Random Palaeo-Work idea of the Day #24: Holiday Planet

 Season's Greetings and Happy Holidays folks! As a christmas day gift, I'll give you all a follow up to last week's post, where I show you sonething made new fashioned out of something old: concepts for new episodes of Dinosaur Planet that fix the balance issues I voiced last time! I'm setting them on landmasses that weren't in the original series' lineup

These two episode concepts were actually concieved in 2020 before I even got the idea to start the blog. I've decided to update them with what I know now. They're a what if? excersise, and I will write the episodes as if I were in 2003, using sources and information from at least before that year and nothing after, though there won't be much concern for budget from both Meteor Studios and Evergreen Films, as it is my imagination.

Before we get started, I'd like to offer a special thanks to Deviantart user ThalassoAtrox, for inspiring me to write these after seeing a rundown of Dinosaur Planet he wrote (though now deleted).

Episode Five - Old Hemonga's Bay

Perhaps a scene from the episode
(from National Geogrphic's Sea Monsters)

Old Hemonga's Bay is set 80 million years ago (as per series' usual) in New Zealand's Tahora Formation, (with some taxa from South Island's contemporary Conway Formation). The episode follows the an elderly Moanasaurus as it lives last days in a coastal bay bordered by marshland and meadows, meeting not only some of the other animals of the Cretaceous seas, coming into conflict with some of them, and even meeting some of the poorly known and obscure dinosaurs of New Zealand at the time. A species list as follows.

• Moanasaurus mangahouangae - A 12 metre-long mosasaur that functions as a top predator of cretaceous New Zealand's surrounding ocean. One of the most successful of them is Old Hemonga, a male around 75 years old who has the scars to back up his many attacks and whose name means Death in Maori. After a scuffle with some Taniwhasaurs and a storm, he ends up injured in a shallow bay. Old Hemonga decides to stay in it for a while where he can either heal or just die. At the end, he eventually makes his way to another reef on the other side, where many a mosasaur skeleton lies, and its here he dies peacefully - in other words Old Death.
• Taniwhasaurus oweni - Another mosasaur, this one a 7 metre long tylosaurine that functions as the orca to the Moanasaurus' sperm whale within the ecosystem. Old Hemonga has tangled with many of them in his past, and even has a tooth or two embedded in his skin.
• Prognathodon waiparaensis - Yet another mosasaur, this species has a special taste for hard-shelled animals like ammonites and turtles, and can grow to sizes comparable to Old Hemonga's.
• Tuarangisaurus keyesi - A plesiosaur that shares the apex predatory niche with the mosasaurs and sharks. They have taken to spawning in shallow waters, close to where Old Hemonga is residing, and that brings him into conflict with them when he goes after them, such as one named Streak, named for having stripes on her neck. it would use an updated model of the Nessie wannabe from Pod's Travels.
• Archelon ischyros - A massive sea turtle that stretches as far as North America but for the episode's convenience also occurs in the pacific.
• Onchopristis dunklei - A sawfish which dwells in the coastal wetlands. At one point Old Hemonga tries to eat one, but fend him off with .
• Cretolamna appendiculata - An otodontid shark. They may flee at the smell of the mosasaurs like Old Hemonga, but are still excellent predators in their own right,
• Gunnarites zelandicus - Ammonites, and a common, easy to get food source in the ocean.
• New Zealand Nodosaur - An armoured dinosaur (and the only one in the episode). They're a good treat when they wash out to sea, even with hard body armour covering the backside.
• New Zealand Pterosaur - Small scavenging relatives of Quetzalcoatlus (even using the same model). They'd appear sporadically throughout the episode, usually when something is dead or is about to be.

Meanwhile, Sampson's talking head segments for the episode would be:

1. Marine reptiles of the Cretaceous period.
2. Dinosaurs recovered from marine deposits, such as Aletopelta and Claosaurus, and how they got there.
3. Life of Zealandia and Joan Wiffen's discovery of them.

I really wanted to include other dinosaurs of the Tahora, like theropod and ornithopod known from it, the former in particular being a beachcomber like the Eustroptospondylus in Walking with Dinosaurs. However, feedback offered pointed out how it would overstuff the episode when the focus is solely on marine fauna. So in the end I cut all of them save the nodosaur, in reference to various ones found in marine deposits after being washed out to sea.

Episode Six - Leap and Chowdown

Placeholder art by Sergey Krasovskiy

An episode taking place in Madagascar, which focuses on a newly-hatched Majungasaurus named Leap and a family of Masiakasaurus, in particular Chowdown, the father. The plot starts when while Leap's mother is killed* before she even hatches and while she's away from the nest, and so what follows is Leap imprints on Chowdown, and we follow them over the next couple months, as they survive predators and nature and try to hunt. Most of all, the driving question is: will Chowdown's fostering help Leap grow and develop the skills her species needs to hunt and thrive, or are the ways of Masiakasaurus not suited for Majungas and will lead Leap to an early doom?

• Majungasaurus crenatissimus - The top predator of Madagascar, an abelisaur that builds mounds for nests that other animals use. Would naturally reuse the abelisaur model but with the skull horn and shorter legs it had. Focus species.
• Masiakasaurus knopfleri - A strange little theropod dinosaur with forward-facing teeth sticking out of its mouth, used to pluck prey from tight spaces, and has a symbiotic relationship with Majungasaurus, with the latter letting them lay their own eggs in their nest is exchange for alerting for predators and removing pests from it. Focus species.
• Rapetosaurus krausi - A large sauropod and the biggest creature on the island. It would reuse the the show's titanosaur model.
• "Stegosaurus madagascarensis" - Before you ask, this is a tooth taxon that's indeed invalid, snd is likely a parankylosaur, but it wouldn't be theorised to be so until Maidment et al. (2008). And hey, it will make the stegosaurus plates in the logo seem less egrigious when there are literally no jurassic genera in the series. Anyway, it would be presented by both the narrative and  as a living fossil that has evolved in isolation while other members of Stegosauridae went extinct elsewhere, but more importantly a tough SOB that can turn your face to a pulp if you're not careful.
• Simosuchus clarki - A herbivorous burrowing crocodilian that's small but pugnacious, and doesn't take lightly to anything that comes near it. It would ideally use the Allodaposuchus/Notosuchus model, with the tail and body shortened.
• Rahonavis ostromi - A feathered dinosaur that is closely related to birds to the point it can fly. It would modified fron the Ichthyornis model.
• Lavanify miolaka - A large mammal, one of the many of Madagascar. Its reused model would be the Deltatheridium's from White Tip's Journey.

Talking head segments for the episode would be:

1. Ceratosaur dinosaurss and their relationships, especially the difference between abelisaurs and noasaurs. Yes, Scott Sampson would bring up him discovering Masiakasaurus here.
2. How dinosaurs and crocodilians are related and adaptations they have to dry conditions.
3. Living fossil lineages and how many live on islands.

As a final treat, here's an excerpt from the would-be script.

-----------------------------------

Leap's mother knows where to find the prime cuts in the dry season: where the water is. That's why she's headed to the watering hole that hasn't yet evaporated up - and that attracts many creatures in the ballpark of prey.

Sure enough, around the watering hole is a whole gathering of lumbering vegetarians. Most of the herd is made up of Rapetosaurus, a sauropod that towers over the scrubland. The rest is composed of an unexpected sight: Stegosaurus. These throwbacks to the Jurassic period are the last of their kind, evolving in isolation for 80 million years while every other stegosaur went extinct. Not much has changed though, especially not the tail spikes. Those still pack a hard punch.

Either way Leap's mother is set on ambushing the juveniles. They're easier targets and still have enough meat to satisfy both her and her hatchlings to be.

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* Since this was before Rogers et al. (2007), it woudn't be by Majungasaurus cannibalism, but rather, an injury during hunting the Rapetsaurus and Stegosaurus.

Happy holidays folks, or as those in the Palkaeosphere say, Merychippus! Hope you enjoyed this gift of a blog post. I'll be seeing you soon before New Years' Eve.

Sources/See Also

• Dinosaur Planet Episode Five Concept and Dinosaur Planet Episode Six Concept, the in hindsight really cringy original concepts.
• Maidment, Susannah C.R.; Norman, David B.; Barrett, Paul M.; Upchurch, Paul (2008). "Systematics and phylogeny of Stegosauria (Dinosauria: Ornithischia)". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 6 (4): 1. Bibcode:2008JSPal...6..367M. doi:10.1017/S1477201908002459. S2CID 85Rogers, Raymond R.; Krause, David W.; Curry Rogers, Kristina (2007). "Cannibalism in the Madagascan dinosaur Majungatholus atopus". Nature. 422 (6931): 515–518. Bibcode:2003Natur.422..515R. doi:10.1038/nature01532. PMID 12673249. S2CID 4389583.673680.
• The Lost Dinosaurs of New Zealand review
• Prehistoric Planet Season Two: Islands - First Thoughts (SPOILERS)