Hello, welcome back to me looking at the creatures of Dino Dan, where we’ve reached the end of the road, as I complete the remaining creatures from Dino Dana. To summarize, I look at the design of each creature, along with any oother info shown, mentioned or implied and look at how accurate or inaccurate it is, followed by personal opinion based notes in the design itself.
Positives = Accuracies
IDK = Can’t find or tell weather that’s accurate/possible or not
Negatives = Inaccuracies
Titanis is kinda cool, I like the head shape, the feather crest and the colors are nice (though yellow/pink may not be best combo). With that said, I wish the legs were bigger and the arms highlight the worst of this series’s bizarre avoidance of proper wings
I LOVE this design so much! Gigantoraptor is one of my favorite dinosaurs and this design does the giant chicken justice. The dull red and white are such a great color scheme and all my favorite features like the neck, legs and size are still intact. And most importantly FINALLY A DESIGN WITH WINGS!!! I’m glad they picked this creature out of all to give the wings (even if that sucks for the rest). One of my favorite designs of this entire series probably. Too bad it only appears twice
Like Hippodraco, Europa is another wild-card inclusion, though not as exciting for me. The colors are still nice I suppose. Can’t really say much for or against it, but it’s inclusion is neat I guess.
Man, this Archaeopteryx is just a mess. It wasn’t until I heavily analyzed the design, but even when I first said eyes on this thing, I knew something was wrong. The ostrich head looks lame, the chest and stomach proportions are unfit for a bird, the posture is weird too and for the love of Raptor Jesus WHY does this BIRD have ARMS instead of WINGS!?!? It’s a shame, since the coloration actually looks pretty cool.
Also, I find it kinda dumb how there’s an entire episode dedicated to Dana struggling to figure if this creature is a dinosaur or a pterosaur, even though any paleo-fan/nerd, fresh out the metaphorical eggshell could tell that’s an Archaeopteryx on first try.
Livyatan is just fine, I think blue and white are a decent mix. It’s a big predatory whale, that’s kinda cool on its own. But I do really wish we saw a curved jaw design with a more unique head shape and the small teeth size is pretty jarring. The wrinkles too bring down the design a bit.
Also, I don’t care if it’s dumb, watching it and a submarine breach together was awesome.
Meganeura (and Arthorpleura) are weird in that I for some reason get excited about what’s just an upscaled arthropod (tho at least Arthro I prefer with the armored look). Meganeura is just a big dragonfly and that’s enough for me, somehow makes it a favorite for me and this design looks cool to me.
(Tho maybe that’s me giving into some of my edgelord tendencies, since arthropods are the definitive edgiest animals and better edgier when giant).
Also, I feel so bad for it in its 2nd appearance, where it only exists to get dunked on and eaten by various paraves.
Bronto is another fine one, but man that face is goofy as hell. Life on Our Planet Megacerops is a Chad, this guy is straight virgin material by comparison. Also, wish we saw more of it regardless.
Eoraptor as the 1st (proper) Triassic animal is decent. The vivid green colors really carry the design and it’s prolly the least obvious the recolors. If this were the only recollection, I’d be fine.
I honestly don’t care about ProCompy since it’s superficially the same thing to me regardless of design. Tho they could have tried just a little bit harder than Compy but duller and naked.
Honestly, do you care about these 2 sauropods? Are you a genuine fan of Bellu or Amygdala and upset they’re just recolors? Well I’m not and let’s not kid ourselves, neither are you. These 2 could have been 100% ace in the hole accurate design and I still wouldn’t care at all. Just another 2 random dinosaurs that blend into the crowd (my personal 2nd least favorite type of extinct animal).
Procerato and Eustrepto are such cool and unique creatures, so them being s***y recolors doesn’t need to be explained as to why that’s bad. Procerato definitely was worse off a color pattern that looks like literal ****, but Eustrepto’s colors would have actually looked pretty cool if given a proper model.
This was what I meant when I said this series treats the Triassic like s***.
Zuul is a surprising choice but a welcome one. I think the natural browny green colors looks better than Euoplo, really nice design, tho I do wish it were a bit thicker.
Gorgo has a great model, the plain brown with liver spots pattern are kinda dull and unpleasant. Gorgon from the WWD movie is always be best Gorgo.
Fun fact, the reason these 2 are as accurate as they are (I assume) is because the company who made the show, also made an animation for the Royal Ontario Museum (which was also visited in all 3 shows and the movie) to go along with the discovery and exhibit of Zuul. And since they had the Zuul and Gorgo lying about, they decided, may as well put them into the Dana Movie.
Too bad both make mere cameos, despite new additions usually getting at least one full episode about them.
Pachycephalosaurus, while an odd final species, looks really nice with the blue color and long build to it. Pachy boi looks simply majestic (say for the weird neck).
Stygi and Draco are here too and we’re totally children the whole time (even tho there’s no way it’s coloration would change that drastically IRL). If you wanna hear my thoughts about them just go read parts 1 and 3.
Also, it’s kinda sweet the Pachy trio are used to teach both dinosaur ontogeny and a family lesson about ignoring what’s different to focus on what’s in common.
Updated notes (updates in highlights):
Dinosaur Revolution Quetz’s cooler blues and greens are also amazing.
I was trying to the right wording for Diplo neck flexibility
I forgot Titanosaurids didn’t have the claw on its front feet.
And there it is, every creature has been covered. Where do we go from here?
Well 1st I’m going to do one last bonus episode about all the non-canon creatures from toys and games so be ready for that (ignoring Dino Timeline for the website or the Activity Book, because you’d never see me again otherwise).
And then one last send off to this series via compiling all my notes
But until then, thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed , and goodbye.
