this one, that carnosaurs descended from teratosaurs. In the later 1980s, Teratosaurus was found to be more closely related to crocodilians than dinosaurs.
- Coelurosaurs are stated to have descended directly from coelophysids, but most current classifications indicate coelophysids were an early offshoot of theropods which aren't particularly closely related to coelurosaurs any more than they are to carnosaurs or ceratosaurs.
- Coelurosaurs are also referred to as "coelurids", which was another wastebasket taxon many random small theropods (including several now considered noasaurid ceratosaurs) were inserted into in popular dinosaur texts of 1980s into the 90s. Nowadays, the only species universally considered a coelurid is Coelurus itself, although the coeval Tanycolagreus is probably one as well.
- Several groups presented to have survived into the modern day (most egregiously the Jurassic Megalosaurus, not just a megalosaur, but the genus itself) or in the cladograms as having survived into the Cenozoic, belong to lineages that didn't make it close to the end of the Cretaceous (pliosaurs, spinosaurids, diplodocids, camarasaurids, toothed pterosaurs, etc.).
- Two of the biogeographical realms listed, the Ethiopian and Oriental realms, are now renamed as the Afrotropical and Indomalyan realms (respectively).
- On the bright side, it was one of the first media to depict dinosaurs with filamentous integumentary structures (because at the time adding covering to dinosaurs was highly controversial, but being speculative, this book didn't need to worry about such things). Unfortunately, Dixon calls it fur.note The distribution of "fur" to dinosaurs in the book is also totally random; many coelurosaurs completely lack it while hadrosaurs and ankylosaurs (neither of which have any evidence for hair or feathers) are given it.
- The concept of the "saurornithoidid" Jinx hunting by disguising itself as the "hypsilophodont" Coneater, aside from relying on superficial similarities between the two groups being exaggerated (the forelimb and skull anatomy of the Jinx in particular being fudged in order to make it work) it wouldn't make sense at all with the current knowledge that "saurornithoid" dinosaurs (read: troodontids) were as fully feathered as birds, including having wings (some may have even been able to fly).
- Several times, dinosaurs are portrayed or stated to have wrinkly, leathery skin, but extensive fossils of dinosaur skin have shown that nearly all dinosaurs, when they weren't covered in feathers, had small, pebbly, non-overlapping scales, sometimes interspersed with larger scutes.
- Many dinosaur tails have been reduced to rod-thin poles, which is often explained as that the animal no longer needs it as a counterbalance, so it became reduced. However, what it does not seem to touch upon is that the thick tail base of dinosaurs contains many important muscles attached to the thigh, necessary for locomotion (even birds, which have highly reduced tails, kept the condensed butt, which is used to assist maneuvring in flight).
- The birdsnatcher is a species of long-necked plesiosaur which specializes in preying on birds and pterosaurs which it plucks out of the sky, but it is now thought that it would be physically impossible for plesiosaurs to raise their necks far out of the water, never mind have them be fast and flexible enough to catch a flying pterosaur.
- In the Monocorn entry, it's noted some ceratopsians are no longer limited to North America (probably intending to refer to ceratopsids specifically, since non-ceratopsid ceratopsians have long been known from Asia), as they entered Asia through the Bering Strait during the ice age. An Asian ceratopsid was described in 2010, known as Sinoceratops (there's also Turanoceratops, but it may be a transitionary species just outside the group).
- It's stated that there is no record of tree-living dinosaurs from the Mesozoic, and all the arboreal dinosaurs featured in the book are recently evolved. From exceptional fossil formations in China starting in the late 1990s, we now know many species of bird-like dinosaur that likely lived in trees, as well as anatomical evidence to suggest heterodontosaurs were also capable of tree-climbing.
- The introduction for temperate forest habitats states that seasonal change did not occur during the Mesozoic. During the 1980s and 1990s, fossils of dinosaurs were found in high-latitude regions such as Alaska and southern Australia, areas which would've been in the polar regions at the time and therefore would have experienced extreme seasonal changes (including months of total darkness).
- Raptors are described as having been immigrants to South America that wiped out most of the native predators, when there were already several varieties of raptors native to the continent, some of which were already quite large.
- Multiple concepts are shown that actually would make sense if derived from a different ancestor. The tree-climbing hornbill-like Crackbeak is described as a hypsilophodont, despite very closely resembling an oviraptorosaur, the Cutlasstooth is described as a giant "primitive coelurosaur" even though it more likely should have been a tyrannosaur descendant, and most notably, the armless, scavenging Gourmand would make far more sense had it been an abelisaur, which indeed did live in South America and had fully vestigial arms.
- The complete absence of abelisaurs, which are not mentioned even once despite being widespread during the Late Cretaceous, can be chalked up to the fact they were only just discovered and named at the time the book was being published (Abelisaurus and Carnotaurus were named in 1985, and Majungasaurus was known at the time but not recognized as an abelisaurid until the late '90s, when more complete fossils of it were found). Hence why only tyrannosaurs and "megalosaurs" among large predatory dinosaurs are shown to have survived to the present day (ironically in the places where abelisaurs were known to have dominated).
- The megaraptorans are also not mentioned even once despite being one of the three groups of large predatory dinosaurs (alongside tyrannosaurids and abelisaurids) known to have survived to the very end of the Cretaceous. This is of course logical, because the book was written in the 80s, it wasn't until the late 90s that Megaraptor was discovered, and not until 2009 that they were established as a group.
- Interestingly, the "megalosaur" is noted to have similarities to the "megalosaurs" that lived in prehistoric Gondwana. Megalosaurus is now only known from England, which would've been part of Laurasia. Gondwanan Megalosaurus species are now believed to represent abelisaurs, carcharodontosaurs, or even crocodyliforms, none of which are closely related to megalosaurs. On the other hand, the crocodile-headed spinosaurs, many of which did live in Gondwana, are typically considered members of the megalosaur group, and a megalosaur-like tibia is known from the latest Cretaceous of Antarctica.
- The zwim is a shrew-like mammal with a paddle tail, highlighting how mammals remained tiny rodent-like critters in an alternate world where dinosaurs had lived. However, mammal fossils from the Mesozoic showed a surprising lot of diversity: there were tree-climbing squirrel-like forms, some of which could glide, some were aquatic otter-like species, or hoofed ones resembling a mouse deer, or burrowing gopher like forms. Numerous species from the Cretaceous exceeded several kilograms, indicating a likely trend of increasing size despite the dominance of dinosaurs. One, called Repenomamus, was a badger-like predator that ate small dinosaurs.
- The Gourmand, as a tyrannosaur, is described as being a gigantic carnosaur. At the time, Carnosauria was a wastebasket taxon where theropods were dumped based on large size alone, but starting in the early 1990s, it was subsequently found that carnivorous theropods repeatedly reached large sizes independently and many supposed "carnosaurs" weren't really related. Carnosauria is now a much more inclusive group that excludes tyrannosaurs, which are now considered coelurosaurs.
- Relating to this, the Gourmand is presented as an exclusive scavenger, which was part of a hypothesis at the time that carnosaurs (which, as stated above, included tyrannosaurs at the time) were simply growing bigger, slower, and bulkier. The Gourmand was presented as the ultimate culmination of this, a fifteen-ton, cumbersome, armoured scavenger. This idea has not been taken seriously for a long time now, for multiple reasons (aside from the aforementioned fact tyrannosaurs are not carnosaurs, it's since been concluded tyrannosaurs were certainly active hunters, they were actually built for speed, and the unlikelihood of such a huge and slow animal somehow subsisting entirely off of bodies lying around). This firmly dates the book's publication to the late 1980s or early 1990s, when the "Was T. rex a predator or a scavenger?" debate was a big deal in pop culture, and was inevitably brought up in discussions of the animal. For some reason, the megalosaur is also described as being a scavenger, as though it were impossible for any large theropod to be a hunter.
- In the Neotropical section, it's noted how hadrosaurs never reached South America, allowing sauropods to continue dominating. It has since become known that hadrosaurs had already dispersed into South America before the end of the Cretaceous (never mind that sauropod and hadrosaur coexistence was already known from several other continents, so there's no evidence of one "outcompeting" the other), in genera such as Secernosaurus and Bonapartesaurus.
- In the Bricket entry, it's stated that crested hadrosaurs (lambeosaurines) never managed to reach Asia during the Cretaceous, and only managed to get there during the recent ice ages. Not that there weren't already lambeosaurines known from Asia already (such as Tsintaosaurus), but numerous discoveries later on have found a great diversity of lambeosaurines present in Asia at the end of the Late Cretaceous, while ironically, they seem to have been rare in North America.
- The Lumber, aside from being a stereotypically outdated sauropod (tail-dragging, slow, and wrinkly), is a species which has evolved a trunk on its face, like an elephant. This was an idea that was sometimes proposed for sauropods in the 70s and 80s, but is now completely discredited; no one takes it seriously anymore for numerous reasons (reptiles don't have the facial musculature, it's totally unnecessary for an animal that already has an incredibly long neck to reach things, and skull anatomy of sauropods don't align at all with anatomy of animals with trunks).
- The Lumber is so large, it's stated to be unable to lift its huge neck above its shoulders. This was likely part of the belief at the time that it would be impossible for a sauropod to pump blood into its head through a long neck held upright (ignoring species like Brachiosaurus). The majority of modern studies have found it more likely most, if not all, sauropods held their necks at an incline because no living amniotes have their necks held horizontally.
- Inversely, the two titanosaur species from the Ethiopian realm, stated to have changed little from their Jurassic and Cretaceous ancestors, are depicted with nostrils on their foreheads. Starting in the early 2000s, newer research has indicated it's much more likely sauropods had nostrils near the end of the snout, like most land vertebrates. Discoveries in the 2010s also indicate that sauropods had keratinous beaks like ornithischians and many theropods.
- These two titanosaurs are also indicated to digest plant matter by ingesting stones (known as gastroliths) to grind up plant matter in their gizzard and stomach. Some newer studies have cast doubt on the belief that gastroliths were used to aid digestion; it may have been that they just ate stones accidentally sometimes.
- The digit anatomy of many of the dinosaurs is inaccurate in most cases, with too many fingers or claws. This is especially egregious with the titanosaurs, which have standard elephant-like feet when they shouldn't even have digits on their front feet at all! The hadrosaurs are also portrayed with primitive clawed hands, but more well-preserved fossils indicate they had a single hoof-like nail somewhat similar to a horse on their front feet.
- The illustration for the ancestor of the Taranter clearly uses the original 1908 Barnum Brown diagram of the osteoderm distribution for Ankylosaurus, but subsequent studies about a century later have indicated the armour was much more complex◊ than originally believed.
- The entry for the Taranter also states ankylosaurs are divided into two groups (these are not referred to by name, but presumably these are nodosaurids and ankylosaurids). Even ignoring miscellaneous unsorted species, in 2021, a new third group of ankylosaurs was established known as "Parankylosauria", which encompasses several species of Gondwanan ankylosaurs that were discovered long after the book was originally published. It's also stated nodosaurs declined at the end of the Cretaceous but there's currently little evidence to suggest any real decline (even Ankylosaurus itself coexisted with a nodosaurid, Denversaurus)
- The coconut grab is depicted with eight arms total and the kraken with twelve tentacles, but it's now thought that ammonites had ten arms.
- The hadrosaurs are depicted with literal duckbills, but closer examinations of well-preserved hadrosaur skulls indicates this is an inaccurate reconstruction. The flattened duckbill is only the shape of the bony part of the snout, and there was a keratinous protrusion in front of it in life which pointed downward.
- The text states the earliest known Australian coelurosaur as Kakuru. Later research puts Kakuru's identity as a coelurosaur in doubt, as the coelurosaur-like traits of the sole bone known are also traits of abelisaurs. Any identity beyond "theropod" is inconclusive.
- Plesiosaur classification is very simplistic, only containing the long-necked elasmosaurs and the short-necked pliosaurs. Ignoring that pliosaurs are now believed to have become extinct near the beginning of the Late Cretaceous, we know not all short-necked plesiosaurs were part of one group (the polycotylids had pliosaur-like builds but were probably more closely related to elasmosaurs, and all short necked plesiosaurs from the end of the Cretaceous were polycotylids). This simplistic classification of plesiosaurs by neck length was completely discarded by the 2000s, with elasmosaurs now considered a much more inclusive subgroup.
- The Ethiopian realm (Africa) is said to still retain much of the wildlife it's had since since the time of ancient Gondwana, due to its isolation. However, this is not true of Africa in our timeline, where much of the current native life is descended from species that immigrated from Asia and Europe, with most of its earlier fauna wiped out. Much of the reason why Africa retains its diversity of megafauna is more due to related megafauna dying out everywhere else before the present day rather than Africa having any faunal uniqueness. In particular, it states the Sahara has been an impenetrable barrier to faunal immigration, but newer research indicates the Sahara was much wetter and more hospitable only six-thousand years ago.
- In Africa, pterosaurs are depicted as having outcompeted herbivorous dinosaurs because they didn't manage to reach the continent in time. At the time of original publishing, the African Cretaceous fossil record was extremely poor, making this claim slightly more believable, but subsequent discoveries have indicated that both sauropods and hadrosaurs had already colonized it.
- Additionally, it's stated that Africa split away from Gondwana 145 million years ago, but more recent finds indicate it was still connected to South America much later than initially believed, until around ninety million years ago.
- Related to this, the only South American animals explicitly mentioned to come from its old stock rather than recent northern immigrants are the titanosaurs (with the Turtosaur in particular clearly based on Saltasaurus). This is likely due to the fact that South American paleontology was still in its infancy (with the aforementioned Saltasaurus being an early exception), only becoming famous for its extensive fossil bone beds in the 1990s.
- In the introduction, it's stated that crocodilians were the only archosaur group to remain evolutionarily conservative as riverine fish-eaters. However, many newer studies heavily refute this, with evidence to suggest crocodilians originally had active, land-dwelling, warm-blooded ancestors, and many finds indicate they diversified tremendously during the Mesozoic, with sea-going, herbivorous, burrowing, omnivorous, fast-running, and possibly even filter-feeding forms, with complex social behaviour and mammal-like anatomy.
- A few times, the lack of a collarbone (or clavicle) in theropods is noted, with the arbosaurs stated to have re-evolved it for their brachiating movement. Later finds starting in the 1990s indicate a collarbone was present and widespread among theropod groups.
- Related to this, bio-mechanical studies on dinosaur limbs indicate the range of motion for their hands and arms was much more limited than in mammals, so a group of dinosaurs which agilely swing through the trees like monkeys is probably unlikely. Discoveries of real arboreal dinosaurs don't show any evidence of any brachiating species either.
- Tuataras are mentioned in the Kloon's entry as being "primitive" reptiles that have changed little since the Triassic. This is now widely considered a grossly misleading misconception among biologists and there is little evidence to support this "living fossil" notion.
- Subsequent geological studies have found that New Zealand (and New Caledonia) are actually fragments of a currently mostly submerged continent known as Zealandia. It's believed that around 23 million years ago most of the landmass was submerged, explaining why nearly all of its fauna consists of animals which could've swum or flown over after that (like its flightless birds), so it would be unlikely for the Kloon and Wandle's ancestors to have originated from pterosaurs that were there from when the landmass originally rifted away.
- Many illustrations also depict the dinosaurs with pronated hands (palms facing the chest), but subsequent studies have indicated the limited range of motion of their wrists would prevent such a posture (this is an extremely common mistake in dinosaur reconstructions, even now). Dinosaurs can only position their hands with the palms facing each other.
- Numerous illustrations use very shrinkwrapped portrayals, particularly involving the tail and hip regions of dinosaurs, with unnaturally bulging posteriors, although some also have weirdly thin or shrunken skulls as well (particularly hadrosaurs).
- A few times it's suggested that dinosaurs lack the intelligence had by mammals in our timeline; in the afterword, Dixon suggests that if intelligence were to develop among dinosaurs, it would only be savage cunning, rather than any sophisticated learning capabilities, as if it were impossible to imagine dinosaurs becoming truly intelligent. Overall, the book's narrative is presented during the awkward period of pop culture palaeontology where the image of tail-dragging, Prehistoric Monster Dumb Dinos still persisted (numerous passages are given to describe how dimwitted or sluggish large dinosaurs are), and that of agile, warm-blooded animals presented by the dinosaur renaissance were only just starting to replace it (it would be another five years before Jurassic Park hit theatres).
- The book flip-flops on how warm-blooded the large dinosaurs are, frequently describing them as becoming sluggish when the weather gets cool, slow-moving, or stating their metabolisms are not efficient enough to survive in the tundra (and then, as aforementioned, showing two species of bird that live there), despite earlier noting how sauropods had bone growth on par with birds and mammals. This can likely be attributed to the theory of dinosaur endothermy being relatively new at the time and the image of the tail-dragging evolutionary relic still fresh in pop culture, so the book attempts to compromise between the two possibilities.
- Relating to this, a more subtle case of science marching on is the complete lack of any omnivorous dinosaurs. All theropods are presented as strict carnivores, and all sauropods and ornithischians as strict herbivores. We now know many theropods evolved into omnivorous and herbivorous groups (even excluding birds), some ornithischians are speculated to have been omnivorous, and sauropods evolved from meat-eating ancestors in the Triassic.
- On many of the entries, it's stated how a given species has changed very little from its Mesozoic ancestor (such as the Numbskull, the Rajaphant, the Monocorn, the Coneater, and numerous others). This can probably be ascribed due to the fact that dinosaur evolutionary trends back in the 1980s were poorly understood (as seen with numerous more specific examples already noted here) with many traits in different species wrongly interpreted as homologous, giving the false perception that lineages remained similar for long periods (resulting in now obsolete "traditional" groupings such as carnosaurs, hypsilophodonts, iguanodonts, and prosauropods) so the book went for a very conservative view of their future development.
- Many dinosaurs and pterosaurs are depicted as nearly one-to-one Fantastic Fauna Counterparts of modern birds and mammals, but many later studies indicate that they were very different ecologically. In particular, it's now known many non-avian dinosaur and pterosaur species occupied different niches as they aged, changing their diet and habitat as they grew up. Hence why most pterosaur and dinosaur species were enormous by the end of the Cretaceous and there were very few small ones: there's not much need for small or medium-sized species if the huge species could occupy those niches as juveniles and adolescents. However, here, most modern dinosaur species are relatively small, and many giant prehistoric species evolved into smaller forms seemingly for no other reason than to make them more similar to real life modern animals.
- In the epilogue, where Dixon criticizes Lost World stories such as Journey to the Center of the Earth for depicting animals from different epochs coexisting because they would inevitably outcompete one another. This is presented in the story with hadrosaurs outcompeting sauropods or coelurosaurs outcompeting South America's previous native predators. However, both these examples are now considered defunct; as mentioned above, there's little evidence to suggest competition between hadrosaurs and titanosaurs, and the coelurosaur example is likely based on carnivorans "outcompeting" sparassodonts when they arrived in South America, but later studies have indicated sparassodonts were already extinct before carnivorans arrived. There's little evidence of immigration events outright wiping out all native competitors in a region.
- Also in the epilogue, he notes the complete impossibility of animal cloning to discredit the idea of bringing dinosaurs back to life. Less than ten years after the book came out, Dolly the sheep was successfully cloned from adult somatic cells. He's still correct that it's impossible to clone prehistoric animals from fossils, however.
- In the introduction, where the cause of dinosaur mass extinction is examined, multiple ideas are given, with asteroid impact among them, but he states that dinosaurs likely died out due to natural causes. Dixon questions that, if an asteroid was indeed the cause of this extinction event, where would the crater be? The location of the impactor in question was documented and confirmed in the 1990s (actually, it was discovered in the 1970s, but wasn't confirmed as an impact crater until then); it's now known as the Chicxulub crater. An asteroid impact is now widely considered the primary reason for the end-Cretaceous extinction event and very few believe in a gradual extinction anymore.
- Dixon also notes how some dinosaur bones were found in deposits slightly above the layers of Cretaceous rock, using this as evidence of gradual dinosaur extinction, rather than abrupt. Numerous studies since have considered these bones reworked (they were disturbed after their original preservation and slipped into younger rocks) and the dating techniques used to be unreliable. There remains no reliable evidence of any large non-avian dinosaurs surviving the K-Pg boundary, nor would their short-term survival necessarily undermine an abrupt extinction event.
- Evidence for diminishing dinosaur diversity at the end of the Late Cretaceous is also controversial; some newer studies suggest this stance may be flawed, being based mostly off of North American dinosaurs, rather than a global view, and unreliable fossil recording creating preservation biases.
- The end of the Mesozoic is now believed to have more precisely ended just before sixty-six million years ago, rather than sixty-five million years ago.
- Ironically, this criticism of the book— written by paleontologist Greg Paul, no less— has aged almost as badly as the book itself. Despite taking Dixon to task for many of the book's mistakes, Paul says a number of things that are now known to be inaccurate. He says that therizinosaurs were related to sauropods (they were actually theropods, notably one of the few herbivorous ones), that all pterosaurs were fish- or insect-eaters (azdarchids were predators of small dinosaurs and tapejarids were omnivorous fruit-eaters), and that no burrowing or aquatic dinosaurs existed (prior, of course, to the discovery that Spinosaurus was aquatic, and before the discovery of Halszkaraptor)note. He even singles out the Lank as "the worst beast in the book", despite it being arguably the most realistic of Dixon's flightless pterosaurs.
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