At 4th and 11th of september Discovery channel launches new 4 hour dinosaur documentary, which have hyped through spring and summer. It,s animation have been said that it is like Avatar meets Jurassic Park and it is interesting combination of latest scientific information and vivid storytelling.

Finally there is videos available at youtube, which were shown in Comic con-expo.
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Now, what I am thinking about this? Well, honestly I have to say that so far it seems a waste of money and effort.

Though the animation is good looking and movements of the animals are animated smoothly, their behaviour is combination of anthropomorphic gestures, 100-year old movie monster clichés unrealistic interaction with each other and exaggerated parental behaviour in species which did not do such a things.

All of these above are OK, if this whole concept is made in a Diseny´s Dinosaur-like fashion, but this is supposed to be a educational documentary.

Some have argued, that this whole documentary may be a little boring to watch if the dinosaurs behaviour would have been animated more accurately and represented in a same way as wildlife documentaries. That is true in some cases, but the truth is that when extinct life forms are reconstructed accurately, they most likely won´t meet the expectations of the public. The popular image of the dinosaurs is based much more on movies, than documentaries or books or scientific papers and many people have forgotten this fact or just ignores it. And those who wants to see savage dinosaurs, most likely wants to see savage lions and sharks etc..  something that is entertaining.

There are several things in those videoclips I would like to point out .

The fight between Torvosaurus vs sauropod vs stegosaurids vs allosaurus is ridiculously unrealistic.
First of all, predators usually try to surprise the victim, not to run towards, roaring.
Second the situation is as unrealistic as the situation that the lioness would try to catch a Cape buffalo calf, then group of warthogs arrive and attacks the lioness, which knocks the buffalo over and manages to catch the escaped buffalo calf. While trying to kill the calf the lioness is once again attacked by a leopard, which lioness manages to kill, before being stomped to death by mother Cape buffalo.
When there is a fight between predator and prey, all other animals will flee to safe (with the exception of some mammals and birds, which protect their offspring ), instead of trying fend off the predator.

In T.rex fight clip, other of the T.rexes snaps it's neck just before the attack, just like a badass opponent would do in a  some sort of kung fu-movie. There is evidence of some kind of head-biting fights between theropods, it is unlikely that 5-tonne animals would ram against themselves after short run. That kind of collision would cause broken bones and injured intestines. Fights made of head butting and pushing (not ramming) is another story...

Sleeping allosaurus-scene have also annoying anthropomorphic features. Even though it would like to silence the chirping Ornitholestes (Which is unlike behaviour, judging by its brain, which was very reptilian in size to it's body and it´s structure), the Ornitholestes would run away instead of keeping chirping and allowing the allosaurus to shut it up, like one could shut radio off.

Even though there is a evidence of gregarious beaviour in sauropods, it is controversial that sauropods took parental care of their young ones. And even more unlikely is that sauropods could "teach"  their offspring what to eat and what not to, like the Shunosaurus did in the mushroom clip.  

I would like to know, what kind of scientists were involved this show. Most likely they were unaware of the script of the documentary. Some new careful theories and speculation about certain kind of dinosaur behaviour is taken from the context and exaggerated and fitted into the filmmakers script. This kind of travesty have been seen before in the horrible Jurassic Fight club few years ago.

Dinosaurs aren´t boring, even though they didn´t act like the ones seen in the films. They were active and sophisticated animals and filled many ecological roles. The more individual can learn about them through paleontological research-not from silly programs- the more he/she can be fascinated about then in a manner that one can be fascinated about seeing live moose in a wilderness or a bald eagle. No blood and gore needed. But if there is a possibility see, how silently attacked Tyrannosaurus bites three foot-long chunk of meat from duckbill´s thigh, it would be a horrible sight.

EDIT. Hmmm... Seems like it´s going to be a lot worse. More dino-sillines:
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