Mesozoic Mind

Hello, and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind. Let's begin again, to close out winter with an ice age palaeodoc! L.A. 10,000 BC is another one of those forgotten documentaries from the early 2000's. Naturally its from Discovery Channel. Man, I really need to branch out more and watch other docus not owned by a certain conglomerate now.... The docu's premise is of using Hollywood stuntmen (Greg Fitzpatrick, Cheryl Lawson, and Richard Bucher) to demonstrate how ancient Indeginous people would have survived and even hunted the megafauna in Reality show-style challenges. Wow, the 2000s were something else.  We first see three people, played by the stuntmen, having bad days as the narrator talks up how no matter how bad it seems to get these days, the past was way more difficult when all the megafauna were still around... and then its completely forgotten. It's a shame, as I feel like a potential set up of snooty rich folk getting a taste of real survival would be a novel premis...

Yes, this blog is still going on. Here's an assemblage of all the video-based palaeomemes i've made to tide you over:

  Man, what a great year for good palaeomedia, from fiction to documentary, to small youtube channels. Granted, even the big ones had flaws (looking at you, Jurassic World and "Walking with Dinosaurs"), but still. It just continued the hot streak since 2022. Hopefully even with all that's going on in the world I can get back to this blog and find my love for it again.

IT'S BACK! I'M BACK! Do I mean my blog or Prehistoric Planet ? Both. This time, instead on continuing with the dinosaurs, we go to our era, or rather the period before the human era: the Pleistocene. Granted, there are key differences that at least for me make it feel more like a spinoff then a proper new season. I rank the episodes (without elabouration): Grass Lands New Lands Desert Lands Big Melt Big Freeze The effects are great as ever. Framestore takes over from MPC after they sadly went the way of the di-, nah, pterosaur, and they still have have it 20 years on from a certain other cenozoic palaeodocumentary. Also ever, the sequences and photography are brilliant as ever. The species selection is good, going beyond the usual stock genera/northen hemisphere fauna, from australian megafauna to deep cuts like the giant otter Enhydriodon . That was a thrilling sequence. But all that said, I do admit Ice Age feels a bit... downgraded from the first two seasons. Here's why ...

Shark Week is on, that sesanationalistic pile of crap. All the docs are utter crap and do ittle to educate the public on what sharks are really like. But given I do like movking it, if I had to make a special for Shark Week... Sharks Vs. Dinosaurs Looks at fossil specimens of dinosaurs with evidence sharks fed on them, like bite mark or even teeth, and the sharks the made them, like Squalicorax , Certoxyrhina , and Cretolammna among others. Czechia’s only dinosaur Burianosaurus  Claosaurus and Silviasaurus from interior US. Appalchian dinosaurs as described by Brownstein (2018). Sources Michael J. Everhart and Keith Ewell "Shark-bitten dinosaur (Hadrosauridae) caudal vertebrae from the Niobrara Chalk (Upper Coniacian) of western Kansas," Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science 109(1), 27-35, (1 April 2006). https://doi.org/10.1660/0022-8443(2006)109[27:SDHCVF]2.0.CO;2  Madzia, Daniel; Boyd, Clint A.; Mazuch, Martin (2017). "A basal ornithopod dinosaur from the Ceno...

I saw Jurassic World: Rebirth in theatres couple nights ago, with Gareth Edwards at the helm. Here are my thoughts with it. Both the designs (for the most part) and action setpieces are generally excellent, some of the strongest in the franchise. My favourite would have to be the Mosasaurus and Spinosaurus chase are a great example of both, updating both away from the lasts films aesthethics something closer to current understanding yet still having the movie flair. The bahaviour meanwhile returns more to the first trilogy rather then the World trilogy. Meanwhile, the scene with the Titanosaurus is perhaps even more beutiful then the Brachiosaurus scene from the very first movie. Gareth Edward's love of scale really shines in it as Loomis strokes the leg, and any dino lover will cry like he does. Characters, while not nessicarily the deepest the franchise, are likable. Its especially for Dr. Henry Loomis himself, who's a nerdy sweet type closer to Grant then the generic macho...

Well, Walking with Dinosaurs 2025 came and went. The reboot to the icon of palaeodocumentaries, promising a new take that would appeal to audiences not versed in the nitty gritty by showing dig sites in action to show how palaeontology works alongside the usual nature doc-style life reconstruction sequences. It .... was .... Not very good. While no one ws expecting it to surpass the original, so much seems to conspire to make it subpar. There's a reduced budget compared to the original, so there aren't that many species, and to choose active dig sites only limited the sites, meaning half the series is Cretaceous North America. Conbine that with being made in the fog of COVID and at a time when nature docs are bing underfunded by a society caring only for sating the rich, and you thus get a series which feel thin and empty, not really a succesor to the classic. But which reaches the heights of what came before it and which plunged deeper then even the movie? Let's find out....

I finally went to the Royal Tyrrell Museum earlier this month, alongsife Calgay Zoo and Dinosaur Provincial Park. It was amazing. It lived up to my hopes for it. I took a lot of photos too. And yes, I'm back.