Walking with Dinosaurs/Headscratchers


 * Something about Chased by Dinosaurs has always bothered me: Why is Mononykus feathered when Velociraptor gets to run around naked? If they were going to go through the trouble of giving one creature feathers...
 * I guess they wanted to keep them "consistent" with the scaly raptors from the main show. Or felt that feathers should be reserved for Mononykus as its "specialty".
 * Maybe they thought scaly raptors are cooler?
 * That would be faulty logic in case they portrayed the Velociraptor accurately as a small troodont-like predator and not a large dromaeosaurid (such as the Jurassic Park version of Deinonychus or the show's already existing versions of the Utahraptor or Dromaeosaurus, seen in the latter half of the main series).
 * They even gave Ornitholestes some speculative (though extremely sparse) plumage in the original Walking with Dinosaurs, but they still left dromaeosaurids naked. Go figure.
 * One aspect of the special The Ballad of Big Al that has caused some angry bitching on a forum I visit (and this lead to a whole lot of BBC hating) is the depiction of Allosaurus nesting habits. There seems to be plenty of fossil evidence that suggests the youngsters stayed in their nest until they were strong enough to find food for themselves, up to which point the mother brought them food. I have also heard that they may have nested in groups, but I haven't found any solid info about this on the net yet. However this had all supposedly been known before the special was made. So what gives? Does the way the episode shows allosaurs nesting have any evidence to back it up?
 * I'll be sure to pass this by Albertonykus and tell you what he says!
 * I do not know of any evidence that supports any of those claims. They sound like speculation to me. Indeed, known hatchlings of non-avian theropods (troodonts and oviraptorosaurs) show that they were precocial, not nest bound. Caveat: I'm not familiar with carnosaurs, and there could potentially be evidence that I'm not aware of.
 * Original Headscratcher-er here: A quick Googling session (including clicking through the "Look Inside" feature of a couple of dino books) resulted in the following revelations: allosaur nests have been found to contain a huge number of teeth, from adults and juveniles alike, as well as fragmentary remains of sauropods, occasionally with tiny allosaur teeth still being stuck into them. Bob Bakker, who found the site, claims that this is evidence that parents brought food for their chicks for at least a short while, and there even was a TV documentary about the uncovering of the nesting site, but it's so old, it apparently sank into oblivion. What's interesting is that the second part of the Big Al special also discusses allosaur nests, but it doesn't mention group-nesting, and the babies are shown leaving the nest right after they hatch. And essentially this is what lead to BBC's shows being proclaimed to be as bad as Jurassic Fight Club or Clash of the Dinosaurs.
 * Let's try to sort this out -- is the BBC website (and a load of other sources) doing right by retro-classifying the polar allosaur as an Australovenator, or should we still refrain from attempting to figure out what dinosaur it actually was?
 * Could be Rapator or Walgettosuchus (if they're not synonymous).
 * But do we take the linked site's words as that of God and consider Australovenator to be the official "identity" of the polar allosaur from now on, or should we ignore it?
 * I don't know how good the "polar allosaurid" material is, but chances are it's Australovenator (or some other neovenatorid).