Animal Armageddon

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Animal Armageddon
Format	Documentary
Developed by	Digital Ranch
Narrated by	Michael Carroll
Theme music composer	Alan Ett
Country of origin	United States
Language(s)	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	8
Production
Executive producer(s)	Jason McKinley
Running time	45 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	Animal Planet
Original run	February 12, 2009 (2009-02-12) – September 24, 2009 (2009-09-24)
External links
Official website

Animal Armageddon is an American paleontology-based documentary television miniseries that originally aired from February 12, 2009 (2009-02-12) to September 24, 2009 (2009-09-24) on Animal Planet. All the prehistorical scenes are created 100% in Lightwave.^{[citation needed]} It is produced by Digital Ranch and all the computer graphics are designed and created by Radical3D.

Contents 1 Critical reception 2 Featured animals 2.1 Death Rays 2.2 Hell on Earth 2.3 Doomsday 2.4 Panic in the Sky 2.5 The Great Dying 2.6 Strangled 2.7 Fire and Ice 2.8 The Next Extinction 3 Locations 3.1 Death Rays 3.2 Hell on Earth 3.3 Doomsday 3.4 Panic in the Sky 3.5 The Great Dying 3.6 Strangled 3.7 Fire and Ice 3.8 The Next Extinction 4 Episodes 5 Inaccuracies 6 Notes 7 External links

[edit] Critical reception

The show was entered for Emmy consideration in many categories in 2009. It failed to be nominated in any.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Featured animals

The following is a list of animal species that the program features. (Note: A means that that particular animal survived that particular mass extinction, and E means that that particular animal went extinct during that particular mass extinction.)

[edit] Death Rays Isotelus (A)[1] Astraspis (A)[2] Cameroceras (A(but were smaller and weaker after the event))[3] Megalograptus (A)[4] Coiled nautiloid (A)[5] Acanthodian (A)[6] [edit] Hell on Earth Cheirolepis (A(But into more modern Actinopterygian))[7] Dunkleosteus (E) Eusthenopteron (A(As Tiktaalik)) Materpiscis (E) Tiktaalik (A(As Ichthyostega)) Bothriolepis (A) Ichthyostega (A) [edit] Doomsday Purgatorius (A)[8] Edmontosaurus (E)[9] Troodon (E) Tyrannosaurus rex (E) Tylosaurus (E) [10] Phobosuchus (E) Triceratops (E) Quetzalcoatlus (E)

Alamosaurus (E) Ammonite (E) Cretoxyrhina (E) [edit] Panic in the Sky Protoceratops (E) Velociraptor (E)[11] Tarbosaurus (E)[12] Nemegtosaurus (E)[13] Ammonite (E) Cretoxyrhina (A as shark) [edit] The Great Dying Lystrosaurus (A)[14] Gorgonops (E) Thrinaxodon (A) Proterosuchus (A) Dicynodon (E) [edit] Strangled Eudimorphodon (E) Rutiodon (E) Desmatosuchus (E) Megazostrodon (A) Staurikosaurus (A) [edit] Fire and Ice Homo sapiens (A)[15] Elasmotherium (E) Sumatran Leopard (E) Gigantopithecus (A, evolved into Orangutan) Puma (A) Stegodon (A) Cave Lion (E)[16] Woolly Mammoth (A)[17]

[edit] The Next Extinction Human (A, but in small numbers) Cockroach (A)[18] Rat (A) Falcon (A, but in small numbers) Monitor Lizard (Unknown) Elephant(Unknown)[19] Ant (A) Bee (Unknown) Rhinoceros (Unknown) Grizzly Bear (A) Humboldt Penguin (Unknown) Impala (Unknown) Gray Wolf (Unknown) Wildebeest (Unknown) Giraffe (Unknown) Lion (Unknown) Gorilla (Unknown) Gaur (A as domesticated species) Crocodile (A) Armadillo (A) White-tailed Deer (Unknown) Parrot (Unknown) Cheetah (Unknown) Sea Lion (Unknown)

[edit] Locations

[edit] Death Rays Las Vegas Mexico Europe [edit] Hell on Earth Siberia Greenland Pennsylvania Morocco Southern Italy

[edit] Doomsday Alaska Montana Mexico Texas [edit] Panic in the Sky Mongolia China Alaska

[edit] The Great Dying Kansas Siberia South Africa North Africa [edit] Strangled Appalachian Mountains Arizona South Africa

[edit] Fire and Ice Sumatra Vietnam North America India [edit] The Next Extinction New York City Arizona Siberia Mexico

[edit] Episodes

Airdate	Ep#	Title	Event	Time Frame	Years ago	Summary
Feb 12th	1	"Death Rays"	Ordovician-Silurian extinction events	Ordovician	450,000,000 - 447,000,000 years ago	A deadly gamma-ray burst evidently triggers the first known mass extinction in the history of Earth. Describes how the marine communities (there was barely multicellular life on land at this time) cope under the hypothetical gamma ray burst that affected the Earth by altering the atmospheric composition and stability.
Feb 19th	2	"Hell on Earth"	Late Devonian extinction	Devonian	377,000,000 - 367,000,000 years ago	A superplume volcanic explosion blots out the sun, driving life to the brink of extinction. It causes many eruptions in the world, a leak of gasses and the consequent greenhouse effect.
Feb 26th	3	"Doomsday"[20][21]	Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event	Cretaceous	65,000,000 years ago	A asteroid the size of Mount Everest is about to end the age of the dinosaurs, followed by powerful earthquakes, megatsunamis, and a lethal rain of flaming rocky debris during the first 24 hours.
March 5	4	"Panic in the Sky"	Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event	Cretaceous	65,000,000 years ago	Wildfires, acid rain, global darkness, and snow storms spell death for the dinosaurs during their final year.
Sept 3rd	5	"The Great Dying"	Permian–Triassic extinction event	Permian	250,000,000 - 249,200,000 years ago	A volcanic eruption 250 million years ago gives rise to the greatest extinction ever. Shows land ecosystems under serious stress due to severe climate change caused by basalt flow volcanic eruptions in Siberia, thus modifying the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
Sept 10th	6	"Strangled" [22]	Triassic-Jurassic extinction event	Triassic	200,000,000 years ago	Scorching lava, suffocating heat and toxic gases violently causes a mass extinction 200 million years ago, allowing the dinosaurs to take the dominant role.
Sept 17th	7	"Fire and Ice"	Quaternary extinction event	Pleistocene	74,000 - 10,000 years ago	Giant mammals are wiped out from a deadly firestorm called the Toba supervolcano during the Ice Age as the first humans were nearly wiped out during this volcanic event.
Sept 24th	8	"The Next Extinction"	future[23]	Not too distant future	future	This episode explains what mass extinction humans will be experiencing in the future.

[edit] Inaccuracies

As in any paleobiology dramatization, there are several mistakes, ignored in order to have a simple, direct explanation for each episode:

• Pangea in the Permian is pictured as an idyllic, Eden-like place to live. Geological evidence shows that there was a progressive drying of the bulk mass of the supercontinent, in such level that by the eve of the Great Dying (251.4 million years BP) the climate was strongly seasonal and monsoonal, and marine communities were already under stress due to the reduction of the shallow seas caused by the assembling of Pangea earlier in the Permian.
• The Great Dying episode focuses on land communities, which lost about 70% of their species. But the Permo-Triassic extinction hit harder the marine ecosystems, so probably a dramatization focused on marine animals would have been a better example of what happened.
• A Gamma-ray burst is presented as THE explanation for the End-Ordovician extinction, despite this theory being relatively new, untested and difficult to prove. More likely, according to paleontologists, is that this event was caused by the climate and sea temperature changes brought about by the positioning (because of continental drift) of South America and Africa over the South Pole, which led to the onset of an ice cap that covered extensively these continents.
• In the episode "Hell on Earth" the host said that the Dunkleosteus weighed 20,000 tons. This is obviously a mistake because Dunkleosteus would have been 4,000,000 lbs. It was around 20,000 pounds.
• In the episode "Hell on Earth" the host said Ichthyostega was the decendent of Tiktaalik. In reality however, Acanthostega came between Tiktaalik and Ichthyostega.
• In the episode "Doomsday" the Troodon would have not been large enough to bite the neck of a hadrosaur and kill it in one bite. The Troodons may have hunted in packs. They probably waited in the bushes to scare a herd of hadrosaurs. The one that lags behind is the one they focus on. They used their foot and hand claws to slash at the neck and sides of the dinosaur. This causes it's prey to bleed to death. Only then does the leader of the pack bites the neck for a quick death. It's not as easy as displayed in the episode.
• In the episode "Doomsday" the Triceratops was shown to have a weak neck frill that is only used to attract mates. The frills of Centrosaurine Ceratopsians including Centrosaurus, Pachyrhinosaurus, and Styracosaurus may have only used their frills in mating. The Ceratopsine Ceratopsians like Chasmosaurus, Torosaurus, and Triceratops had thicker neck frills and may have used them for both defense and mating.
• The show does not show the J-K (Jurassic-Cretaceous) Extinction.

[edit] Notes

Only "Panic in the Sky" and "Doomsday" has an episode that describes what would happen if the same thing were to happen again to our world

[edit] External links

• Official website
• Animal Armageddon at the Internet Movie Database