Mesozoic Mind

Hello, and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind. Let's begin again, to close out winter with an ice age palaeodoc! L.A. 10,000 BC is another one of those forgotten documentaries from the early 2000's. Naturally its from Discovery Channel. Man, I really need to branch out more and watch other docus not owned by a certain conglomerate now.... The docu's premise is of using Hollywood stuntmen (Greg Fitzpatrick, Cheryl Lawson, and Richard Bucher) to demonstrate how ancient Indeginous people would have survived and even hunted the megafauna in Reality show-style challenges. Wow, the 2000s were something else.  We first see three people, played by the stuntmen, having bad days as the narrator talks up how no matter how bad it seems to get these days, the past was way more difficult when all the megafauna were still around... and then its completely forgotten. It's a shame, as I feel like a potential set up of snooty rich folk getting a taste of real survival would be a novel premis...

IT'S BACK! I'M BACK! Do I mean my blog or Prehistoric Planet ? Both. This time, instead on continuing with the dinosaurs, we go to our era, or rather the period before the human era: the Pleistocene. Granted, there are key differences that at least for me make it feel more like a spinoff then a proper new season. I rank the episodes (without elabouration): Grass Lands New Lands Desert Lands Big Melt Big Freeze The effects are great as ever. Framestore takes over from MPC after they sadly went the way of the di-, nah, pterosaur, and they still have have it 20 years on from a certain other cenozoic palaeodocumentary. Also ever, the sequences and photography are brilliant as ever. The species selection is good, going beyond the usual stock genera/northen hemisphere fauna, from australian megafauna to deep cuts like the giant otter Enhydriodon . That was a thrilling sequence. But all that said, I do admit Ice Age feels a bit... downgraded from the first two seasons. Here's why ...

I saw Jurassic World: Rebirth in theatres couple nights ago, with Gareth Edwards at the helm. Here are my thoughts with it. Both the designs (for the most part) and action setpieces are generally excellent, some of the strongest in the franchise. My favourite would have to be the Mosasaurus and Spinosaurus chase are a great example of both, updating both away from the lasts films aesthethics something closer to current understanding yet still having the movie flair. The bahaviour meanwhile returns more to the first trilogy rather then the World trilogy. Meanwhile, the scene with the Titanosaurus is perhaps even more beutiful then the Brachiosaurus scene from the very first movie. Gareth Edward's love of scale really shines in it as Loomis strokes the leg, and any dino lover will cry like he does. Characters, while not nessicarily the deepest the franchise, are likable. Its especially for Dr. Henry Loomis himself, who's a nerdy sweet type closer to Grant then the generic macho...

Ah, T. rex. It needs no introduction, and even the youngest nor laypeople not familiar with all but the basics of palaeontology know what it is. It has easily solidified itself as THE dinosaur by default, and has studied countlessly more then arguably any other fossil lifeform on Earth. Ironically, being so well known has meant it's been taken for granted, even called overrated versus other dinosaurs, and many, many misconceptions about it, from like merely a scavenger that couldn't even hunt live prey. This is a shame, as Tyrannosaurus is a pretty cool dino on its own, able to crush bone like no other theropods couldn't and had one of the more fascinating growth stages of any of them. T. rex: The Ultimate Predator , organised by NYC's renowned American Museum of Natural History, which came to the Royal Ontario Museum this month and intends to educate visitors on what is known about the dinosaur, from how it evolved from other dinosaurs to how it lived, and bust those m...

Hoo boy, strap in... So on Sunday the 13th, Dinosaur - With Stephen Fry  premiered on the british Channel 5. Remember how I said I was interested in it?  That as the first major palaeo-documentary after Prehistoric Planet and had the rare "Human host back in time and interacts with them" format I love and want to see more, I was hyped and eagerly awaited more after its announcement. But then came the trailer , and all that hype pretty much vanished. Once did premiered however, the Palaeosphere literally flipped on it overnight. Why? Stephen Fry's Dinosaur was not very good. At all. It feels like the monkey's fist flipped me and us all off, a cheap cash in on the success of Prehistoric Planet . The basic premise is that Stephen Fry imagines himself going back in time to interact with dinosaurs. The first episode focuses on the Jurassic period and focusing on both Diplodocus and Allosaurus  and a confrontation between them, before Fry watches the Diplos do other stuff...

I acknowledge I live on the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Huron-Wendat and Wyandot Nations. Since October last year there's been a unique little exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum. Toronto-based Fisher Creek Cree artist Kent Monkman, who depicts through his two spirit alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle the culture and history of Indigenous people, and the trouble and resilience against White colonialists, lampooning western art that glorified the white thieves (not settlers, they were thieves, plain and simple). I visited it two times so far: one in October when it debuted, and this month on the 8th. You can also view paintings on his website . Now a warning to any Indigenous reader: I'm not one of you (I'm South Asian-Canadian), so I might and will get things very wrong. I apologise in advance. While the primary focus is on Indigenous culture and history, there are a few fossil specimens at the...

Ah, books. For many a palaeonerd my introduction to prehistory. So many encyclopedias, picture books, so many across libraries. Where should I start? How about with the venerable Dorling Kindsesley books from Britain, who have published plenty of education books that have helped fuel interest and love for the subject. And in particular is today's subject, DK's First Dinosaur Encyclopedia (2007), written by Caroline Bingham with input from the noted Dougal Dixon. I borrowed it from my local library, an edition from 2007. It has a few tears here and there, but otherwise is in good condition. I remember reading it at (one of) my uncle's house, with various images placed into my memories: Brachiosaurus in the desert, zebra-striped Therizinosaurus , a fishing Baryonyx , a rainbow-coloured t. rex among others. Two typical spreads of the book The book is a general overview of dinosaurs, from their biology to the Mesozoic, with a few detours for specific groups and taxa. Since thi...

Today's subject was watched a lot by me as a kid on the mythical format known as DVDs, an animated film with the rather generic title of Dinosaur Island , direcyed by Will Meugniot of Exo-Squad fame and released by defunct animation studio DiC. Dinosaur Island 's plot is about four teens being selected for a competitive reality show to win a million dollars, but the plane taking them to their destination crashes, and where they land is a lost world wehere dinosaurs still roa, ans must survive it. Sound familiar? Supposedly this is is an adaptation of The Lost World  by Arthur Conan Doyle, the Camp Cretaceous to the latter's Jurassic World if you will. Let's get the biggest problem out of the way with DI'02 : the animation is not very good. DiC was infamous from its stiff and flat animation and art style, especially towards the end of its lifetime, and here the animation is very reflective of that. Everything moves relatively jerky, and the backgrounds aren't...