Pterosaurs on Life On Our Planet

As my previous review showed, Life On Our Planet has issues. One of the issues is how it portrays pterosaurs, in the episode In Cold Blood (which you already know by the title is a doozy.

Here, the sole direct depiction of pterosaurs portrays Pterodactylus (not identified as such but clearly meant to be it based on its anatomy and time period) hunting baby turtles from the sky. Anatomically, the animal is alright: fuzzy body covering, appropriate wing structure, even lips covering the teeth (a novelty only recently considered by paleoartists). Where it falls short is in the behaviour: it is seen attacking baby turtles from the sky, when the actual animal foraged on aquatic invertebrates by swimming or wading.

In other words, like a duck being portrayed acting like a frigatebird.

This is the only significant appearence of pterosaurs in the series. They brief appear in the asteroid episode (using the same model; bold to suggest ctenochasmatoids were around in the KT event…) and that’s it. They’re essentially treated as footnote in the show, and their greatest achievement, being the first vertebrates to ever fly, is given to birds instead.

An all around disappointing depiction.