• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, Yesterday

Only in the warming days of June could a summer CGI-based documentary series about dinosaurs ever come to network television.

But here it is -- a completely animated docuseries about dinosaurs -- and in the case of Episode One, their predecessors from the Triassic period, which preceded the Jurassic. “Triassic Park,” anyone?

Indeed, this series -- titled “Surviving Earth” and premiering Thursday on NBC -- is the best animated show about prehistory since “The Flintstones.” 

Episode One of “Surviving Earth” is titled “When the Climate Changed.” The action takes place 232 million years BTV (before television). 

And yet, the amount of knowledge we have about some of the creatures profiled here, right down to the sounds they made and the emotions they felt, is nothing short of unbelievable.

“Unbelievable” in this context is meant to be taken literally with one caveat: I have no idea how much knowledge science has gleaned about Triassic wildlife from fossils. 

But in this show, the challenges of a young Ischigualastia hatchling (pictured above) to find food and evade predators are told in such detail that it can make you wonder whether this show is, at least in part, made up.

The challenges to the baby Ischigualista include dodging the trampling feet of two bison-sized male adults Ischigualista who are fighting -- just like all men, says an unnamed narrator.

The female Ischigualista, on the other hand, are nurturing, loving and caring. Those male Ischigualista can sure learn a thing or two from their womenfolk!

The Ischigualistia are said to be the largest herbivores of the Triassic period. Their story is supposed to represent all Triassic wildlife, which this show says were entirely wiped out by a period of extreme heat -- the dreaded climate change! 

According to the show, the flora and fauna of the Triassic period thrived because their world was drenched. 

The show says the period was characterized by a million years of monsoons that never stopped. 

The skeptic in me has to ask: How do we know what the weather was like on the planet Earth for a million years a couple of hundred million years ago?

The death of what was, for all intent and purposes, all Triassic life on Earth, paved the way for the rise of the dinosaurs presumably millions and millions of years later, says this CGI dinosaur show.

The show does not say whether climate change will finish off the human race in the manner of the Ischigualista, but if that is the show’s implication, then it is no fun indeed.

“Surviving Earth” premieres Thursday (June 11) at 8 p.m. Eastern on NBC and Peacock.