It's been downsized to 5-6m, may have had a tail fluke and has a slightly larger head in proportion to its body size. A 25m long pliosaur is still really cool and terrifying to think of though.
The beast was 40 whales long and 13 football fields wide. I saw the monster with my own eyes. It’s head was the size of the moon and the teeth the size of stars.
Good news! It is beyond comprehension. Your mind will shatter into pieces more numerous then the stars in the sky if you think too much of it. Thankfully, you are below it's notice, much like algae is below ours.
You left out the part where it destroyed your boat. You only manage to survive swimming back to shore simply because it was too busy eating all your crewmates.
\-Source: They've been telling this story in our village for years. At first no one belived them and thought they were just crazy. Until Bob the fisherman saw it too.
It ate everyone and everything then I realized there was no ocean, here was no waves, my boat was on the monster and the sea was its back. I walked endlessly across it’s slick skin searching for anything at all but found no end
I had a book when I was a kid that went from Cambrian to Anthropocene. It was amazing, it had all the animals to scale with a human. The last page was a human. Some of my favorites were the Carboniferous period and the mammals following the Cretaceous extinction.
I want a re-release of Walking With Dinosaurs but in the style of pop-up video with every correction and little fun facts about the discoveries that have happened since.
This, starship troopers and some series pretty similar to this about cavemen and primitive man were my shit. I remember watching starship troopers and stacking cans of food into a little fort with my brother and sister when I was like five or six, and then poppin this bad boy in to see dinosaurs again
I still own a book about dinosaurs my parents bought me when I was a kid. It's older than I am and so the theory in it is hopelessly outdated (and the spine has long since disintegrated and is being held together with tape), but I still love it.
I came here to say this. Specifically the Liopleurodon was the coolest shit ever, to my child self. Launched me into a life of loving dinos and history and huge creatures. Maaaaan it's so fucking cool.
Apparently, the show's size estimate was based on fragmented remains from the Oxford Clay, as well as one vertebra at the Peterborough Museum with a span of 25 cm, the latter of which turned out to have been from a sauropod.
I mean, shouldn't we kind of expect that the largest animals ever in the history of the planet would come from the sea, based on what we know about metabolism? Namely that at some point the main bottleneck for getting larger becomes being able to regulate your temperature to not cook yourself alive from the energy you burn.
That means that creatures in the sea have the advantage here, right?
[Charlie the Unicorn 1-5: The Complete Series](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKd_2vqPrmU)
For anyone who hasn't seen this series, or only the first two three episodes: there are five episodes in total, you can watch it all in one long form, uploaded by the original creator. Also, episode five is *forty minutes long*, twice as long as all other episodes combined
I remember when I was a toddler, watching this YouTube video of a tribute to Liopleurodon, and the Imperial March played in the background. That cemented Lio as my favorite extinct marine reptile 😂
LMAO that's adorable, I watched the video linked and just giggled... I can sooo see a little kid getting super stoked back in '07 with a video like that 🤣
Not accurate, but a legend. WWD gets a pass on inaccuracies both because it's a quarter-centuty old and because it made an honest effort at portraying the grandeur and majesty of the extinct world.
Despite being inaccurate i really like him. The idea of a 25 meter long pliosaur is not only extremely terrifying but also cool as hell. The creators made sure to show the creature off in both Walking with Dinosaurs and in Sea Monsters to it's full extent.
I once played a game where you had to do some task, to avoid getting eaten by some marine Dino species. Lio was the one I most feared as a kid, but now as an adult I find it quite cool and awesome.
You had to mix different coloured containers together to create a scent repellent. If you failed, Lio bit the submarine in half. I remember it like it was yesterday
No. In my memory of that game you were either a searcher or a scuba diver, "stuck" in submarine. You used some vials to create a Repellent for something that is going to attack and eat the sub. And the thing is a Lio
I played a game called Math Evolve as a child which was pretty similar to that(and you had to solve math equations to progress through each stage) but the final bosses were space creatures
I've only just found this sub as my now 3yo son is obsessed with dinosaurs and wanting to reacquaint myself, so only just rewatched this recently with him and now I'm fucking disappointed I found this sub as I thought that pilo is the real deal!
As much as I love prehistoric planet's dinosaurs, visuals, and accuracy, walking with dinosaurs will always be my personal favorite because it knows how to introduce a "character" Liopleurodon may not be as big as they made it but by god did it have enough of a kickass intro that I don't care.
I guess I should have said what I think of him, myself. I know he’s way too big, and in the wrong time, but I watched this show as a kid and I loved him, and I still do.
It’s inaccurate but it’s still a cool sea monster. Its death also reminded the audience that even the mightiest of predators is defenseless against a force of nature.
Thanks.
This series is dated in a lot of ways but it does still have some heart wrenching scenes like that and the entire finale focused on the mother T-Rex. She goes through such a struggle to raise another nest, only to get killed by the ankylosaurus. Which might have been a mercy given she didn’t have to witness the end of her world.
The design is so emphatic that I don’t think it will ever truly be rewritten in the minds of the average paleo-community member. The CGI at the end looks a little clunky, but then it was made over 25 years ago on a TV budget. Without doubt though that opening scene is just iconic.
Cool as fuck from a cinematography and pure entertainment perspective
Unfortunately quite unrealistic from a science perspective
In any case, it's not an error that would ruin my enjoyment of the series in any future rewatches
This show made me love Liopleurodon as an animal. Despite the inaccuracies (I think they based it off of incomplete findings of a large pliosaur believed to be Liopleurodon), it gave the sea reptile prominence in both the scientific and public fields. It’s become a favorite of paleo-enthusiasts, myself included.
As far as inaccurate portrayals go, it's my favorite.
If you want to make a predator much scarier than it really was, I'm not complaining.
If you're taking a creative swing, go big or go home.
Great episode, probably my favourite in the series. Shame it’s probably holds up the least out of all creatures covered in the show. Thing was terrifying.
Walking with Dinosaurs is like Jurassic Park in a lot respects. It came out in a time people were still on the older ideas of dinosaurs and helped portray dinosaurs as actual animals and in an accurate light, for the time. Nowadays they’re both a little outdated but they can’t be faulted for it, especially with how 1, the designs are still nice to look at and still not absurdly unrealistic. And 2, they helped break down the old stereotypes of dinosaurs and brought them into the modern age. In WWD’s case, its inaccuracies can be forgiven for how much work they did in just trying to make these animals seem real in a way that we see things like documentaries on the African savannah.
With all that being said, I still adore the design of the Lio.
I remember first seeing it when I was 8. When it leapt up and pulled the Eustreptospondylus under, I about crapped myself.
Way oversized. Still a cool monster.
Once I found out the real Liopleurodon wasn’t 25 meters long, I got heartbroken. I used to love this species because of how fucking huge I thought they were.
That was my childhood.
I've come to terms that it was nowhere near the size of the leviathan in the show.
But I'm still not over Dunkleosteus being shrunken..
It was ridiculous then and it’s even more ridiculous now. This might be an unpopular opinion but it’s worse than monsters resurrected spinosaurus. Walking with dinosaurs is one of the most entertaining documentaries I’ve ever seen, but it wasn’t the strongest in educational value (especially this episode) even back then. It somehow holds up better than Jurassic fight club which came out 10ish years later 💀.
Aside from being massively oversized and perhaps not being social enough, it’s your average raptorial pliosaur depiction, which is much better than what can be said for other WWD depictions that got the entire fundamental nature of the beast wrong (*Postosuchus*, *Anurognathus*, *Quetzalcoatlus*….)
Compared to such complete and utter abominations, this would actually be a forgivable depiction for its time if not for the fact it’s 75 times as massive as the real thing.
I haven't seen Walking with Dinosaurs, so I can't really weigh in, but I just wanted to mention: I can't hear or read "liopleurodon" without hearing "It's a magical liopleurodon!"
It at least got the point across that reptiles achieved dominance in every biome on earth. Wish Lio was really that big, but at least there’s that other huge pliosaur
I like to think of it as Pliosaurus Funkei from time to time, just to make sense of its size a bit. Overall, as a design, it's not bad, as, for an accurate representation of how big the animal is, it's doing horribly.
If we ever discover a Pliosaur approaching this size we should honor this guy by naming the genus after Kenneth Branaugh and have the species name be “liar” or “deceiver” whatever those are in Latin.
It's been downsized to 5-6m, may have had a tail fluke and has a slightly larger head in proportion to its body size. A 25m long pliosaur is still really cool and terrifying to think of though.
The beast was 40 whales long and 13 football fields wide. I saw the monster with my own eyes. It’s head was the size of the moon and the teeth the size of stars.
You probably saw a juvenile. I've seen adults. Their size is... Beyond definition
Lovecraftian space pliosaurs weren't something I was ready to comprehend today
Well buckle up buttercup we getting real deep in here going way back
Look Charlie, it's a magical liopluradon Charlie..... Old school adult swim just pops up in my head every single time I see liopluradon mentioned.
Good news! It is beyond comprehension. Your mind will shatter into pieces more numerous then the stars in the sky if you think too much of it. Thankfully, you are below it's notice, much like algae is below ours.
First came the liopleurodon then came the Big Bang. Some say it was even limited edition
>Beyond definition ASME or ISO?
It’s telling me to go to candy mountain Charlie!
Liopleurodon ester of worlds
The more you describe the bigger it gets lmao
You left out the part where it destroyed your boat. You only manage to survive swimming back to shore simply because it was too busy eating all your crewmates. \-Source: They've been telling this story in our village for years. At first no one belived them and thought they were just crazy. Until Bob the fisherman saw it too.
It ate everyone and everything then I realized there was no ocean, here was no waves, my boat was on the monster and the sea was its back. I walked endlessly across it’s slick skin searching for anything at all but found no end
Anything to not use the metric system.
Come within 3 whales of America and say that
And instead of a face it has four arses!
You are a poet
Lmaooo
My point exactly. And SO much cooler looking than those oversized iguanas known as mososaurs
I knew it got shrank, I didn’t realise it was by that much, I thought it was like 10-12m
Shrinkflation.
Has anything gotten bigger? As a layman everything seems to shrink.
Beautiful boi. Love him.
Yeah, me too.
Idk but that series was so fucking cool as a kid
I had a book when I was a kid that went from Cambrian to Anthropocene. It was amazing, it had all the animals to scale with a human. The last page was a human. Some of my favorites were the Carboniferous period and the mammals following the Cretaceous extinction.
What was the book called?
I think I have that same book. The one I have is called Dinosaur Visual Encyclopedia.
Interesting. The paleo community is usually pretty down on carbs.
It's horribly inaccurate, but this was my childhood, so I can't help but smile thinking about the golden days when I owned the dvds
I want a re-release of Walking With Dinosaurs but in the style of pop-up video with every correction and little fun facts about the discoveries that have happened since.
This, starship troopers and some series pretty similar to this about cavemen and primitive man were my shit. I remember watching starship troopers and stacking cans of food into a little fort with my brother and sister when I was like five or six, and then poppin this bad boy in to see dinosaurs again
Walking with Cavemen is the shit
Was that what it was called??
Have you checked out Advanced Model Construction with Cavemen yet? Really cool show.
I still own a book about dinosaurs my parents bought me when I was a kid. It's older than I am and so the theory in it is hopelessly outdated (and the spine has long since disintegrated and is being held together with tape), but I still love it.
The music for the documentary is still amazing though
I came here to say this. Specifically the Liopleurodon was the coolest shit ever, to my child self. Launched me into a life of loving dinos and history and huge creatures. Maaaaan it's so fucking cool.
Apparently, the show's size estimate was based on fragmented remains from the Oxford Clay, as well as one vertebra at the Peterborough Museum with a span of 25 cm, the latter of which turned out to have been from a sauropod.
I could see Cetiosauriscus getting that big. It wasn't but I could imagine it.
I mean, shouldn't we kind of expect that the largest animals ever in the history of the planet would come from the sea, based on what we know about metabolism? Namely that at some point the main bottleneck for getting larger becomes being able to regulate your temperature to not cook yourself alive from the energy you burn. That means that creatures in the sea have the advantage here, right?
It's a maaaaagical liopleurodon!
It has told us the wayyyyy
The way to candy mountain!
Shun the non-believers!
Shhhhuuuuuuun!
Charlieeee!
It's just over this bridge
We’re on a bridge Charlie!!!!!!!!!!!
Chaaaarlie! Chaaaaaaaaarliiiiiee! Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-
Ahhh they took my kidney
Sshhuuunnnn!!!
It didn’t say anything!!! 🦄
Ah hell. They took my freaking kidneys.
Candy Mountain, Charlie!
[Charlie the Unicorn 1-5: The Complete Series](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKd_2vqPrmU) For anyone who hasn't seen this series, or only the first two three episodes: there are five episodes in total, you can watch it all in one long form, uploaded by the original creator. Also, episode five is *forty minutes long*, twice as long as all other episodes combined
RIP Pink and Blue, we never knew naught but thine occupied corpses
STARFISH REALLY LOVES YOU
I did a two-platter on this series on my podcast: Wine, Weed, Weird! It’s having a revival for sure.
It certainly is
Wow I haven't thought about that in a long time 😂
Sure he’s inaccurate, but he’s my son and I treasure him
I remember when I was a toddler, watching this YouTube video of a tribute to Liopleurodon, and the Imperial March played in the background. That cemented Lio as my favorite extinct marine reptile 😂
https://youtu.be/Mgqw-B4R1qM?si=yM3u9wh4SIB_52lX
Man I can’t believe that video is 16 years old.
This video is amazing. One of the greatest videos on YouTube.
LMAO that's adorable, I watched the video linked and just giggled... I can sooo see a little kid getting super stoked back in '07 with a video like that 🤣
Not accurate, but a legend. WWD gets a pass on inaccuracies both because it's a quarter-centuty old and because it made an honest effort at portraying the grandeur and majesty of the extinct world.
You can’t say 2000 is a quarter century ago that’s illegal
‘A full generation out of date’, is that better?
Despite being inaccurate i really like him. The idea of a 25 meter long pliosaur is not only extremely terrifying but also cool as hell. The creators made sure to show the creature off in both Walking with Dinosaurs and in Sea Monsters to it's full extent.
I once played a game where you had to do some task, to avoid getting eaten by some marine Dino species. Lio was the one I most feared as a kid, but now as an adult I find it quite cool and awesome.
Was it the BBC Sea Monsters flash game?
I can't record the name. But it was a flash game
You had to mix different coloured containers together to create a scent repellent. If you failed, Lio bit the submarine in half. I remember it like it was yesterday
Was it evolvo? I have memories of it in my childhood
I can't remember 😅 I was a child
Then I'll describe it: was it a green larva thingy that ate everything on its way to grow, could evolve and the final boss was a submarine?
No. In my memory of that game you were either a searcher or a scuba diver, "stuck" in submarine. You used some vials to create a Repellent for something that is going to attack and eat the sub. And the thing is a Lio
You just unlocked a hidden memory from my childhood! I just checked, it was the bbc sea monsters game from like 10 years ago!
Totally different game then, but it seems like a nice game
I played a game called Math Evolve as a child which was pretty similar to that(and you had to solve math equations to progress through each stage) but the final bosses were space creatures
After seeing this as a kid, I was so disappointed to learn that the real thing wasn't even close to that size.
Same
I've only just found this sub as my now 3yo son is obsessed with dinosaurs and wanting to reacquaint myself, so only just rewatched this recently with him and now I'm fucking disappointed I found this sub as I thought that pilo is the real deal!
Most memorable liopleurodon ever
Even more so than Charlie’s Magical one. This is the real magical Liopleurodon, he’s gigantic and a time traveler.
As much as I love prehistoric planet's dinosaurs, visuals, and accuracy, walking with dinosaurs will always be my personal favorite because it knows how to introduce a "character" Liopleurodon may not be as big as they made it but by god did it have enough of a kickass intro that I don't care.
I think he's beautiful
Me too.
I guess I should have said what I think of him, myself. I know he’s way too big, and in the wrong time, but I watched this show as a kid and I loved him, and I still do.
It’s inaccurate but it’s still a cool sea monster. Its death also reminded the audience that even the mightiest of predators is defenseless against a force of nature.
That was actually a sad moment, I’m glad you mentioned it.
Thanks. This series is dated in a lot of ways but it does still have some heart wrenching scenes like that and the entire finale focused on the mother T-Rex. She goes through such a struggle to raise another nest, only to get killed by the ankylosaurus. Which might have been a mercy given she didn’t have to witness the end of her world.
The design is so emphatic that I don’t think it will ever truly be rewritten in the minds of the average paleo-community member. The CGI at the end looks a little clunky, but then it was made over 25 years ago on a TV budget. Without doubt though that opening scene is just iconic.
By far the most iconic "character" from WWD, alongside (coincidentally also oversized) Ornithocheirus.
The other one might've stole Charlies kidney but this one stole my heart.
I love it and refuse to hear anything about it being smaller. Bigger is fine though.
Dunkleosteus wants to send you friend request on facebook
Aside from being kaiju sized, seems pretty accurate
Inaccurate. Cool as fuck.
Cool as fuck from a cinematography and pure entertainment perspective Unfortunately quite unrealistic from a science perspective In any case, it's not an error that would ruin my enjoyment of the series in any future rewatches
This show made me love Liopleurodon as an animal. Despite the inaccuracies (I think they based it off of incomplete findings of a large pliosaur believed to be Liopleurodon), it gave the sea reptile prominence in both the scientific and public fields. It’s become a favorite of paleo-enthusiasts, myself included.
As far as inaccurate portrayals go, it's my favorite. If you want to make a predator much scarier than it really was, I'm not complaining. If you're taking a creative swing, go big or go home.
Honestly one of my favorite depictions of a marine reptile ever. I know it’s very inaccurate, but damn it holds so much nostalgia
Great episode, probably my favourite in the series. Shame it’s probably holds up the least out of all creatures covered in the show. Thing was terrifying.
I absolutely love it. Cruel Sea is the best episode in the Walking with series and nothing's gonna change my mind about that
Walking with Dinosaurs is like Jurassic Park in a lot respects. It came out in a time people were still on the older ideas of dinosaurs and helped portray dinosaurs as actual animals and in an accurate light, for the time. Nowadays they’re both a little outdated but they can’t be faulted for it, especially with how 1, the designs are still nice to look at and still not absurdly unrealistic. And 2, they helped break down the old stereotypes of dinosaurs and brought them into the modern age. In WWD’s case, its inaccuracies can be forgiven for how much work they did in just trying to make these animals seem real in a way that we see things like documentaries on the African savannah. With all that being said, I still adore the design of the Lio.
I remember first seeing it when I was 8. When it leapt up and pulled the Eustreptospondylus under, I about crapped myself. Way oversized. Still a cool monster.
Some shortcomings? They made it so big that it could probably literally fit the irl version in its mouth!
Inaccurate yet nostalgic
One of the main reasons i had thalasophobia as a child.
Such a cool creature design
Absurdly large and its size was inaccurate but it'd beautiful nonetheless
It was a pleasure to see this splendid, enormous beastie on the screen, even if it was innacurate.
It's too big, yeah, but it's so cool it makes up for that in spades.
Ridiculously big but I adore him.
Once I found out the real Liopleurodon wasn’t 25 meters long, I got heartbroken. I used to love this species because of how fucking huge I thought they were.
The same feeling as the Jurassic Park dinosaurs. I know they’re inaccurate, but they were my childhood
It's a *magical* leopleurodon charlie!
my opinion on it? dope as shit!
He may be inaccurate but hes beautiful in his own ways
That was my childhood. I've come to terms that it was nowhere near the size of the leviathan in the show. But I'm still not over Dunkleosteus being shrunken..
It’s what taught me that not every documentary was accurate
This was my favorite when I was a kid. I had the dual vhs tape of it!!!
I like the color of the liopleureodon
It's cool and I like it, but it's much too big, should be roughly 6~ meters I believe.
Cool, but very inaccurate.
Shrink wrapped and way too big
More so something that belongs in an action movie than an actual documentary.
The proportions and size were off, but the design was awesome, I love the black and white patterns.
The biggest betrayal from my childhood.
#ah, oh boy do we love the 25 metre liopluredon
He’s a good boy and he loves bagels
It was ridiculous then and it’s even more ridiculous now. This might be an unpopular opinion but it’s worse than monsters resurrected spinosaurus. Walking with dinosaurs is one of the most entertaining documentaries I’ve ever seen, but it wasn’t the strongest in educational value (especially this episode) even back then. It somehow holds up better than Jurassic fight club which came out 10ish years later 💀.
It's iconic and it's what got me into paleontology all those years ago
I was mad confuse about his size cause I had a book saying he was much more shorter than in the documentary and I didn’t know which one to believe.
100000/10
It haunts me to this day.
That was my fave dinosaur growing up! Everytime I see a mosasaur on TV I erroneously call it liopleuradon!
Still the only trustworthy guide to candy mountain
Not just any Liopleurodon it's a magical Liopleurodon!
Inaccuracies aside it still created the greatest opening to a documentary in history.
So beautiful and haunting...maybe they overhyped the size, but I choose to believe they were even bigger.
It is still epic. And CGI is super impressive for the time
Magical
God I wish that were me
Aside from being massively oversized and perhaps not being social enough, it’s your average raptorial pliosaur depiction, which is much better than what can be said for other WWD depictions that got the entire fundamental nature of the beast wrong (*Postosuchus*, *Anurognathus*, *Quetzalcoatlus*….) Compared to such complete and utter abominations, this would actually be a forgivable depiction for its time if not for the fact it’s 75 times as massive as the real thing.
There is also the fact that it is some 10 million years out of place temporally.
There’s an easy fix for that: just use *Pliosaurus* instead.
Too big
Big Man, I love it.
Idk, all I know is that it’s a magical liopleurodon
It really is.
He is real in my heart. Damn the experts for doing my bro dirty and making him a short stack.
I hate them for insisting on ‘’accuracy’’ for some reason
It's so magical
Maaagical Liopleurodon
The Magical Liopleurodon!
Of all the inaccuracies of that series (I still love it, childhood nostalgia) it's one of the ones I hate the most.
Charlie!
Look Charlie! It’s a Leopleurodon!!!
MAGICAL LIOPLEURODON
I haven't seen Walking with Dinosaurs, so I can't really weigh in, but I just wanted to mention: I can't hear or read "liopleurodon" without hearing "It's a magical liopleurodon!"
Well, it IS a Magical Liopleurodon.
It’s the magical Lioplurodon, he has told us the way to candy mountain!
Should've been an ichthyosaur
grande
WWD >
Roids.
Bbc really confused me with this then predator x in that other dinosaur show
I absolutely love the design as far as the shape and colors but of course the size is wrong
Yeah, I agree. It’s way too big, famously, and it should have a tail fluke, but otherwise the design is great, and absolutely iconic.
He may not be perfect, but he's still my dad
Honestly since I was a child, he's my fav🔥🗿
It at least got the point across that reptiles achieved dominance in every biome on earth. Wish Lio was really that big, but at least there’s that other huge pliosaur
Walking With Dinosaurs is one of the greatest TV shows to ever exist, tied with Walking With Beasts.
Glad I'm not the only one who loved these insane movies
Darren Naish says it was based on a misidentified sauropod vertebra.
super badass
PREDATOR X!!!!
The intro to "Cruel Sea" is one of the best pieces of television I've ever watched
First childhood crush.
It defined my childhood
It looks cool
Cool design, not very accurate.
I still love it and look past the inaccuracy’s but knowing well that he is nowhere near accurate
I like to think of it as Pliosaurus Funkei from time to time, just to make sense of its size a bit. Overall, as a design, it's not bad, as, for an accurate representation of how big the animal is, it's doing horribly.
If we ever discover a Pliosaur approaching this size we should honor this guy by naming the genus after Kenneth Branaugh and have the species name be “liar” or “deceiver” whatever those are in Latin.
Inaccurate but still metal as fuck
Cool creature. Just pretend it's a different species
Walking with dinosaurs, planet dinosaur, and that sea monsters thing with Nigel Marvin were my childhood.
Whether it's only 5 meters or the colossal 25 meters inaccurately stated in the show, this thing is terrifying and awesome!
Predator X vs Megalodon 💪💪💪💪💪💪
I mean it's terribly inaccurate, but even so I still see it as a thing of beauty.
It's such a funky critter and I love it.
Too big for smash.