Some Random Palaeo-Shorts

It's February, and with only 28 days in it, why not use the time for short stuff? I declare February Short Month = Short Reviews month, and mostly be about various prehistory-themed short form works this month I can find around the internet or remember, mostly animations, though maybe a book or two will be featured.

Let's start off with a handful from the golden age of YouTube that was the 2000's and the time I grew up in, when it actually gave a damn about its users and didn't sellout to other corporations.

T. rex in the Atrium (2010)

There isn’t much to the Welsh short created by students of the University of South Wales. At a Welsh college campus, students find themselces terrorised by a Tyrannosaurus that bursts in and eats people. Where did it come from? We never find out. It's only 1:34 minutes long.

The design for the T. rex seems to be the standard "Jurassic Park clone" design with all that entails, with nothing too different then the rest of them: exposed teeth, pronated hands, roaring a lot. The only thing that stands out are larger then normal canine teeth like mammals do, which quite a few other misinformed works do. This is not quite true at all: most dinosaurs outside of ornithopods had uniform teeth. Though part of me is suspecting 

Techincally wise, its fine, though its still clear this was a student film and not an actual full project: the acting/screams seem a bit stilted at times, and while the rex's CG is generally good for the time, the shattered glass effects noticeably "hover" after they land. And of course, at just 1 3/4 minutes, there isn't much more to discuss about it.

Okay, I will say there are heavy Primeval vibes to TRITA, but that might just be because any works about prehistoric animals in modern Britain in the last 16 years give off such a feeling.

I find T. rex in the Atrium to be a decent start for its creators' careers and as a short, and I enjoyed it, though there isn't much to it.

• Accuracy - 4/10
• Aging - 5/10
• Presentation - 7/10
• Visuals - 7/10
• Music - n/a
• Storytelling - 5/10
• Rewatchability - 7/10

Dinosaur on my street (2006)

even less to it then the above. It's just a shot of a T. rex in the suburbs walking up to a house then somehow flying off. Even back when I first saw it reminded me of that one scene in The Lost World: Jurassic Park where the rex rooster* has escaped into our world.

The CG was made in Maya and After Effects, and for the mid-2000's made by an amatuer its.... fine. Still, it lacks any weight to its movements. The flying came because the creator didn't want to animate walking too much, but even young me was baffled they did this.

The design is also a JPclone. Although I'll give it credit, there are lips/no tooth slippage unlike T. rex in the Atrium's, and the design nails the wide jowls the real thing had to my likinh. And I like the rumbling sounds it makes.

T. rex on my street is an animation test. Nothing more, nothing less, only notable for the effort put into in it and the very end of the video. Moving on.

* I personally use rooster as a term for male theropods.

• Accuracy - 4/10
• Aging - 5/10
• Presentation - 7/10
• Visuals - 7/10
• Music - n/a
• Storytelling -  n/a
• Rewatchability - 6/10

Carnotaurus (2012)

This animated short created by UCLA student Benett Kim is about the horned abelisaur (one named Snaggletooth) chasing a dragonfly, but it falls after leaping in for the kill, and on account of its infamously tiny arms it can't get up. Slapstick misfortune ensues as it tries to do so.

Despite the cartoony stylisation going on with the designs here (and the lack of lips - major anger button for me), holds up quite well. It even has the backwards facing tiny arms it actually had. its clear Kim was a fan of dinosaurs and did what need to be done (he even includes the species name satrei and time it lived, 70 mya). The only thing that has aged poorly is the scales: rather then the uniform rows seen here and in many other depictions, they were all over the body (Hendricks 2021). It's also accurate in how Carnotaurus is built to run, yet as seen in one of the final gags relies on that because of the way its tail was all stiff, it couldn't turn fast enough, as poor Snag finds out the hard way.

I do admit though that young me, ever the pendatic douche, was bothered by the premise that once the Carnotaurus goes down, its tiny arms means it can't push itself up. As funny as it is to assume that tiny-armed theropods were good as dead if felled, studies have shown their leg muscles and ligaments had enough strength to raise the body alone. Even without that, with how boxy carnotaurus' head was, and they had long muscular necks adept at swinging down, it doesn't take much to think they could use their heads to boost themselves up - which doesn't happen here. Course, that wouldn't be funny, would it? And besides, I'm honestly more forgiving of inaccuracies in cartoons like these - usually.

With a funny premise that has well-done funny gags in it and plenty of bonuses for palaeo-nerds. Carnotaurus has been worth your time for 11 years and counting.

• Accuracy - 8/10
• Aging - 8/10
• Visuals - 8/10
• Music - n/a
• Storytelling - 7/10
• Rewatchability - 8/10

Thanks for reading, hope you like it (and sorry it it seemed rushed)! Check back in the coming weeks for more mini-reviews, and actually more in this one, edited in.

Sources/See Also

• Hendrickx C, Bell PR (2021). "The scaly skin of the abelisaurid Carnotaurus sastrei (Theropoda: Ceratosauria) from the Upper Cretaceous of Patagonia". Cretaceous Research. 128: Article 104994. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2021.104994.