Transformers: Age of the Primes toyline discussion || update: stock renders of upcoming Alpha Trion, Micronus, Flatline, Fireflight, Skydive, ++

[NovaSaber]

Dinosaurs were already extinct in real life 4 million years ago, and are still around in the Savage Land in the present in the Marvel universe, so I don't think justifying the Dinobots had anything to do with the reason for the time gap.

I think the reason was they just wanted "Transformers crashed on Earth some time ago and are now waking up" to justify them being from space without anyone having seen them coming, because Hasbro's original idea was that they were "robots in disguise" whose presence was not widely known (which both the cartoon and comic quickly abandoned, even if the comics had people ignorant about their exact nature).
Of course, that could have been justified with just thousands of years rather than millions.

 

[Undead Scottsman]

Yeah, Ark would have had to crash 65+ million years ago to get living Dinosaurs, outside of the wacky comic book nature of the Savage Land. Actually longer because a lot of the species the Dinobots were based on lived in wildly different eras.

(Based on some real quick and dirty googling, apologies for any mistakes)
T-Rex, Triceratops: 66–68 million years ago
Brontosaurus: 156 to 146 million years ago
Stegasaurus, Pterodactyl: 150-160 million years ago

 

[NovaSaber]

Swoop is a Pteranodon, from approximately 85-88 million years ago.

 

[Undead Scottsman]

My bad, thanks.

 

[Princess Viola]

starting to get the feeling whoever was writing this stuff back in the 1980s wasn't thinking 'oh yeah this japanese changey robot toyline we got will probably still be around 40 years later, better make sure the backstories make sense'

 

[Sabrblade]

starting to get the feeling whoever was writing this stuff back in the 1980s wasn't thinking 'oh yeah this japanese changey robot toyline we got will probably still be around 40 years later, better make sure the backstories make sense'

Having spent time talking one-on-one with Flint Dille for about a whole half-hour last night (because he was the one who kept the conversation going), that's putting it mildly.

 

[LordGigaIce]

Swoop is a Pteranodon, from approximately 85-88 million years ago.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

I'd keep the 4 million year time skip, but not have everyone normally live that long. It's just Shockwave. He will carry out his orders until told to stop, so if he's never told to stop he will just do it forever in defiance of sanity and his own mortality.

 

[LBD "Nytetrayn"]

I'm glad my war is "just" several thousand years by comparison. That's honestly plenty.