Mesozoic Mind

Phew, sorry for the hiatus. I didn't go to college after all - yet. I'm back! Got another obscure palaeo -documentary at hand! No, this is not that book I reviewed  despite the prescence of both the American Museum of Natural History and Mark Norrell, nor a documentary calledd The Dinosaur Hunters from 2002 about Gideon Mantell and other 1800's palaeontologists based off a book, nor the utterly terrible Discovery Reality series Dino Hunters . Sheesh, National Geographic's Dinosaur Hunters is such a generic title you need to specify what you mean everytime. Anyway... Rather, it's the National Geographic documentary special from 1996, back before Nat Geo had its own channel and put out specials on other channels and VHS. It was made at the height of the Dinosaur Renaissance as new discoveries of theropods were coming out of Asia to reveal how birdlike and caring the smaller dinosaurs were rather then the lumbering idiots. That's what the doc is about: those very...

Dino Death Trap  is one of the more well-known palaeo-documentaries under National Geographic's released in 2007, the same year as fellow well-known ones  Sea Monsters and the cenozoic doc Prehistoic Predators . It's also the one that introduced the early tyrannosaur Guanlong and early ceratopsian Yinlong to me, as with many others. Might I also add it was released under the banner Dinosaurs Unearthed , shared with the documentary about Edmontosaurus , Dino Autopsy  (which we will eventualy get to eventually). The documentary is about palaeontologists from both sides of the Pacific like the iconic Xu Xing and the Tyrell Museum's David Eberth discovering a trove of fossils the Middle Jurassic of northwestern China 160-155 million years ago and working to determine how they fit in dinosaur evolution since not many dinosaur fossils are preserved from the era, in particularly a whole column with layer upon layer of dinosaur skeletons. At the end of the doc we are treated t...

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...

Oh, I'm gonna love this Hello, and welcome back to Aquatober here at Mesozoic Mind. Last time we looked at Sea Rex , a documentary for IMAX theatres in museums. Now we're gonna take a look at... basically the exact same thing. Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure . Released by National Geographic in 2007, this film is undoubtedly a familiar source of nostalgia, whether its the film, its video game, or the series of videos Nat Geo uploaded. The film chronicles life in the Western Interior Seaway of Late Cretaceous North America through the perspective of a female  Dolichorhynchops ; I believe many have taken to calling her Doly for short and henceforth I shall too. She encounters may other denizens of the sea, including the giant sea lizard the Tylosaurus . The film also has a framing device of scientists uncovering Doly's skeleton. The film to put it in one word, is breathtaking . The visuals are all excellent and top-notch. The animal designs are bright, vivid, and amazin...