Q: Though with that mindset, I suppose dinosaurs were considered okay (despite this presence also being pretty fantastical when you get down to it) by the dev team because they did indeed exist in the past?
A: Correct. There is real world knowledge in you can relate to, presume, and somewhat count on. It starts to get weirder, and harder to relate to, when facts are entirely made up. While obviously there would have been many players that would have enjoyed fantastic creatures...it was unclear just how large that audience would have been, considering the core of what ZT was about. I can tell you plainly the developers would have LOVED to create a Dragon, etc...but we just couldn't get enough data to justify it as a reasonable product risk and add on at the time.