Dinosaurs: Fun, Fact and Fantasy review
Hello, and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind for the new year! Today's subject of Mesozoic Mind, the oldest work featured so far, may trigger nostalgic flashbacks, whether your a British person growing up in the 80's or worldwide in the 2000's via Youtube. It's Dinosaurs: Fun, Fact and Fantasy , a 1982 Direct to Video documentary oriented at children, courtesy of Pickwick Video. It aired at a time when palaeontology was in the middle of re-evaluating dinosaurs not as sluggish, slow, evolutionary failures but a successful clade, yet the public hadn't yet quite caught on. Also, please excuse the low quality screengrabs. The video ain't even HD. After a montage of dinosaur related B-rolls (and featuring the OG King Kong from 1933), we begin with a stop motion short on life in Mesozoic England, most notably a stooped-over Megalosaurus on the prowl and eventually felling an Iguanodon , because really, what else is it gonna eat? Cetiosaurus or anything it actually lived...