FAQ

Upon release, Planet Dinosaur was one of the most scientifically accurate and up-to-date television programs featuring CGI dinosaurs (and other prehistoric animals), which nevertheless is not saying much. Although the show didn't provoke as much complaining from the general palaeontology-community as its famous predecessor Walking with Dinosaurs (1999) did, it was sadly quite inaccurate at times and the findings of recent years have also made some of its depictions of prehistoric animals obsolete or at least highly questionable.

Inaccuracies include:

* Some theropod dinosaurs are shown twisting their hands, but their wrists were unable to rotate in real life.

* Many quadrupedal dinosaurs are shown with four front claws. In reality, they had three, and had two extra, stumpy digits held off the ground.

* Certain pterosaurs are incorrectly shown folding their wings in from the side, instead of from the back. All of them also inexplicably lack a pteroid bone -- the long, thin bone that sprouted from their "wrist" and pointed toward their shoulder.

* The wing feathers of many dinosaurs are erroneously shown attaching to their third finger, instead of the second. Many dinosaurs that we know had wing feathers (like troodontids) are inexplicably lacking them, as well as feathers lining their tail.

* Some winged dinosaurs are shown digging with their "hands", as opposed to their legs which would have been far more suited for this.

* Certain animals are misplaced in time and probably didn't live with each other (Sarcosuchus, Ouranosaurus, Microraptor and Sinraptor).

* Some findings suggest that Spinosaurus had tiny back legs and was altogether even better suited for living in water than what the narrator claims. An updated version of the show's Spinosaurus model appeared in the 2014 Nova documentary Bigger than T. rex.

* Rugops couldn't have been an obligate scavenger, that diet is simply impossible for an animal this size.

* Onchopristis lived entirely in freshwater.

* Sinornithosaurus didn't have venom as the show claims. That idea was based on a misinterpretation of its skull and had been debunked well before the show was produced.

* Microraptor had black feathers, didn't have a scaly head and had two longer feathers extending from its "tail-fan".

* Troodon is described as strictly carnivorous, but theories popularized at the time of the show's production claim that it could well have been omnivorous, especially given its tiny teeth.

* "Predator X" now has a scientific name: Pliosaurus funkei, and likely weighed significantly less than what the show claims. Its skull is also incorrect due to a CGI modeling error.

* Saurophaganax may have been just a large Allosaurus, but some consider it a distinct genus.

* The series' design of Stegosaurus lacks its characteristic throat-armor.

* Daspletosaurus head is too generic and blocky-looking, the "bumps" in front of its eyes aren't that apparent.

* Bradychneme is represented by a reuse of the Troodon model, but some scientists think that it wasn't a troodontid but an alvarezsaurid.

* Hatzegopteryx was more heavily built, with a shorter neck and bigger head.

* The name Zunityrannus was made up by the show. The animal still lacks an actual scientific name in real life.

* The schematics at the end of the last episode show that dinosaurs have gone extinct, whereas the second episode correctly pointed out that birds are a surviving branch of their family tree.