In the TV show Prehistoric Planet, where computer-generated dinosaur images are presented like any other nature documentary, there is a scene where an atrociraptor picks up a burning twig. The raptor is expelling parasites from its feathers by raising the branch to its coat.
The field of paleontology has grown leaps and bounds over the past 30 years, but using the fossil record to determine appearance is not one of them. What evidence is there to support a specific behavior? Scientists don't know how to look into the minds of dead animals. There's a scene in the show where a raptor uses a burning twig to drive prey out of their hiding places.
According to Prehistoric Planet's executive producer Mike Gunton, the authenticity of these behaviors is supported by a multi-disciplinary approach.
The worst thing that could happen in this is that someone says, 'Oh, well, this is all fake.' Why should I not pay attention to this? "That's right," Gunton said.
Gunton said that to make the picture that you see on the screen, we are pulling on dozens and dozens of separate threads. There are paleo-ecologists, paleo-climatologists, paleo-ethologists, and fossil people.
Once the team was assembled, a global squad of experts in all different time zones and specialties, the next step was putting the world's best data on the dinos in front of this team.
Luckily for the team behind Apple TV's Prehistoric Planet, there is a good time to look into the records.
Naish said that we are in a golden age of dinosaurs. "People are finding new species all over the world, but also in terms of the information we have about their biology, their sensory ability, what they actually looked like."
The traditional fossil record, computer-generated models of animals, and observations of living creatures comprise the information. Naish said that the assumptions about the raptor's behavior were made by its hunting descendants.
A long list of predatory birds have been reported to pick up burning sticks and move them around to spread fire, and these birds have also been reported to grab burning sticks and deliberately treat their feathers with smoke.
It's an extrapolation to show in an extinct dinosaur.
The conversation between the team of paleontologists and the artists rendering the dinosaurs is more than one way. He said that there were times during the making of the show where a computer model would be so realistic that it would help scientists make assumptions about the dinosaurs that they couldn't before.
I think it can't turn that quickly. Gunton said it might be a stalker rather than an ambusher.
We would love to develop more extrapolations and cross-fertilizations between the filmmakers, the animators and the scientific community.
Victoria Arbour was a consultant on the show.
"All the creative ways we can pull all of these different lines of evidence into creating a sort ofholistic picture of dinosaurs as living animals is what I enjoy the most," Arbour said.
Ankylosaur is a beast of a dinosaur covered in armor and wielding a hammer tail. In the show, one of these ancient creatures eats some charcoal left smoldering by a forest fire and learns that young ferns are the first to grow after a fire.
She doesn't get to see the focus of her work in such detail.
Sometimes I get to work with really exceptional specimen that are really complete, but it's not the same as looking at a live animal.
According to Gunton, he hopes the sum of these approaches is greater than the separate parts, which he calls a fuzzy picture of the truth.
There are so many things keeping us true that we almost can't leave the tracks. We wanted to see if we could make a 21st century template for how we see the world.
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