Mesozoic Mind

It's quite common knowledge that birds are dinosaurs. While a lot of people are mistaken and think they are seperate or merely descend from dinosaurs, those are typically the older and more conservative generations, and younger generations who grew up reading about the palaeontological findings concerning the evolution of them accepy this scientific fact easily. It's also well known that raptor can refer to both dromaeosaurs and the carnivorous groups of birds, due to the claws that no doubt grip their prey for the beaks to get in more easily, the word coming from the Latin word for thief or to seieze, Rapare. Both groups from the same clade, dromaeosaurs and birds of prey inspire awe and terror throughout our minds' imaginations and artistic creations. I write all this because earlier this month on the Eighth I went somewhere that's quite relavent to the above paragraph, and boy was it gud. Earlier this month, I went to Mountsberg Conservation Area with my parents for ...

It's baaack! I finally got to finish this Marvel-created Dinosaur Rennaisance-era series, or at least the third issue.  The lineup for this book, titled  Bone-Heads and Duck-Bills , goes this time: Ornithopods Hadrosaurs Pachycephalosaurs Mammals The Cretaceous period A soneone who actually likes ornithopods, I'm going to like this book. I'm just not going to cover the informational segments today. They're boring to read for me, and they drag. I may do them seperately instead. Starting with - Oh damn! The colours on this art! Colourist Euan Peters really deserves props here for the bold ones of the lava in the otherwise dark setting, and the same goes for artist Steve Hambridge. Meanwhile, the textboxes really do a great job of conveying an apocalyptic feel and the desperation the creatures face. I wouldn't expect anything less from the esteemed Dan Abnett, best known for his own tales of apocalyptic fiction elsewhere. Anyways, this segment takes place in Mid-Cretac...

Hello, to start off July at Mesozoic Mind, here's an idea I had in my head for a bit but never got around to writing - until now. Troodont Imagine this game... but with a different kind of parave. The game would be set in the Late Cretaceous and you play as a troodont* living in Campanian North America**. You use the maniraptor's famously big brain and wits to live - but also cause trouble for the heck of it. Just a few of what you can do in the game include: Cause stampedes of hadrosaurs or ceratopsids. Trap predators after you ( Daspletosaurus and Gorgosaurus , raptors, azhdarchids, and crocodilians) in humiliating spots and escape. Catching prey. And of course, just loudly pestering other dinosaurs and smaller creatures for fun. The tone would be inspired by Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote and other "Chase" cartoons, as well as  Dinosaur Planet and Dinosaur Revolution and their comical quasi-anthropomorphic presentation. The artstyle would be cartoony and cel-shade...

Chromosaurs I did promise such a thing in the Chromosaurus quicky.... so here you go! A throwback to 1980's science fiction works and cartoons in particular, a story about tribes of robot dinosaurs and their struggle to live, and that includes fighting amost one another, but also . Our main one we follow are naturally the T. rexes, but others include: Sauropods Ceratopsids Hadrosaurs Raptors Wings An animated film set in the Jurassic about the first  Archeopteryx  and his attempts to learn how to fly despite his flock ridiculing him so much. However, in a fiery climax as a volcano erupts, his flight saves him and fluies away to found the lineage. It's gonna be one of those where dinosaurs that lived in seperate areas and times (mostly each stage of the Late Jurassic what is now Europe and Asia) are in the same ecosystem and have a cartoonish art style, and yes I known Archeopteryx wasn't much of a flyer itself, though there will be plenty of getting accuracy right, such as ...

If you've seen compilations of early CGI films from the 1980's and 90's, you may have seen this. I previously mentioned it in my review of Donkin's Dinosaurs , but never got around to reviewing in full... as it were. This is Chromosaurus *, creating by a fledgeling Pacific Data Images, written by animator Don Venhaus (the director however is unknown as of this writing), and released in 1985, the bery fiest CG work to use dinosaurs in any capacity, albiet here robotic ones. It was quite a year for palaeomedia, as it included not just it (the first CG-animated work period), but also the CBS documentary Dinosaur!  with its stop motion dinos and no doubt many's introduction to the Dinosaur Renaissance's ideals, what is known as the Normanpedia that introduced the palaeoart world to John Sibbick, as well as the Disney movie  Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend . It seems to be the year that kicked off the hype for prehistory that led to Jurassc Park in the 90's, and...

With the 30th anniversary of Jurassic Park having come in June, I had to celebrate, first by watching the film itself, but the day after that, I went with my father on June 12 to another befitting attraction: Jurassic World: The Exhibition , a travelling walkthrough attraction organised by Neon Global, which came to my fair city of Mississaga in May, specifically a former sporting good store now used for travelling. JWTE themes itself to travelling to the namesake park of the recent trilogy. It's actually the latest of many tie ins to the frsnchise, from The Dinosaurs of Jurassic Park back in the 1990's, to the Japenese-exclusive Jurassic Park Institute Tour , which I eagerly watched as a kid and wanted to go to. But enough of building up and let's begin our tour, shall we? The exhibit begins with a themed pre-show about boarding a boat to Isla Nublar, as video screens of ocean simulate the ride there. It's a nice start to the attraction if I say so myself. Neat post...

Hello, and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind. June is here, and I'm kicking it off with two ideas related to how June is been labelled both Jurassic June and Pride Month, both of which are quite to my interests, hence why all June posts this months will have at least more then one Jurassic taxa and be dubbed Junerassic . Jurassic Giants Art by Nils Hoff (2011) Yet another documentary idea of mine, this one about one of the underrepresented Late Jurassic locales known: the Tendaguru Formation of Tanzania. It's not as well known as other contemporary formations (China's, Europe's, or North America's), but what sets it apart is that it preserves both terrestrial and marine fossils due to representing a coastal plain of lagoons and deltas. This documentary would thus be about the giants of both the land and the sea, and how the ecosystems of both influence one another. For example, washed out dung from dinosaurs on land brings nitrogen to the sea. And yes, there would be sc...

Remember my post on May the second ? How I said I was going to Chicago? The one place I've wanted to go for a long long time? I indeed visited the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago earlier this month for a wedding vacation, on the 6th, and although it was not my first visit, I hadn't had a chance to visit in years. the very first exhibit I headed to? The Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet  on the second floor, it's palaeontology gallery, first opened in 2006 after the museum closed a very 90's gallery "Life After Time". I LOVED IT. EVERY BLOODY SECOND OF IT. I was like a kid in a candy store seeing one of the most impressive array of fossils I've ever seen and excellent exhibitry. Not even a full bladder could stop my enthusiasm.  Admittedly I was so caught up in the rapture I wasn't really paying specifics and went too fast for my liking, so I'm not going to remember all the details of the exhibit. Forgive me for such and potentially missi...