Greg Dwyer

26th Mar 2018

Tremors 2 (1996)

Corrected entry: Kate finds a Graboid fossil and explains that the rock is from the Precambrian era (which ran from about 4.5 billion years ago through about 500 million years ago), thus making them literally the oldest complex life-forms in the history of Earth. Cool idea, but it makes no sense. Life in the Precambrian era was mostly bacterial or simplistic organisms such as sea-sponges and jellyfish late in the era. Something like the Graboids just couldn't have existed, both because they're too complex to have existed in that time-frame and also (and more importantly) because there wouldn't be an adequate food source for them to thrive. Sure, maybe they could have existed during the time of dinosaurs, but that only started about 250 million years ago, way after the end of the Precambrian era.

Correction: They retconned this in the TV series, saying that Kate had misdated the fossil, which was actually from the Devonian Period.

Greg Dwyer

I don't think a retcon validates a movie mistake.

Correction: The oldest known life forms. Graboids existed, therefore other life forms existed too, which they ate, we've just not discovered them yet.

Jon Sandys

Correction: The graboids might not have originated from earth. Like suggested they could be aliens and their species landed on Earth 5 billion years ago.

lionhead

The movie states that they are from Earth. The suggestion that they're aliens is invalidated in the film itself, as it is proven wrong by the scene in question. Ergo, this correction is invalid. Also, this correction fails to address one of the key issues brought up in the mistake - they wouldn't have a viable food source and would have died out, even if the preposterous notion that they were aliens were true.

Correction: This is speculation at best regarding creatures that don't exist in real life. There's no way to say they wouldn't have adequate food source without knowing what they needed to survive, or how they evolved.

Bishop73

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