A Palaeontologist Reacts to Ice-Age Animals in the Movies
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- čas přidán 14. 07. 2022
- Canadian Museum of Nature palaeobiologist Danielle Fraser, Ph.D., shares insights about ice-age animals shown in the movies "10,000 BC", "Alpha" and "Ice Age". Not every animal during the Pleistocene Epoch had sabre teeth!
00:30 "10,000 BC"
04:23 "Alpha"
11:53 "Ice Age"
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French version: • Une paléontologue réag...
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Fun fact; Blue Sky didn't want to add dodos at all, but Fox said they'd cut funding if they were excluded, hence why they're all shown to die at the end, and never show up in the franchise again besides one dying in the second film
That's a weird hill for Fox to want to die on.
@@LincolnDWard that's Fox for you though, lol
they were not aiming for accuracy. it's for comedic effects.
@@RoseNZieg and those comedic affects were pure gold.
Finally a Paleotology react to Ice Age
When it comes to ice age 3 and beyond, all scientific accuracy is out of the window 😅🙄
There was actually another video of a paleontologist who pointed out that Manny, Sid, Diego and the human baby represented the four main groups of placental mammals (Afrotheria, Xenarthra, Laurasiatheria and Euarchontoglires)
@@garrettdonovan8238 that’s actually v interesting!
Great observation
Although not accurate, the creation of the saber tooth squirrel in Ice Age was absolute genius. I could watch that little guy chase his nuts all day long.
Scrat incidentally pretty similar with treeshrew, an obscure squirrel like mammal which really exist till modern time, although it only live in Southeast Asian jungle and of course this animal ill suited for icy landscape
9:33 According to the creators of Alpha, the large cat was a cave lion. They just added the oversized fangs to make it look cooler. 🦁
I figured it was a lion based on its tail
Actually it was supposed to be a cave lion but the studio said to make it a smilodon or else they’ll cut funding so they slapped fangs on the model
Issues with movies depicting ice age animals:
1) wooly mammoth is oversized frequently.I noticed in 10,000BC the mammoths seem to be somewhere in the region of 5m tall or more, whereas in reality they were as big as a asian elaphent.
2)humans are portrayed as being able to frequently hunt mammoths and other huge megafauna frequently, whereas in reality we know that not only is there limited evidence for hunting, but that the wooden spears may have broken on impact due to the sheer size of the animal and fragility of the wood and stone weapons.
3)Terror birds depicted alongside people, this is false, none alive by 1million years.
4)Sabre tooths are often depicted too sleek and cat like, they would have been stocky as fuck, they took down huge megafauna.
Steppe Mammoths The Cousins Of Woolly Mammoths We’re estimated to have had a shoulder height of 4.5 metres (15 ft) and a weight of 14.3 tonnes (14.1 long tons; 15.8 short tons).
Also humans very regularly hunted mammoths, there are mammoth pits where we dumped their bones that have evidence of hundreds of mammoths, we just usually hunted late adolescents, or teenage mammoths. They existed alongside us when we had access to stone and early metal tools, and things like flint and obsidian arrow/spear tips have been found embedded in mammoth bones.
There’s more evidence that humans chased mammoths off cliffs versus actually chasing and spearing them. There are gigantic wooly mammoth “death pits” full of bones left behind by the hunters. They’d pick all the meat and skin off and just leave them there (maybe taking some bones for decoration/accessories)
That was fun I will probably forget everything I just learnt but fun anyway
Last terror birds extincted around 40k years ago... they could meet with the people. 😅
The last mammoth still lived on Wrangler Iclands in Siberia, at the same time as King Khufu/Cheops instructed his great architect Imhothep to build him the first Egyptian pyramid. Like 4500 years ago.
Khufu's was not the first Pyramid built in Egypt. It IS true that Imhotep designed the first Pyramid but it was not for Khufu, but for Djoser several hundred years earlier.
I personally would LOVE a series of this scientist just watching and pausing movies to comment on wether the animal is moving accurately or looks accurate that’s my FAVORITE I LOVE picking apart media in that specific way
Any movie or expert suggestions? We're looking to expand this series!
The apparent flanges on the lower jaws of the saber-toothed creatures in Ice Age strongly suggest the marsupial saber-tooth, Thylacosmilus, rather than the metatherian Smilodon. But considering the liberties the animators took through the whole movie, it would be pretty hard to pin down a particular species in any case.
They made the executive decision for the sabretooths design to be as freaky and weird as possible, they talk about it in the behind the scenes. Sid looked more like a ground sloth in earlier concepts and models, but they chose a more cartoony and outlandish design instead
That's so cool about the coloring of mammoths. I had no idea that they varied so much. Neat! Thanks for this great video!
You are so welcome! Thanks for watching!
Scrat the Sabertooth squirrel was just a creature the studio wanted to do just for the fun of it. They knew that sabertooth squirrel didn't exist lol
not only is the sabetooth in 10.000 BC oversized, the Smilodon lived in the America's only and not in a pseudo Egyptian setting, the sabertooth living in Europe and Asia was the Homotherium, but it's canines were [robabvbly not large enough to impress the audience.
There was a hyena species living in the Yukon, but I think it was Chasmaporthetes, the "running hyena", build more wolflike and not Crocuta, the spotted hyena.
Correct
Not to mention the tail length and the cheeks being too wide and the nose slopes down.
That’s just a tiger.
Most the pity not one mention of the Phorusrhacos scene in 10,000BC. These “ Terror Birds “ were apex predators and lived in the Americas during the Pleistocene. Not known from the more northern latitudes but, definitely present in the southern US.
Were there only a select few specific "tribes" of humans that specialized in hunting Mammoths? I know the Clovis people were famous for doing so, but were there any other notable ones?
It's difficult to say for certain, but the findings we do have indicate that mammoth hunts weren't a common thing. It was probably a once in a blue moon thing, potentially involving multiple tribal groups coming together, including Paleo-American groups like the Clovis culture. It's possible that it was a major event, as findings in the UK have shown. It's on the coast now, but one of the sites in question used to be a cliff overlooking grassland and the site is loaded with butchered mammoths among other large creatures, so it's likely that they scared them into falling over before finishing them off (assuming they didn't die on impact).
I'm glad she mentioned that Sid should be much bigger.
I've seen a statue in person here in Brazil that is supposed to represent the actual size of the sloth.... And it was HUGE. 😂😂
Also, if it was actually accurate, sid would've worn Diego's ass like a coat
Actually the last mammoth lived on an island off the coast of Siberia at about the same time as pyramid building in Egypt if that actually matters to anyone.
I wonder if the coat colors of wolves were even that diverse that far back in the Ice Age like what Alpha shows.
From my knowledge, black coats in wolves didn’t exist until pretty recently as a result from wolves breeding with dogs who carried over that black-coat gene to dogs. Black wolves now, as a result of that, are often more genetically diverse and healthier b/c of it, and also have more tamer personalities and temperaments, whereas grey-coat wolves (which range from white and grey, to brown to red and anything in-between that isn’t black) are more aggressive.
So I wonder if Alpha took that into account or not or if I just didn’t know some older species of wolf at the time carried that black coat gene before dogs introduced it to them.
I'm no geneticist, but doesn't the fact that some dogs have black coats mean that the black coat gene existed in wolves? Like, in order to breed dogs with black coats, darker fur genes must exist in their wolf ancestors somewhere?
@@sarahr8311 idk but I know that’s what wolf genealogists say when it comes to Yellowstone wolves. Probably because dogs are so vastly different looking in colors and sizes it’s possible to have them go back and introduce stuff into the pure wolves’ genes. Not everything comes directly from wolves. Otherwise all dogs would still look like wolves today. Black coats were probably eventually bred in or popped up in dogs at some point. There are things that are distinctly related and unique to dogs. So that’s why I’m thinking it didn’t occur super far back in their heritage like seen in the movie.
@@doodlemunchkin2222 fair enough. I didn't know they said that about the Yellowstone wolves, that's cool.
So what you're telling me is Sid should have worn Diego as a hat?
If sid was a giant ground sloth than yes he would had easily been able to take on diego
Syd and the squirrel thingy are my favorite wee characters. I have many children n grandchildren and now great grands.i watch this movie all the time
Absolutely fascinating thank you
Spotted and brown hyenas are more African animals but… I’m pretty sure the striped hyena is more of an Asian resident, alongside tigers and rusty-spotted cats (just look them up, they are adorable!)
Gosh heck ice age was a highlight of my childhood
And sid looked pretty strange with his eyes stretched out
Very interesting! Yes - I burst out laughing at the galloping mammoths in 10,000 BC!
Glad you enjoyed it 😂
Ice age animals need more recognition
It's one hell of a coincidence that the megafauna extinction events in Australia, America, Madagascar and New Zealand are so closely correlated with the arrival of humans
It should be noted that Smilodon was, ironically, poorly adapted for ice age conditions; it did much better during the warmer interglacials (the Pleistocene was NOT one cold period$.
This is a very long shot, but are you u/iamnotburgerking?
@@pranavarvind4281
Yep.
@@bkjeong4302 Good to know you bust palaeontology misconceptions on CZcams too. Always appreciate your write-ups on the subreddit.
I think 10,000 bc should be called a genre of hypothetical science… a series of what ifs inspired by real world understandings of science peppered with a bit of whimsical fantasy. It’s fun.
This was a fun episode. I wish I knew even more about the Ice Age(s).
What about the terror bird from 10,000 BC?
I'm pretty sure those "glyptodons" were actually doedicurus because of their spikey tail clubs they had
The feline in Alpha is listed as being a cave lion in the Wikipedia entry. I wish more movies, realistically or not, would depict Arctodus simus. The first Ice Age will always be a favorite movie of mine (especially compared to the later movies) historical "accuracy" notwithstanding.
I see a paleontology video, I click
Love her!!!! She’s awesome
Didn’t they actually find a fossil of a prehistoric squirrel like species with saver fangs AFTER the ice age movies? I’m sure I read something about that. Obviously if it’s true there’s only been one (and probably not a whole one) specimen found otherwise it’d be more well known.
they did, but it lived at the time of Dinosaurs
@@GiordanDiodato there is still a possibility that there could be an offshoot of that spieces, but it's definitely a big stretch.
Never knew about "Alpha"
I'll have to look that up.
The only real thing I didn't like about this movie is that the characters in the movie spoke in a made up language similar to what they think people of the time might have spoken. I understand English didn't exist at the time, I just hate subtitles.
@@Valeska687 Why? Oo
In my country we prefer subtitles to dubbing or reshooting.
@@Luredreier I find I can't enjoy the movie as much because I'm too busy reading subtitles. I miss newonces (sorry, I can't spell to save my life) in the story line, facial expressions, and who knows what else because I'm reading subtitles instead of paying attention to what's happening in the movie. Plus, I'm a fairly slow reader so if the characters are speaking to each other rapidly, like for instance they're having an argument, I tend to miss at least some of the conversation because I can't read as fast as the text is flowing across the screen. I just find it all very annoying and will avoid movies with subtitles. I'll go see a dubbed movie before I'd see one with subtitles. I love the concept of Alfa, but if I had known there were subtitles I never would have gone to see it.
Nice thank you this is very interesting, as an australian i’ve heard and seen all about australian megafauna, nice change
I am from Washington State, and used to love visiting the Grabd Coulee area, which has the well known ‘Blue Rhino’ fossil. What is the difference between this and the Wooly Rhino? Amd im so curious that only one of these fossils have been found here!
Wasn't "Blue Rhino" also the name for a strain of Cannabis (asking for a friend) ? ;)
But I've always heard less than 10% of animals actually fossilize. So the truth is we don't know what could have been out there that didn't have any fossils at all.
It's less than 1%.
@@richardr2555 Wow. So we really don't know as much as we think we do. That gives movies/books a lot of leeway on what 'could' have existed.
@@DevlinBlake 2.5 billion t-rexes have ever lived. 32 fossils of them have been found. That's one fossil for every 80 million t-rexes. See how rare it is to fossilize.
It's always cool to see these giant animals. Especially since all the animals that we have now are pretty pathetic by comparison. (Personally I'm a dinosaur person but i still like seeing later megaphawna)
There are two species of bison living today: the American bison ( Bison bison) and the European bison (Bison bonasus).
Well, the age of the Pyramids are not 100% estabilished. There are some theories suggesting that the Pyramids were already there when the ancient egypgians found them.
That part is more plausible that the great pyramids have always been there.
@@merafirewing6591 Yeah....they found them (the 3 perfect pyramids) for sure...if not...why there aren't any more of them? Why all the rest are imperfect? So, they did 3 perfect ones and then said: "Ok, now we can stop doing this alright?"
Can you do the Fun on a Bun episode of Futurama?
If you haven't figured it out by now the part where Eddie is flying and suddenly crashing down and the other glyptodon said some breakthrough meaning Eddie has literally broken half when he fell to the ground hence the sound of a thud /cracking😳
Take a shot every time she says "Yukon."
Her not calling Diego "saber tooth tiger" makes me so angry! I just can't explain why😂😂
I can never see or hear anything about Ice Age without thinking about that one thing that Casual Geographic said so very eloquently and truthfully.
If Ice Age was real, Sid would´ve worn Diego like a Furcoat.
9:19 I also find it very interesting, how different modern dog breeds were originally born. Pretty unbelievable that all the different looking dogs of the world hailed from a singular canine species, the wolf. (Unless they domesticated some other wild canines, like coyotes or jackals, in parts of the world where wolves don't usually reside.) In my knowledge, some of the oldest still existing dog breeds are salukis from Egypt and Arabia, most likely breeded from African end Eurasian jackals, and pugs, that have been around for about 400-500 years. Do you know any other very old dog breeds around the world?🐺🐶
How about on TikTok when the videos say that the ancestors were powerful, frightening wolves that stalked their prey - & this dog is on its way to Starbucks for a pup cup. 😆
The Spirit Cave mummy is the oldest human mummy found in North America. It was discovered in 1940 in Spirit Cave, 13 miles east of Fallon, Nevada, United States, by the husband-and-wife archaeological team of Sydney and Georgia Wheeler. Wikipedia
Miracinonyx is an extinct genus of felids belonging to the subfamily Felinae that was endemic to North America from the Pleistocene epoch and morphologically similar to the modern cheetah, although its apparent similar ecological niches have been considered questionable due to anatomical morphologies of the former that would have limited the ability to act as a specialized pursuit predator. Wikipedia
OK... whilst Im not saying they used them to make the pyramids, the mammoths on Wrangel Island (and possibly Northern Siberia I think) survived up until 4000 years ago, when Egyptians were building pyramids.
3:38 So, is that where smilodon's popular incorrect name, "saber-tooth tiger", came from? Because that really looks like a tiger's head with giant fangs sticking out of it. Nowadays we know that smilodons and tigers are not related to each other in any way, and smilodon is often referred to simply as "saber-tooth cat".😉🐯
I will watch movies with you anytime.
Sid the sloth is supposed to represent the giant ground sloth
The 10,000 BC smilodon reminds me of a liger
She as assumes in the 1st movie that humans were her size, probably not true. Also the is some debates because newer findings suggest their may have been civilizations, even Egyptian civilizations that MAY have been older than previously thought though no confirmed.
The screen puts at least 100 pounds on the cat from 10,000 BC…. Just saying
Glyptodonta are closely related to armadillos, not sloths.
So what youre saying is we had blonde mammoths and technically super saiyan mammoths. Thats awesome
Wait, I thought that Glyptodons are closely related to armadillos not sloths
I think they’re all in the same family. But yeh I’m pretty sure they’re armadillos
@@joshuathomas3220 interesting
Glyptodonts were giant armadillos, there were giant ground sloths tho, that may be what ur thinking of
Edit: sorry I read that wrong now I too am confused
@@bhuggins6059 well, I didn’t know that’s pretty interesting
@@tyrannotherium7873 I red it wrongly lol
As far as mammoths building the pyramids, it seems like animals adapted to cold weather climates like the Yukon would do fairly poorly in a desert no?
My partner knows to just let me pause and babble about animals constantly in various media we watch. If they don't then they have me talking their ear off while they're trying to concentrate on something else.
I think another thing that Ice Age got wrong was they used Brontotheriums for Carl and Frank's species, but that species went extinct before the Ice Age. It would have been more appropriate to use a Woolly Rhinoceros.
what about the mammoths on Wrangel island? Didn't they persist into around when the Egyptian pyramids were being built?
Yes, and she mentions this and other similar enclaves at 3:09
omg watch all the movies with me i need your comentary!!! you would be great
The attacking big cat in alpha looked like a
Lion
And Sid was stated to be a ground sloth.
I think smilodons were spotted
Interesting video and lovely lady, but their patreon, Canada, was advertised too much. Nonetheless, we also had a great time, thank you!
was the cave lion really the biggest spicies of cat to have ever lived
I want her to identify what kind of dog Gru has from "Despicable Me"
Is he really a dog? I always thought Gru was lying, just like how he called the minions his "Cousins".
I just wanna know if sid is a megatherium or not 😭
According to Google, he is. He's supposed to be a giant ground sloth, although technically he should've been much closer to Manny's size since giant ground sloths weren't that much smaller than mammoths. I'm guessing they made him smaller so other creatures could bully him all the time. Poor Sid!
Was there any evidence that wolves and humans worked together during the ice age?
I think it is more likely the first wolves at the root of the dogs were kept for food. Dogs have been eaten al over the world and still today bush animals are kept as pets fed on scraps to grow big ( and fat) enough to become main dish.
Probably the most feral of a litter of abandonded wolf pups went into the stew first, will the more docile were kept longer and even manage to breed.
Nowadays most wolves have a fear of humans and keep there distance, I think that wolves not fearing humans and came close to human settlement were far too dangerous to become domesticated.
There are hints that wolf's domesticated themselves, moving closer to human camps to feed of the remains of their hunt. At least for the middle-east there is no direct evidence if and when wolfs/dogs first worked together on hunting.
I think there’s some cave paintings that could showcase wolves and humans coexisting together
They didn't find terror birds as same time as humans.
1. The earth is only about 7k yrs old.
2. Animals don't have hands.
Dude buck teeth make him cute and explain his bilateral lisp
How could a mammoth survive the heat of Egypt?
So when we’re dire wolves around?
We are still in the ice age.
Where wolf..where wolf...7:14...there wolf. There man in tree.
I thought glyptodonts were armadillos. Well I mean I *know* they are but the way she worded that was weird. Sloths, armadillos, etc are all related but why bring up sloths when armadillos are what they are and they’re more closely related to modern day armadillos.
The real question is: where are the chalicothere movies?!
Maybe we'll have to do a part 2 👀
My understanding is that modern dogs do not descend from wolves. That wolves and dogs have a common ancestor that split into modern canines and wolves.
You're half right. Dogs don't descend from modern populations of grey wolves, but they do descend from grey wolves. The grey wolves that dogs descended from were genetically distinct from modern grey wolves, but not enough to form a separate species. So it is still true to say that dogs are descended from grey wolves. In fact dogs are a subspecies of grey wolf themselves, Canis lupus familiarus.
@@bradenhoefert2109 ahh that makes sense. Thank you for expanding my understanding of the issue.
Smilodon was North American, right? Are they closer related to pumas? That would make sense to me, in terms of what their coat looked like, but I am absolutely no kind of scientist.
The modern day cats are more closely related to eachother than too sabre toothed cats. Interestingly enough the puma would be grouped with the small cats. This means they are more closely related to cheetahs, housecats, ocelots, lynxes etc than too the big cats like lions, tigers and leopards.
We don't know what the coat off smilodon looked like. But even the coat looked like one of a modern day cat it is not that abnormal for totally unrelated species to look alike. We call this convergent evolution. This basicly means that you start seeing the same adaptations in unrelated species because the environment and/or there niche are simular. A beautiful example is how counter shading is common in aquatic animals.
@@AVDB95 Thank you
I HAVE FOUND THE DINO NERD HUB I AM FINALLY HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!
11:51 Alan Grant?
I wanna work for you... Even just highlighting things for you lol
Interesting but she doesn't give much room for artistic interpretation. There was a Homotherium type beast type is believed to be larger than some if not most Smilodons including Smilodon fatalis.
Might as well mention that the near-extinction of bison in NA was part of a purposeful hunt to separate American Indians from their land
I thought glyptodonts were close relatives of armadillos
They absolutly are. Sloths and anteaters are also related to glyptodonts but not as closely as armadillos.
12:33 They do however resemble giant armadillos more, but maybe that's because modern day sloths and armadillos (as well as anteaters) belong to the same "clade" of mammals known as xenarthra.
😉🦥
I thought there where two species of bison? The American one and the European one.
That's correct. The wisent are just not that well know and almost went extinct at one point. Breeding programs have brought the numbers back up to a few thousand.
It would’ve been really funny if Ice Age just wasn’t one of the movies
Kind of questioning her "expert" insights. Mammoths were very much still alive, when the pyramids were build. It´s just, that they didn´t live in Egypt. However, remains of a population on Wrangel island have been discovered, that was still existent 4000 years ago.
She admits to not being an Egyptologist, so she probably didn't know off the top of her head when the pyramids were built.
Wasn't that the spinx not the pyramid
She mentions this and other similar enclaves at 3:09. Also, it is not incorrect to say that the wooly mammoth went extinct in most of the world at the end of the last Ice Age, and this is often colloquially used as the species' extinction date, even among scientists (since the ecosystems they left behind didn't care that there were still a few mammoths on isolated islands in the Arctic)
If memory serves, weren't the Wrangel mammoths also an example of Insular Dwarfism ?
May I Till You A Fact
Steppe Mammoths The Cousins Of Woolly Mammoths We’re estimated to have had a shoulder height of 4.5 metres (15 ft) and a weight of 14.3 tonnes (14.1 long tons; 15.8 short tons).
I find it funny how she mentions all the time whether an animal lived in canada or not as if it matters - when it comes to ice age media, most of it is situated in eurasia anyway.
She's from the Canadian Museum of Nature. The Canadian Museum of Nature resides on the traditional, unceded territory of the Anishinābe Algonquin people who have stewarded this land for thousands of years.
The museum’s scientific research occurs across Canada-from coast to coast to coast-on the territories of the Métis and First Nations people and in Inuit Nunangat.
Hahaha love it, "well we're gonna start with 10000 BC" you got my curiosity right there. Probably the worst movie i have seen.
Wait a minute, why are there ancient egyptians in 10,000 b.c. they were here from 3600 b.c. so...
Then mammoth abuse for blocks but for blocks there were people
Nah that 10,000 bc Smilodon is trash. That’s just an upscale Roger with saber teeth. Didn’t even mention the tail.
Mammoth lived till bout 2000 year ago on a tiny island
More like 4500 years ago
Alpha. I think I'm the only person in the world that loves that movie. Everything about it.
I hate movies that have more than 1 ending. The story is done, move on. This is the only movie I've seen where I actually like each ending on it's own merret. What, there were four full 'ending' of this movie and I loved each one.
Dang, now i got to go watch it again.
Bruh! Even Ice Age got a few things right. XD
Glyptodons are related to armadillo's , not sloths ; Don't want to say she's an idiot but will sayshe is wrong .
She is not wrong I can't explain but there is a video of Moth Light Media( the evolution of armadillos) that is about it and if I am not mistaken they are closely related to sloths than armadillos
They're related to both. Armadillos and sloths are closely related.