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** On the phylogenetic tree in the introduction, mosasaurs are shown splitting off from lizards in the Early Jurassic, but fossils indicate they only evolved in the Late Cretaceous (whether or not mosasaurs are genetically closer to snakes or monitor lizards is still a matter of debate). Regardless, for reasons unclear, no mosasaur species are depicted in the present day.
** The monocorn is mentioned to have evolved a digitigrade stance from plantigrade ancestors. Ceratopsids, like all ornithischians, were already digitigrade animals, and walked on their toes for both their front and back feet.


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* ToxicDinosaur: The sandle is mentioned to have a venomous bite for subduing prey (likely due to being heavily inspired by desert-dwelling vipers) and the gestalt males have spines growing in a crown around their skull which can inject a lethal toxin.

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** In Africa, pterosaurs are depicted as having outcompeted herbivorous dinosaurs such as ornithopods and sauropods because the latter didn't manage to reach the continent in time. Even though several sauropods were already known from Africa at the time, most famously the Late Jurassic fauna of Tendaguru such as ''Dicraeosaurus'', ''Tornieria'', and the African ''Brachiosaurus'' (now ''Giraffatitan), whose fossils have been known since the 1910s, and the Mid Cretaceous iguanodont ''Ouranosaurus'' was also described in 1976, so it was already confirmed that large plant-eating dinosaurs inhabited Africa throughout the Mesozoic.

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** In Africa, pterosaurs are depicted as having outcompeted herbivorous dinosaurs such as ornithopods and sauropods because the latter didn't manage to reach the continent in time. Even though several sauropods were already known from Africa at the time, most famously the Late Jurassic fauna of Tendaguru such as ''Dicraeosaurus'', ''Tornieria'', and the African ''Brachiosaurus'' (now ''Giraffatitan), ''Giraffatitan''), whose fossils have been known since the 1910s, and the Mid Cretaceous iguanodont ''Ouranosaurus'' was also described in 1976, so it was already confirmed that large plant-eating dinosaurs inhabited Africa throughout the Mesozoic.



* FantasticFaunaCounterpart: Many of the book's imaginary animals are extremely obviously based on real animals in appearance, behaviour, and often living in the same locations. The Lank are giraffe-like pterosaurs (even with giraffe colours and living in Africa), Plungers are penguin-pterosaurs, Tubb are koala-dinosaurs (yes, they eat only eucalyptus and live in Australia), Watergulps are manatee-dinosaurs, Pangaloons are, well, pangolin-dinosaurs and the Gestalt are mole rat-dinosaurs to name a few.

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* FantasticFaunaCounterpart: Many If they aren't just straight up transplants of prehistoric species, most of the book's imaginary animals are extremely obviously based on real animals in appearance, behaviour, and often living in the same locations. locations.
** The Waspeater is an analogue to the tamanduas, having an extremely similar appearance, including large claws for digging into insect hives, a very narrow, largely fused skull and mandible, and a prehensile tail and hooked hind claws for grasping branches. The fact it lives in Africa rather than South America is almost certainly due to anteaters being thought to be close relatives of the African aardvark and pangolins, [[ScienceMarchesOn a relationship which is now long discredited]] (Dixon made the same mistake with the swimming anteater in ''After Man'').
**
The Lank are giraffe-like pterosaurs (even is one of the most egregious examples in the entire book. It's a giraffe-pterosaur, complete with giraffe colours the same colour scheme, the same shape (including having evolved hooves), the same size, the same stride, and living in Africa), Plungers are penguin-pterosaurs, Tubb are koala-dinosaurs (yes, they eat the same area (the savannahs of Africa). The only eucalyptus and live in Australia), Watergulps are manatee-dinosaurs, Pangaloons are, well, pangolin-dinosaurs and thing really different is that it's a grazer, rather than a browser.
** The Flarp is an ostrich-pterosaur, being a large flightless, grazing biped about two metres tall that lives on
the grasslands of Africa in small flocks, which retains wings for display purposes.
** The
Gestalt are mole rat-dinosaurs pachycephalosaurs as naked-molerats (a favourite concept of Dixon's), as small herbivorous vertebrates which in complex eusocial colonies, with one large, wrinkled queen. The only real difference is that they live in trees rather than underground.
** The Sandle is the equivalent of the golden mole, a small tunnelling animal that feeds on insects which is able
to name "swim" through the sand dunes of Africa, with smooth fur and a few.torpedo-like shape to aid in this movement. It also has similarities to the Sahara sand viper, possessing a venomous bite and ambushing prey by laying just under the sand.
** The Wyrms are the equivalent of snakes, being extremely elongated carnivores which move by undulations of their flattened belly scales and have only one kidney due to their narrow bodies. Similar to snakes, they are extremely widespread and diverse, with species that live in deserts and burrow, and those that live in jungles and climb trees.
** The Tromble is the avian equivalent of the muskox, as a large, shaggy herbivore which lives in migratory herds across the Arctic tundra, feeding on lichens, mosses, and hardy grasses.
** The sprintosaurs are the analogue to modern deers or antelopes, being widespread fleet-footed obligate quadrupeds that live in great herds on the prairies and grasslands.
** The Northclaw is the equivalent of a cougar, being a ferocious sickle-clawed solitary apex predator of North America.
** The Monocorn is a bison-ceratopsid, being a huge horned grazer, complete with a shaggy mane and humped back, that lives across the northern hemisphere, particularly across the plains of North America.
** The Bricket is a moose-hadrosaur, being a relatively large quadruped herbivore with brown fur (including a small hump of bristles over its shoulder) native to the woodlands of North America with a broad display structure on its head that also soaks in water to help rid itself of parasites.
** The Zwim is basically a shrew which has taken the niche of the North American river otter, being an amphibious mammal that lives in burrows near freshwater, feeds on aquatic invertebrates, and is very social. Similar to the otter, it's noted that their vision can adapt to seeing both above and underwater.
** The Balaclav is the mountain goat, as a relatively large alpine-dwelling herbivore capable of subsisting on low-nutrient mosses and other high-altitude plants, and which lives in the Rocky Mountains.
** The Sift is a pterosaur heron equivalent, being a very long-legged, narrow-beaked wader that feeds on small aquatic prey in freshwater areas (note that no pterosaurs in reality had legs long enough for bipedal wading as depicted in the book). The Paraso is another such pterosaur-heron, but is much more specifically a black heron copy, having the same black colouration and the exact same hunting method (shading the water with their wings to attract fish).
** The Nauger is the woodpecker equivalent, as a North American insectivore which bores out grubs from under tree bark (although the method in which it does so is copied from the aye-aye), which is lampshaded by the text in this case, suggesting that if no dinosaurs were around then birds might have filled its niche ([[ScienceMarchesOn the book repeatedly denies a link between dinosaurs and birds which is now widely accepted]]).
** The Pangaloon is, rather obviously, a pangolin analogue, being an insectivore with a long tongue, large claws, and hard scales evolved from fused fur masses. Notably, it being found in South America rather than Africa or Asia is because pangolins were thought to be close relatives of the actually South American anteaters at the time of the book's publication (pangolins are more closely related to ''humans'' than anteaters).
** The Watergulp and Glub are the equivalent of manatees and dugongs, being largely freshwater aquatic herbivores, the former from the Amazon and the latter from the mangroves of Asia. However, the book decided to make these two animals unrelated, rather than part of one distinct grouping of aquatic herbivores like manatees and dugongs.
** The Gimp is the equivalent of the hummingbird, being a tiny, narrow-mouthed nectar-drinker with a very long tongue native to the New World.
** The Scaly Glider is analogous to the real life ''Draco'' lizards, being small, arboreal, insectivorous, jungle-dwelling reptiles with structures along their flanks which allow them to glide (in ''Draco'', this is a skin membrane stretched over elongated ribs, in the scaly glider, this is enlarged, flattened scales). The main difference is that it lives in South America, unlike the ''Draco'' lizards, which are exclusively Asian.
** The Turtosaur is the equivalent of a glyptodont, being a very large South American grazer with extensive body armour, including a domed shell covering most of its torso and abdomen.
** The Lumber is a sauropod African elephant (made even more blatant by its scientific name, ''Elephasaurus''), a massive, grey, wrinkly-skinned herbivore with a prehensile trunk which is the largest land animal (although strangely, it lives in South America rather than Africa, although the related gompotheres did live in South America until only a few thousand years ago). The prehensile trunk was a niche hypothesis for sauropods that frequently appeared in popular dinosaur texts of the 20th century, but it was never seriously considered.
** The Cutlasstooth is a ''Smilodon'' coelurosaur, a robustly-built sabre-toothed apex carnivore found in South America and descended from predators which migrated from North America when the two continents conjoined during the Pliocene.
** The Harridan is a pterosaur which has adapted to the niche of a bird-of-prey, something which the text lampshades. Specifically, it behaviourally resembles the golden eagle, a very large aerial predator that mainly hunts small mammals, mates for life, and lives in the mountains, although it lives in South America instead of North America.
** The Rajaphant, as made obvious by the name, is an Asian elephant analogue, being a huge, grey, wrinkly-skinned herbivore which is native to India and lives in tightly-knit herds. However, unlike elephants, their herds are comprised of mixed-sex adults and led by a male (granted, it's possible Dixon didn't know this at the time).
** The Taddy is a panda-dinosaur, a furry, round-faced, slow-moving mountain herbivore which feeds almost entirely on bamboo and lives in Asia. It is about the same size as a panda and has also evolved a unique grasping hand for handling bamboo.
** The Cribum is very obviously a flamingo equivalent, being a filter-feeding biped that feeds on brine shrimp, which induces the exact same pink colouration. It's also the exact same size as a flamingo and feeds by the same method: dipping their head upside-down into the water. It lives in Australia though, where flamingos are not found.
** The Pouch is a pelican analogue, with a large throat beneath a broad, orange-coloured face for holding fish and is also a strong swimmer.
** The Gwanna is a kangaroo-iguanodont, being a common Australian herbivore which lives in herds across the grasslands and has a similar evolutionary history of its relatives having been replaced by a supposedly-superior equivalent on the other continents (hadrosaurs to iguanodonts here, placental mammals to marsupials in real life). It's also about the same size as the largest kangaroos, is the same colour, and the illustration even shows them ''hopping'' just to drive the similarity home (although the description notes that they walk/run normally).
** The Crackbeak is a tree kangaroo analogue, being an arboreal herbivore descended from a fleet-footed terrestrial animal which is found only in Australia and is noted to have coincidental similarities to unrelated arboreal animals on other continents (arbosaurs here, monkeys in real life).
** The Tubb is a particularly obvious example, as a dinosaur koala. It is a small, pudgy, slow-moving, grey-furred herbivore which lives in trees and feeds exclusively on eucalyptus. It also has two opposable thumbs like a koala, is noted to share a common ancestry with the crackbeak (as with both tree kangaroos and koalas in reality) and also lives in Australia, as though the continent of Australia itself somehow induces the evolution of such incredibly similar animals.
** The Kloon and Wandle are pterosaur-moas, being large, flightless herbivores only found in New Zealand and come in a number of species. Similar to the moa, it's noted that they have not only lost their wings, they have lost all traces of the wings' existence. However, unlike the moas, they are noted to be very slow animals which are absolutely hapless against any sort of predator (in reality, moas were preyed upon by the giant Haast's eagle), and possess mammal-like skulls with grinding teeth ([[ArtisticLicensePaleontology pterosaurs didn't have these either]]).
** The Coconut Grab is a coconut crab redesigned as an ammonite, similarly being a semi-terrestrial island dweller which has a taste for coconut and will even climb trees to get them.
** The Soar is a pterosaur-albatross, being a huge, white fish-eater which spends long periods over the ocean and nests in colonies on remote islands.
** The Plunger is a pterosaur-penguin, a flightless, aquatic fish-eater which lives in colonies around the South Pole, with a thick layer of blubber for insulation and wings which have evolved into flippers for swimming underwater and tobogganing on their stomachs on land. It has the exact same colouration as a chinstrap penguin to boot.
** The Whulk is a plesiosaur that has taken the niche of a baleen whale, being a similarly gigantic oceanic filter-feeder with a giant head, expandable throat pouch, and sieve-like mouth for straining large quantities of plankton.
** The Pelorus is the plesiosaur equivalent of a leatherback sea turtle, as a marine reptile about two metres in length that feeds exclusively on a jellyfish equivalent.
** The Kraken is the equivalent of a lion's mane jellyfish, due its massive size, sprawling, venomous tentacles that can stretch for tens of metres, always staying at/near the water's surface, and being hunted by a leatherback sea turtle equivalent.
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* In Africa, pterosaurs are depicted as having outcompeted herbivorous dinosaurs such as ornithopods and sauropods because the latter didn't manage to reach the continent in time. Even though several sauropods were already known from Africa at the time, most famously the Late Jurassic fauna of Tendaguru such as ''Dicraeosaurus'', ''Tornieria'', and the African ''Brachiosaurus'' (now ''Giraffatitan), whose fossils have been known since the 1910s, and the Mid Cretaceous iguanodont ''Ouranosaurus'' was also described in 1976, so it was already confirmed that large plant-eating dinosaurs inhabited Africa throughout the Mesozoic.

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* ** In Africa, pterosaurs are depicted as having outcompeted herbivorous dinosaurs such as ornithopods and sauropods because the latter didn't manage to reach the continent in time. Even though several sauropods were already known from Africa at the time, most famously the Late Jurassic fauna of Tendaguru such as ''Dicraeosaurus'', ''Tornieria'', and the African ''Brachiosaurus'' (now ''Giraffatitan), whose fossils have been known since the 1910s, and the Mid Cretaceous iguanodont ''Ouranosaurus'' was also described in 1976, so it was already confirmed that large plant-eating dinosaurs inhabited Africa throughout the Mesozoic.
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Added DiffLines:

* In Africa, pterosaurs are depicted as having outcompeted herbivorous dinosaurs such as ornithopods and sauropods because the latter didn't manage to reach the continent in time. Even though several sauropods were already known from Africa at the time, most famously the Late Jurassic fauna of Tendaguru such as ''Dicraeosaurus'', ''Tornieria'', and the African ''Brachiosaurus'' (now ''Giraffatitan), whose fossils have been known since the 1910s, and the Mid Cretaceous iguanodont ''Ouranosaurus'' was also described in 1976, so it was already confirmed that large plant-eating dinosaurs inhabited Africa throughout the Mesozoic.

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** The book shows ''Megalosaurus modernus'', a LivingRelic still existing on the island of Madagascar (likely referencing how the local lemurs are "living fossils" compared to mainland simians). While ''Megalosaurus'' used to be a major wastebasket taxon, which included fragmentary fossils found in Late Cretaceous rocks in Madagascar, by the '80s this was no longer the case, and the Madagascar fossils were reclassified as ''Majungasaurus'' back in 1955 (though it wasn't recognized as an abelisaurid until more complete remains were found in the '90s).


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* ArtisticLicensePaleontology:
** The book shows ''Megalosaurus modernus'', a LivingRelic still existing on the island of Madagascar (likely referencing how the local lemurs are "living fossils" compared to mainland simians). While ''Megalosaurus'' used to be a major wastebasket taxon, which included fragmentary fossils found in Late Cretaceous rocks in Madagascar, by the '80s this was no longer the case, and the Madagascar fossils were reclassified as ''Majungasaurus'' back in 1955 (though it wasn't recognized as an abelisaurid until more complete remains were found in the '90s).
** It's claimed that hadrosaurs never ventured into South America in the Cretaceous, even though the Argentinian ''Secernosaurus koerneri'' and "''Kritosaurus australis''" (now ''Huallasaurus australis'') were described in 1979 and 1984 respectively.
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** The gimps are a type of nectar-drinking dinosaur like a featherless, flightless hummingbird with a mouth evolved into a tube that can only lick up nectar. However, even specialized nectarivores like hummingbirds still need to eat other food like insects or pollen because nectar alone doesn't have enough nutrients to survive on it alone. It would also be incredibly difficult for the gimp species to each survive on only ''one'' species of flower, especially since they cannot fly to search far and wide for flowers (even the most specialized hummingbird species can choose between multiple species of flower).

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** The gimps are a type of nectar-drinking dinosaur like a featherless, flightless hummingbird with a mouth evolved into a tube that can only lick up nectar. However, even specialized nectarivores like hummingbirds still need to eat other food like insects or pollen because nectar alone doesn't have enough nutrients to survive on it alone.-- since it's literally only sugar and water, additional things like vitamins and proteins need to come from somewhere else. It would also be incredibly difficult for the gimp species to each survive on only ''one'' species of flower, especially since they cannot fly to search far and wide for flowers (even the most specialized hummingbird species can choose between multiple species of flower).
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* The book shows ''Megalosaurus modernus'', a LivingRelic still existing on the island of Madagascar (likely referencing how the local lemurs are "living fossils" compared to mainland simians). While ''Megalosaurus'' used to be a major wastebasket taxon, which included fragmentary fossils found in Late Cretaceous rocks in Madagascar, by the '80s this was no longer the case, and the Madagascar fossils were reclassified as ''Majungasaurus'' back in 1955 (though it wasn't recognized as an abelisaurid until more complete remains were found in the '90s).

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* ** The book shows ''Megalosaurus modernus'', a LivingRelic still existing on the island of Madagascar (likely referencing how the local lemurs are "living fossils" compared to mainland simians). While ''Megalosaurus'' used to be a major wastebasket taxon, which included fragmentary fossils found in Late Cretaceous rocks in Madagascar, by the '80s this was no longer the case, and the Madagascar fossils were reclassified as ''Majungasaurus'' back in 1955 (though it wasn't recognized as an abelisaurid until more complete remains were found in the '90s).
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Added DiffLines:

* The book shows ''Megalosaurus modernus'', a LivingRelic still existing on the island of Madagascar (likely referencing how the local lemurs are "living fossils" compared to mainland simians). While ''Megalosaurus'' used to be a major wastebasket taxon, which included fragmentary fossils found in Late Cretaceous rocks in Madagascar, by the '80s this was no longer the case, and the Madagascar fossils were reclassified as ''Majungasaurus'' back in 1955 (though it wasn't recognized as an abelisaurid until more complete remains were found in the '90s).
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** For some reason, there are ''Megalosaurus'' in the present day. In [[MisplacedWildlife Africa]] (''Megalosaurus'' went extinct in the Middle Jurassic - of Europe - long before its fellow dinosaurs died out). ''Megalosaurus'' was long used as wastebasket to contain various large theropods from throughout the Mesozoic, but this had mostly been sorted out by then.

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** For some reason, there are ''Megalosaurus'' in the present day. In [[MisplacedWildlife Africa]] (''Megalosaurus'' went extinct in the Middle Jurassic - of Europe - long before its fellow dinosaurs died out). ''Megalosaurus'' was long used as wastebasket to contain various large theropods from throughout the Mesozoic, but this had mostly been sorted out by then. There were fragmentary fossils assigned to ''Megalosaurus'' from Madagascar but they were reclassified as ''Majungasaurus'' in 1955 (more complete material was found in the '90s, allowing it to be identified as an abelisaur).

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