Three years ago, Netflix released a documentary, known as Life On Our Planet, which had eight episodes all narrated by Morgan Freeman and produced by Steven Spielberg focusing on life from different times in Earth’s history. Three years later, the exact same crew made another documentary known as The Dinosaurs, which is a new Netflix documentary and spiritual successor to Life On Our Planet that educates its audience on primarily dinosaurs while showing some animals that coexisted with them during the Mesozoic. In this article, I will summarize each episode of The Dinosaurs to then rate them on a scale of 1-10!

The Dinosaurs

Episode 1, “Rise”

The first episode begins with a prologue dating to the late Cretaceous, featuring a herd of female Pachycephalosaurus alongside two males fighting each other for the females until they are interrupted by a Tyrannosaurus, which ends up killing one of the males. After this, the episode heads to the Triassic, showing the baby ancestors of the dinosaurs coming out of their eggs and trying to survive in a harsh world full of what they referred to as “ancient reptiles.” Later on, actual Triassic dinosaurs alongside pterosaurs are shown in their respective ecosystems. Near the end of the episode, it shows the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction event and the rise of the dinosaurs! Overall, this episode was alright because I feel like they shouldn’t have called the animals that were not dinosaurs or pterosaurs ancient reptiles when some of them shown were actually early crocodile relatives. I do like how they presented evolution in these episodes. This show has a major recurring problem of putting certain animals in locations where they did not actually exist. For example, this episode had an early crocodile relative known as Smok and a dinosaur known as Liliensternus, which are from Germany, in the United States of America, which causes confusion to the audience who are educated on paleontology. If I had to rate it, I would list this episode as a 5/10.

Episode 2, “Conquest”

The next episode picks up the pace, starting in the very early Jurassic and ending near the end of the late Jurassic. It originally starts off with dinosaurs who were able to survive after the harsh Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction event, like Vulcanodon, an early sauropod, to then showing Dilophosaurus, later the episode features a Sinraptor, a large carnivore, and Anchiornis, a little bird that could glide. At the end, a pair of Allosaurus fight with a Stegosaurus before the female gets wounded by that Stegosaurus’s thagomizer and then is cannibalized by the male Allosaurus. To sum it up, this episode featured a lot of educational things proven by the fossil record, such as Allosaurus being cannibalistic, but like I already mentioned, it put animals in other locations that they were not found in this time, with Sinraptor and Anchiornis. I also like how they put Dilophosaurus in this episode because most people think of it as a tiny and venomous dinosaur because of Jurassic Park, but in reality, Dilophosaurus was a giant (almost 30 feet long) bulky predator that had no venom but did have massive claws and powerful arms! Overall, I enjoyed this episode, and it did a great job with accuracy, besides what happened with Sinraptor and Anchiornis. In my opinion, this is a 9/10 for me.

Episode 3, “Empire”

The episode starts in the Yixian formation of the early Cretaceous, which is known for being very cold. It shows a Yutyrannus, the largest feathered dinosaur we know of, hunting and taking down a cold-adapted sauropod known as Dongbeititan. This episode also shows a pterosaur getting bullied by some birds before moving onto showing a Spinosaurus, a dinosaur that is at home in water and on land, waiting for fish to come by so it may get a meal! The episode also shows the rise of more modern plants, with one of the last Stegosaurs, Yanbeilong, having issues moving around these types of plants. The greatest thing I saw in this documentary was the Hateg Basin, which was an island that existed during the late Cretaceous and was the home to animals like Hatzegopteryx, which is the largest pterosaur to ever exist, and many dwarf dinosaurs, including the sauropod Magyarosaurus. Overall, this episode was really great, this one didn’t even put animals in the wrong areas, as the previous and upcoming ones did! Anywho, I would say this is a 9/10 for me because I like it around the same amount as the episode that came before it.

Episode 4, “Fall”

This episode continues in the late Cretaceous, showing an extinct penguin-like bird, Hesperornis, trying to survive with a large aquatic reptile known as Tylosaurus. As it progresses, the episode eventually makes it to the time and place where the prologue took place, Hell Creek, which is known for having animals like Triceratops or Pachycephalosaurus! Near the end, we see a “final fight” between a mother Tyrannosaurus and an Ankylosaurus, which ends with the Tyrannosaurus killing the Ankylosaurus to feed her young. The episode ends with the Cretaceous mass extinction event, which left only one group of dinosaurs, which evolved during the Jurassic, alive to this day: the birds. Overall, I feel like this was a great ending to this miniseries however, it had that same issue that has been mentioned twice now, putting animals in the wrong areas because it put a pterosaur from Africa in a location with the American Edmontosaurus. I would rate this as a solid 8/10.

To sum it up, The Dinosaurs is a great documentary despite having a few flaws here and there, similar to its predecessor, Life On Our Planet, but I 100% recommend you, the reader, to watch them both, regardless of the many minor issues they both have, if you have the time to do so.

Additionally, if you were able to watch the show, what are your opinions on it? Let us know in the comments below!