Mesozoic Mind

Phew, sorry for the hiatus. I didn't go to college after all - yet. I'm back! Got another obscure palaeo -documentary at hand! No, this is not that book I reviewed  despite the prescence of both the American Museum of Natural History and Mark Norrell, nor a documentary calledd The Dinosaur Hunters from 2002 about Gideon Mantell and other 1800's palaeontologists based off a book, nor the utterly terrible Discovery Reality series Dino Hunters . Sheesh, National Geographic's Dinosaur Hunters is such a generic title you need to specify what you mean everytime. Anyway... Rather, it's the National Geographic documentary special from 1996, back before Nat Geo had its own channel and put out specials on other channels and VHS. It was made at the height of the Dinosaur Renaissance as new discoveries of theropods were coming out of Asia to reveal how birdlike and caring the smaller dinosaurs were rather then the lumbering idiots. That's what the doc is about: those very...

Ah, Eyewitness . That 90's British natural history franchise I adore. In the libraries of the 2000's you flourished as both books and VHSs, narrated in the latter by Andrew Sachs*, and would inspire many young kid to love science and the natural world. * I will never accept the Martin Sheen Americanised versions, which I swear I didn't grow up with as a Canadian. While prehistoric life has been discussed throughout episodes (including season one's  Dinosaur , naturally), today we will focus on the season two episode  Prehistoric Life , about the evolution of animals throughout time and the study of them. The episode relays its information as a broad overview of life over Deep Time, going from: Calculating the age of the earth Stromatolites Cambrian Trilobites Dunkleosteus Carboniferous plants and insects Dinosaurs and Pterosaurs Mammals of the Cenozoic Human evolution And finally waxing about the creatures that may have never been preserved in the fossil record never to...