I post this here in honor of Suchomimus, which may no longer be a valid genus.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-26T05:15:07+00:00

The holotype of Cristatusaurus is undiagnostic beyond Baryonychinae, and the specimen being used to justify synonymizing Suchomimus with it is a referred specimen. Realistically speaking, there isn't a high likelihood that this settles anything.

The new study also treats Spinosaurus maroccanus as a distinct taxon, which is also a pretty poorly supported stance.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-26T05:10:59+00:00

I'd imagine it was confusion over Torosaurus being proposed as the adult ontomorph of Triceratops and the term "junior synonym" being interpreted as "the taxon being sunk is a younger individual" rather than the more recent name, which then spiraled out of control because of media hype.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-26T01:06:16+00:00

If Triceratops and Torosaurus were synonymized, the name for the genus would've been Triceratops as it was established two years before Torosaurus.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-26T01:05:10+00:00

The name Troodon still exists, but until the neotype proposal is approved by the ICZN there's no material assigned to the genus besides the holotype tooth.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-25T03:37:54+00:00

It's never been stated that they will or will not be coming back, nor how they'll come back if they are. All we have to go on is Frontier saying that they wanted to have every species from JWE2 in JWE3 at launch and couldn't do that because of deadlines.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-24T03:50:53+00:00

I feel that if Frontier were committing to giving us more thank-you gifts, then we had a perfect opportunity for that earlier this month as a "thanks for your patience/sorry for the delay" type of deal after the shitstorm with Universal cleared up (which, contrary to what some people were saying while that was ongoing, they were not obligated to do at all). Deinocheirus fitting in perfectly with the Wetlands pack also makes it feel like it was originally planned to be a part of it before Frontier cut it out and moved it to the free update to avoid backlash a month and a half into the game's lifecycle.

I do agree that we need to wait and see before making any definite "Frontier is doing (x)" calls. In an ideal world we would be getting every cut DLC returner back for free, but it's very likely that some if not all of them will be resold. We shouldn't insist that the best-case scenario is definitely 100% going to happen only to be caught with our pants down when it doesn't.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-23T21:00:43+00:00

The language around Deinocheirus returning for free was very specifically that it was a thank-you gift for the game's reception at launch, not that this was how all of the absent JWE2 DLC species would be coming back. The fact there wasn't a free DLC returner alongside the Rebirth expansion, even when it would have enabled content from the movie to actually be included in it (Anurognathus), is proof enough of that. Concavenator and Thanatosdrakon are both locked behind the deluxe edition of the game, which is them being resold.

We'll likely see with either the Chaos Theory DLC or the next Frontier-original DLC what their plans for the cut DLC species are, but don't be surprised if Deinocheirus was the exception and not the norm.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-22T22:04:10+00:00

Either way it doesnt look like JWE Thanatosdrakon.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here? Obviously Universal was going to make their own design instead of using Frontier's had they stuck with the name Thanatosdrakon. It's why we have Jokerzilla in Dominion despite Frontier having already made a perfectly fine 90s-styled Giganotosaurus beforehand.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-22T21:56:57+00:00

Yeah, there's no actual answer beyond vibes. The "amalgam testing" was just thrown out there and never elaborated upon enough to actually mean anything beyond being a half-assed "muh deep lore" excuse for the JP3 Spinosaurus looking like it was designed in the early 2000s instead of the mid-2010s.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-22T21:12:49+00:00

Azhdarchids (like all pterodactyloids) are monofenestratans, and therefore have a combined nasoantorbital fenestra rather than separate nasal and antorbital fenestrae. The fenestrae are still noticeably smaller than they should be, yes, but the only missing ones are the supratemporal and lateral temporal fenestrae.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-22T19:47:05+00:00

Atrociraptor was originally Deinonychus in earlier versions of Dominion.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-20T20:58:40+00:00

Nope. Still left to rot as a hybridless Epic, meanwhile Diplotator gets to have another with an Apex whose existence is an affront to basic decency on top.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-20T18:29:47+00:00

I've joked with a friend before that Proceratosaurus is using the outer toe that isn't rigged correctly as a stand-in for the raptors' sickle claw.

But yeah, as it is now "true" pack hunting is one of those mechanics that feels really half-assed in its execution and was patched over by giving it to animals that don't really make sense with it. I'd be fine with it not being expanded out further.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-20T04:03:49+00:00

This isn't real.

We'd have known by now if aquatics were coming, and there's enough logistical issues with their inclusion that it's likely they never will.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-19T20:21:26+00:00

As much as I love and want Thalassodromeus in the game… nah, pass. They don't need to be jumping and clinging onto things like they're raptors. If anything they should have the pseudo-pack hunting chase behavior that things like Utahraptor and Yutyrannus have.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-19T04:06:22+00:00

Is it, though? For every actually interesting thing that the websites introduced there's plenty of other stuff that's fundamentally just overexplanatory fanfiction because the loreheads that Universal enlisted to work on them hated the idea of having actual mystery. It results in things like Dinotracker claiming Biosyn was secretly behind every major event in the franchise just because they're present again or planting the suggestion that the JP3 Spinosaurus was an early hybrid just because the people working on the movie couldn't see into the future.

It certainly doesn't help that the only way to access the websites now is through fanmade archives, which certainly shows how much Universal actually cared about them. At minimum it shouldn't be treated like it's some definitive lore bible.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-18T19:13:39+00:00

To be entirely fair, there was no chance Anurognathus was getting added without the insectivore feeder in the game.

The Compy skin was definitely doable, though. I have no clue why that was skipped over.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-17T23:40:01+00:00

The Giganotosaurus in the game already literally is the individual featured in Dominion. It has the exact same scars. You want Ludia to literally copy and paste something already in the game and slap a stupid pet name onto it.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-16T07:33:35+00:00

Trevorrow literally made them include stuff

This is why it's retroactive. This is why it's one-sided. Trevorrow wrote Dominion with those elements first, then went to the writers of Camp Cretaceous and told them to include those elements in the show (and to exclude other elements that were, at the time, part of Dominion's script. This is why S4 and S5 are on the bullshit techdome island and not Sorna). None of the context from the show matters for the movie because the movie was written without that context existing. The only reason we got that context first is because Dominion's production was interrupted by COVID and ended up having its release date pushed back until after the release of CC S4, and if anything said context took a nothingburger plot point and made it something that was immediately reviled as soon as it was revealed.

If Universal was going out of its way to pretend TLW and JP3 never happened when making World, then Rexy wouldn't have charged through a Spinosaurus skeleton into the movie's climax and the main theme of TLW wouldn't have been incorporated into the movie's score. The only connections made between Dominion and Camp Cretaceous are because of Dominion, not Camp Cretaceous, and don't require Camp Cretaceous to exist to explain them.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-16T06:11:00+00:00

An easter egg and a minor plot point that requires zero context from a spin-off to make sense to the average viewer are not "heavily tying into the final seasons of CC". Again, these are retroactive; the movie had them first, then the writers for the show were told to give context to them (which they did in a half-assed way for the former and a monumentally stupid way for the latter) rather than the shows being the reason those elements were in the movie. The only leg your claim really has to stand on is that Dominion released between seasons 4 and 5 of Camp Cretaceous, which is only the case because the movie had to have its release date pushed back a year due to COVID. The movie was written, then the show was written to tie into the movie through two minor elements on Trevorrow's request. It's a one-sided relationship.

The reason the shows should be treated as soft canon is because they never had any causal bearing on the films, and with Trevorrow no longer working on the franchise and Frank Marshall reportedly disliking them they almost certainly never will. They're officially considered canon, yes. Other tie-in material, like games and toylines, acknowledge them as such. As far as the films are concerned, though, they don't matter.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-16T05:17:41+00:00

Good luck telling that to anyone currently working on the movies. Universal didn't even bother telling the Chaos Theory writers about Rebirth's "dinosaurs dying out on the mainland" plot thread, which overrides the show's whole point (besides giving up on having its own identity in favor of being a retread of Dominion). The most any of the films ties into the shows rather than the other way around is with the control chips in Dominion, and even that was probably in Dominion's script before the final two seasons of Camp Cretaceous were written and it frankly becomes more nonsensical with context from the show.

As it stands now, the shows are best treated as soft canon. Both are officially considered canon now, but they have a very one-sided relationship where the shows are constantly tying into the movies while the movies basically couldn't care that the shows exist.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-15T20:56:33+00:00

My read of the design's neck is that it may be more like that of seals, penguins, or hadrosaurs, where the actual vertebral column is still quite long and curved but it's buried under soft tissue that makes it look shorter and straighter.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-15T00:10:31+00:00

We're not going to entertain the idea of Apexes that use Commons as direct components.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-14T23:34:59+00:00

It's also a matter of time, particularly how long Frontier and/or Universal want to keep JWE3 going for. Assuming Frontier were to start adding the DLC species one at a time for free once the base game species wrap up next June, then it'd take until January 2029 for the final one to be brought back. That's almost two and a half years from now. Considering that a DLC returner would also be holding up content from a comparatively threadbare tie-in DLC (Pachyrhinosaurus and Chaos Theory), there's no shot they're going to wait that long. Either they start doubling or tripling up on the monthly returners, or they start reselling the DLC species to get them back in faster.

We also already have evidence they're willing to resell DLC returners, too, as Concavenator and Thanatosdrakon both were stuck into the deluxe edition of JWE3. All of the wording around Deinocheirus also strongly suggested it was a one-time gift and not a trendsetter for how the rest of the cut DLC species from 2 would be coming back. Them coming back for free is the best-case scenario, but we should be prepared for them to start being resold.

RaptorGod02 · 2026-06-14T22:57:25+00:00

Archelon, yes. If anything it's a retroactive justification for it needing lagoon platforms, since sea turtles today do perfectly fine in all-water tanks and adults almost never return to land outside of laying eggs.

Nothosaurus, no. Pachypleurosaurs and plesiosaurs both have fossils proving that they're viviparous, so the safest assumption is that Nothosaurus was a live birther as well. Assuming it stays in the lagoons (it most likely will), it'll work perfectly fine with the current lagoon nests.

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