RE: Complaining

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@umd.edu>]

> From: owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu [mailto:owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu] On Behalf Of 
> Ruben
> Sent: Monday, April 29, 2013 11:22 PM
>
> On 04/29/2013 04:16 PM, GSP1954@aol.com wrote:
> > Is it really too much to ask the people doing digital dinosaur
> > animation to at least try to get things close to right?
> >
> > The third NOVA program on Australia. Hadrosaurs galloping on their
> > slender forelimbs. No way, they trotted or paced using the arms to add
> > some speed and especially turning agility. (Some of the footage may
> > have been picked up from an earlier program.) Galloping Triceratops.
> > Even assuming it was as fast as rhinos the trot/gallop transition
> > speed at that mass is so high that it would probably have trotted or
> > paced, even if smaller ceratopsians galloped at that speed. And stiff
> > backed running quadrupedal dinosaurs may never have galloped like
> > flexible backed quad mammals. Stegosaurs trotting when at most they
> > ambled like elephants. The sauropods were walking with absurdly flexed 
> > elbows. The sauropod skin was all wrong. Sort of like
> crocodilians. Why?
> > We have samples of sauropod skin. All these decades of publishing on
> > this stuff and often its like we are still in the early 70s.
> 
> Yeah - I saw that.  That wasn't even the worse of the inaccuracies of that 
> series.  It was just a god aweful Nova series.  I also
hate when
> you have to sit through the first 20 minutes to hear the same hype over and 
> over until finally a single point is made.  Sometimes
I think
> they are making these science shows for the handicapped.

Many of the CGI dinosaurs were from previous documentaries, not new for this 
program. (The overly-scaled titanosaurs, however, were
new).

And I disagree STRONGLY with Ruben re: the quality of the show. Over the course 
of the first three episodes they have included a lot
of information that simply doesn't get out to the general public.

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Email: tholtz@umd.edu   Phone: 301-405-4084
Office: Centreville 1216                        
Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
Dept. of Geology, University of Maryland
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
Fax: 301-314-9661               

Faculty Director, Science & Global Change Program, College Park Scholars
http://www.geol.umd.edu/sgc
Fax: 301-314-9843

Mailing Address:        Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                        Department of Geology
                        Building 237, Room 1117
                        University of Maryland
                        College Park, MD 20742 USA