Jurassic Fight Club (titled Dinosaur Secrets in Australia and the United Kingdom) is a paleontology-based television miniseries on the History Channel which premiered in the United States in July 2008. Jurassic Fight Club was hosted by George Blasing, a self-taught paleontologist, and also features well-known paleontologists such as Thomas R. Holtz Jr., Philip J. Currie, Lawrence Witmer, and others. The show ran for one season of 12 episodes and was not renewed.
Summary Scientists study the battles of prehistoric creatures, such as dinosaurs, before they became extinct. Each episode features a forensic-styled breakdown of a prehistoric battle. Based on fossil evidence and paleontologic analysis, a computer-generated imagery rendering of the battle, based on the evidence and the imagination of George Blasing (the show's host) is the final act of each episode. In most cases, the battles are based on actual fossil finds, although in several episodes, scientists simply put two contemporaneous prehistoric animals, against each other. It is the second most-watched show on paleontology beaten only by Walking with Dinosaurs, has been quite controversial but has become very popular, for various show reasons.
Episodes
Inaccuracies Jurassic Fight Club is often criticized for its portrayal of prehistoric life. All the carnivores are portrayed as having insatiable appetites and always fighting each other to the death, which rarely happens in nature. Conversely, nearly all herbivores are easy for the predators to kill, even when they reasonably could defend themselves. Like other documentaries focusing on prehistoric life, Jurassic Fight Club contains scientific errors and outdated information. While some of this is the result of new discoveries during and after release, some inaccuracies were known even at the time. The show also often presents fringe theories and fabricated information as indisputable fact. The theropods have errors common in other dinosaur documentaries of the time; minimal soft tissue restoration, pronated wrists, mammalian roars, and practically no feathering. With the exception of Utahraptor, dromaeosaurs are depicted as pack hunters with a dominance hierarchy, launching coordinated attacks using their sickle claws to slash and disembowel prey.
Specific errors At the time of production, Majungatholus was the name given to the abelisaurid from Madagascar, but by the time of broadcast, the name had been determined to be a more modern synonym for Majungasaurus. The young Tyrannosaurus in the documentary are depicted as smaller versions of the adults, when they would have looked more like the Nanotyrannus at that point in their lives. Furthermore, they are depicted without feathers, when they likely would have had them before molting upon reaching maturity. The unidentified pterosaur in the episode "Raptor's Last Stand" is a scaled-down model of Quetzalcoatlus. However, the episode takes place in the Early Cretaceous, when Azhdarchids did not appear until the Late Cretaceous. The Pachyrhinosaurus in the series is depicted with a rhinoceros-like horn on its head; however, current evidence suggests that the structure was a large bony mass, but that is because experts at the time believed it had a keratin horn like rhinoceroses and therefore did not fossilize. In the episode "Raptors vs. T. rex ", it is stated that the Tyrannosaurus "burst onto the earth 90 million years ago, and ruled planet Earth for the next 25 million years", when in fact the oldest T. rex dates back 69 million years and went extinct along with the other dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
Turf Wars The Jurassic Fight Club game, Turf Wars was a fighting game that could be found on history.com but is no longer available. You could play as one of six dinosaurs, skills are used to defeat the other five. Cheat codes can make players invincible, access special attacks, etc. These dinosaurs are featured in battle order with their own status:
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