Mesozoic Mind

Happy halloween season, reader! Say, remember these books? It's easier if you were born and/or raised in the 90's or early 2000's, but to those born later then that, allow me to introduce them to you. These are the Looking At... Dinosaurs books . They are all illustrated by Tony Gibbons, and written by a body that included authors Heather Amery, Tamara Green, Frances Freedman, Mike Brown, and Jenny Vaughn. Finally, Cambridge's David Norman was the consultant for the book series, while Gareth Stevens Publishing published the books; they also did other series like it, covering topics like animal victims of the Anthropocene Extinction and arthropods. Each of the books follows a typical formula. There are a few deviations in order from book to book, but they mostly go: The introduction to the genus A size comparison spread A spread with the skeleton of the subject. An illustration of the dinosaur in its time. Two or three freespace pages that vary by subject, often seeming ...

  The Hatchling premeired on October 17 last week from this mini-review's posting. I watched it the moment it came out, and here are my thoughts on it (if you haven't seen my Twitter tweet on it). I think it's excellent. First and foremost, the visuals for the dinosaurs done by Max Bellomio ( Forgotten Bloodlines fame) are excellent and highly accurate, provided by Max Bellomio. The short's runtime, while only 10 minutes, is still rather well paced, playing out like an excerpt from a feature length film, aided by great performances from the actors (I hope they go onto bigger things), and keeps the other dinosaurs in it only briefly to keep focus on the Deinocheirus . I also like how the characters actually do address that the dinosaurs showing up and making themselves at home would be bad for the eosystem no matter what (something I wish a certain Jurassic Park film did in detail, but enough of that). The music is also nice too, carrying the classic 80's and 90...

Hello, I wanted to bring to your awareness a short film coming this month and only announced yesterday, called The Hatchling . Not much is known so far besides a score piece being released, but won't stop me from writing about it. First, the wide beak of the Hatchling and the claws show it's going to have the giant duck-like Deinocherirus as the dinosaur at the heart of it. As someone who loves  Deinocheirus  and how bizarre it is, I'm on board with seeing it. This probably one of the first appearences of it in fiction as opposed to a non-fiction work like documentaries or books. And of course I'm glad they chose a dino like Deino instead of thw usual Rex or herbivore we've seen a milliomn times in stories like these. The short also appears to be done in the now-classic 80's throwback style, like a Saurian version of Stranger Things , as evidenced. 1980's throwbacks are so common these days, aren't they? Like, the hand drawn poster style is almost as es...

It's the start of the Spooky Season! What better way for Mesozoic Mind to celebrate it then a concept for a palaeontology-centric horror film? My idea is inspired by all the horror pictures on Twitter (I will never call it X) I've been seeing around the time I wrote this. Like this one for example. Thieving Lizards Our protagonist is palaeontologist Billy DeSantis, a hotshot palaeotologist who begions the film making. However, he starts seeing these ghostly beings who resemble prehistoric life. Some are raptors, some are mammalian creatures, but either way they unnerve the heck out of Billy, who recognises them all as creatures he has studied directly in particular the taptor, which he has named Kleptiasaurus  (from Klepto, the greek). They even start to get more and more aggresive, charging at him, breaking into wherever he is, and snarling in his face. Initially it looks like Billy is an innocent victim who doesn't deserve the haunting, and you want him to escape them som...