Dinosaur Christmas Part 2

The apparently drunk dinosaur is back for more yuletide merriment...

Dinosaur Christmas Part 1

Yeah. I don't know, either.

The Christmas Dinosaur

1. That's a crappy soundtrack.
2. That's not a dinosaur, it's a pterosaur.
3. Ah hell, Merry Christmas.

Dinosaur in Christmas

And now begins the Christmas week dinosaur video marathon. Enjoy!

Insight into the way my little brain works: the main reason I'm posting this is because it's the only dinosaur connection I've been able to make for Perfect Strangers star Mark Linn-Baker, whose wife is the daughter of Arnold Lobel, the illustrator of the recently-featured book Dinosaur Time. Why that strikes me as being important/relevant/neato/cool? I have no idea.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Long Gone

This poem appeared in a Macmillan reading textbook called Snails to Whales, published in 1989. I picked it up used in a Lafayette, IN thrift store. Emily Wakefield or Mary Bauer, I've got your book if you ever want it back.

Bob Shein is credited as the artist. Long Gone comes from a collection of kid's poems called Zoo Doings by Jack Prelutskey, who also published a collection called Tyrannosaur Was a Beast, illustrated by Arnold Lobel, who you may remember from last week's vintage dinosaur art post.

77 Years Ago in Popular Science

The upcoming Dinosaur National Monument warranted a short blurb in the September 1932 issue of Popular Science. Dig those clown shoes on the sauropod. Thx Google Books.

Backlash of the Dinosaurs.

Now that Clash of the Dinosaurs has been out for a couple weeks, the scientists involved have had a chance to see it... and it's not pretty. Matt Wedel, one of the paleontologists behind the fine, enthrallingly-titled blog Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week, posted a scathing review today. He describes the process of being contacted by Dangerous, Inc. (the production complany behind the series), consulting with them, and filming his talking head segments. He includes emails and diagrams that he sent Dangerous. As he does on the blog, he went to great lengths to explain sauropod anatomy. I can't imagine working on the series and not being totally thrilled and thankful to have an engaged scientist consulting me.

Instead, the producers took his efforts to debunk the old, tired, dead-in-the-water idea that sauropods had "two brains" and flipped it to make it wound like he endorsed the idea. Really. Read his righteous anger here.

That this kind of spectacle-over-science is done by what is supposedly a science channel is a complete shame. Complete, bitter, miserable freaking shame.

I'm glad the Onion came through when I needed a laugh today.

Away We Go

Jennie and I leave tomorrow for the UK, to spend two glorious yuletide weeks in a veritable winter wonderland. From what I understand, the English do possess rather advanced technology, and the internet should be accessible. But I've taken the precaution of scheduling a full slate of LITC posts for the duration of the trip. No slackin' off here!

We'll be flying in an Airbus A319, apparently. If only I flew in true style. Like the mighty Rasp.

Image courtesy dinoriders.com

The Glob

Here's a really cool Walt Kelly illustration from the February 18, 1952 issue of LIFE Magazine. It accompanied an abbreviated version of The Glob, a children's story by John O'Reilly.



Kelly is a legendary cartoonist, the creator of the classic comic Pogo. Most of his other drawings in LIFE are pretty small, but you can see more at a blog called Satisfactory Comics, including a nasty Allosaurus. It doesn't look like The Glob became a lasting hit, but you certainly can't blame it on Kelly's drawings. They're killer. It's out of print, but there are some used copies to be had. If you're looking to thrill your kids with an "evolutionary fable," you could do a lot worse.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaur Time

In 1974, two giants of children's literature collaborated on a dinosaur book for young readers called Dinosaur Time. Peggy Parish found fame a decade earlier with her first Amelia Bedelia book. Her illustrator was Arnold Lobel, the writer and illustrator of the Caldecott Medal-winning Frog and Toad series.

Lobel's illustrations, as you'd expect from his other work, are fanciful and full of personality. I'm especially fond of this saggy-skinned Stegosaurus...

...and this roly-poly ankylosaur.

I'd like to share some of the cool two-page spreads, such as a Pentaceratops, but my copy, an old hardcover cast-off from Burtsfield School in West Lafayette, IN, is super fragile. If you don't want to take my word for it, it looks like a softcover version is still in print.