I watched the documentary Dinosaur Stampede on ABC on Tuesday night, and I can't say I'm very impressed with the scientific rigor (or lack thereof) displayed. The documentary focuses on The Dinosaur Stampede National Monument: a dinosaur trackway site containing thousands of dinosaur footprints, at Lark Quarry in central-western Queensland. The original interpretation for this site was that it represented a stampede, with a larger bodied theropod pursuing smaller bodied ornithopods and theropods.
I have to mention my personal bias from the outset: I know the authors who wrote a rebuttal to this stampede story, who claim that the larger bodied track maker was not a theropod, but an ornithopod, perhaps similar to Muttaburrasaurus langdoni. Even so, I think there were some obvious misinterpretations that even an unbiased viewer would have noticed.
The documentary glosses over the first interesting piece of evidence: that the trackway of the larger bodied dinosaur heads in the opposite direction of the smaller bodied dinosaurs. Why would the stampede head toward the supposed threat? Attempts to fit this into the stampede story (here and here) seem awkward and complicated. And it feels like the evidence is being forced into a shoe that doesn't fit (more on that in Part 2). I am a big believer of parsimony: that the simplest explanation is often the most correct. For example, the larger track maker may have passed through before the smaller dinosaurs (heading in the opposite direction) passed through. You can even see some smaller dinosaur footprints inside the larger footprints.
The final CGI movie of the stampede shows the predator chasing the prey, which would have resulted in all tracks heading in the same direction. Why wasn't this problem examined in the documentary?
I have to mention my personal bias from the outset: I know the authors who wrote a rebuttal to this stampede story, who claim that the larger bodied track maker was not a theropod, but an ornithopod, perhaps similar to Muttaburrasaurus langdoni. Even so, I think there were some obvious misinterpretations that even an unbiased viewer would have noticed.
The documentary glosses over the first interesting piece of evidence: that the trackway of the larger bodied dinosaur heads in the opposite direction of the smaller bodied dinosaurs. Why would the stampede head toward the supposed threat? Attempts to fit this into the stampede story (here and here) seem awkward and complicated. And it feels like the evidence is being forced into a shoe that doesn't fit (more on that in Part 2). I am a big believer of parsimony: that the simplest explanation is often the most correct. For example, the larger track maker may have passed through before the smaller dinosaurs (heading in the opposite direction) passed through. You can even see some smaller dinosaur footprints inside the larger footprints.
The final CGI movie of the stampede shows the predator chasing the prey, which would have resulted in all tracks heading in the same direction. Why wasn't this problem examined in the documentary?
Trackways at Lark Quarry - note the smaller prints heading to the bottom of the image, and the larger prints heading to the top. Image courtesy of the Queensland Museum "Winton dinosaur trackways - Fact Sheet", 2011.
Keep an eye out tomorrow for Part 2: Australovenator was framed, we need justice!
