I saw the movie
Alpha with friends last Saturday night. When
my friends and I go see movies, we whisper to each other the whole time,
pointing out flaws in both the plot and the science it implies.
Alpha was a rare treat for me: a movie that highlighted large-scale terrain and large, extinct animals. I knew I would like it.
The
movie begins with a sequence of landscape shots, some with animals. The
first animals we see are woolly mammoths, traveling in a characteristic
herd. A few seconds later, a small group of woolly rhinoceros move
through what appears to be a glacier-scarred landscape. Hyena and wolf
packs prowl and vocalize. Words appear on the screen informing us that
the setting is Europe, 20,000 years ago.
With a date
and general location, it is now straightforward to examine the science
behind the plot. 20,000 years ago puts the movie near the end of the
Pleistocene period, otherwise known by its more famous alias, the "Ice
Age." There's a lot to say about the science behind the many ice ages of
Earth, so we'll save that for another blog post. This one will focus on
the animals seen in the movie, and whether or not they belong there.
First up is identifying the animals seen in the opening sequence.
Elasmotherium
could be the woolly rhinoceros, as it lived in Europe in the
Pleistocene, but the youngest fossils date from 29,000 years ago,
slightly before the movie's setting. Another genus of animals,
Stephanorhinos,
also lived in continental Europe around the same time, but it's not as
woolly as the ones in the movie, and their horns are a bit short. My
guess is that the animals are
Elasmotherium, and maybe they are the last of their kind alive. In any case, it checks out.
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American Mammoth skeleton on display at the George C. Page Museum. Photo credit: J. Noviello |
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The
most iconic animal of the Pleistocene is the mammoth, and it's no
surprise those animals appear early in the film (though it's a shame
that they aren't seen again). The oldest woolly mammoth fossils are
found in east Asia. From there mammoths migrated out, eventually
evolving into a few different species. Europe was definitely one of
those places, as their bones are fairly common in many countries, and
mammoths are seen in cave paintings made by ancient humans. While most
mammoths were extinct by 10,000 years ago, small populations of isolated
animals may have survived until as late as 4,000 years ago. One quick
note is that the mastodon is a totally different animal from the
mammoth, and only found (so far) in north and central America. This one
too checks out.
The humans in the movie (which are very likely true
Homo sapiens,
even though Neanderthals certainly inhabited the area) are first seen
hunting buffalo. This checks out as well, as there are many different
species of bison in the Pleistocene fossil record. The length and
curvature of the horns, as well as the size of the bison itself, at
first made me think of
Bison latifrons, but that animal only lived in North America. A better choice for the buffalo hunted in the movie is the steppe bison,
Bison priscus,
as it was a widespread species and definitely lived in Europe; it also
makes many appearances in cave paintings, especially at the Cave of
Lascaux in France. This checks out too.
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From: https://www.lascaux.fr/en/prepare-your-visit/visit-lascaux/lascaux-2 |
Wolves
and hyenas also check out, though the animals seen in the movies are
their modern-day counterparts. Cave hyenas were massive, about twice the
size of extant hyenas. Judging from the presence of bones in different
caves, it appears that cave hyenas and humans actively hunted each
other, or at least scavenged from each other's kills. These hyenas lived
across Europe and Asia until about 20,000 years ago, after which their
populations severely declined. In any case, this too checks out. Of
course wolves check out because we know that dogs are descended from
wolves, so the question becomes what kind of wolves these are. While I
initially thought they could be dire wolves, they are only found in
North America. The wolves in the movie are probably simple cave wolves.
Finally,
there is the closest thing to a villain in the movie: the saber-tooth
cat. While we only are ever shown a shadowy outline of the beast that
kills a hunter early in the film, its profile is unmistakable.
Sabre-tooth cats (the most famous of which is
Smilodon fatalis,
though there are a few) were fearsome predators that went extinct about
10,000 years ago, so the timeline checks out. Now onto where they lived.
The most famous location for their bones is the La Brea Tar Pits in Los
Angeles, California, but they are found as far south as Argentina.
While saber-tooth cats were thought to be extinct in Europe as early as
300,000 years ago, a new jawbone discovered in the Netherlands has been
dated to as late as 28,000 years ago, significantly later than what
scientists originally thought! Therefore, while it is far more likely
that saber-tooth cats lived in the Americas around the time of the
movie, it is not impossible they were also in Europe. This checks out,
albeit tenuously.
Maybe it's because I'm a
scientist at heart, and that prehistoric animals are very close to my
heart, but while watching this movie, I automatically evaluated it. I
try to remember that it's been made for entertainment purposes, not for
education. Even so I can appreciate attention to detail, and I think
Alpha did a good job overall representing the paleobiology of
Pleistocene Europe. And, if I may say so myself, the movie itself was
good too.
Sources:
https://www.nature.com/news/sabre-toothed-cats-prowled-europe-200-000-years-after-supposedly-going-extinct-1.22861
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_hyena
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppe_bison
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megafaunal_wolf#cite_note-goldfuss1823-4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elasmotherium