Monsters Resurrected

Monsters Resurrected is an American documentary television series that premiered on September 13, 2009, on the Discovery Channel. The program reconstructs extinct animals. It is also called Mega Beasts.

Featured animals

Creatures in bold are the featured animals of their episodes.

• Acrocanthosaurus
• Amphicyon
• Canis edwardii
• Carcharodontosaurus
• Cretoxyrhina
• Daeodon
• Dallasaurus
• Deinonychus
• Diprotodon
• Dolichorhynchops
• Elasmosaurus
• Epicyon
• Megalania
• Merychippus
• Moropus
• Paluxysaurus
• Paralititan
• Procoptodon
• Ramoceros
• Rugops
• Sarcosuchus
• Sauropelta
• Smilodon
• Spinosaurus
• Tenontosaurus
• Thylacoleo
• Titanis
• Tylosaurus
• Xiphactinus
• Glossotherium
• Hipparion

Episode 1: The Terror Birds

The terror bird Titanis was depicted as a mortal predator that competed with the smaller but equally aggressive Smilodon and Canis edwardii. The force and power of the neck muscles is shown by its hunting a horse in the beginning of the episode. To kill it, it drives its beak into the vertebral column, severing the spinal cord. Another example of this power is when the creature also killed a ground sloth, using the same method. At the end of the episode the crew was discussing extinction in the terror bird, two million years ago, and their conclusion was it was not well adapted.

Episode 2: T-rex Of The Deep

In this episode, the mosasaurs are depicted as the main predators of the Cretaceous seas, competing with the giant sharks and plesiosaurs. It's also shown competing with and killing other mosasaurs.

Episode 3: Biggest Killer Dino

Spinosaurus was depicted as the apex predator at the time, killing Rugops, Carcharodontosaurus and Sarcosuchus. It fought with a Carcharodontosaurus and emerged victorious by smacking its face with a swipe of its claw. The Spinosaurus was shown being attacked by a Sarcosuchus. It quickly paralyzed the crocodile with a bite to the neck before disemboweling apart the dead crocodilian. During the heat, the Spinosaurus attempts to steal a dead titanosaur from a pack of Rugops, but their numbers are too great: one Rugops bites the Spino's claw, while another one clamps its jaws on his massive tail. Afterwards, the spinosaur slams to the ground, breaking its fin and dying. The pack then devours it, symbolizing the differing fates of the two species.

Episode 4: Great American Predator

In this episode, the Acrocanthosaurus is depicted as an apex predator, strong enough to kill prey ten times its size. Afterward, a young Acrocanthosaurus is shown being scared off by a pack of Deinonychus and being forced to hunt harder prey, like the ankylosaur Sauropelta.

Episode 5: Bear Dog

This episode features the Amphicyon ingens as the new top predator of North America, able to defeat the Daeodon using its intelligence and smaller size to out compete it. After five million years of dominating the landscape, the bear dog grew bigger, but then the Epicyon appeared and competed with Amphicyon. They began to attack and kill the offspring in their burrows, and in the end both go extinct.

Episode 6: Giant Ripper

In this episode they recreate the Varanus, the top predator of Australia for hundreds of thousands of years. Hunting the largest marsupials ever to evolve using its senses and venom to kill its prey, and it had almost no competition, until humans arrive. The episode also discusses the cryptozoological side about Megalania, ruling out if it could have survived until recent times. This is the last episode of the series.

Paleontological inaccuracies

• When reconstructing the Spinosaurus for the show, scientists instead used an outdated reconstruction of Suchomimus's skull, which is thicker and doesn't have a notch on the top of the jaw.
• In The Great Ripper, it was said that mammals quickly took over once the dinosaurs died out. However, for the first 10 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs, with the exception of Asia and Australia, mammals were shadowed by birds like Gastornis.
• The term mosasaur is used liberally throughout, as though it referred to a specific genus. However, it was actually a family of lepidosaurid reptiles that included leviathans such as Tylosaurus, the mosasaur featured in the program, Hainosaurus, the largest known mosasaur, and Mosasaurus itself, the first extinct animal identified by science.
• The Tylosaurus is depicted as able to bite the neck of Elasmosaurus clean in half, yet this would be impossible, since the neck of Elasmosaurus was held stiff by bony rods.
• The program portrays Titanis with stubby wings, much like those of Phorusrhacos. However, it is now thought to have had two-clawed hands, comparable to those of Tyrannosaurus.
• In "Biggest Killer Dino", "Great American Predator" and other episodes using stock footage of theropods, their hands are depicted with the palms able to rotate, but this would have been anatomically impossible for the real animals, as their forearm bones (ulna and radius) could not rotate in this way. Their palms should have been relatively fixed facing each other, like a person about to applaud.
• While most experts today agree that dromaeosaurs were feathered, the show's model of the Deinonychus is surprisingly feather-deficient.
• According to the program, Amphicyon is bigger than any living predator. However, it is very easily dwarfed by the sperm whale, although it was bigger than any living member of Carnivora.
• The show states that birds of prey are the closest living relatives of Titanis. However, it is more closely related to the seriema.
• The program states with certainty that Spinosaurus had a sail and weighed nine tons, while its true nature is more problematic. Some believe that it actually had a hump, while estimates of its weight range from four to 20 tons.
• The Spinosaurus' size continued to be changed throughout the documentary, sometimes making it about 120 feet (37 m) tall at the peak of the sail and over 360 feet (110 m) long, far larger than even the adult Paralititans, who the narrator said were safe from attack because of their size, and also far larger than even the blue whale, the largest creature to ever live.
• Rugops is depicted much like a carnosaur with a longish skull, 3-clawed, long-fingered hands and long legs, with smooth, scaly skin. However, in real life Rugops was a ceratosaur that had severely reduced arms with 5 tiny fingers and only 3 useless claws, a short, wide skull, short legs (for a theropod), and skin covered by armour (its name literally means "wrinkled face").
• The program portrays Spinosaurus' habitat as a coniferous coastal swamp, while it may have been comparable to the modern Okavango delta.
• In the Discovery Channel site description of Monsters Resurrected, they say that Spinosaurus is twice as big as Tyrannosaurus rex, but Tyrannosaurus is 40 feet (12 m) feet long and weighed 6 to 7 tons, while Spinosaurus would probably be up to 60 feet (18 m) feet in length and 4-20 tons.
• The Paralititan is shown chewing the leaves of the trees. However, sauropods could not chew, so instead they swallowed stones to grind the plant matter that they swallowed whole.
• The inside of the show's DVD box states that "the terror bird was the biggest, baddest bird to ever stalk the planet." However, the largest birds to ever live were the herbivorous Aepyornis and Dinornis, not Titanis.
• The commercial break quizzes pronounce Spinosaurus as SPIN-oh-SOHR-us, as opposed to SPY-noh-SOHR-US.

DVD release

The Complete 2 disc DVD was released on May 4, 2010. Amazon.