Life On Our Planet (2023) Accuracy Review | Dino Documentaries RANKED #31

[@GTSE2005]

The worst thing about this series is the fact that (as the production team has openly said in the behind the scenes videos) their priority was making the creatures look scary rather than accurate

[@cintronproductions9430]

And it was pointless in the case of the Titanis anyway cuz they made it a Smilodon fodder joke anyway so why make it look scary?

[@metriacantho]

True

[@dozierworld4350]

Do you like the t rex's color scheme in this one, and can you see others liking it? I have mixed feelings.

[@SpecklesTeeV]

That sounds so stupid. Making them look scary for the appeal of the public is such negligent for the show. You don’t have to make something look scary in order for it to be scary. Like a bear or a lion can be cute in their own way but also scary when they are in a situation of hunting or aggressiveness. Even such a thing like a Velociraptor which is smaller than we depicted with feathers can be scary. Imagine a whole pack of them piercing your body with their talons. It’s terrifying. Even a cute dog can be scary.

[@kennethsatria6607]

​@@SpecklesTeeV Well said. Though if were being honest the Terror Birds they made didnt even really look scary either. Adding fleshy growths would'e worked I think.

[@spacegojiraxz-1715]

One of my biggest problems with this series is the lack of diverse fauna.Most of the prehistoric life shown have already made plenty of roles in other paleodocs, and almost every creature shown was not new to me it would been cool to see some more obscure fauna.

[@Kurominos1]

for me it would be cool to see once Tylacosmilus i think thats what it was called looked and actet like a sabertooth but wasnt one directly and it lived in south america together with the terrobirds before the continents conectet

[@flightlesslord2688]

Erythrosuchus, and a heavy focus on Trilobites?

[@Fede_99]

​@@Kurominos1It probably didn't behaved like a sabertooth

[@jurassicswine]

That’s my biggest issue. Each ecosystem from the Burgess Shale to the Morrison feels so empty and lifeless, and on average each segment has around 2 species. Not once while watching the episodes I did was I understood the impression these were real, lived in ecosystems.

[@spacegojiraxz-1715]

@@jurassicswine I felt the same way to for the most part

[@kaiju115]

As soon as they showed the Terror Birds being outcompeted by Smilodon, I knew this documentary was doomed.

[@joshuaW5621]

Me too. When I saw that in the trailer, I my excitement turned into worry. When this show came out, it turned into a nightmare.

[@cintronproductions9430]

"The Smilodon's mammalian cunning, was one reason terror birds went extinct."- Morgan Freeman, who was either internally cringing at being forced to read such a horrid line or couldn't care less and wanted his paycheck, 2023

[@kaiju115]

@@cintronproductions9430 Im willing to bet it was the latter.

[@JurassicReptile]

@@cintronproductions9430 I think he just assumed it was correct since the team should’ve done their research.

[@beauloppens4100]

Luckily this happened in like epp 6 or 7, good u saw it so soon !!

[@HankTheT.Rex69]

On the trailer I genuinely commented that “I think there will be a modern day episode as they showed a lot of scenes from the modern day,” and I wish I was right.

[@dozierworld4350]

Do you like the t rex's color scheme in this one, and can you see others liking it?

[@doublemgamer2567]

I just realized while watching this, but I think the Edmontosaurus looks so weird because they reused the Maisaura model. The shot where the Edmontosaurus looks down at her babies looks almost identical to the shot where the Maisaura does the same exact thing. Man, I really thought this was a cool documentary when I first watched, but with every video I watch about it, I start to like it less and less.

[@LucasCaminha]

It is exactly the same model too, all they did was cover the Maia's crest with the Edmonto's comb, which looks weirdly hardened as a result... Which in turn makes it look less like an accurate Edmontosaurus and more like a semi-decent Hypacrosaurus, if anything.

[@LoudmouthReviews]

Yup and its not the only time they reused models. The allosaurus is clearly a modified version of the one from Jurassic World hence its weird croc like skin

[@tylerfish2701]

​@@LucasCaminhaI noticed that too. How can ILM be this lazy?

[@cintronproductions9430]

They were so fricking lazy, the Edmontos even have the exact same animations as the Maias, the same nests, the same babies and they stand in the exact same spots, ugh!

[@LoudmouthReviews]

@@cintronproductions9430 Its probably them trying to work under budget constraints. I doubt Netflix spent event even 1/3 per episode what Apple spent on Prehistoric Planet. Netflix is the biggest streaming service in the world but they clearly cheaped out

[@aidanmation]

When this documentary was revealed, I was severely sceptical of its accuracy. Particularly with the Jurassic Park-looking triceratops and the T.rex with the Jurassic Park roar. Safe to say, I'm glad i trusted that feeling

[@JurassicReptile]

Prehistoric Planet actually uses a Jurassic Park Rex roar too, just not the famous one.

[@dozierworld4350]

Do you like the t rex's color scheme in this one, and can you see others liking it?

[@shelleyhill4366]

Life on our planet also uses that less famous jp T. rex roar.

[@spinosaurusstriker]

​@@JurassicReptile the glutural pne , basically the most plausible one

[@sakei-kun3090]

Let's Gooooo!! I'm not exaggerating when I say this is one of, if not, my favorite series of videos on KZbin.

[@KO_Star_boi]

Same

[@dozierworld4350]

Do you like the T Rex's color scheme in this one, and can you see others liking it?

[@jeffreygao3956]

Still waiting on a Dinosaurs Decoded analysis! I'm gonna guess it'll get a C or B.

[@TheKindofTiredSleepCantFix]

I would like to point out that despite this coming out after Prehistoric Planet, this started production before. The Skeleton Crew have talked about it several times, none of them were advisories for the show, but they know people who were.

[@dozierworld4350]

Do you like the t rex's color scheme in this one, and can you see others liking it?

[@LucasCaminha]

Something that annoys me to no end, and which I rarely see get mentioned, is the paleoenviroment for Deinonychus. Most of the extinct animals' habitats are well done in this show (I heard some critiques for the foliage in the Arthropleura segment, but I'm not well versed enough to confirm), yet Deinonychus is inexplicably plopped in a dry badlands enviroment. This would've worked well for Utahraptor, which did inhabit semi-arid scrublands like that, but Deinonychus lived in lush, tropical wetlands, more akin to an early cretaceous Hell Creek if anything. That, and the weird "sleeves" they did for it and Anchiornis, where the wing feathers droop down from the fingers for some god forsaken reason, makes the Deinonychus segment the one I have the biggest vendetta against personally. It's such a cool dinosaur, and it's never really done justice in most paleomedia.

[@joshuaW5621]

Seems like Deinonychus‘s home just can’t be done right.

[@creakingskull7008]

The deinonychus looked really funky overall

[@cintronproductions9430]

​@@creakingskull7008Their feathers looked like plastic in some shots, they do the same claw tapping the JP raptors do which makes me think they too are edited JP models but with feathers on, and during the chase I swear they pronated their wrists once or twice. Also how dafuk can they catch up to a running ornithomimosaur?

[@creakingskull7008]

@@cintronproductions9430 They look absolutely nothing like JP raptors, they just look off in their own way, please stop comparing everything to Jurassic Park

[@cintronproductions9430]

@@creakingskull7008 Their feet look exactly like the feet of JP raptors, real raptors didn't have feet that looked EXACTLY like that. Also how can I not compare these models to Jurassic World when the Triceratops, Diplodocus and Allosaurus are blatantly edited JW models. In a documentary.

[@robbieq7814]

It is called “life on our planet”, and yet it should have more prehistoric species, but it should definitely have modern parts

[@marcolibbi5479]

Ok but the merchandising was purposedly deceiving and misleading, since with the exception of a couple of present-day moments (only in the very last trailer) all the marketing heavily focused on prehistory. Besides, even though the structure of the documentary could potentially work, it practically didn't lmao (at least according to lots people, myself included), because the outcome turned out as something very messy, inconsistent, and kinda unfocused. Most of fhe present-day scenes were incredible on their own, no doubt on that, but... Yeah things probably should have been handled differently

[@dozierworld4350]

Do you like the t rex's color scheme in this one, and can you see others liking it?

[@robbieq7814]

@@dozierworld4350 what does that have to do with anything?

[@Gamingceratops]

I swear he keeps copying and pasting this question on random comments

[@denisovan_the_menisovan]

I remember seeing the first _Maiasaura_ segment, and upon hearing them described as "defenceless", I actually said out loud, "Defenceless my arse!" Exactly how much research was done for this?

[@cintronproductions9430]

What's more stupid is that when they said that Maiasaura was defenseless, they said it when they were comparing Triceratops to Maiasaura, yet the Triceratops turns around and runs away like a coward when the T.rex appears instead of, you know, using its method of defense that is on ITS FACE, so why did it turn around, exposing its vulnerable backside? How is Triceratops different from the "defenseless" Maiasaura then if you also portray it as fodder that can't fight without a herd? Oh and btw Trikes were either solitary or lived in small groups, not large herds.

[@denisovan_the_menisovan]

​@@cintronproductions9430 I'm slowly starting to believe that some billionaire or other is financing an anti-herbivore propaganda campaign through bad palaeo-docs.

[@dozierworld4350]

Do you like the t rex's color scheme in this one, and can you see others liking it?

[@denisovan_the_menisovan]

@dozierworld4350 The colour scheme? Pretty nice. Everything else? Not so much. The teeth look like they were rammed into the gums by the handful, and I'm not so sure about the osteoderms.

[@jeffreygao3956]

Hadrosaurs are POWERFUL!

[@krenocarnotor1416]

I watched this documentary with my grandpa not too long after it was released. He's really into nature documentaries, so it was fun for him. However, it looks like I got to update him on some stuff now lol. While watching it I thought it was neat, but I definitely picked up on some iffy stuff and thought, " I don't think that'd right or "I wonder what Red Raptor Writes has got to say about this." Personally though, I didn't mind the switch from prehistoric life to modern life. To be fair to the documentary It's called Life On Our Planet not Only prehistoric Life On Our Planet. It's still good to see a good fact checking, appreciate it.

[@dozierworld4350]

Do you like the t rex's color scheme in this one, and can you see others liking it?

[@maurolibbi8411]

Yeah, surely it's not called "Prehistoric Life on Our Planet" but that doesn't excuse it from having a messy and unclear structure that switches continuously from past to present, barely explaining anything on the evolution of life through prehistory and depicting several inaccuracies in between (pack hunting Deinonychus, Smilodon killing and outcompeting phorusracids, flying Anchiornis, dinosaurs from Jurassic World, and many more). LOOP is not the worst paleo-documentary I've ever watched yet it's a really mediocre one still, and that comes from one who absolutely loves nature documentaries about extant life on Earth as much as paleo-documentaries

[@Firestar-TV]

13:04 the Thing about Prehistoric Kingdom is though that they also try to make all Animals as scientifically accurate as possible which is one of the Reasons why I absolutely love the Game and already followed the Developement around 10 Years ago

[@creakingskull7008]

For real, that game has the best designs in all of media, every animal they add instantly becomes the best version of itself (except for iguanodon maybe, not a big fan of the way they did the bumps on the back)

[@tjarkschweizer]

Yes unless it's Tyrannosaurus. They took some "artistic liberties" with that one.

[@Firestar-TV]

@@tjarkschweizer what's wrong for Example with that one (and I assume also with Tarbosaurus?). If it's the Teeth Thing, I think there isn't really Proof that the Teeth were completely covered by the Lips

[@Bagelgeuse]

​@@tjarkschweizerYou mean the exposed teeth? Cuz aside from that, the PK T.rex is perfect.

[@dozierworld4350]

Do you like the t rex's color scheme in this one, and can you see others liking it?

[@DreadEnder]

Yesterday i watched Attenborough and the sea monster. And I have to say. OH MY GOD!!! “Titanoboa monster snake” grab your pants and move over! We have a new king of accuracy! Also I love that I could identify every location in the show before they pointed it out! Kimmeridge is a great area! And Bristol university is amazing!

[@dozierworld4350]

Do you like the t rex's color scheme in this one, and can you see others liking it?

[@DreadEnder]

@@dozierworld4350 in Attenborough and the sea monster? There isn’t one. In prehistoric planet? Absolutely! It’s brilliant! In life on our planet? Nah it doesn’t look very good, accuracy mainly but a pretty ugly design anyway.

[@FrostGhidorahEX]

Life on Our Planet is such an oddball of a Dino Doc. It felt like it had the perfect set up. A multi episode series that focused on a different time period each episode ending with a final episode in the modern day. Perhaps with shots showing how even though the places and faces may change life continues on in its everlasting spectacle. But this felt like a rejected script for Blue Planet or something that had prehistoric segements added in to build interest While there are some charms such as the Smilodon, the beautiful black Deinonychus (who seriously can't catch a damn break) and the lovely parental Maiasaura It overall just feels like it spins its wheels in the mud. It really doesn't go anywhere and it just makes a mess I hope rhe new Dino docs in the future do better

[@josejuliangonzalez9216]

It is confirmed in the companion book the that the Miocene Terror bird is a Phorusracos and that the Jurassic Pliosaurid is the Predator X Pliosaurus. The Smilodon brothers are Smilodon Gracilis, while the juvenile male in the doedicurus segment is Populator. The Gorgonopsid IS a female Inostrancevia

[@bkjeong4302]

Also note that there were no large terror birds left (and only one tiny species) by the time S. fatalis and S. populator evolved. Even by S. gracilis’s time the only big terror bird was Titanis, as South America suffered a series of megafaunal extinctions even before the GABI starting in the Late Miocene.

[@dozierworld4350]

Do you like the t rex's color scheme in this one, and can you see others liking it?

[@josejuliangonzalez9216]

@@dozierworld4350 yes!

[@Drakovenator]

Fun Fact did you know there a bird that can hunt in packs and that bird is the Harris’s Hawk

[@redraptorwrites6778]

Yeah I've seen videos of them hunting before. Really cool!

[@CanonBehenna]

Argee raptor pack are more realistic than lone raptor

[@gambitaku6179]

I always look forward to this series. Bro definitely deserves more subs

[@enfieldlammergeier]

The first scene I’ve seen from Life on Our Planet was the segment with Cave lions hunting a baby mammoth… I think this is the worst segment of the series, I’m not even going to lie. Reasons: •A single lion manages to wrestle a whole adolescent mammoth to the ground. The mammoth herd just watches and doesn’t intervene instead of turning the lions into minced meat. •Cave lions were solitary, not pack hunters. •Cave lions almost exclusively hunted reindeer and baby cave bears… because Cave Hyenas bullied the living shit out of cave lions. At some point it got so bad, cave lions hunted a population of reindeer into extinction and went extinct as well because they had nothing else to eat. It’s not even new knowledge, these papers came out like 10 years ago.

[@vaggos2003]

Here are some more flaws with this scene: -What is it with the attack formations? The mammooths I somewgat get it, they needed to stick together as one, but why were the cave lions in a straight line in front of them? They should be circling the herd and looking for openings. In fact, you could argue that the mammooths should follow a circle formation as well in order to counter that. These 2 groups wouldn't be standing in front of each other as if they are football teams. -That lone cave lion ran in front of the entire mammooth herd and somehow managed to wrestle down a teenage mammooth in one leap and despite the fact that before all that its pack had already moved quite a bit away and the mammooth herd was, what, 20 meters away, the lion pack managed to in that time realise what happened and cover a potentially far greater distance than the mammooths needed to so as to get far ahead of them in less amount of time. Sure, cave lions were most likely faster than mammooths, but this is ridiculous. -We get inconsistency in the shots, as in the one shot the mammooths stop running towards the lions and are quite a bit far away, then in the next shot they are right in front of the lions, so front that one lion even gets to grab a mammooth's trunk, and in the next shot right before they leave they are yet again quite a bit far away. Out of all the things I could have expected from this doc, visual inconsistency waa not one of them. -The mammooth herd can scare off 5 lions no problemo, but just 3 lions can hold off the exact same herd directly attacking them long enough for the other 2 to kill the fallen teenager. Oh, and about that... -...the mammooth gets incapacitated immediately after it hits the ground. No noises for help, no shaking its legs as a last means if defending itself, no struggle to get up, it falls and goes "welp, I'm out". -And apparently the lion just instantly gets the perfect bite on the mammooth and goes through the tons of hair and thich skin just fine. There are also the facts that the teenage mammooth stayed behind the herd at the first place, which also feels a bit forced and convinient, and then once being charged by the single lion runs away from the herd instead of towards the herd or trying to defemd itself, but those 2 can be somewhat excused as actions of a more naive inexperienced mammooth during a heated moment. For everything else tho, what the fuck? The team didn't even need to do that much research on mammooths and cave lions to know that this scene would realistically never go down like this. Just watch some clips of current day lions hunting current day elephants and recreate that. That moment when Ice Age out of all things has a better version of this scene as its climax.

[@enfieldlammergeier]

@@vaggos2003 Couldn’t have summarised it better myself. Tried to keep my comment more concise, but thank you your insight. This scene was so bad, I’m at a loss for words how the same documentary can show a realistic depiction of a Smilodon being curious with Glyptodons, and then turn around and pretend like a single lion can incapacitate a adolescent (not even a baby) mammoth. Honestly, the entire scene could have been improved if the adult mammoths were cut out. Just a stranded adolescent mammoth that gets tag teamed by the lions. Or replace the lions with cave hyenas, because that would actually be more accurate and make some sort of sense.

[@speedracer2008]

@@enfieldlammergeier To be fair, while yes, previous studies have shown that cave lions ate mainly reindeer, that doesn't necessarily mean that they wouldn't have eaten other things from time to time, as well. Baby mammoths could certainly have been on the menu for them if the opportunity arose. However, I do agree that the teenage mammoth went down way too quickly. It would be more believable if it was a baby that got lost in the commotion, cause a single cave lion could take that down pretty easily, or if they had the lions attack the subadult in a group and tackle it together, using their weight to pin it down, before killing it.

[@markcobuzzi826]

If I recall correctly, RRW, another old mistake the documentary seemed to make was grouping this one giant orthocone species under the "Cameroceras" genus rather than the more updated "Endoceras".

[@dozierworld4350]

Do you like the t rex's color scheme in this one, and can you see others liking it?

[@infernowolf8914]

I have a feeling that this one is gonna be ranked in the bottom tiers.

[@Fede_99]

As it should be, imo he even put it too high

[@ScaleHunt]

Yeah. I feel like it was a D at best, but I'd happily put it in F.

[@joshuaW5621]

I’d put it in D too. I’d also put Dinosaurs with Stephen Fry in D if he decides to review that too.

[@GTSE2005]

I felt that this documentary has enough merits to keep it out of the bottom tiers, I think a C tier was fair enough

[@dozierworld4350]

Do you like the t rex's color scheme in this one, and can you see others liking it?

[@paleoscinkus542]

The main issue I have with the creature designs is that the special effects studio literally recycled Jurassic World assets. They were trying to appeal to the mainstream at the expense of being educational.

[@tylerfish2701]

That is both and stupid for ILM to do.

[@GTSE2005]

They said in the behind the scenes videos that their priority was making the creatures scary.

[@cintronproductions9430]

​​@@GTSE2005ILM: "We can't give the terror bird a yellow beak cuz then it'll be an oversized chicken! It has to be scary!" Also ILM: *proceeds to turn the Titanis into an oversized chicken that gets merked by a single Smilodon that barely reached the bird's ankle in real life* Wow, so scary. 🙄

[@GalvyTheTom]

@@cintronproductions9430ILM didn’t write the series.

[@JurassicReptile]

I think you guys have no idea how making a show works

[@salvador_69.11]

2021 red raptor writes: dunkleostulus will not appear in any future dino documents. Prehistoric assassins: 😐 Life on our planet: 😐

[@PaleoEdits]

I'm sorry but what are you on about with "at least the mass-extinctions were well done" ? They suffer from the same mixed bag of problems as the animals. 1. The end Ordovician extinction wasn't driven by life literally freezing to death as we see in the show but by loss of shallow sea reef habitats as sea levels fell with the growing ice. All they read as research was "there was an ice age" . 2. The end Devonian is complete gibberish. To be fair, this is one of least well understood of the so called "big five" extinction events, but more probable causes are LIPs, glaciation and anoxia. Yes there might very well have been an increase bloom of algea - as is the case for most if not all extinction events - but the scale of it as portrayed in the show and the blame as the main driver is overblown. Furthermore, the Devonian wasn't A mass extinction event but at least TWO major events seperated by millions of years. These arn't more dramatic in scale as the series of extinction events in the Cambrian or the end-captian one. Which leads to: 3. Perpetuating the idea of there having been just five mass extinctions events. 4. The end Permian extinction is pretty well made but it misses the crucial contribution of ozone depletion and the following genetic mutations as observed in pollen. And from a more artistic viewpoint, I do feel that this one - along with most extinctions in the series (apart from perhaps the end-Cretaceous) - are portrayed far too fast and dramatically, as if every extinction was an asteroid impact. Now if you were to travel straight into the "great dying" then you probably wouldn't even notice there was an ongoing extinction. These are generally slow events. 5. The end Triassic extinction is pretty much just ignored. 6. The end Cretaceous extinction is all right, but they should have emphasised the location of the asteroid impact as this is what actually lead to extinction according to the impact theory. The earth has suffered similar impacts that didn't lead to a severe loss in biodiversity, but because of the sulpher released from this gypsum rich shallow sea the world cooled and darkened dramatically. Instead they seemingly can't help but portray the darkening cloud as part of the actual blast front. Which is just hollywood sillyness. Think the tambora eruption instead, but on a far grander scale. 7. And of course on a more detailed level a lot of extinctions in the series is unfoundedly blamed on out-competition between "superior" dynasties, your terror birds and smilodons etc. So no, from an educational viewpoint the show doesn't handle the mass-extinctions well AT ALL. Edit: I forgot to mention: 8. the Carnian pluvial event was another serious extinction event that was featured in the show BUT it wasn't even mentioned as an extinction.

[@wilhelmtan5301]

According to the Skeleton Crew who knows some of the paleontologists working on that documentary, the idea of the documentary was made before Prehistoric Planet was released

[@therosrex5488]

I had a lot of problems with this documentary. Like, a lot. There were some unbelievably great shots, though. Every episode had some shots that looked photorealistic to me. The CGI for most of it was incredible, but like you pointed out, there were definitely some low points. The writing, research, and several depictions were also just...not good. Visuals: A Writing: C Research: C I'd put it at a C overall. Had promise, but floundered in the execution

[@DieHard815]

@marshalmarrs3269 Mickey Mouse goes back in time to look at dinosaurs!?!

[@LoudmouthReviews]

Honestly one way they could have dramatically improved the show was simply to edit it down to only 6 episodes. Most of the first episode and the last is completely wasted. Taking its better moments and editing them closer together would have given the series better flow and the modern animal segments could have been released separately maybe as part of Our Planet II. That and then fix a few of the avoidable scientific mistakes Red Raptor points out and boom this could have been great

[@mariedufore8795]

The Allosaurus looks like the one in Jurassic World

[@yissibiiyte]

I feel like people's expectations for this show were unfairly high. It wasn't amazing by any means, but I thought it was alright.

[@GojiraFan-in9oo]

I knew Nanotyrannus would come back. I even predicted it when the meme videos came out

[@yousef757-vx3gz]

it's not back because that paper isn't that reliable

[@nigerjohnson4977]

Nano deniers fr:

[@salvador_69.11]

​@@nigerjohnson4977Nano stand

[@speedracer2008]

One thing I think you should have given the show credit for is how the terror birds are shown challenging each other in a non-violent way. They could have shown them pecking each other to death, but, instead, their fight consists mostly of intimidation displays, which is accurate for intraspecific competition.

[@thefirehawk8520]

The Allosaurus design reminds me a lot of the "Battle at Bigrock" Allosaurus from Jurassic World

[@Vombatiform2]

About the bison hunt. I´am not certain people ever met B.latifrons given how old it is. Bison taxonomy is kind of iffy in North America given that B. latifrons, B. antiquus and B. bison kind of meld into each other over time. Honestly they change in such short period of time that it won´t necessarily be too off the mark to call them all B. bison.

[@IsaacSurf735]

I made all of the same points you did when I was watching this documentary a few months ago. I completely agree, it had so much potential and really failed to deliver at all. I will say it was a nice change to see more than just the Cretaceous again but as you mentioned at the end the walking with series did it just as well a whole 20 years ago. Thank you for your work I always look forward to these videos when they do arrive

[@vincentx2850]

One thing to note is that the negative impact of human hunting on megafauna is likely vastly overshadowed by the ecological modification we as a keystone species may have imposed. Our fondness of setting things on fire in particular may be extremely detrimental.

[@cryoking5025]

Finally, I now know how to react when people bring this up, personally I thought it was kinda bad, so I finally found someone who agrees

[@Firestar-TV]

Really enjoyed it. Just wish they would've put more Effort into making it as scientifically accurate as possible

[@Fede_99]

They didn't do it because they wanted some animals to be scary instead of accurate, and saying this when you're working on a documentary which should be educational, it's pretty stupid.

[@creakingskull7008]

@@Fede_99 They said this with the terror bird but in reality all they did was change the color of the beak, the model itself still looks the same. Wouldn't be surprised if the Allosaurus was the result of that tho

[@Firestar-TV]

@@Fede_99 just brainless. IT'S A DOCUMENTARY. IT'S YOUR JOB TO MAKE IT REALISTIC🤦🏻‍♂️

[@Wildwiki6798]

The real biggest problem about this series is that they keep saying that the evolutionary tree is “ Dynasties or different worlds “ like the part of the prehistoric giant squid when the narrator says “ the tentacled giant is in the dynasty of … “ they pushed this dynasties stuff to far.

[@jurassicswine]

This is where the fun begins

[@Firestar-TV]

Funfact regarding the Cave Lions: the grey Fur Color Isn't really accurate. Two frozen Cave Lion Cubs were found a few Years ago and they were similar in Appeareance to modern Lions

[@JurassicReptile]

They could maybe change their fur colour depending on the weather like modern animals

[@tylerfish2701]

It still boggles my mind that they chose to focus more on the present day animals in a PALEO documentary. What were they thinking?

[@carlthecapybara]

Red Raptor, I have a suggestion for an accuracy review: Prehistoric Assassins. I would like to see if the science still holds up and both episodes are on youtube! :)

[@android65mar]

17:53- yes this nature red in tooth and claw' was my main beef with this series as well.

[@benmcreynolds8581]

I really hope we start to see a lot more videos that cover prehistoric creatures that have lived on our planet in different eras. Dinosaur's have been covered most but I'd like to see the vast amount of other lifeforms covered as well in more media. There is so many things to cover. IDK why it's taking so long for this type of media to get made...

[@enfieldlammergeier]

I’m still waiting for cave hyenas to be featured in a documentary. These animals were the apex predators of Ice Age Europe, bullying anything from cave lions to cave bears and even prevented humans from crossing into Americas. Dinocrocuta got a singular feature in a documentary, but I wish other prehistoric hyenas did too as well. I still don’t understand the anti-hyena bias in palaeontology and documentaries

[@Thatguy-sm8cw]

Love tuning in to another Dino Doc review. Bravo!

[@gattycroc8073]

I'm still waiting for a successor to When Crocs ate Dinosaurs because that is a documentary that gets very little attention with TheBugScar's review being the only one I could find on KZbin about it. Crocodylomorphs deserve better since modern forms are called living fossils yet vert little is said about those of the past.🐊

[@thedarkmasterthedarkmaster]

The thing about the Terror Bird scene is that it's so easy to fix, have the bird be wounded by the other and then the Smilodon simply finish it off; There boom issue solved

[@TidbitswithKripp]

you should do an accuracy review of David Attenborough's 'natural history museum alive'

[@DinoTitanMaster]

Yes i was waiting for this one!!

[@TheFoshaMan]

25:59 To be fair, I thought you were going to be more hard with the docu, guess the Christmas spirit won! xD

[@DefrostedChicken]

Me personally, I'm still on team Dromaeosaurid Pack Hunting. They're similar in size to wolves relative to their community and I think they'd occupy a similar niche, if not the same one. I think it'd be fairly logical for them to form wolf-like packs.

[@marcolibbi5479]

We don't have direct evidences for that, tho. Not only that, but we do have evidence for the opposite. In the famous fossil of Tenontosaurus surrounded by the three dead deinonychuses, those three poor carnivores had been slaughtered by their own similars during the feeding frenzy right after taking down the herbivore. Not just that, but one of those corpses was found to have another Deinonychus' claw stuck in one of its tail's verterebrae, a glaring evidence that it got killed after a violent confrontation, something that usually doesn't happen with gregarious animals, where a well defined social hierarchy usually tends to prevent brutal fights like that. Finally, some isotopics analyses on dromaeosaurids' teeth showed that youngs and adults followed different diets, rather than eating the same resources (which would have been the case if juveniles stayed by the adults and consumed their same preys). If the parental bond wasn't strong, with youngs living on their own, it's even more unlikely for them to have followed an even more complex social form like a pack. I believe that the scientists' current theory, according to which dromaeosaurids were actually lonely animals that occasionally formed loose gangs to hunt bigger preys) is still the most solid one.

[@DrRipper19]

"suicide is bad-" well done! The biggest crime this series commits by far is pushing the long-long-outdated narrative that life has been improving and becoming more superior over time. This is probably a side-effect of them trying to fit everything that happens into clean, simple narratives because they assume their audience is stupid. It ended up almost feeling like it had some kind of agenda. Also yeah, what was with that first episode? Just terrible, like they assumed the audience had zero patience and was going to turn it off if no dinosaurs appeared on the screen.

[@pedrord19]

Another superb and awesome Review as always !!! 👍🏻 I love Life on Our Planet with a passion !!! Even with a little inacuracy here and there, is still a magnifecent and Very entertaining series. The Terror Bird is my favorite alongside Cameroceras, Deinonychus, Arthropleura, Anchiornis and Allosaurus. The cinematography is mesmerizinglly beautiful and the soundtrack is epic, specially the score during the Terror Bird chase scene !!!

[@maozilla9149]

23:27 thats Rarosaurus is an extinct genus of marine reptile that lived during the Late Cretaceous. It contains one valid species, R. singularis, and it was found in the Muwaqqar Chalk Marl Formation of Jordan. and Polycotylids resemble the pliosaurs with their short necks and large elongated heads, but closer phylogenetic studies indicate that they share many common features with the long-necked elasmosaurs. The Pliosaurus model was reused for this animal, leading to misconception from audiences since pliosaurs had already died out millions of years prior to the end of the Cretaceous. Like Pliosaurus, the Cretaceous plesiosaur shares many common features. These include a large, crocodile-like skull packed with conical teeth, four large flippers to propel itself through the water, a streamlined body, and a small rudder tail. As we only have fragmentary remains of Rarosaurus, the size of the animal can only be estimated to around 3 meters (10 feet) in length, making it one of the smaller members of the plesiosaur order.

[@firegator6853]

i got so hyped in the permian-triassic episodes because i was expecting to see a lot of the weirdos that lived back then but we got nothing especially from triassic we only just saw the moments right after the extinction was over we didnt see triassic at it's peak at all which is a shame because its a period with a lot of wild diversity of bodyplans you could legit dedicate a whole series to that period so when the triassic was over i was so sad and disappointed that 80% of the episode was dedicated to modern day

[@BarelloSmith]

Lystrosaurus didn't live in the early Cretaceous but in the late Permian/early Triassic.

[@D34dM4nYT]

Fun Fact: Because Amblin is associated with this show, they re-used the Allosaurus model from the 2019 Jurassic World short "Battle At Big Rock".

[@kaantheviperunverdi7735]

You should also cover prehistoric planet season 2

[@saramorethepenguinkid1321]

This documentary could have kept my expectations high had it not been for the repetitive narrating, inaccurate details, and overlap of modern day fauna over all of the prehistoric fauna it had originally advertised. Thank you so much for making this review. The grade here is well deserved. Also, I have a recommendation for a documentary you can review in the future. I just watched a Discovery Doc called Jurassic Ghost Town: A Mass Murder Mystery on Max. It had some good arguments, but the murder mystery vibes and build up scenes had me scratching my head a lot. When you get the time, I recommend checking that out.

[@marcolibbi5479]

From this August on, my brother and I watched all of your accuracy reviews, and after watching your videos about Prehistoric Planet and Prehistoric Planet 2, I was eager to find out what did you think about Life on Our Planet. Dude, I'm glad to state that I agree with u on basically EVERYTHING you said in this review. After all those teasers and trailers I was hyped af for this documentary - don't get me wrong, there was already something holding me off, like the Jurassic World reconstructions or the CGI, but it looked like some good product overall. What we got instead was an extremely mixed bag which wiped out almost all of my expectations (mainly due to the CLEARLY deceiving marketing lmao). Now, I've always been a huge lover of documentaries about extant animals as well (like Planet Earth) but in this case, cramming prehistory and present-day world made for a messy, shallow, unfocused result, where any segment set in the prehistoric time is extremely superficial. As you said, the show just portrays the bare minimum from each age, rushedly hopping from one step to another and depicting evolution of life on Earth as a war between factions, with one group popping up and overhtrowing the previous one. Medias should really start debunking this commonplace; nature doesn't work like that, what comes next isn't necessarily better than what came first. Each group has its own ups and downs, but there isn't a group wich is better than the others (for example, it's not like mammals are better than insects). Sure, sometimes a group gets actually replaced by another, but that's because under specific circumstances it happened to be more adapted. There's not an absolute best or an absolute winner. As you said, yeah, LOOP also shows many debunked stereotypes, like the sabertoothed cats forcing the terror birds into extinction, the DAMN sauropods fleeing from an Allosaurus (same for the Triceratops, which is openly stated to be unable to face a T.rex), the Deinonychus which is explicitely stated to live in packs, and the flying Anchiornis. Most of the reconstructions fall flat too, from the JW copy pasted dinosaurs to the crocodilian erythrosuchid to the generical looking "plesiosaur" and pterosaurs. Speaking of that, it leaves me atone how the majority of the featured species and periods are unnamed, like they were too lazy to google up and provide species and periods their names. I'm sorry because every time I talk about this documentary I try to cut short but I end up writing these HUGE wall of texts lol. Anyways, I'd say that in the new age of documentaries, Prehistoric Planet remains the best. Life on Our Planet doesn't get even close.

[@vaggos2003]

No need to apologise, pal. As someone who loves analysing media in-depth, I appreciate comment essays like these. In fact, if you're interested, I could share and discuss some thoughts of mine about this doc on an artistic merit.

[@marcolibbi5479]

@@vaggos2003 sure you can!

[@landenriley8442]

The life on our planet Allosaurus is easily compared to battle at big rock's Allosaurus

[@Fede_99]

I think it's literally the same model with some corrections, even tho it still looked bad

[@landenriley8442]

@@Fede_99 that's what's everyone else is thinking

[@themightymrpink]

22:10 The genus Lystrosaurus was only found from the late Permian to early Triassic epochs.

[@jeffreygao3956]

26:02 Seeing the complete accuracy tier list got me thinking -Upgrade Prehistoric Planet to A+ -Downgrade Walking With Dinosaurs to either D+ or C-. -Downgrade Walking with Beasts to a C+. -Downgrade March of the Dinosaurs to maybe a B. -Downgrade The Truth about Killer Dinosaurs to B+. -Upgrade Prehistoric Predators to maybe an A-. -No problems with Jurassic Fight Club and Valley of the T. rex; They fail!

[@jeffreygao3956]

Actually March of the Dinosaurs is more D.

[@Ace0Spades17]

I feel like if you want to cover all of paleo history then I’d go with the route the Walking With series did. Have multiple series covering different eras in earths history. Plus if they’re good then you’d make more money. Key part is IF they’re good

[@thebunkerparodie6368]

an odd writting example for me would be the maisaura scene

[@thegek345]

The Edmonto scene is just the Maia with different stripe color and that crest put on the head and thats why it looks weird

[@fred_fuchs]

If you want to see an old dino doc I would recommend Dinosaur! Narrated by Christopher Reeve

[@CanonBehenna]

If only you tell other about how prehistoric beasts was a test plot for a Disney movie before Jurassic park stepped in and got it cancelled

[@Regalius12]

So here Is some clarification for some things. This documentary actually started production a little bit before prehistoric planet. And both of them are being made at the same time

[@thelittleal1212]

I love the roster of prehistoric animals, and the cgi looks impressive, but the way they move, look, and how it’s all shot, it feels less like a Documentary with realistic and rather some big Hollywood movie. But hey, this is Netflix where talking about, They very much suck when it comes to historical media

[@amn9433]

22:11 didn't you mean Early Triassic?

[@MrsBurke-xr7lp]

Yes sirrrrrrrrrr! Finally we have life on our planet thank you so much

[@internetduck1520]

the soundtrack is what makes this documentary amazing for me, the melodies and harmonies perfectly capture the awe of prehistoric life and heavily outweighs the flaws imo

[@jthomas8263]

The Giant Southern Tyrannosaurus Species found in New Mexico called 'Tyrannosaurus Mcraeensis' or simply as 'Big Mac.'

[@ansibarius4633]

Judging from this clip alone, the animal designs in the Smilodon scenes look as if they were heavily inspired by those of the 2001 BBC series Walking with Beasts (which was sensational for its time).

[@ianfranks9327]

what pissed me off the most about this series is that most of, or half of each episode length, is focused on modern day animals, when all the advertisements showed it being a paleo documentary, it just pissed the shit out of me when they would focus on a prehistoric animal, and constantly cut back to modern day animals, I was absolutely bored as shit!

[@Bagelgeuse]

Ok, the rest of this review is solid, but 22:12 threw me for a LooP (pun intended). Lystrosaurus dying out in the early Cretaceous?

[@justusb.plorer8773]

22:05 Look, I know they Lystrosaurus survived the Great Dying, but I don't think they lasted _quite_ until the early cretaceous.

[@creakingskull7008]

Honestly i don't see a smilodon hunting a terror bird to be a problem the same way an oviraptor eating an egg isn't a problem. I feel people overcorrect too much in paleonthology. Yeah terror birds weren't smilodon's main food source but i see no reason why it couldn't hunt it from time to time, it was caught by surprise not beaten in an epic death battle

[@ExtremeMadnessX]

Terror bird didn't even try to defend himself.

[@spinosaurusstriker]

I would agree with you if it wasn't for the fact that the terrorbird acted like a fodder animal, want to show a smilodon tackling a terrorbird? Depict him as old or sick individual, if i tackle a dude 3 times heavier than me he is not going to fall.

[@GTSE2005]

The Smilodons were horrifically oversized, in reality S.gracialis would have only been around the height of Titanis' knee (presumably the species in that scene). It would be outright suicidal to attack something 4 times bigger than them.

[@creakingskull7008]

I'll give y'all the the terror bird didn't fight back but that's more a problem with the whole show rather than this specific case

[@spinosaurusstriker]

​@@creakingskull7008i mean yeah no one is discussing that sjjs

[@thespinodino]

You can clearly tell this studio is the same one that did the cgi for the Jurassic World trilogy when you look at the designs for Triceratops, Diplodocus, and Allosaurus. They all bear a striking resemblance to their Jurassic World counterparts. Diplodocus reuses parts of the Apatosaurus model, but you get what I mean.

[@greendoor4039]

This feels like something you’d watch once then after a while go to KZbin to watch the good parts you really like so you don’t have to get through all the goofs

[@robbieq7814]

The allosaurus looks like the jurrasic world fallen kingdom and dominion juvenile design

[@joshuaW5621]

Does this mean????

[@robbieq7814]

@@joshuaW5621 mean what?

[@joshuaW5621]

@@robbieq7814 they pulled a Dinosaurs with Stephen Fry on us.

[@robbieq7814]

@@joshuaW5621 oh ok

[@robbieq7814]

@@joshuaW5621they did, but with a bit of actual accuracy

[@Raygathex]

Ok so fun fact, they were working on this since before Prehistoric Planet started production, so changing the design on the Dunk or the Rex brows to look more like those would have been extremely costly.

[@theflyingdutchguy9870]

welcome back RRW. definately missed you voice.

[@thabas7578]

Oh man, its been three years... thanks red raptor writes, you made my time at high school much better ❤❤

[@redraptorwrites6778]

So glad I can help. Happy to hear I brightened someone's day

[@thabas7578]

@@redraptorwrites6778 you didnt brightened my day, you brightened my life

[@BenjaminKoops]

I was surprised how the camel sounds from age of Empires 2 where used in the permian. So they weren't from camels after all.

[@chadgorosaurus4898]

The amount of creatures shown is what brings this documentary down. We should have seen way more, especially from the Triassic. Also the scene with the early Sabre Tooth Cats killing Titanis was pure brain rot.

[@JabbarMuhammad-s5h]

The visual effects from this documentary are pretty accurate

[@quintonnarcisse6425]

@marshalmarrs3269especially the Triceratops, Allosaurus and Diplodocus. Diplo’s head is shaped like that of the JW Apatosaurus

[@quintonnarcisse6425]

@marshalmarrs3269 i noticed it on Tyrannosaurus when she and the juveniles were on that cliff clearing and it broke me

[@spinosaurusstriker]

You are too nice

[@Jpteryx]

There are so many inaccuracies in this series. From all the factual errors in the narration, to bad designs like bobbleheaded Anomalocaris, featherless Arkansaurus, light gray Anchiornis, and the weird head shape on Titanis.

[@thegoldentb7596]

Idk how I sat through all 8 episodes. My tipping point was the hunting scene between the cave lions and the mammoths. When the one lion pounced the mammoth baby trying to kill it, the mammoth baby obliges, rolls over, and just dies. Like HUH??

[@BetterOnichThanSorry]

10:16 11:49 I consider Erythrosuchus particularly atrocious. There is no excuse to have it walking around like an arthritic alligator; it's akin to having a T. rex walk around like a tail dragging kangaroo.

[@ironiccookies2320]

This documentary was the fastest documentary I've ever dropped. The animals are all wrong, they're all portrayed as good and evil but in reality things aren't black and white, and they keep skipping time around. First they showed modern day, then Cambrian, then dinosaurs, then back to Devonian, then modern day, etc etc

[@eduardomorrone5692]

About smilodon killing terror birds, can we talk about the one smilodon that freezed in run?

[@bentri7964]

I watched some of the behind the scenes for the show, and on several occasions they started they were prioritizing a cool look over accuracy

[@stephenwhitford775]

What's that Ceratosaurus from?

[@AntiThotPatrol]

One of my biggest gripes with this docuseries is that it reinforces debunked myths or old science, views that certain ecological niches/species as dynasties that wipe out another, and the “defenseless herbivore” stereotype. One of the biggest things that made me have to put down the focuseries is when the series claimed that an adult triceratops could not defend itself against a T-Rex or that hadrosaurs were “defenseless”. Another example is that they claimed that Lystrosaurus was literally idiotic and eaten to extinction.

[@jurgen1395]

Sea monsters the bbc version might need to be down tier because of the dunk

[@I-Rex232]

The triceratops hunt in the first episode was so weird, I liked how the mother t-rex and the youngsters worked together and how the youngsters blew it with their cover, but I really dont think a trriceratops would turn it's back on a t-rex trying to outspeed it. It defenitly wasn't smart enough to have coordinated herd defense with like a "horn wall" strategy they showed. It seems far more likely that it would stand it's ground and make sure to keep facing the biggest threat, it's clearly what the animal is built for, I can't imagine ceratopsians surviving for so long with such predators if their instinct would be to turn their vulnerable backs instead of their armored fronts to a threat that is faster and capable of running for longer than them.

[@Darksaviour]

My problem is the show feels like it’s having an identity crisis if it wants to be a documentary about exctanct or exctinct life. My guess is they blew the CGI budget to get Morgan Freeman to narrate

[@Eeeeeee-sh2zn]

Actually, this documentary was in production since long before Prehistoric Planet was even announced.

[@ElCEOdelosdinosaurios]

0:23 Where did that Ceratosaurus come from???

[@Raventhe3rd]

another idea for a paleomyth is if nanotyrannus was a legit genus. Theres a new paper that recently came out that actually suggests it might be.