DINOSAURS HAVE FEATHERS! Get over it!

While episode 4 of Primeval is about future beetles (so there is little for me to talk about), episode 3 included a Dromeosaur. Or was it? The model from an earlier episode had feathers, but this one they seemed to think: “Screw science, we’ve made so many mess ups we might as well go the whole hog”.

De-evolution of “Raptors”from Series 2- Series 5

Picture by Emily Willoughby http://emilywilloughby.com/

But even the feathered “raptors” were badly done, as this picture by Emily Willoughby  shows:

Need I say more?!?!

Yes, because some morons are showing OVIRAPTORIDS without feathers too! Oh yeah, we haven’t found a feathered Oviraptor so it OBVIOUSLY didn’t have feathers (note the sarcasm in italics), even though we have found its close cousins with them. The same goes to  Therizinosaurs and all other Maniraptorans, plus most baby Tetanurans (enter Sciurumimus) and Tyrannosaurs (Yutyrannus, Guanlong, Dilong).

 

Picture above by Chris Masna of Rob Bakker, one of the first people to theorise that a Dromaeosaurs had feathers.

What annoys me is that there are many talented Paleo-artists and Amateur Palaeontologists and yet most “documentaries” and films use a slightly modified Jurassic park Raptor with some feathers glued on. To all documentary makers: Follow these rules: http://tomozaurus.deviantart.com/art/Common-errors-for-Velociraptor-178827028

Finally, I leave you with another of Chris’ work:

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Magical Tim Haines Liopleurodons

Look Charlie, its the magical Liopleurodon!

Calling Liopleurodon magical may seem silly but in Walking With Dinosaurs and Primeval’s case, that description would be quite fitting.

Liopleurodon was actually about 6-7 metres long, possibly 10, but probably no more than that. So the idea it could pluck a Eustreptospondylus off the land is obviously make-believe. A 25 METRE Liopleurodon is just going to far.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! THEY BE STEALIN’ MY CREDIBILITY!

The source of this nonsense comes from one man, Tim Haines. This guy worked on the “Walking with” series and is co-creator and executive producer of Primeval. When asked why the Liopleurodon is so big he said something along he lines of “Just because we haven’t found one yet, doesn’t mean they didn’t get that large”. Yeah, just because we haven’t found a Unicorn, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Oh by the way, Santa doesn’t exist. (Maybe its quite fitting to have an oversized Liopleurodon living with Unicorns!)

Oh submarine, I don’t know how I can express the feelings I have for you…

It’s not a surprise then that another magical Liopleurodon (Actually there were 3) attacked a nuclear submarine. Oh, and living with him was this:

So what is it? Apparently Tim Haines confirmed that the Balaur which will appear in Episode 5.3 will be coloured black with red eyes, as a joke because it comes from Transylvania. Oddly the dino in 5.3 is a Dromaeosaurus so many say the one in 5.2 is a Balaur, as it fits the description. Others say it is a Eustreptospondylus. Balaur did have a third, useless digit on its hand, which would have been visible if the animal had no feathers, like this freak of nature. But unfortunately, it had neither in Primeval!

It doesn’t matter what I am, I’m going to get eaten anyway!

Poor Eustreptospondylus, remembered through time as “that dino which was grabbed from the water’s edge”. While I still find people on YouTube and various Forums who still think Liopleurodon is King. Sad really.

Revenge is tasty!

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Speculative evolution dinosaurs

What if dinosaurs had not become extinct? How would they evolve? What would happen to mammals? I have addressed this in the document below. Enjoy!

New dinos hypothetical

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Dinosaurs of Britain

This is a video that I made for my English project, together with three friends. Note that I am NOT yet a paleontologist but aspire to be one.

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Sea Monsters

The third in the series.

 

Post who you think is the ultimate sea monster, I’d like to know everyone’s opinion on this.

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Ankylosaurus

Here is the second comic strip, all about an awesome battle between an Ankylosaurus and a T-rex.

To all T-rex fans, WHAT COULD YOU HAVE EXPECTED!

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Proceratosaurus

This a new comic strip of a Proceratosaurus and an unfortunate event (for him at least) with a cetiosaurus. Enjoy!

If you have a dinosaur you want me to make something like this for, tell me!

 

 

 

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Sinornithosaurus

They’ve done it again. Sinornithosaurus is the third dinosaur we know the colour of and, because it comes from the same place as sinosauropteryx and confuciusornis, it would be great in the coloured dinosaur film. In fact it was shown on Planet dinosaur recently as a gliding dinosaur with a venomous bite.

Awesome

 

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Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart

This year I went to Heidelberg and Stuttgart on holiday. Whilst in Stuttgart I visited the State museum for natural history. The museum is split into two parts, the Schloss Rosenstein is for stuffed animals and the Museum am Lowentor is only for German prehistoric animals (so no t-rex, triceratops, velociraptor or any of those really common dinosaurs.) This is about the great central display showing a diorama of late Triassic life.

The most famous of the dinos is plateosaurus, the most famous triassic animal (joint with coelophysis.) But far from its fairy tail land of America ,of where it did not live, plateosaurus is a German citizen. But it wasn’t the only herbivore on the block. A even larger dino called gresslyosaurus also lived there. Much controversy surrounds this 9 metre beast as many say that it is just a large plateosaurus. The museum doesn’t so I dont know who to believe.

You may ask what ate these beasts if there were no coelophysis or postasuchus. Well, coelophysis’s relative liliensternus. This beast probably hunted in packs to bring down the huge prosauropods. As well as him there was also procompsognathus who hunted insects and squabbled over the remains of liliensternus kills.

But most importantly there are the pterosaurs. The first pterosaur was eudimorphodon. This tiny German pterosaur was the ancestor to pteranodon, pterodactylus (German but also French so was not mentioned in the museum) and all the other pterosaurs.

 

 

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Snow leopard

This is a video of my amazingly cute kittens acting as snow leopards.

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