I don't think it really matters at this point. When you're making a movie about fighting robots that transform, there isn't much logic involved

Fucking awesome

 

Ignoring that it would still require them to predate their own ancestors, if The Fallen and Jetfire were doddering old men with just a few thousand years of Energon deprivation, how are the Dinobots supposed to last 65 million years?

Because we all know how much attention the films pay to the supplemental material.

 

Except it DOESN'T ignore the "fact" that they'd predate their own ancestors, it instead ACKNOWLEDGES that they may well all already be millions and millions of years old for all we know because the movies haven't dealt with that at all in any concrete way whatsoever.

The simple fact that we know the original Primes were alive 17,000 years ago indicates nothing about their age other than suggesting their phenomenally long lifespans.

Likewise, the synergy (and the occasional lack thereof) between the expanded media and the movies is irrelevant. I just pointed out the time-hopping as a gimme since it IS there. For that matter Sentinel already mentioned reshaping time and space with his pillars so there's that, too.

These issues of time and Energon are nothing which couldn't easily be accounted for with some creative writing, just like the presence of the Dinobots themselves.