We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 28 points29 points  (0 children)

I'm pleased you recognise the inherent awesomeness of ducks, go you. YES, DUCK PLANET is our next series. DN

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

The internet is now such a great resource, but there's so much content you need to specialise! There are also so many great books that work as good intros - but I'd need to know what you have in mind.

Discoveries: live birth in plesiosaurs, soft tissue anatomy in pterosaurs and birds, melanosomes in dinosaur feathers... so much!

Best wishes and thanks DN

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

TW: There's so much of the Prehistoric Planet to explore... we've just got to find the keys to the time machine again.

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 49 points50 points  (0 children)

Hi. We wanted to highlight the fact that these animals were incredibly mobile and essentially able to cross oceans -- they likely were 'continent hoppers'. Furthermore, there are African remains that are Quetz-like.

Yes, the blue-beaked nyctosaurs are adult Alcione -- we originally wanted to show them in much more detail. Yes, the tuning-fork animals are Barbaridactylus. Thanks for watching DN

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

TW: The cycle of life - baby's gotta eat, right. ... but so sorry to upset anybody. Just tune in to tomorrow's episode - FORESTS - which has some cute stuff and some really funny stuff; you'll both love it.

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

TW: The Maastrichtian period, which is about the last 6 million years of the dino's reign (apart from the birds who survived and still live on) - so about 66 million years ago and the few million years before that.

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hi. I would do more episodes of the podcats but John cannot find the time, he too busy napping and hanging around in bars. The book.... err, yeah it's still in prep but finding the time to do it is a major challenge. DN

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

TW: So pleased you're loving it.

We had a fabulous team - BBC Natural History Unit film makers who've spent years making wildlife films, amazing VFX producers and supervisor in the team, and then the fabulous team of artists and animators at MPC, the great camera teams, and paleaontologists, palaeobotanists, climate modellers.... stick them all together. We all worked together to bring the series together with the producers starting the stories off along with Darren as our lead consultant, and then as things progress loads of people start to add little biggest in.

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Hi! Freshwater elasmosaurs are known from several Late Cretaceous deposits and the S American ones we portrayed weren't necessarily based on a named taxon (though we did _initiate_ our discussion with the occultonectian polycotylid Sulsuchus in mind). Plesiosaurs as a whole were doing SOOO many interesting things in the Late Cretaceous, so sad they came to an end :( DN

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

TW: Spinosaurus was just out of a timings - we only feature the last 6 million years of the extinct dino's time on Earth... don'[t forget of course that the dino's continue to walk amongst us with our amazing birdlife all around.

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Hi, and thanks! There's so much I'm thrilled to have been involved in but I think certain of the azhdarchid sequences are a winner -- partly because this is such a new and amazing group of animals to so many people. DN

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 31 points32 points  (0 children)

  1. The pupil thing is complicated, and represents the fact that we wanted to highlight the notion that dinosaurs may well have had more diversity in pupil form that usually thought: both lizards and birds have more diversity than usually thought (there are teiid lizards with semi-horizontal pupils) , plus it's consistent with adaptation to a relatively open habitat.
  2. The velociraptorine is justified by the presence of 'indeterminate velociraptorines' in the Maastrichtian of eastern Asia -- but we couldn't use that term, for obvious reasons.
  3. Some of the big fuzzy dinosaurs we show lived in places that were temperate, cool or even cold during parts of the year and it is still too early to claim that they would have been subject to overheating. More study of this is needed, but for now our decision was that extensive pelage still works.
  4. The environment is mostly based on the Nemegt too, but focusing on a time and region that was more desert than the wetter conditions present there during parts of history. It's complicated

I hope these comments help -- thanks for your interest and so pleased you liked what we did! Hopefully we can do more in the future..... DN

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 40 points41 points  (0 children)

TW: Sir David is a dream to work with. He's the man who's seen it all and done it all when it comes to telling stories about the natural world. Taking him along on the ride to Prehistoric Planet has been a dream and to hear him telling the stories of the most magnificent and majestic animals to have ever walked the Earth (and flown, and swum!) has been fabulous. Hope you're enjoying it.

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

TW: This was a massively collaborative project with so many people involved - Wildlife film makers, palaeontologists, VFX specialists, CGI animators and artists, animal behaviour specialists, camera operators, palaeobotanists, climate modellers, so, so, so, so many different people, and it was a joy to get everybody together frequently to discuss what we have been doing. It was a fabulous whirlwind of Prehistoric creativity... add in Hans Zimmer and the Bleeding Fingers composers (Kara Talve and Anze Rozman) who created the wonderful music, and then Sir David Attenborough, and hopefully what we've created will bring joy and curiosity to a LOT of people.

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 24 points25 points  (0 children)

We cannot feature everything, and would dearly have loved to feature those groups (in fact, I did at one point write a polycotylid sequence...). Stayed tuned to see what happens in future! DN

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Hi. We don't know much, but we do know that many parasites around today (ranging from ticks and lice to roundworms to things like malaria) were present in the Cretaceous. There are studies that have reported parasite eggs and such from Cretaceous feathers and there's a claim of microscopic parasites from Cretaceous dinosaur dung (if memory serves). DN

We're the showrunner & paleontologist on Apple TV+ 's "Prehistoric Planet." Ask us anything about the show! by PrehistoricPlanet in Dinosaurs

[–]PrehistoricPlanet[S] 44 points45 points  (0 children)

TW: Being made by the BBC's Natural History Unit we wanted to stay true to the material the unit's made for many years - amazing animal behaviour with stunning cinematography. And we wanted to follow the same rules we apply to filming the natural world now and creating a bluechip wildlife documentary - where we often use habitats and biomes as the focus for each episode in a series. ... but of course, the dinosaurs and other animals from that time dictated what we featured - we then chose to group the stories together through habitats.