Well, anyone who has their palaeontological sights on the media has probably heard of Jurassic Fight Club, the History Channel romp and stomp of Mesozoic violence. Well, I’m here to say that it’s not perfect, but its my damning weakness…it’s a guilty pleasure, and a fun one at that. There’s just something about titans of flesh stomping their mass across verdant palaeoscapes that just brings out the child in you, and this is exactly what JFC manages to perform. The very first episode opened up with two Mesozoic theropods ramping up the violence meter in a life and death struggle. Okay, so the bull majungasaurus looked like an oversized barnyard fowl, but the light and shadow and the struggle of these two Madagascarian Cretaceous bruisers made it…well, epic! On the other hand, this becomes just the problem. Like edutainment pieces that came before it, Jurassic Fight Club uses “eat your face action!” (from here on this blog’s term for monster war fanfare), it wants to be more entertaining than factually sound.
One of the most blaring examples comes later in the series. An episode on tyrannosaurus and the potentially juvenile form or seperate species “nanotyrannus” states that the nannies purposefully slaughter Tyrannosaurus rex infants. While there are some modern animals that will engage in infanticide, if nanotyrannus is a seperate species, what exactly is the logic of running around like Maastrichtian bullies, picking on little tyros while their parents are out hunting? The best I can guess would be competition elimination, but that brings the question of why they wouldn’t just gang up on the parents, since they are bringing home the bacon. A more recent episode had Utahraptors with bulky heads that look fat for even a deinonychus, much less the Utahs. Then there was the most glaring example of all, the meg episode. At the end of an episode conerning the Pliocene shark megalodon, Steve freakin’ Alten* comes on and talks about the possibilities of a surviving meg!
On the other hand, the show encourages some sweet-tasting and savory speculations as well. A personal favorite of mine takes place during the aforementioned Utahraptor episode. While the thyreophoran bulk cruiser known as Gastonia has crappy eyesight, it has the aide of a group of adorable little azdharchid pterosaurs perching upon its back in the episode. This was just so cute I wish I had a framed image of it to epitomize good speculation. It is also a scene that has good modern precedence. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, take a look at most modern savannah grazers. You have various avifauna such as cattle egrets and tickbirds prodding and prying at parasites and making unseemingly noises at predators as a cooperative “you scratch my back” system. That, my friends, is what is special here. All in all, the mixture of bad and good doesn’t manage to shake what is a valuable and usable formula; I just wish they’d do some more homework on the matter.
*To those unfamiliar with Steve Alten, he is famous for writing some seriously palaeontologically-inaccurate books on megalodon living in deep-sea trenches alongside gilled pliosaurs and coming on currents to “eat your face action!” all over those silly humans and their technology. He also wrote an absurd title called The Loch, but those giant monsters and Scottish stereotypes are for another review.
