Liquidrage

Oh, I have no doubt the list of who helped put this together is available.

But from a viewers standpoint the scientists are anonymous.

I have little doubt that the science behind the show is good too. It's the presentation that comes across as poor IMO.

ksagnostic

Well, I'm missing his sabre toothed rats (but that was 50 million years in the future). Looking forward to the terrestrial squids.

I would like to see a little more disclaimer (something Dixon was always careful to do).

Mediancat

Demons to diamonds that'll be available in the book; there is one and I'm fairly sure I'm going to buy it. I confess that was the single most annoying thing about the program; not annoying enough that I didn;t overall find it quite enjoyable,

The "birds came from avian dinosaurs" presentation they gave wasn't very well done, admittedly. It almost gave the impressions birds came from pterosaurs.

Good to see someone else who liked After Man around here. I was beginning to think I was the only one.

Rob aka Mediancat

"Why can't you be more like bardelot?"

Illithid

In addition to sharing annoyance at the lack of disclaimer, it always bugs me when shows like this say "...scientists say...". Can we possibly be less generic? If it's a show on dinosaurs, why not "Paleontologists say..."? Or for Mt. St. Helens, for example, "Many vulcanologists speculate that...".

But no, apparently there's just a bunch of guys in white lab coats, with "SCIENTIST" on the back. Bleah. At least the audience might pick up some new vocabulary.

slh

An entertaining show. I too attempted to explain a little bit of basic evolution to my lady in order to put the show in proper perspective - I failed and just ate popcorn and shut up.

Kinda cool to think that spiders will herd mammals as livestock, and squids will be the next sentient life on the planet.

I think it would have been a better show if they had narrowed the scope down to a specific few animal classes. I would have wanted arthropods and mammals to be expounded upon.

pz

I'm afraid I really hated it. They loaded on so much false detail that any good underlying message about the inevitability of biological change was totally lost; and there were a number of annoying implications, as if niches were fixed and if humans were gone, well, cephalopods will just move in and become people. They seemed unduly fascinated with the idea that small obscure invertebrates might evolve into big vertebrate-like creatures -- it was a kind of chordate snobbishness, as if all the 'lower' organisms are just aching to someday grow up and take over our wonderful, interesting, glorious position.

And that whole story about mammals being reduced to livestock for spiders, which were in turn the sole food supply for the 'largest flying animal ever', all supported on a base of windblown seeds in an arid environment...baloney. The energetics of such a situation simply do not make sense. If they'd left out the stupid big bird I might have accepted it.

And the names...! I've always thought Dougal Dixon had a tin ear.

Mediancat

I don;t think they were implying niches were fixed, and 200 million years isn't "Just moving in." I didn't get any of the chordate snobbishness you seem to have gotten either; if there aren't much more than sharks and non-chordates left, couldn't they take over some of the niches left unfilled by the fish, the birds, etc?

Baloney? Ants used aphids as livestock now. So that part of it's possible. They never said that the spiders were the only food source for the birds, and they never said that bird was the largest flying animal ever . . . simply the best at flying.

I've always liked Dixon's way with names. To each their own, I guess.

Rob aka Mediancat

aka ol' Hornhead

Undercurrent

I agree on that. The point they were trying to make was, "the human lineage isn't so special, it could as easily have been some other line that conquered the earth." But it was more like they were just whaling on the mammals, as if their relationship to man makes them particularly poorly adapted to the world, and rooting for the squids.

I also disliked the notion that everything in the future is bigger/better/faster than anything today. Turtles growing bigger than brachiosaurs? Why the hell would they do that except to show off for the camera?

Sharkopath...<shudder> 200 million years in the future, and we're still using bad english puns.

m.

GunnerJ

I'm sorry, but, "flish?" "Sharkopath?"

And Christ, this show had some of the cheesiest special effects for so much CGI. Example, the wavy "stink lines" on the screen from the walruss/bird's barf.

Still, all things considered, the Tauraton is a real ultimate badass, and for that alone, the show gets my props.

However, I'd have liked to see some explaination for how three entire phyla could get wiped out in 200 million years. Is there any precedent for this in the fossil record?

GunnerJ

Not for nothing but, why the hell did a bunch of lizards do that in the jurassic? Why did coastal wolves become the largest sea creatures on earth? There's no real way to tell how these things may go.

So, STOP HATING ON THE TAURATON, THEY KICK ASS AND YOU KNOW IT!