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Description
The Pliocene (5.3-2.5 mya), overall, isn't a particularly interesting chapter in Cenozoic history (being a very short epoch), its fauna is mostly made up of smaller ancestors to the giants of the Pleistocene (including humans) and some dying lineages from the Miocene (like terror birds, borophagines, megalodon, and Deinotherium), and it's most notable event is the early evolution of humans in Africa during the Messinian-Gelasian, with even the Great American Interchage kicking off at its very end. So this was by all accounts the best thing to center your Pliocene episode on, but it is still jarring how he lept forward 22 million years since "Land of Giants ", which for the Cenozoic, is comparable to the 68 million years jump between "New Blood" and "Time of Titans".

I don't have that much to criticize about "Next of Kin", as it's probably the WWB episode that holds up the best. It's neck to neck with "Mammoth Journey", with both still having some outdated elements, and both have an egregious example of prop recycling that results in an anatomically inaccurate mammal, but the one from "Mammoth Journey" is arguably shoddier and more patronizing (being a very familiar animal), so "Next of Kin" wins out as the most accurate WWB episode.

"Next of Kind" is set in Ethiopia, around the Great Rift Valley, which has been a goldmine of hominian fossils, though other parts of Africa have plenty of fossils to offer too. And yes, we Homo sapiens and our closest relatives belong to the subtribe Hominina, as we are part of the same tribe as chimpanzees (Pan), the same subfamily as gorillas (Gorilla), and the same family as orangutans (Pongo), just to remove any doubt that we are (fully) bipedal, hairless monkeys. Anyways, the episode is set 3.2 million years ago (Piacenzian), and shockingly, this might be the most anachronism-free episode in WW. Granted, the cast is made up of just four taxa, but all of them are known from East Africa and from this time period. On the downside...yeah, this is a rather small cast, and only two of them are new models (technically three if you count the young Australopithecus), the other two are a reworked Chalicotherium and Smilodon (more on that later).

Of course, at this point in time, we are on the cusp of the Quaternary period, where life on Earth has taken on its modern form, with many direct ancestors of our current fauna roaming the globe, but there are still oddities, largely holdovers from the Miocene that will soon go extinct (megalodon vanished nearly half a million years prior), and unsurprisingly, "Next of Kin" highlights some of these relict oddities, because it obviously won't focus on generic African wildlife we're all too familiar with like modern-looking rhinos or warthogs. Again, to keep things organized, let's look at the four featured species.

A) Australopithecus afarensis, the most iconic human ancestor since the discovery of "Lucy", and generally, WWB's portrayal holds up very well. They are essentially portrayed as bipedal, gracile chimpanzees (albeit less violent) in terms of social structure and behavior, which makes sense, as chimps are our closet living relatives, and Australopithecus shows similar sexual dimorphism which would lend credence to this interpretation. Since this is paleo-anthropology, probably the most studied and thus most heated subject in paleontology, there has been debate about whether the larger A. afarensis specimens (up to 1.5 meters tall) are male and the smaller ones (1.2 meters or less) female, but such sexual dimorphism is the norm among all living apes and simians in general. Another major bonus for this portrayal is that Australopithecus is depicted via CGI and animatronics, not actors in makeup and prosthetics as is the norm (like Walking with Cavemen), which leads to an accurate depiction of Australopithecus in terms of proportions and skull anatomy (like a small, chimp-like cranium), not guys in less-than-convincing monkeys suit with distinctly H. sapiens-like proportions and enlarged craniums.

Any issues with WWB's Australopithecus are informed ones and an unfortunate example of poor timing. As far back as the 90s, the notion that Australopithecus was the oldest human ancestor/relative that walked upright and that the spread of savannahs was the major driving force behind bipedality was challenged with the 1995 description of the even older Ardipithecus ramidus (4.5 mya), initially known from fragmentary remains but workers soon collected more complete ones around the turn of the century, and this ape lived in more forested habitats, and then (in the year 2001 no less) we also got the description of the even older Ardipithecus kadabba (5.8-5.4 mya) and Orrorin tugenensis (6.1-5.7 mya), both species that were very close to the human-chimpanzee split, showing that bipedalism evolved earlier than previously thought and with taxa that preceded the spread of the savannah, to say nothing of the controversial, 7-million-year-old Sahelanthropus tchadensis. And with the discovery of these even older bipeds and various other human species in the last two decades, there has been considerable debate among paleo-anthropologists (which is nothing new) about whether Australopithecus is the true ancestors of Homo and not a side-branch with no descendants, though nobody has conclusively disproven this commonly cited evolutionary relationship and there is no doubt that Australopithecus were human-line hominins.

Though the changing climate of Africa in the Pliocene-Pleistocene, growing increasingly drier and more dominated by savannahs still had a major impact on human evolution, especially in shaping Homo, leading to our transformation from simple, ape-like scavengers and opportunists (like H. habilis) to accomplished, highly sophisticated hunters (H. sapiens). And it's worth repeating that our general understanding of human evolution hasn't really changed that much in the last four decades, it's just the specific details that cause debate, like who our direct ancestors are and new ideas such as genetic admixture revealing how our origins were far more complex than the classic "March of Progress" view.

B) Dinofelis, one of the three machairodont genera that coexisted with our ancestors and also had a near-cosmopolitan distribution across the world, the others being Megantereon and Homotherium. The Pliocene was a bit of a rut for big cats, as machairodonts weren't very large during this 2.5-million-year interval and panthers were only starting to evolve. WWB's Dinofelis is obviously a tweaked version of the Smilodon model, but it's a lot better than the other example from "Mammoth Journey", as they did modify its face and gave it an appropriately long tail, and both machairodonts had similar stocky builds and powerful front limbs . Most purported Dinofelis species come from Africa, and they varied from leopard-sized to lioness-sized, the WWB animal seems to skew larger (no surprise) and most closely matches Dinofelis aronoki, which works for the setting. Unfortunately, it suffers from some shrinkwrapping and limited CGI rendering, by having its small fangs poke out of its mouth, when they should be tucked behind its lips , and sporting a thin, rat-like tail instead of a tufted, cat-like one; not major issues, but indicative of the show's age.

The reason Dinofelis was selected as the antagonist was due to its association with Australopithecus and other early hominians, though the same is true for Megantereon. A major inspiration seems to have been finds at Swartkrans, South Africa, where several caves provided Dinofelis fossils together with those of Paranthropus, early Homo, and baboons, which led to the interpretation that these were big cat dens, where the predator dragged off its kills to be eaten, as further suggested by tooth marks on the primate fossils (though the baboon site seems to have been a pit where the cats and monkeys fell and got trapped). In his book The Hunters or the Hunted? (1981), Bob Brain (a consultant for the episode) hypothesized that Dinofelis was a “specialist primate killer”, selecting hominids and baboons as prey. But again, right when WWB premiered, a new study involving isotope analyses performed on the predators of Swartkrans (lions, leopards, spotted hyenas, Dinofelis, Megantereon, and the running hyena Chasmaporthetes), showed that the leopard, Megantereon and spotted hyena were the most prominent hunters of primates (including hominians), while the local Dinofelis preferred ungulates such as antelope.

Of course, Ethiopia is a long way away from Swartkrans, and like with all cats, the diet of Dinofelis (which is made up of multiple species and was widely distributed), likely varied depending on what prey animals were readily available in any region. Modern leopards, for example, don't commonly target chimpanzees, but in places where two overlap, certain individual leopards seem to be more inclined towards hunting apes than others. The same can apply to Dinofelis, and with australopithecines being easy targets, it makes sense that it would target them, with individual cats possibly gaining a taste for them (it's the same cat that targets the clan in the episode). Interestingly though, Swartkrans isn't the only site to provide evidence of Megantereon attacking our ancient cousins, as H. erectus fossils from Georgia also show evidence of Megantereon predation.

Similarly, the episode depicts Dinofelis as a clear analog to a leopard, to complement Australopithecus's chimpanzee, but being one of the largest predators in Africa at the time (up to 150 kg), Dinofelis maybe wasn't that arboreal. Leopards spend a lot of time in the trees and even stash their kills up there to avoid larger and/or more social predators like lions, hyenas, wild dogs, and historically, machairodonts as well. Then again, Dinofelis still faced competition from animals like Chasmaporthetes, Pachycrocuta, and Xenocyon, which were likely more inclined towards roaming in groups, possibly also Homotherium, so who knows?

C) Deinotherium, another example where the portrayal holds up well enough but there are some caveats. First is the size. The WWB Deinotherium is huge, shown as standing 4 meters tall and weighing 14 tons (the narrator says it's as tall as a giraffe, which would imply a height of over 5 meters). The type species, Deinotherium giganteum was truly that huge (though a mass of 14 tons might be a slight exaggeration), ranking among the largest land mammals known to us, but that species was found in Europe during the Mid Miocene-Mid Pliocene, while the African Deinotherium bozasi, which coexisted with Australopithecus and survived until 1 mya, was smaller, being about the same size as an African elephant, thus making WWB's Deinotherium a chimera, and a needless one at that, as even a 3.5-meter animal would have utterly dwarfed an Australopithecus (which was 1.5 meters tall or less). It was also not the largest animal in Africa at the time, as the local Mammuthus and Palaeoloxodon species were just as big , if not bigger.

Of course, I don't fault them for cherry-picking the oddest-looking proboscidean known from Africa at the time, though this brings us to another issue. While it goes without saying that deinotheres aren't "true elephants" (elephantids), there are actually far more basal than you might think. While stegodontids, gomphotheres, amebelodontids, mastodons, and even Palaeomastodon and Phiomia are considered elephantiforms, deinotheres are not! They branched off even earlier, likely over 40 million years ago, meaning Deinotherium bozasi was a true evolutionary anachronism in Pliocene Africa, while all the other native elephants were true elephantids, or close enough (like Anancus). This brings into question just how elephant-like these animals were, like going into musth (though still reasonable speculation) and a major point of contention is its trunk. While there is no doubt that deinotheres had trunks due to the shape of their external nares, around the turn of the century (when WWB was being made) it was first proposed that these animals had shorter, more robust trunks, due to their basal position and certain characteristics of the skull. This has proven controversial, as others argued that such a short trunk would have hindered the animal from drinking, thus favoring a normal elephantine trunk , with others still, suggest that its trunk could have been shorter than in modern elephants, but not as short as the WWB depiction . Like the hopping Leptictidium, this falls in the category of not being technically inaccurate, but it's open to debate.

D) Ancylotherium...oh boy, now we get into the main issue of this episode, this chalicothere. Besides, once more, being given nothing to do, WWB's portrayal of Ancylotherium is pretty bad. Firstly, it's stated to be the last of its kind, but we already knew long before WWB that chalicotheres survived until the Mid Pleistocene; those being the chalicotheriine Chalicotheriu sivalense from Asia, which was named back in 1837, before being rebranded as Nestoritherium sivalense in 1859, and we found more species of Nestoritherium in subsequent years, as well as fellow chalicotheriine Hesperotherium sinense (2002), both of which lived long enough to overlap with the Asian Homo erectus. The African Ancylotherium was the last known schizotheriine though, and in the Miocene, it stretched into Asia and Europe as well, but if that was what the narrator meant, the vague wording does not help.

But more importantly, the glaring issue is that WWB's Ancylotherium is just a repaint of their Chalicotherium from "Land of Giants", with modified front feet and a more erect posture. This is a problem; since these two genera represent different chalicothere subfamilies; chalicotheriines and schizotheriines, which are very different from each other, the latter didn't just not walk on their knuckles, they also didn't have absurdly long front limbs and a slopping back , their necks were longer, their snouts weren't as short , and they (overall) occupied border ecological niches, thanks to their higher-crowned teeth allowing them to eat tougher vegetation, possibly explaining why they were more geographically widespread. I understand budget restraints, but it doesn't change the fact that this is simply an unusable model for Ancylotherium. It would be like trying to pass off a repainted T. rex as Albertosaurus despite the notable anatomical differences between them, or a crestless Parasaurolophus as an Edmontosaurus (same family but very different subfamilies). Now, had they used Borissiakia in "Land of Giants" and repainted it for this episode, it would have worked a lot better. The neck might have been a bit too long but it would otherwise work much better as an Ancylotherium, on account of both being schizotheriines.

Not helping matters is that how depictions of Ancylotherium outside of this are frustratingly few, and many are just aping WWB's grossly inaccurate design . Frankly, I think many more fossil mammals that had no representation on the screen have more represented in paleo-art than Ancylotherium. As an interesting tidbit , besides looking more like a jacked-up goat-horse with claws , Ancylotherium had a somewhat domed head , similar to Tylocephalonyx and the chalicotheriine Kalimantsia, though not as exaggerated, implying a function of some sort (like agonistic behavior). Yes, chalicotheres (both types) copied pachycephalosaurs in addition to ground sloths. Kalimantsia was a pachy-gorilla-sloth-horse. WWB's version does have a nice color scheme, like its cousin from the last episode, here seemingly based on African ungulates like zebras and spiral-horned antelopes, which works well, but too bad its main contribution is to be background fodder. As said before, WWB did a disservice to chalicotheres, and its main contribution as far as these strange ungulates go was to spread misinformation; that Chalicotherium lived in the Oligocene and that Ancylotherium was just Chalicotherium minus the knuckle-walking. I'd be less negative if there was more to them, but there really isn't.

As I have said, this is the WWB episode that holds up the most, though it's not free of error; those being the portrayal of the Ancylotherium, some outdated theories for the evolution of bipedalism in humans, and a needlessly chimeric portrayal of one genus. Still, the story and cast of characters require next to no updates; other than the schizotheriine needing to look like an actual schizotheriine, Dinofelis showing less teeth, and the Deinotherium being slightly smaller. If you wanted to, you could push back the date towards the bud of human evolution with Ardipithecus or Orrorin, at the end of the Miocene, and you can still keep the other animals, or perhaps swap out the Dinofelis for the much larger Amphimachairodus kabir, one of the largest known felines, whose genus vanished during the Miocene-Pliocene turnover, resulting in the aforementioned big cat rut of the Pliocene. Given the relatively small cast, you could also throw in an additional character, like Sivatherium or Pachycrocuta.

Next up is "Sabretooth", and...uhh...I probably won't be too kind on that one.

Description
The Pliocene (5.3-2.5 mya), overall, isn't a particularly interesting chapter in Cenozoic history (being a very short epoch), its fauna is mostly made up of smaller ancestors to the giants of the Pleistocene (including humans) and some dying lineages from the Miocene (like terror birds, borophagines, megalodon, and Deinotherium), and it's most notable event is the early evolution of humans in Africa during the Messinian-Gelasian, with even the Great American Interchage kicking off at its very end. So this was by all accounts the best thing to center your Pliocene episode on, but it is still jarring how he lept forward 22 million years since "Land of Giants ", which for the Cenozoic, is comparable to the 68 million years jump between "New Blood" and "Time of Titans".

I don't have that much to criticize about "Next of Kin", as it's probably the WWB episode that holds up the best. It's neck to neck with "Mammoth Journey", with both still having some outdated elements, and both have an egregious example of prop recycling that results in an anatomically inaccurate mammal, but the one from "Mammoth Journey" is arguably shoddier and more patronizing (being a very familiar animal), so "Next of Kin" wins out as the most accurate WWB episode.

"Next of Kind" is set in Ethiopia, around the Great Rift Valley, which has been a goldmine of hominian fossils, though other parts of Africa have plenty of fossils to offer too. And yes, we Homo sapiens and our closest relatives belong to the subtribe Hominina, as we are part of the same tribe as chimpanzees (Pan), the same subfamily as gorillas (Gorilla), and the same family as orangutans (Pongo), just to remove any doubt that we are (fully) bipedal, hairless monkeys. Anyways, the episode is set 3.2 million years ago (Piacenzian), and shockingly, this might be the most anachronism-free episode in WW. Granted, the cast is made up of just four taxa, but all of them are known from East Africa and from this time period. On the downside...yeah, this is a rather small cast, and only two of them are new models (technically three if you count the young Australopithecus), the other two are a reworked Chalicotherium and Smilodon (more on that later).

Of course, at this point in time, we are on the cusp of the Quaternary period, where life on Earth has taken on its modern form, with many direct ancestors of our current fauna roaming the globe, but there are still oddities, largely holdovers from the Miocene that will soon go extinct (megalodon vanished nearly half a million years prior), and unsurprisingly, "Next of Kin" highlights some of these relict oddities, because it obviously won't focus on generic African wildlife we're all too familiar with like modern-looking rhinos or warthogs. Again, to keep things organized, let's look at the four featured species.

A) Australopithecus afarensis, the most iconic human ancestor since the discovery of "Lucy", and generally, WWB's portrayal holds up very well. They are essentially portrayed as bipedal, gracile chimpanzees (albeit less violent) in terms of social structure and behavior, which makes sense, as chimps are our closet living relatives, and Australopithecus shows similar sexual dimorphism which would lend credence to this interpretation. Since this is paleo-anthropology, probably the most studied and thus most heated subject in paleontology, there has been debate about whether the larger A. afarensis specimens (up to 1.5 meters tall) are male and the smaller ones (1.2 meters or less) female, but such sexual dimorphism is the norm among all living apes and simians in general. Another major bonus for this portrayal is that Australopithecus is depicted via CGI and animatronics, not actors in makeup and prosthetics as is the norm (like Walking with Cavemen), which leads to an accurate depiction of Australopithecus in terms of proportions and skull anatomy (like a small, chimp-like cranium), not guys in less-than-convincing monkeys suit with distinctly H. sapiens-like proportions and enlarged craniums.

Any issues with WWB's Australopithecus are informed ones and an unfortunate example of poor timing. As far back as the 90s, the notion that Australopithecus was the oldest human ancestor/relative that walked upright and that the spread of savannahs was the major driving force behind bipedality was challenged with the 1995 description of the even older Ardipithecus ramidus (4.5 mya), initially known from fragmentary remains but workers soon collected more complete ones around the turn of the century, and this ape lived in more forested habitats, and then (in the year 2001 no less) we also got the description of the even older Ardipithecus kadabba (5.8-5.4 mya) and Orrorin tugenensis (6.1-5.7 mya), both species that were very close to the human-chimpanzee split, showing that bipedalism evolved earlier than previously thought and with taxa that preceded the spread of the savannah, to say nothing of the controversial, 7-million-year-old Sahelanthropus tchadensis. And with the discovery of these even older bipeds and various other human species in the last two decades, there has been considerable debate among paleo-anthropologists (which is nothing new) about whether Australopithecus is the true ancestors of Homo and not a side-branch with no descendants, though nobody has conclusively disproven this commonly cited evolutionary relationship and there is no doubt that Australopithecus were human-line hominins.

Though the changing climate of Africa in the Pliocene-Pleistocene, growing increasingly drier and more dominated by savannahs still had a major impact on human evolution, especially in shaping Homo, leading to our transformation from simple, ape-like scavengers and opportunists (like H. habilis) to accomplished, highly sophisticated hunters (H. sapiens). And it's worth repeating that our general understanding of human evolution hasn't really changed that much in the last four decades, it's just the specific details that cause debate, like who our direct ancestors are and new ideas such as genetic admixture revealing how our origins were far more complex than the classic "March of Progress" view.

B) Dinofelis, one of the three machairodont genera that coexisted with our ancestors and also had a near-cosmopolitan distribution across the world, the others being Megantereon and Homotherium. The Pliocene was a bit of a rut for big cats, as machairodonts weren't very large during this 2.5-million-year interval and panthers were only starting to evolve. WWB's Dinofelis is obviously a tweaked version of the Smilodon model, but it's a lot better than the other example from "Mammoth Journey", as they did modify its face and gave it an appropriately long tail, and both machairodonts had similar stocky builds and powerful front limbs . Most purported Dinofelis species come from Africa, and they varied from leopard-sized to lioness-sized, the WWB animal seems to skew larger (no surprise) and most closely matches Dinofelis aronoki, which works for the setting. Unfortunately, it suffers from some shrinkwrapping and limited CGI rendering, by having its small fangs poke out of its mouth, when they should be tucked behind its lips , and sporting a thin, rat-like tail instead of a tufted, cat-like one; not major issues, but indicative of the show's age.

The reason Dinofelis was selected as the antagonist was due to its association with Australopithecus and other early hominians, though the same is true for Megantereon. A major inspiration seems to have been finds at Swartkrans, South Africa, where several caves provided Dinofelis fossils together with those of Paranthropus, early Homo, and baboons, which led to the interpretation that these were big cat dens, where the predator dragged off its kills to be eaten, as further suggested by tooth marks on the primate fossils (though the baboon site seems to have been a pit where the cats and monkeys fell and got trapped). In his book The Hunters or the Hunted? (1981), Bob Brain (a consultant for the episode) hypothesized that Dinofelis was a “specialist primate killer”, selecting hominids and baboons as prey. But again, right when WWB premiered, a new study involving isotope analyses performed on the predators of Swartkrans (lions, leopards, spotted hyenas, Dinofelis, Megantereon, and the running hyena Chasmaporthetes), showed that the leopard, Megantereon and spotted hyena were the most prominent hunters of primates (including hominians), while the local Dinofelis preferred ungulates such as antelope.

Of course, Ethiopia is a long way away from Swartkrans, and like with all cats, the diet of Dinofelis (which is made up of multiple species and was widely distributed), likely varied depending on what prey animals were readily available in any region. Modern leopards, for example, don't commonly target chimpanzees, but in places where two overlap, certain individual leopards seem to be more inclined towards hunting apes than others. The same can apply to Dinofelis, and with australopithecines being easy targets, it makes sense that it would target them, with individual cats possibly gaining a taste for them (it's the same cat that targets the clan in the episode). Interestingly though, Swartkrans isn't the only site to provide evidence of Megantereon attacking our ancient cousins, as H. erectus fossils from Georgia also show evidence of Megantereon predation.

Similarly, the episode depicts Dinofelis as a clear analog to a leopard, to complement Australopithecus's chimpanzee, but being one of the largest predators in Africa at the time (up to 150 kg), Dinofelis maybe wasn't that arboreal. Leopards spend a lot of time in the trees and even stash their kills up there to avoid larger and/or more social predators like lions, hyenas, wild dogs, and historically, machairodonts as well. Then again, Dinofelis still faced competition from animals like Chasmaporthetes, Pachycrocuta, and Xenocyon, which were likely more inclined towards roaming in groups, possibly also Homotherium, so who knows?

C) Deinotherium, another example where the portrayal holds up well enough but there are some caveats. First is the size. The WWB Deinotherium is huge, shown as standing 4 meters tall and weighing 14 tons (the narrator says it's as tall as a giraffe, which would imply a height of over 5 meters). The type species, Deinotherium giganteum was truly that huge (though a mass of 14 tons might be a slight exaggeration), ranking among the largest land mammals known to us, but that species was found in Europe during the Mid Miocene-Mid Pliocene, while the African Deinotherium bozasi, which coexisted with Australopithecus and survived until 1 mya, was smaller, being about the same size as an African elephant, thus making WWB's Deinotherium a chimera, and a needless one at that, as even a 3.5-meter animal would have utterly dwarfed an Australopithecus (which was 1.5 meters tall or less). It was also not the largest animal in Africa at the time, as the local Mammuthus and Palaeoloxodon species were just as big , if not bigger.

Of course, I don't fault them for cherry-picking the oddest-looking proboscidean known from Africa at the time, though this brings us to another issue. While it goes without saying that deinotheres aren't "true elephants" (elephantids), there are actually far more basal than you might think. While stegodontids, gomphotheres, amebelodontids, mastodons, and even Palaeomastodon and Phiomia are considered elephantiforms, deinotheres are not! They branched off even earlier, likely over 40 million years ago, meaning Deinotherium bozasi was a true evolutionary anachronism in Pliocene Africa, while all the other native elephants were true elephantids, or close enough (like Anancus). This brings into question just how elephant-like these animals were, like going into musth (though still reasonable speculation) and a major point of contention is its trunk. While there is no doubt that deinotheres had trunks due to the shape of their external nares, around the turn of the century (when WWB was being made) it was first proposed that these animals had shorter, more robust trunks, due to their basal position and certain characteristics of the skull. This has proven controversial, as others argued that such a short trunk would have hindered the animal from drinking, thus favoring a normal elephantine trunk , with others still, suggest that its trunk could have been shorter than in modern elephants, but not as short as the WWB depiction . Like the hopping Leptictidium, this falls in the category of not being technically inaccurate, but it's open to debate.

D) Ancylotherium...oh boy, now we get into the main issue of this episode, this chalicothere. Besides, once more, being given nothing to do, WWB's portrayal of Ancylotherium is pretty bad. Firstly, it's stated to be the last of its kind, but we already knew long before WWB that chalicotheres survived until the Mid Pleistocene; those being the chalicotheriine Chalicotheriu sivalense from Asia, which was named back in 1837, before being rebranded as Nestoritherium sivalense in 1859, and we found more species of Nestoritherium in subsequent years, as well as fellow chalicotheriine Hesperotherium sinense (2002), both of which lived long enough to overlap with the Asian Homo erectus. The African Ancylotherium was the last known schizotheriine though, and in the Miocene, it stretched into Asia and Europe as well, but if that was what the narrator meant, the vague wording does not help.

But more importantly, the glaring issue is that WWB's Ancylotherium is just a repaint of their Chalicotherium from "Land of Giants", with modified front feet and a more erect posture. This is a problem; since these two genera represent different chalicothere subfamilies; chalicotheriines and schizotheriines, which are very different from each other, the latter didn't just not walk on their knuckles, they also didn't have absurdly long front limbs and a slopping back , their necks were longer, their snouts weren't as short , and they (overall) occupied border ecological niches, thanks to their higher-crowned teeth allowing them to eat tougher vegetation, possibly explaining why they were more geographically widespread. I understand budget restraints, but it doesn't change the fact that this is simply an unusable model for Ancylotherium. It would be like trying to pass off a repainted T. rex as Albertosaurus despite the notable anatomical differences between them, or a crestless Parasaurolophus as an Edmontosaurus (same family but very different subfamilies). Now, had they used Borissiakia in "Land of Giants" and repainted it for this episode, it would have worked a lot better. The neck might have been a bit too long but it would otherwise work much better as an Ancylotherium, on account of both being schizotheriines.

Not helping matters is that how depictions of Ancylotherium outside of this are frustratingly few, and many are just aping WWB's grossly inaccurate design . Frankly, I think many more fossil mammals that had no representation on the screen have more represented in paleo-art than Ancylotherium. As an interesting tidbit , besides looking more like a jacked-up goat-horse with claws , Ancylotherium had a somewhat domed head , similar to Tylocephalonyx and the chalicotheriine Kalimantsia, though not as exaggerated, implying a function of some sort (like agonistic behavior). Yes, chalicotheres (both types) copied pachycephalosaurs in addition to ground sloths. Kalimantsia was a pachy-gorilla-sloth-horse. WWB's version does have a nice color scheme, like its cousin from the last episode, here seemingly based on African ungulates like zebras and spiral-horned antelopes, which works well, but too bad its main contribution is to be background fodder. As said before, WWB did a disservice to chalicotheres, and its main contribution as far as these strange ungulates go was to spread misinformation; that Chalicotherium lived in the Oligocene and that Ancylotherium was just Chalicotherium minus the knuckle-walking. I'd be less negative if there was more to them, but there really isn't.

As I have said, this is the WWB episode that holds up the most, though it's not free of error; those being the portrayal of the Ancylotherium, some outdated theories for the evolution of bipedalism in humans, and a needlessly chimeric portrayal of one genus. Still, the story and cast of characters require next to no updates; other than the schizotheriine needing to look like an actual schizotheriine, Dinofelis showing less teeth, and the Deinotherium being slightly smaller. If you wanted to, you could push back the date towards the bud of human evolution with Ardipithecus or Orrorin, at the end of the Miocene, and you can still keep the other animals, or perhaps swap out the Dinofelis for the much larger Amphimachairodus kabir, one of the largest known felines, whose genus vanished during the Miocene-Pliocene turnover, resulting in the aforementioned big cat rut of the Pliocene. Given the relatively small cast, you could also throw in an additional character, like Sivatherium or Pachycrocuta.

Next up is "Sabretooth", and...uhh...I probably won't be too kind on that one.