Mesozoic Mind

Today for Random Palaeo-Work idea of the Day, we're gonna do something different, and mostly do museum exhibits. Ichthyosaurs: Age of Sea Dragons As mentioned in my previous post on how I'd redo the Royal Ontario Museum's fossil dinosaur galleries, I suggested that the marine Jurassic fossils be replaced and put into storage, but also they go to their own exhibit. Well here it is. Layout The main layout of the exhibit would be as a Walk Through Time representing different periods of the mesozoic, with each section of it focusing on a different aspect of these marine reptiles. #1 Introduction - The first fossil discoveries of ichtghyosaurs in England, naturally bringing up Mary Anning. # 2 Origins in the Triassic (China and BC) - The evolution of early ichthyosaurs. # 3 Giants from the Deep (either Shastasaurus  or  Shonisaurus as centrepiece) - Covers the giant ichtyosaurs of the Triassic, and to a lesser extent how they as a whole swam via the fins. # 4 Cutting-Edge Hun...

Hoo boy, this is gonna be a toughie to sit through. Today, we are reviewing a very forgotten dinosaur documentary, a work not to be confused with a certain trading card series, generically named Dinosaur Attack . This is a very obscure doc, as while it itself has been uploaded online, albeit under a very dumb clickbait title*, there's next to nothing about it online. It's so obscure for the longest time I couldn't find even the date it was released, though eventually I did and apparently its 1999 (but even then I have my doubts). I gladly appreciate if anyone has more info. The basic premise of the documentary is about the Paluxy River trackway in Texas, which for those not in the know, dates back to the Early Cretaceous and preserves both sauropod and theropod tracks, each possibly made by the respective sauropod and theropod genera Sauroposeidon and Acrocanthosaurus . The neat thing is that based off the way each are arranged, it seems it preserves a hunt in progre...

For my birthday (well weekend afterwards) in 2021, me and my mother went to the Royal Ontario Museum, and several times afterwards. I loved all of it, but me being me, I looked most forward to the museum's dinosaur gallery, the James and Louise Temerty Galleries of the Age of Dinosaurs. They were good, but I did feel they could be better, and with some of if not a lot of the info and exhibit design outdated to the 2000's, it's due for a renovation. Now today we're doing something new: Palaeo-Redo , where I reimagine works of palaeo-media, both as I would have done or could be improved. And without further ado, I present... The Ahmed Family Gallery of Dinosaurs ! The new gallery will be themed around the jaws and teeth of dinosaurs and their diets and evolution. In one direction, if you arrive from the Dawn of Life Gallery, the axis would be the latter and how environmental change impacted them. In the other direction, is the anatomical differences between clades of dino...

  Just like the ROM visit, I got several books for my birthday. One of them is today's subject, The Dinosaur Hunters *, a book about the history of palaeontology and the study dinosaurs, from the origins of the subject to the impact dinosaurs have on pop culture. It is written by Lowell Dingus with help from Mark Norell, both from and book helped by the venerable American Museum of Natural History. * Not to be confused with another non-fiction book of the same name and subject by Deborah Cadbury. The contents of it are fairly broad in scope. It goes chronologically, and a basic list summary is: Origins of Palaeontology, from the Greek Xenophanes observing fossil shells in mountains to Nicolas Steno's work in geology against Church's dogma. England's discoveries, such as William Buckland and Megalosaurus, the Mantells discovering and describing Iguanodon , and Crystal Palace Park. During and beyond the 1870's, Belgium sees the discovery of more Iguanodon that change...

Hello, and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind for the new year! Today's subject of Mesozoic Mind, the oldest work featured so far, may trigger nostalgic flashbacks, whether your a British person growing up in the 80's or worldwide in the 2000's via Youtube. It's Dinosaurs: Fun, Fact and Fantasy , a 1982 Direct to Video documentary oriented at children, courtesy of Pickwick Video. It aired at a time when palaeontology was in the middle of re-evaluating dinosaurs not as sluggish, slow, evolutionary failures but a successful clade, yet the public hadn't yet quite caught on. Also, please excuse the low quality screengrabs. The video ain't even HD. After a montage of dinosaur related B-rolls (and featuring the OG King Kong from 1933), we begin with a stop motion short on life in Mesozoic England, most notably a stooped-over Megalosaurus  on the prowl and eventually felling an Iguanodon , because really, what else is it gonna eat? Cetiosaurus or anything it actually lived...