Mesozoic Miscellany 59

Plenty of news about Jurassic Park 4 lately, with the latest latest news being that it might not be happening any time soon. Still, it's inspired a nice flurry of writing among our blogging comrades, and that's a good thing.

Matt Martyniuk at DinoGoss wrote about it, with this nice turn of phrase: "it's a bit sad that JP has eaten its own tail and become the self-perpetuating font of inaccurate science the original film was designed to destroy."

Andrea Cau doesn't really care either way, and invites those who might be losing sleep over scaly raptors to worry about more important things.

At the increasingly super Walking With Dinosaurs blog, Mike Taylor offered his opinion on what might make for a more interesting sequel than another trip to Nublar or Sorna.

Michael Marshall at New Scientist wrote a summary of the news, with a perturbed quote from Tet Zoo's Darren Naish, which I saw pop up in a few places going for the "paleontologists' reaction" angle.

John Conway wrote a great piece at his blog on Jurassic Park 4 and "AWESOMEBRO!" culture, which I'm sure we'll all agree is typified in John's lurid and gory work.

I'll wrap up this section with Mark Witton, who wrote about the resistance to feathery dinosaurs at his blog, doing a nice job of explaining how feathery integument might undercut an animal's monstrous nature.

"If popular depictions of dinosaurs are anything to go by, they were only vulnerable to two things: other dinosaurs, and giant rocks from space. Anything else can bugger right off: they're that freakin' hardcore. Modern animals, by contrast, struggle when someone redirects a river or we drive our cars too much. Dinosaurs could take that, and they'd eat your mother just for even suggesting otherwise."

Friend of LITC and super-terrific artist Sharon Wegner-Larson has added some super-terrific art prints to her Etsy store, including her incredible Dimetrodon piece entered in our All Yesterdays contest.

At The Bite Stuff, Jaime Headden wrote about the twin sides of his brain, the artist and the scientist, and how they work together in the process of reconstructing prehistoric forms.

You've surely seen it all over, but hear straight from Emily Willoughby the story of her fish-eating Microraptor illo.

Darren Naish visited the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival, and brought us the skinny at Tet Zoo.

At the Dinosaur Toy Blog, our own Niroot covered the new Collecta Diplodocus figure. And Marc wrote about that popular newish ceratopsid, Diabloceratops.

In response to the passing of Dr. Larry Martin, both Jason Brougham and Mickey Mortimer have written posts about his legacy in paleontology.

Happily having joined up with ART Evolved, frequent LITC commenter Herman Diaz as been writing some great stuff, including book reviews and a piece on his fun alvarezsaurid for our contest.

Marc and Niroot are admirers, and Trish Arnold also implores you (and me, I'm afraid), to get off our duffs and pick up Katrina Von Grouw's The Unfeathered Bird.

We've had notice of some dinosaur-related Kickstarter projects in the last week, and I share them here for your consideration. First up, Andy Nguyen's Dinosaur Poster project.
See more at the blog dedicated to his project.

Next, a short film called "Dino Hunt" has an Indiegogo campaign running.

You can keep up with the campaign and production at the official Twitter and website, as well.

Finally, check out a Kickstarter by the More Dinosaurs folks to fund a new dinosaur art website.


If you've got some spare nickels knocking around your pockets, there's never a shortage of dinosaur goods at which to pitch them, is there?