Mesozoic Mind

Ah, books. For many a palaeonerd my introduction to prehistory. So many encyclopedias, picture books, so many across libraries. Where should I start? How about with the venerable Dorling Kindsesley books from Britain, who have published plenty of education books that have helped fuel interest and love for the subject. And in particular is today's subject, DK's First Dinosaur Encyclopedia (2007), written by Caroline Bingham with input from the noted Dougal Dixon. I borrowed it from my local library, an edition from 2007. It has a few tears here and there, but otherwise is in good condition. I remember reading it at (one of) my uncle's house, with various images placed into my memories: Brachiosaurus in the desert, zebra-striped Therizinosaurus , a fishing Baryonyx , a rainbow-coloured t. rex among others. Two typical spreads of the book The book is a general overview of dinosaurs, from their biology to the Mesozoic, with a few detours for specific groups and taxa. Since thi...

Hoo boy, this is gonna be a toughie to sit through. Today, we are reviewing a very forgotten dinosaur documentary, a work not to be confused with a certain trading card series, generically named Dinosaur Attack . This is a very obscure doc, as while it itself has been uploaded online, albeit under a very dumb clickbait title*, there's next to nothing about it online. It's so obscure for the longest time I couldn't find even the date it was released, though eventually I did and apparently its 1999 (but even then I have my doubts). I gladly appreciate if anyone has more info. The basic premise of the documentary is about the Paluxy River trackway in Texas, which for those not in the know, dates back to the Early Cretaceous and preserves both sauropod and theropod tracks, each possibly made by the respective sauropod and theropod genera Sauroposeidon and Acrocanthosaurus . The neat thing is that based off the way each are arranged, it seems it preserves a hunt in progre...

( Link to episode itself ) Hello, and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind. Today, the work we're looking at actually isn't Mesozoic in nature (only at the very,  very start), instead being the era we apes live in, the Cenozoic. I admit as amazing the Cenozoic was/is, my heart is always going to be more interested in the Mesozoic and all works associated with it, but nevertheless, will do my best to take interest in this one. After the monumental success of Walking with Dinosaurs , Tim Haines and Jasper James were working on a next instalment of the series, one focusing on the Cenozoic era and all it's bizarre mammalian life. In fact, their very first idea of the Trilogies of Life was to start off with it, but a mix of the CG of the time being unable to render the CG fur of mammals properly and their general lack of popularity versus dinosaurs led to the first series, but after 2 to 3 years, they were able to, and so they made Walking With Beasts , this year celebrating its 20th a...

Welcome back to Mesozoic Mind, and we're concluding what I've dubbed Walking with Dinovember by finishing up the other half-erm, three fifths of the Chased by series, Chased by Sea Monsters *. Like the first two, CBSM features zoologist and TV presenter Nigel Marven and a film crew travelling though time in search of particular species. * Again, not called this back home in Britain, only officially so in US and Canada, where the two are just called "A Walking with Dinosaur Trilogy", but let's face it, the former is way more memorable (even if technically Nigel isn't actually chased by them that much here). This three-part series consists of them in a boat called the Ancient Mariner visiting the oceans of 7 points in time, each labelled as the Deadliest Seas of All Time thanks to the sea creatures which inhabit them. Episodes are " Dangerous Seas ", " Into the Jaws of Death ", " To Hell..... and Back? ". In order visited, the per...

(link for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6KolH0LekY&list=PLzV6yGh6hXDbaa0SvKxy3cywqM--SnWBR&index=1&t=5s&ab_channel=GabrielM.R ) While Walking with Dinosaurs is undeniably a british show, it was not made by them lone: the American Discovery Channel also helped make it. Naturally they aired it stateside, albeit as a single special narrated by Avery Brooks.  However, we're not discussing it. We’re discussing Prehistoric Planet . This was a recut of the series made for younger audiences that aired on Discovery Kids (back when it was just Discovery Channel aimed at kids and not a Hasbro channel) shortened the episodes into roughly 21 minute episodes. There was a season two that did Walking with Beasts , and narrated by Christian Slater (making it the closest to a cenozoic sequel to Dinosaur Planet , but its Lost Media save for the intro ). This was undoubtedly many an american and canadian's introduction to it, but I am not one of them. I discovered the orig...

Welcome back to Mesozoic Mind ! We're continuing the Trilogies of Life this month with another instalment of it: 2002's Chased by Dinosaurs * and 2003's Sea Monsters . I remember watching them as a kid and being obsessed with them. Even today I can practically quote the whole scripts from memory. * Note that they're not called this back home in Britain, only officially so in US and Canada, where the two are just called "Walking with Dinosaur Specials" The biggest difference from the rest of the franchise is that there's a human onscreen hosting it and interacting with the prehistoric life: british naturalist Nigel Marven (who if your like me, is no stranger to this kind of thing ). In many regards, its in the vein of Animal Planet's nature documentaries put out by Steve Irwin (RIP) and Jeff Corwin put out at the time. At the time (and still is), this was pretty novel: on one hand you had a typical documentary with plenty of humans in our time being int...