I need to catch up on several more years of new plesiosaur models. The notable new company on the block is PNSO, the Peking Nature-Science Organisation, although having pushed out an impressively prolific catalogue of prehistoric animal models, to date they have produced only one commercially available plesiosaur figure, a Kronosaurus in…
Today is the official publication day for my new children's picture book The Tyrannosaur's Feathers. As previously announced on this blog, the book was co-written with Jonathan Emmett, illustrated by Stieven Van der Poorten, and published by UCLan Publishing. We are all so happy with how it has turned out. The front cover of…
A month has passed since my new book, The Plesiosaur's Neck, was published. So, it's a good time to reflect on some of the events and reactions that followed its release. Firstly, it was exciting to see the book in the wild, particularly at the Heffers branch of Blackell's in Oxford, where…
It is with much excitement that I am able to reveal the front cover of The Plesiosaur's Neck, a new children's picture book written by Jonathan Emmett and myself. The book, illustrated by the excellent Adam Larkum, is being published by UCLan Publishing. Now available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk, Hive.co.uk, Waterstones.com “There’s…
It is hard to believe that the last time I wrote about plesiosaur toys here was in March 2011, over six years ago (http://plesiosauria.com/news/index.php/new-plesiosaur-replicas-for-2011/). Since then, many more new plesiosaur figures have hit the shelves, well, online stores - you'll do well to find any of these toys in actual brick and…
The Golden Trilobite is awarded annually by the Palaeontological Association to "high quality amateur and institutional websites that promote the charitable aims of the Association". I've no idea who nominated my website this year, but my thanks go to whoever raised it to the attention of the the PalAss Council, because it…
So, time for more Planet Dinosaur plesiosaurs... In part 1 of we familiarised ourselves with the taxonomy and appearance of the plesiosaurian stars of the fourth episode of the BBC's Planet Dinosaur, 'Fight for Life'. Now we're all set up to pick apart, with ruthless abandon, the animators' painstaking efforts to bring…
Astute viewers of BBC's plesiosaur-fest on Planet Dinosaur this week may have spotted my name dash across the screen at the end credits. 'Fight for Life', the fourth in the series, was the first episode, and so far as I'm aware only episode, to plunge us into the Mesozoic oceans and introduce…
A couple of new plesiosaur figures will be released in 2011, both from blossoming company CollectA. As a UK-based company CollectA has a tendency to choose British taxa, sometimes rather obscure ones. So forget Elasmosaurus or Kronosaurus, CollectA have gone out of their way to produce the first ever replica of two…
The recent 'Sea Dragons of Avalon' symposium in Street was a great success - congratulations to everyone involved. See Darren Naish's blog Tetrapod Zoology for a full report - part 1 and part 2. I thoroughly enjoyed the event and it was an excellent opportunity to meet up with colleagues and even…
So far, 2008 has seen a healthy number of new papers on plesiosaurs and a few new taxa too. Way back in February, Druckenmiller and Russell (2008a) introduced Nichollsia borealis, a plesiosaur of uncertain affinity, based on a beautifully preserved specimen from Alberta, Canada. More recently, Druckenmiller and Russell (2008b) published a…
This Wordpress blog is the new official news page of 'The Plesiosaur Directory'. It will replace the former html news web page of my website. I think this system will be a much more amenable replacement with benefits for both myself (automated dating, no more FTP-ing etc.) and hopefully for my readers…
I recently read and reviewed Mike Everhart’s new book for the online Journal Palaeontologica Electronica, I reproduce it here: Sea Monsters - Prehistoric Creatures of the Deep, is the official companion to the recently released IMAX movie of the same name. As Everhart explains in the preface to this book (and in…
Artist Debby Cotter Kaspari has produced an Elasmosaurus painting as part of a special exhibition in the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History entitled "Collecting Oklahoma", scheduled to open on the 16th of June 2007. The exhibit will present a selection of rare and unique specimens collected around Oklahoma by the…