Mesozoic Mind

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...

  With winter season in full swing, I think its as good as time as any to focus on a rising star in palaeo-media, the Prince Creek Formation of Alaska, which has been seen in quite a few documentaries over the last decade and even a movie (which I swear I am avoiding) as a snowy wonderland. Among the first is today's subject  March of the Dinosaurs  (2011), a feature-length documentary (with a name that references another certain documenary about (avian) dinosaaurs in arctic conditions) written by the Trilogy of Life's Jasper James, and directed by Matthew Thompson ( Dinosaurs: The Final Day with David Attenborough ).  The film is about a herd of the duck-bill giant Edmontosaurus and the hornless horned dino Pachyrhinosaurus migrating from the PCF in Alaska to Alberta across Laramidia for the winter, but run into much trouble along the way; occasionally we cut back to the PCF to follow a Troodon named Patch struggling to survive in the winter up there. However, the m...

Well, I did promise I'd review it back in April....   Hoo boy, where do I even begin with 2010's  Tyrannosaurus Sex ? This documentary is pretty much only known for one thing: being about dinosauur sex and mentioning penises a lot, even discussing the size of it. You probably saw this clip below as a kid and snickered your ass off as the repeated mention of penises and sex. In the greater scheme of things, the infamous reputation probably stems from how as with most of recent human history, it was deemed by the ruling classes taboo to discuss such topicsto gain control of them for themselves and so was pushed into unacceptability territory, which ended up backfiring through the forbiden fruit effect, meaning were were better off of humaity just accepted it from the start.... but that's beyond the scope of this blog post. Anyway, for the longest time Tyrannosaurus Sex was lost media, with the sole upload getting taken down thanks to that darn copyright, and only being uploa...

Fifty posts and 5000 views, everyone! It's been a year with my ADHD complicating schedule, but I made it! What better way to celebrate this blog about prehistory then with what I prefer best? Obscure as heck Palaeomedia I'm quite sure no one has reviewed before. Question: What's everyone's favourite National Geographic palaeo-documentary... that isn't Sea Monsters or Prehistoric Predators ? I'll let you wait, but that's quite emblematic of how little National Geographic Channel has put out such content versus Discovery Channel or BBC. This especially applies to the 2010's, as there only a few specials about T. rex to note. The 2000's meanwhile features a lot more palaeodocs, but these are all of the talking head kind (with the exception of the theatrical Sea Monsters ) which are 80% talking heads  and fieldwork with scientists and 20% CG in situ reconstructions, which tend to last shorter in consciousness then narratives like BBC and DC have put ou...

While I wait for my unfairly-delayed visit to the ROM, I convinced my father to visit my local library, the first time in by my estimate a year and a half. I admit with embarrassment I flocked to the kids' section eventually, as I always have since I was young. It was there I saw a book on the shelf that caught my attention and after being checked out: 2013's  Dinosaurology: The Search for a Lost World *. * Technically its  Being an Account of an Expedition Into the Unknown South America -- April 1907 , but I am not writing that subtitle nor saying that aloud The book itself is part of the larger Ology series that's been going on since 2003, each professing to be a lost work about a particular subject, ranging from real and providing info ( Oceanology ,  Knightology,  and Spyology ) to the fantastical ( Monsterology , Alienology , and Dragonology ), and written by a fictional author, although in truth they're all mostly done by authors  like Dugald Steer, and o...