Mesozoic Mind

  Just like the ROM visit, I got several books for my birthday. One of them is today's subject, The Dinosaur Hunters *, a book about the history of palaeontology and the study dinosaurs, from the origins of the subject to the impact dinosaurs have on pop culture. It is written by Lowell Dingus with help from Mark Norell, both from and book helped by the venerable American Museum of Natural History. * Not to be confused with another non-fiction book of the same name and subject by Deborah Cadbury. The contents of it are fairly broad in scope. It goes chronologically, and a basic list summary is: Origins of Palaeontology, from the Greek Xenophanes observing fossil shells in mountains to Nicolas Steno's work in geology against Church's dogma. England's discoveries, such as William Buckland and Megalosaurus, the Mantells discovering and describing Iguanodon , and Crystal Palace Park. During and beyond the 1870's, Belgium sees the discovery of more Iguanodon that change...

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...

Hello, and welcome to Mesozoic Mind! Today, we are making our first foray into pure fiction in months. Yesterday, a teaser trailer for the latest and [apparently] last Jurassic Park film was released, Jurassic World: Dominion , after a while with the fellow Universal film Fast and Furious 9 in select Imax theatres, but been known to the users of Paleo Media Central , a Discord server run by one  Kingrexy  I am part of. Let me start off that the last two films, Jurassic World and Fallen Kingdom , I don't like them too much, due to both the undercooked and bland story and how compared to the well made original trilogy's designs, theirs are very inaccurate in many ways, with FK's Baryonyx being an infamous offender with taking its "Dino-Croc" image way too far. However, from  what I can tell, Dominion will actually try for better accuracy, helped by having Stephen Brusatte as scientific advisor (way better then 2000's era Jack Horner), . The Prologue itself wi...