Mesozoic Mind

With  Eyewitness: Prehistoric Life  we began the year, and with  Eyewitness: Prehistoric Life  we end it Well, it's the lasr day of the 2023 CE, and I've had a long one. It's been a long year that saw all sorts of new discoveries in palalaeontology, from the tiny to the tiny jellyfish  Burgessomedusa to the giant Perucetus , and of course, new Palaeo-media come out. I've seen everything from games to TV series and books, to films, but mostly new documentaries, from awe-inspiring Prehistoric Planet season 2, to the big pile of okay that was Life on our Planet , to the atrocious cheap cash-in that was "Frynosaurs" . No matter what they were, I feel spoiled by how so much new stuff we got. Truly I'm living in a golden age not seen since the early 2000's (same time I was born in fact). I've written a lot of blog posts this year, and reached some record views too by legitimate means this time. More notably, I made several trips, most prominently to Chi

 Season's Greetings and Happy Holidays folks! As a christmas day gift, I'll give you all a follow up to last week's post, where I show you sonething made new fashioned out of something old: concepts for new episodes of Dinosaur Planet that fix the balance issues I voiced last time! I'm setting them on landmasses that weren't in the original series' lineup These two episode concepts were actually concieved in 2020 before I even got the idea to start the blog. I've decided to update them with what I know now. They're a what if? excersise, and I will write the episodes as if I were in 2003, using sources and information from at least before that year and nothing after, though there won't be much concern for budget from both Meteor Studios and Evergreen Films, as it is my imagination. Before we get started, I'd like to offer a special thanks to Deviantart user ThalassoAtrox , for inspiring me to write these after seeing a rundown of Dinosaur Planet

Happy holidays, folks! We're bringing out the big guns for this holiday special with a celebration of a great palaeo-documentary close to my heart and has turned 20 years old this month, Discovery Channel's Dinosaur Planet , from 2003! Dinosaur Planet is one of my all time favourite palaeo-documentary, and for good reasons. They were some of the first docs I saw as a kid, seen via Youtube and while I didn't watch them in full until much later, I loved the introes alone. Also, I had much fun with the Dino Viewer on Discovery's website, seeing both the run cycles and the "dun-dun" sound switching tabs on it made. Oh what joy it brought me, now lost to to mists of time as many a species through time were, an ironic fate considering the subject matter. As for the series itself, it's in the WWD-style format of being a nature documentrary presentation which I always love, building off the formula When Dinosaurs Roamed America did. The designs of the fauna crea

A couple days ago I went to the Ontario Science Centre, a science museum on Toronto's east side. It's a pretty nice museum if I say so myself; and concerning recent political events caused by Ontario's premeir, deserves to stay where it is  and be spared from conservatives. But mostly I came to visit one temporary exhibit, that's pertinent to my own interests. Dinos(saurs) in Motion is that one a travelling exhibition from the mind of Imagine Exhibitions and late artist John Payne, about kinetic scupltures of dinosaurs, some of which are borderline robots thanks to being interactive via levers and stering wheels attached to pullies. It has been set up in the Science Centre's atrium, with a fairly minimal setup. The species lineup for the exhibit, going clockwise, goes: Ornithomimus and Struthiomimus Plesiosaurus Diplodocus Deinonychus Ouranosaurus Gastornis Parasaurolophus Ankylosaurus Tyrannosaurus Pachycephalosaurs (I think they have no signage and thus don) Who

Happy holidays! Today's article isn't by me, but an acquaintance of mine Mason Pierce, A.K.A Mr-Ultra, and I helped work on it. He's a guy who already posted this on his Tumblr , we agreed it would also be posted here with a few mods added (see if you can spot them). ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Prehistoric Planet Season Three Now, it should be no secret that I frankly adore Prehistoric Planet for what it is. I’ve already done a whole article going over what a possible 2nd season would be like, and now that it’s been months since the release of the actual Season 2, I’ve come to accept how it returned to the Maasrichtian of the Late Cretaceous. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for PHP to showcase animals and habitats from other time periods as much as the next guy, as I think a season based on the Oxfordian stage of the Late Jurassic would be great. However, with that said, I’m content with the show staying within the Maasrichtian for a