Mesozoic Mind

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind! While the next proper review is still being written, we're gonna be tided over with a fairly short documentary from 1988 and San Francisco-based Harbinger Films, A Whopping Small Dinosaur! ( Link at Internet Archive  - watch it while you still can!) This 26-minute documentary made at the height of the Dinosaur Renaissance documents the discovery and excavation of the Triassic dinosaur  Chindesaurus  at Petrified Forest National Park, albeit 9 years before it was even given a name as Robert Long and other alumni of the University of California Museum of Palaeontology in Berkley study it, while relevant info is also talked about, like the environment it was from and previous expeditions the UCMP has done, like with Annie Alexander . Fin fact: the specimen is nicknamed Gertie, after the saurian cartoon character from 1914, though the name appears nowhere here. While there isn't really all that much to AWSD information or creative

Hello, everyone (and boy there's little chance of topping the previous Stratigraphy post for a long time, like holy $#!+). Today, we're gonna do our second instalment of Palaeo-Redo. Specifically, we're gonna give a makeover to the 2007 Imax documentary Dinosaurs Alive!  by Giant Screen Films, also the source of the roaring dinosaur so many use on the internet. While I haven't reviewed  Dinosaurs Alive yet, I will tell you there isn't much in the way of Dinosaurs being alive in the film through CG sequences, which are fairly short and few, with most of the doc focusing on palaeontologists of the American Museum of Natural History. While not a bad idea on paper, the fact that there isn't all that much dinosaurs (what people pretty much come for) in it makes it in my opinion a bit of a letdown, not helped by a sluggish pace that makes it hard to get through. This is a shame, as the models for the prehistoric life are all pretty good. But what if things had gone a

I'd like to thank everyone who clicked on the links here and stayed throughout the last year for supporting me, so here's another round of Random Palaeo-Work ideas of the Day ™ ! Jurassic Jaws Art by Robert T. Bakker for The Dinosaur Heresies . Narrative two-part documentary about the life of a Megalosaurus in Middle Jurassic England 166 million years ago given the name of Billy Buck, from a hatchling to an adult and its trials in life. Megalosaurus bucklandii  - The lead dinosaur species for the documentary. Cetiosaurus oxonensis  - A sauropod dinosaur. It maybe nowhere as big as others in Jurassic England, but they can still pack a punch. Proceratosaurus bradleyi  - A small tyrannosauroid dinosaur. They're quite the menace when Billy is young, but once he grows up they're only a nuisance at worst. Think the Ornitholestes from Walking with Dinosaurs . Dacentrurus armatus /” Omosaurus ” - A big stegosaur. Callovosaurus leedsi  - A small flocking ornithopod that's co

While humans have been digging up fossils of prehistoric life (not just dinosaurs alone) and interpreting them for literally thousands of years and interpreting them, it's only been relatively recently in the 1800's onwards that human societies have understood them for what they are, and have created works centred on them, known as Palaeo-Media, from art of them, to literature, to film and television, to video games. In the last 20 years it could be argued there have been more of them made then in the last 100 years combined. It is here I propose a list of the periods of palaeo-media has seen so far and how each of them relates to the social values and events of their era. Worth noting is that the stratigraphy presented here isn't understood in the way clearly (more or less) defined layers of rocks or periods of time are, but rather as boxes within one another a la cladistic charts (hence the lack of specific dates), and previous periods can still last decades if not centur

The first trailer for Jurassic World: Dominion has just been uploaded, and boy is there a lot to unpack. I'll let you watch it first, then share some thoughts on it. The film looks incredibly gorgeous, like on the level of the original trilogy. No terrible blue filter... so far. Horseback riding alongside dinosaurs is quite the aesthetic. FEATHERED DINOSAURS ARE IN. Better late then never for the Jurassic World trilogy, I suppose. I love the Therizinosaurus and Pyroraptor for that, even if they aren't perfect. The new Parasaurolophus designs are also neat. So is seeing a very good Quetzalcoatlus attacking. But I don't like the new raptors (apparently Atrociraptor ), barely a step up from the regular ones we've seen. Grant, Ellie, and Ian are back and together, and hopefully they do it an organic way and not just in a fanservicey one. Well it seems the Prologue  was not messing around. I'm cautiously optimistic for the film and will see it in theatres. Goodbye for n