66 million years before a certain eccentric Scotsman would set out to entertain the world using the power of genetic engineering, the ancestors of two of his leading attractions duke it out in the semitropical forests of Late Cretaceous North America.
As you might infer from the dinosaurs’ iconic designs, this scene is actually set in the universe of the Jurassic Park/World film franchise. I made it as a response to a certain “prologue” sequence released to promote Jurassic World: Dominion, which is supposed to be set in the Cretaceous Period before all those dinosaurs got cloned. As cinematographically gorgeous as it is, I was not a fan of the blatant anachronisms and other paleontological errors in the scene, especially its portrayal of Tyrannosaurus rex and Giganotosaurus carolinii as arch-rivals even though the two species lived almost thirty-five million years apart and on separate continents.
I feel that a more suitable confrontation would be between T. rex and Triceratops since both are known to have coexisted with one another. That’s why it’s such a classic paleoart trope to begin with. Besides, having the T. rex fight a big herbivore would be a welcome change of pace since we’ve already seen it against other theropod dinosaurs in the franchise.