Styracosaurs in Love and War

Ah, Dinosaur Revolution. Er, Dinotasia. Mishandled by the Discovery Channel, never allowed to blossom into its own splendid weirdness, reviled by critics (seriously, they did not like it). Director David Krentz has shared another bit of pre-production material on the Facebook page: an animatic depicting a story of Stryracosaurus intraspecific combat cut from the production. It's enjoyable on its own, but it would be wonderful to see it fully realized one day.



That desire to see it fully fleshed out just takes me back to those days of anticipating what I hoped would be a much larger phenomenon. It was always fun to see Krentz's promotional videos for DR before it aired; they were a perfect illustration of the joy so many of us take in prehistoric animals, as in this walkthrough of the Rahonavis sequence:


Regardless of the eventual handling of the work, Dinosaur Revolution must have been a joy to work on. And these rough sketches from Krentz's pen have more soul in one stroke than the entire horde of shoddy CG dinos populating the shelves of bookstores do (before you accuse me of prejudice, keep in mind that it's against the shoddy part, not the CG part). Eh. I'm feeling cranky. At least it doesn't seem that Krentz has given up; in a recent email to the Dinosaur Mailing List, he asked for other perspectives on the potential for scientific institutions to collaborate with media companies in mutually beneficial arrangements. I really hope we haven't seen the last of his work in documentaries.

UPDATE: Dinosaur blogger Mark Wildman has informed me in the comments of this post that in the UK at least, the production has been reaired under its original Reign of the Dinosaurs title. It will premiere this Thursday on the Discovery Channel at 9 o'clock GMT.

More on Dinosaur Revolution:
In Defense of Dinosaur Revolution
Review of Parts One and Two

More Dinosaurigami

In September of last year, I featured a couple examples of Nicolás Gajardo Henríquez's dinosaur origami. Flickr user origamiPete also has a fondness for things paleo. Here are some of his.

Styracosaurus:


Ankylosaurus:


The Mesozoic aquatic bird Hesperornis:


Pete has also done some other ancient creatures, including the hammerheaded amphibian Diplocaulus and the saber-toothed cat, Smilodon.

Jurassic Park 4

I'm going to go ahead and ask that you bop on over to the super dino blog Dinosaur Tracking, written by the knowledgable and charming Brian Switek, and vote on today's poll: which dinosaur (from his own list) would you like to see in the long-rumored but stalled Jurassic Park 4?

From his list, I'd definitely want to see a therizinosaur or two. My list:

1. Oviraptor: The first time I saw Oviraptor, it blowed my brain up real proper. Such a strange head, and now that we know it bore feathers, it's time to give it some bigger exposure. One of the great dinosaurs, for sure. Let's see what ILM could do with it.

2. Amargasaurus: Switek's sauropod wish is Nigersaurus. Can't fault that, but I think people would go bonkers for fin-backed Amargasaurus.

Amargasaurus, via Alex 95 @ flickr

3. Styracosaurus: One of the wildest ceratopsians. Heck of a head.

4. Troodon: Always one of my favorites. Maybe not much of a threat to the protagonists, but I'd love to see those big eyes come to life.

5. A clever plot and well-written characters: Perhaps more improbable than genetically engineered dinosaurs.

Who knows if JP4 will ever happen. There have been many rumors over the years. Perhaps the most entertaining was reported at Ain't It Cool News five years ago. Quoth AICN's Moriarty: "There’s the eight-year-old-boy side of me that thinks that a DIRTY DOZEN-style mercenary team of hyper-smart dinosaurs in body armor killing drug dealers and rescuing kidnapped children will be impossible to resist." Read the rest here. I know you want to...

Maybe a Dino Ate Your Baby

Paleontologist Dave Hone, who writes one of my favorite paleoblogs, Archosaur Musings, is in the news this week for a paper he wrote with Oliver Rauhut of the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology in Munich. The hypothesis they put forward is that theropods likely preyed upon juveniles much more than full-grown adults. It makes a lot of sense to me - predators go for easy meals, and I don't look at Edmontonia or Styracosaurus or Anatotitan and think "fast food." Hone and Rauhut also bring up the fact that compared to today's mammalian megafauna, large dinosaurs probably reproduced in much greater numbers - as evidenced by the nesting colonies of large herbivores we've found, or the egg sites of sauropods (which are more like those of sea turtles, indicating they didn't rear their young). A sure way to ensure the survival of your genetic material is to make a whole lot of it, something we see in all sorts of extant species. The greater number of babies hanging around, the greater the opportunities for predators.

This view is, of course, at odds with fantasies like T. rex squaring off against a snorting, dust-kicking Triceratops bull. Again, we are held down and forced to consider the idea that the more spectacular exercises of our imaginations may not be plausible. I would argue that this is just another example of why we "set childish things aside." Once we drop the idea that the natural world is there to perform a pageant for the entertainment of Homo sapiens, we take a step closer to developing a more profound (and I would argue, much more entertaining) appreciation of the world and our place in it.

I just started this blog (though for a few months I did weekly dino posts at Gentleman's Choice), and maybe have brought this up twice, and I already feel like I'm endlessly harping on it. I also feel like I endlessly harp on dumb science reporting, so...

Scientific Blogging writes,

"The 21st century has been a real disappointment for Tyrannosaurus Rex, by far the most famous dinosaur. Not even recent finds of slightly bigger, and maybe even more terrifying, species like Giganotosaurus could dent the aura of "T-Rex". But if 'The King' turns out to be just a baby killer the party may be over.

Yes, the party is over. You'll see T. rex suddenly disappear from coloring books and place mats and cartoons. Heartbroken kids will dump their lovingly painted models in the rubbish bin! They might even spit on them! It will be like the deep pain I felt when one of my heroes, Sergeant Slaughter, did the unthinkable and switched to the Iraqi side during the first Gulf War. Trust me, it was not pretty! I'd also like to know where they got the idea that Giganotosaurus was "more terrifying." I don't think a relatively small difference in size would make Giganotosaurus or Spinosaurus much more terrifying than T. rex. Despite the few feet of difference, my level of unease would be about the same in the presence of any of the three.

The last sentence in the excerpt annoys me as well, the "just a baby killer" part. Or, as the Telegraph's headline reads, "Tyrannosaurus rex 'picked on baby dinosaurs and ate them whole'". These just smack of anthropomorphism. I guess I'm nitpicking here. It's not the worst science reporting I've seen. At least the stories give a bit of space to quotes from Hone. Science reporting is probably a thankless job, especially in today's journalistic environment. I'm sure there's pressure to amplify things, to give John and Jane Public a single, quickly sketched image of the story before they click the animated ad next to it, and are suddenly enrolled in an online college.

Also, I had a sort of watershed moment this week: I commented on an Archosaur Musings post, an honest question, and recieved a thoughtful, illuminating answer from Hone. This is the first time I've ever asked a question of a scientist and gotten a response. Let me tell you, it's cool. If you think I'm not slapping myself for taking so long to figure out how great the internet can be as a source of scientific learning... trust me. I am. On to more catching up...

Anatotattin'

I am not a tattoo dude. There are plenty of reasons that people like marking their skin. While I understand the desire, none of the reasons are worth the procedure or its permanence of its results. But I suppose that if I was of the tattooing persuasion, I would do something like this:

A pachycephalosaur and (Flickr Image since removed by user) a Protoceratops couple. Admirable in that they're not the classic five or six dinos. The only problem with this approach is that as paleontologists make further discoveries, I might be stuck with an obsolete piece of paleoart on my skin. Not attractive. It might be best to play it safe, like these folks:

I think my ideal dinosaur tattoo would be something like a Troodon on my tummy, and my chest hair would be a cute little hairdo. I would also need to solve the problem of growing hair on my chest.

Also: Face to face with dinosaurs, via virtual reality - Video from Scientific American. It looks like a big ViewMaster toy. Speaking of which...