Mesozoic Mind

Well, to all those who've stuck around to read it since March, the year is closing with the "Happy" Holidays behind us and the New Year of MMXXII soon to come, and I've completed the first one of Mesozoic Mind . It's been a great time here and have had a good time writing them, if sporadically and unfocused (I'll work on that). I'll be honest, I admit that last point has definitely been a problem when writing, causing works to be delayed a bit more then I wanted, unable to write full paragraphs at a time. But still, when I can do it, I can write a lot, and I love doing so. It also has helped me get more, read more, and bond with my mother. Doesn't help on the subject of unfocused that the December schedule was skreonked up by my mother's chemo (now you know about that), hence why the Dawn of Life review was delayed by weeks, and reviews I had planned are now in January, and I'm still annoyed at it. But enough grumbling. If I had to rank my fav...

Well now that we've hit 2000+ views here just in time for Christmas, here's one last Random Palaeo-Media Work idea of the Day for the year. Saurian Summoners A YA book series about a group of five young teens who because of circumstances discover a magic spellbok that allow them summon spirits of the dead - animals that is, and most if not all of them are mesozoic reptiles from North Africa, most notably dinosaurs like Suchomimus , Carcharodontosaurus , and Paralititan , but also crocodilians and pterosaurs like Sarcosuchus and Alanqa , and even cenozoic animals like Basilosaurus and Gigantophis . You see, the backstory myth for this book (told by our main lead's grandparent) would be that the origin of the Sahara desert can be traced back to an an invasion of evil monsters back when it was a green savannah, and the gods of North Africa's civilisations summoned the ghosts, like the Ancient Egyptian desert god Sutekh bringing the bones. Sure enough, these same monsters c...

Happy holidays to all of ya! Here are some ideas for all the support and views you gave me! Savage Lizards A film about a family which washes up on a Lost World inhabited by mesozoic life, including a race of highly intelligent raptors who take them in and give them sanctuary. However, one member doesn't appreciate it, an asshat teenager who buys into the awesomebro rhetoric of all dinosaurs being violent savage monsters who can't do anything but but fight and kill, and threats them accordingly, refusing to see otherwise, even though A) he acts very violent and bellicose himself, and strains his relationships with his family, and B) the raptors are fairly pacifistic outside of hunting and aren't all that violent, and as a whole the other dinosaurs would act as animals do and avoid conflict. Things get so heated between the three that a fight erupts between them, leading the family to leave the island for home, save the son, whose arrogant beliefs get him disowned and abando...

If you haven't noticed, a certain dinosaur skeleton from the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada has become the blog's background mascot. Its name has been designated as ROM 768. ROM 768 has long been (literally) overshadowed by Gordo the Barosaurus just metres away from it, yet it has an equally fascinating history and arguably greater impact on the world. It it the holotype specimen of Parasaurolophus  and more specifically the type species P. walkeri , arguably the famous and recognisable of the hadrosaur dinosaurs. It’s the most complete specimen of it ever found so far, and indeed very few other specimens have been found. Casts of it have been featured in other museums and attractions worldwide. With its discovery and description, we were led to breakthroughs in the study of communication habits of dinosaurs. Meanwhile, for the last 100 years, most reconstructions of it have borrowed much from it, most notably as a notch over its haunches once thought to be a...

After a week-long delay, I finally went to the Royal Ontario Museum to visit a new exhibit, once on Dec. 12 and the next on 19th. While the museum already has galleries for fossil fauna of the Mesozoic era and the Cenozoic era, for the longest time it had no gallery for the Paleozoic before either of them. Shame, as the museum has a pretty good collection, especially from the Burgess Shale in BC, easily one of the most iconic fossil deposits ever. Fortunately, over the course of the last decade the ROM has worked to rectify this. Taking an old event space on the second floor, it has turned it into the Willner Madge Dawn of Life Gallery . this is what it was before The exhibit starts off with a round space introducing the concepts of the exhibit, with at its center a skull of the armoured fish Dunkleosteus  and other fossils along the walls, such as trilobites, ancient plants, and most notably on the wall a giant cast of the floor of Newfoundland's Mistaken Point, and highlighting t...