Welcome back to WWD2020 everyone, now taking place in the non-2020 year of 2021! I’ve made an executive decision to stick with 2020 for the sake of consistency, but let’s just consider this as like, a modern perspective on Walking With Dinosaurs from 2020 onwards or something like that shall we?
And we’re off to an excellent start with the star of this episode, Diplodocus! The species isn’t clear in the episode itself, but since D. carnegii is the most common and best-known species it seems like a safe bet.
Diplodocus gets a lot of speculative treatment in this episode, with mating rituals, feeding habits, herding, and reproductive strategies that aren’t really confirmable from the fossil record. So, is it possible that Diplodocus laid its eggs through a long flesh-tube like a turtle? Sure! Is there any way to tell from the fossil record? Absolutely not.
Anatomy:
Probably the most notable change in the Diplodocus from 1999 to now is the posture of the neck, which kinda changes the entire Look of the animal. The sauropod neck posture in the 90s was very much “the neck must never be higher than exactly parallel with the ground”, based on the supposed flexibility of the neck
These days, however, sauropod posture has been kinda reconfigured, and they now get strong, upward-sloping necks supported by an also-sloping back. I foolishly didn’t draw this Diplodocus in a way the really showed it off, so here’s a lovely sketch by Gabriel Ugueto which really captures the upright, elegant posture:
The only real anatomical gripe I have is with the feet. They put toe claws on the front foot!! All sauropods, except for the very oldest species, had clawless front feet, except for one long inner claw that many later species also lost. This mistake happens all the time, those poor sauropods getting elephant-looking front feet when their actual anatomy was way weirder and cooler!
Skin/Colouration:
Overall, the team did super well on the outside appearance of the Diplodocus! The brown colours look plain at first, but the closer you look the more complex it actually gets, which is really cool and naturalistic! And it’s also a bit of a nightmare to draw, yayy!
Those iconic spines on the back are also very 90s Dinosaur Aesthetic, but these ones are actually supported by fossil evidence! Not from Diplodocus itself, but a related, unnamed species with skin impressions that show spines along the middle of the tail. The bony nodules the WWD Diplodocus has on its sides are also based on these skin impressions.
So yeah, the WWD team actually did a really good job on this one! There’s postural updates that we’ve only started really getting into in the last few years, and those feet, but overall the appearance and behavioural speculation is really interesting and good!
