Mesozoic Mind

While humans have been digging up fossils of prehistoric life (not just dinosaurs alone) and interpreting them for literally thousands of years and interpreting them, it's only been relatively recently in the 1800's onwards that human societies have understood them for what they are, and have created works centred on them, known as Palaeo-Media, from art of them, to literature, to film and television, to video games. In the last 20 years it could be argued there have been more of them made then in the last 100 years combined. It is here I propose a list of the periods of palaeo-media has seen so far and how each of them relates to the social values and events of their era. Worth noting is that the stratigraphy presented here isn't understood in the way clearly (more or less) defined layers of rocks or periods of time are, but rather as boxes within one another a la cladistic charts (hence the lack of specific dates), and previous periods can still last decades if not centur...

If you haven't noticed, a certain dinosaur skeleton from the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada has become the blog's background mascot. Its name has been designated as ROM 768. ROM 768 has long been (literally) overshadowed by Gordo the Barosaurus just metres away from it, yet it has an equally fascinating history and arguably greater impact on the world. It it the holotype specimen of Parasaurolophus  and more specifically the type species P. walkeri , arguably the famous and recognisable of the hadrosaur dinosaurs. It’s the most complete specimen of it ever found so far, and indeed very few other specimens have been found. Casts of it have been featured in other museums and attractions worldwide. With its discovery and description, we were led to breakthroughs in the study of communication habits of dinosaurs. Meanwhile, for the last 100 years, most reconstructions of it have borrowed much from it, most notably as a notch over its haunches once thought to be a...