Are dinosaurs overrated?

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Everything we saw in movies may not reflect at all how dinosaurs really looked like, a T. Rex probably looked more like a giant chicken with teeth.

I'm still impressed.

Another dinosaur that I like is Aardonyx.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardonyx

I find that Aardonyx kinda looks like an ornithopod ... even though it was actually a sauropodomorph.

Dinosaurs are not overrated. Sharks may be underrated though. Natures perfect eating machine.

I like prehistoric sharks, especially Xenacanthus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenacanthus

Modern sharks aren't spikey enough for my tastes.

Yes dinosaurs are overrated. The popular media tends to ignore creatures of the Paleozoic.

Well trilobites and ammonites wouldn't make for interesting movies except a nature documentary.

an oddly terrifying image

Says you! I'm still waiting for Carboniferous Park!

NO.

I, personally, think that Hollywood and prehistory should never mix under any circumstances. Hollywood likes to take the majesty of nature and turn it into a cheesy horror film full of jump scares.

BBC already made Walking With Monsters, which explored the Carboniferous to an extent. Was it perfect? No, but I doubt that Hollywood could represent the Carboniferous any better.

These creatures are actually WAY underrated though. They even have names like Hallucinagia and Anamolocaris!

Cenozoic mammals are great too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9qxCGqA28M

Anomalocaris is pretty cool. I googled for Hallucinagia and it only linked to this thread.

You mean hallucigenia?

My favorite prehistoric epoch was the era represented in the Burgess Shales of British Columbia. The assemblage that has Hallucinengenia .

Late Precambrian?

Anyway its fascinating because it gives a glimpse of what living things were like when nature first experimented with bigger than microbial life. And clues to how the major phyla of animals are related to other major phyla (the fossil Lucy is just a recent twig, the Burgess Shales show the roots of the whole tree).

But the Burgess Shale era would not make particularly good cinema the way the dinosaurs do. Its not the same sorta fascination.

One group of animals that rival dinosaurs in "box office draw" are sharks. Every popular science magazine gets a spike in newsstand purchases if it puts a shark on the cover. And its the living species of sharks that are the stars. Though the extinct cousin of the Great White, the megaladon, also has a definite cult following. The megalodon died out only like a couple millon years ago (recent compared to the dinosaurs). Many folks desperately want to believe that they are still around in some remote corners of the ocean despite the total lack of evidence for that.

Check out this creature!



Steropodon was a primitive, basal monotreme that lived in Australia during the Cretaceous. It was half a meter long. Unlike modern monotremes, it retained molars into adulthood.