Mesozoic Mind

The atlas is one of the many ways dinosaur books have been organised, going from continent to continent and highlighting the genera and fossil find of each of them. To my knowledge, it became common in the 80's and 90's during the height of the Dinosaur Renaissance and into the 21st century, as new discoveries were being made and revaluated in the southern hemisphere and Asia that expanded views in palaeontological beyond just North America and Europe (although funding for research is still confined to those two, because imperialism), and into the 2000's. Today we will look at one such example, 2007's  The Kingfisher First Dinosaur Picture Atlas , written by nature writer David Burnie, who usually writes about extant life, most prominently for the  Eyewitness  series, and published by Kingfisher, a pretty big purveyor of books like these. The book's art meanwhile is by Anthony Lewis , who has done more in a series of similar childrens' atlases for Kingfisher. I ...

With the 30th anniversary of Jurassic Park having come in June, I had to celebrate, first by watching the film itself, but the day after that, I went with my father on June 12 to another befitting attraction: Jurassic World: The Exhibition , a travelling walkthrough attraction organised by Neon Global, which came to my fair city of Mississaga in May, specifically a former sporting good store now used for travelling. JWTE themes itself to travelling to the namesake park of the recent trilogy. It's actually the latest of many tie ins to the frsnchise, from The Dinosaurs of Jurassic Park back in the 1990's, to the Japenese-exclusive Jurassic Park Institute Tour , which I eagerly watched as a kid and wanted to go to. But enough of building up and let's begin our tour, shall we? The exhibit begins with a themed pre-show about boarding a boat to Isla Nublar, as video screens of ocean simulate the ride there. It's a nice start to the attraction if I say so myself. Neat post...

It's February, and with only 28 days in it, why not use the time for short stuff? I declare February Short Month = Short Reviews month, and mostly be about various prehistory-themed short form works this month I can find around the internet or remember, mostly animations, though maybe a book or two will be featured. Let's start off with a handful from the golden age of YouTube that was the 2000's and the time I grew up in, when it actually gave a damn about its users and didn't sellout to other corporations. T. rex in the Atrium (2010) There isn’t much to the Welsh short created by students of the University of South Wales. At a Welsh college campus, students find themselces terrorised by a Tyrannosaurus that bursts in and eats people. Where did it come from? We never find out. It's only 1:34 minutes long. The design for the T. rex seems to be the standard "Jurassic Park clone" design with all that entails, with nothing too different then the rest of them...

Hello, and we're back to Mesozoic Mind! For a weekend vacation to Ottawa, I visited the  Canadian Museum of Nature , a museum that serves as one of the national museums of Canada. It was pretty good, if fairly smaller then I expected and able to be seen in under two hours. Naturally, I capped off the visit with the museum's fossil gallery, where the vast majority of them are. (And you can too, with a museum's Matterport virtual tour they provide for free!) I admit my own experience was hampered by my own excitement and dealing with others, and I kind of rushed it. I'll still try to do my best here. The Fossil Gallery starts off with horizontal one hall that' fairly open but has a lengthwise dividing wall in the centre, while next is s vertical hall divided into both a walkthrough diorama and a section for cenozoic life. This is where things get interesting: the majority of it is on a raised platform accessible by stairs, overlooking the other half. The first galler...