Mesozoic Mind

Hello everyone and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind. Day, who here remembers this video back in the day? If you do, you know what I mean. If not (or even if you do)... lemme introduce you to  Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia , yet another palaeo-documentary released for IMAX theatres during the 2000's (notably came out alongside Dinosaurs Alive ), during the early stages of the Awesomebro period when the Trilogy of Life was done and edgy tributes were coming in, and I adored the trailer alone for it.  80 million years ago, they ruled the earth. Come and see for the first time: real life sized dinosaurs... on the world's largest screen . Oh, man, that's still cool 17 years on. Also, I thought from how the trailer was edited the humans were gonna interact with the dinosaurs by travelling back in time to study the dinosaurs, Nigel Marven-style. That would have been amazing... Anyway, this creation of Quebecois creative Marc Fafard documents the Cenomanian dinosaurs of South America...

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 ...

At Mesozoic Mind I have written (or at least tried to write about) very obscure documentaries few have heard about or remember, as a way to stand out. However, today's subject is a very, very obscure one, as in "literally never heard of it before" and "No one else ever did": Dino Wars . This was a Discovery Channel doc from 2005. The only evidence for it was this schedule screenshot found by someone in the Discord server I frequent trawling for other Lost Media related to Dinosaur Planet , and finding this schedule there. "Cold Case"? Ugh, the irony here.... And this is all we have. No screenshots, no press releases, no DVD releases nor clip let alone that was once on Youtube at some point, nothing on Internert Archive. No known species in it. No nothing. Literally nothing else is known save the date, November 5, 2005. No wonder everyone forgot it so soon. It's Lost Media. I didn't even know about it until last year thanks to that Discord user...

This series for this month is back, if a bit rushed. I apologise in advance. A Dinosaur Story (2008) Here is a story by  about a baby t. rex who finds an egg and knocks it down the side of the hill its on, but pushes it back up. It hatches into a baby  Brachiosaurus , the implication he has made a friend. The thing I note the most was created by alumni from Sheridan College, which is in my hometown of Mississauga, just down the street from where I live. I do admit I like the Tyrannosaurus model here, in spite of the blatant Jurassic Park influences. Maybe it's how the thin frame and short head evoke the real growth cycle tyrannosaurs had, based off fossil evidence. That said, A Dinosaur Story is another short student film, and there isn't much else to it; the CG don't even leave marks on the live action backgrounds nor has any music, and there aren't even much jokes in it. Its story is so short and simple its basically something you'd tell a toddler. If you watche...

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...