As a paleonerd in general and a Dunkleosteus fan in particular, I think Life on Our Planet is a spectacular creation that could have been created better.
The Dunk sequence is given appropriate prominence. Good. The CGI is decent, and the problematical tail and dorsal fin are up to current thinking. The filmmakers did a fair job of using the third dimension: some animated underwater sequences in documentaries are confined mainly to one plane or orientation. Also, the animators get points for not merely re-imaging the juveniles and adults – at least, the scars/digs/scratches are different. It was filmed before the recent publications about Dunkleosteus size and proportions, so the filmmakers didn't need to pick a side.
After that, though – what the hell?
First, the Dunk just appears, with no word of the evolution
leading up to it or the larger groups it nests within. I never heard the word “placoderm.”
This is a problem that reoccurs throughout this series, but it bugs me
especially here. From the narration, you'd think this is the first fish with jaws. Really
bad.
Most bizarrely, why are the juveniles following an adult? I’ve
never read any suggestion that this happened.
IIRC, it would be utterly unknown behavior for fish. These aren't ducklings: they're independent juveniles that would swim like hell away from an adult that might use those jaws to make sushi out of them. For that matter, why are they even near each other? I see nothing in the literature about schooling behavior for Dunks.
Most disappointingly, the armor appears to be uncovered bone in direct contact with the water. You can see the scrapes – not healed or scarred over, as they would be with flesh, but simply dug in. This is very outmoded thinking. Also, the juveniles weirdly have just as many scrapes as the adults. Do they get in all their serious fights as teenagers and then switch to safe prey? Not hardly. Finally, I don't like the "wrists" on the fins. This isn't a plesiosaur. Look at Coccosteus, of which we know the outline, or any shark. There's a little room for debate on the exact appearance but I'm pretty sure this version is wrong. [Yes, I know I usually object to using the 1-m Coccosteus as a model for the ~8m Dunkleosteus, but like everyone else, I can be flexible when it supports my point,]
The series has problems beyond Dunkleosteus. Dinosaur
experts have shredded the design of animals like T. rex, noting the filmmakers
used obsolete ideas or copied (if not repurposing actual animation) from sources like
Jurassic Park, maximizing the scariness of the animals as opposed to the more
lifelike creations in Prehistoric Planet (PP). There’s no excuse for that given the budget the program had and the
resources of its parent company. One point often made online is that no effort seems to have been made to even look at the work of top paleoartists who’ve
spent years evolving their work along with the science.
The structure is odd – why are we in the “Age of Dinosaurs” (as voiced by the always-superb Morgan Freeman) watching modern ants fight? I like the sliding time scale, but surely some branching images showing how evolution is getting us from one featured animal to the next are in order.
Why do the trilobites make amplified, very clear clicking noises when
they walk given that they and presumably we observers are supposedly underwater?
I said the CGI was pretty good with the Dunk, although it’s not
on the level of realism we see with aquatic species in PP (which I hope will
someday venture to the Devonian). The overall quality varies, though. I saw a comment
on X that the anomalocarid doesn’t look at all like a live animal, just a
sophisticated cartoon. I went back to
look, and… yeah.
I was mostly entertained, occasionally enthralled and sometimes disappointed. Simply put, this series isn’t the best it could be, or should have been.
Screen grabs: Fair Use claimed for program review.
Dunk with offspring: Dunk head emphasizing damage to bone armor: Anamalocaris:
Matt Bille is a writer, historian, and naturalist living in Colorado Springs. He can be reached at mattsciwriter@protonmail.com. Website: www.mattbilleauthor.com.
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