Mesozoic Mind

Hello, and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind. To cap off Juneseums month, here are the exhibits for extinct life I've visited in life, worst if not least good to absolute best. Do be aware that 1) I'm focusing on permanent exhibits, and 2) I haven't visited most of these in years if not months, so I don't have the most accurate memories at the time of writing, and I made have forgotten a few exhibits and a lot of the details over the years. #5 - Ripley's Believe it or Not, Niagara Falls This may seem like a weird place to list, but this franchise of the famous "museum" at the Tourist Trap that is Clifton Hill, Niagara Falls, does have a dinosaur skeleton and a few other fossils on display, specifically  Monolophosaurus , an ichthyosaur, and a proboschidean skull, and not a whole lot else (though I do remember a tuft of mammoth fur somewhere here). A further gallery also has an Allosaurus skull, which in total is a quota y. I am certain they're all casts an

Hello and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind . However, today we are not tackling dinosaurs or even the Mesozoic for the most part. rather, we are delving into a different group of fantastical creatures, one from our own imaginations. The name?   Fantastic Beasts™: The Wonder of Nature . On June 18 (after a week-long delay) I went to the Royal Ontario Museum for a temporary exhibit about mythical creatures and real ones and how they intersect, using Harry Po- sorry, the Wizarding World as inspiration, courtesy of  She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-cuz-of-Issues-Beyond-Scope-Of-This . It's all told through both taxidermy specimens from the NHM, props from the movies, and replica models of the creatures. The basic layout of it the exhibit goes like this: the first section is about mythical creatures of European Mythology and their inspirations, like how trading Narwhal tusks created Unicorns, or how manatees inspired unicorns.  The second section is about various animal behaviours that are akin t

So it happened. After twenty-nine years, the Jurassic Park film franchise has come to an end. Jurassic World: Dominion 's trailers were quite promising, showcasing perhaps the largest-scale Jurassic Park film. And of course, the first true feathered dinosaur in film canon. So what do I think of it (without revealing spoilers too much)? It... Was.... Not very good. Like I forgot most of it a day later levels of bad. It takes the flaws of the last two, retains them. What was I expecting? The reviews are under 40% on Rotten Tomatoes. The whole film feels episodic and disjointed. Plot points are forgotten as soon as the scenes end and have no further elaboration. The plot of dinosaurs on mainland US and illegal dinosaur trade in particular is all but forgotten in the second half, which takes place entirely in one place in Italy. The same goes for the dinosaurs, both new and returning: many only appear for a single scene outside of montages, many not even named. Considering how dumb no

Fifty posts and 5000 views, everyone! It's been a year with my ADHD complicating schedule, but I made it! What better way to celebrate this blog about prehistory then with what I prefer best? Obscure as heck Palaeomedia I'm quite sure no one has reviewed before. Question: What's everyone's favourite National Geographic palaeo-documentary... that isn't Sea Monsters or Prehistoric Predators ? I'll let you wait, but that's quite emblematic of how little National Geographic Channel has put out such content versus Discovery Channel or BBC. This especially applies to the 2010's, as there only a few specials about T. rex to note. The 2000's meanwhile features a lot more palaeodocs, but these are all of the talking head kind (with the exception of the theatrical Sea Monsters ) which are 80% talking heads  and fieldwork with scientists and 20% CG in situ reconstructions, which tend to last shorter in consciousness then narratives like BBC and DC have put ou

Hello, and we're back to Mesozoic Mind! For a weekend vacation to Ottawa, I visited the  Canadian Museum of Nature , a museum that serves as one of the national museums of Canada. It was pretty good, if fairly smaller then I expected and able to be seen in under two hours. Naturally, I capped off the visit with the museum's fossil gallery, where the vast majority of them are. (And you can too, with a museum's Matterport virtual tour they provide for free!) I admit my own experience was hampered by my own excitement and dealing with others, and I kind of rushed it. I'll still try to do my best here. The Fossil Gallery starts off with horizontal one hall that' fairly open but has a lengthwise dividing wall in the centre, while next is s vertical hall divided into both a walkthrough diorama and a section for cenozoic life. This is where things get interesting: the majority of it is on a raised platform accessible by stairs, overlooking the other half. The first galler