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 these animals to life. Predator X. We’re going...
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 us to some marine life. I’ll obviously skip...
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 wonderful British Jurassic taxa: Rhomaleosaurus and Attenborosaurus. Rhomaleosaurus...
As if running a blog dedicated to plesiosaurs isn’t geeky enough, I admit to being a toy collector as well. It isn’t a secret that I run a second website (dinotoyblog.com) (and forum) dedicated to dinosaur figures, and since launching that site it has become apparent that there is a surprisingly large community of dinosaur toy collectors. I say ‘toys’,...
Several notable plesiosaur figures were released for 2010. Safari Ltd produced a Walking With Dinosaurs inspired Liopleurodon replica and a ‘toob’ containing an array of small marine reptiles and other prehistoric marine critters. Papo produced an unusual Plesiosaurus. These figures are reviewed and photographed in detail over at The Dinosaur Toy Blog: Liopleurodon by Safari Ltd Plesiosaurus by Papo...
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 the final chapter), both the movie and this...
The newest film offering from National Geographic opened to 78 IMAX theaters across the United States, the largest ever opening for an IMAX movie. ‘Sea Monsters’ is set in the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Sea, and follows the journey of a growing Dolichorhynchops. The official website is now complete and up and running....
A special exhibition entitled “Collecting Oklahoma” opened in the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, on the 16th of June 2007. The exhibition features an original painting of an Elasmosaurus by artist Debby Cotter Kaspari. The exhibit was curated by Rick Lupia, the project coordinator was Deborah Kay, and Tom Luczycki was the exhibits director. I discussed in a...
On Monday the 18th of June, Hive Studios announced the first installment of their animation library featuring some amazing animations of prehistoric animals, including some plesiosaurs. The plesiosaurs are Cryptoclidus, but it’s also worth checking out the Allosaurus and Othnelia animations too. The animations feature in the ABC Science documentary “CRUDE”, all about crude oil. The documentary, including the plesiosaur...
There is an unofficial ‘Premier League’ in vertebrate palaeontology which consits of the animals which attract a lot of public attention. Its members include T. rex, Seismosaurus, Argentinosaurus, Giganotosaurus and so on – the biggest and fiercest extinct animals. When the BBC broadcast ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ they moved Liopleurodon ferox firmly into the Premier League. Here was an animal that...
A series of plesiosaur vertebrae has been found on the shore of Loch Ness and hailed by some monster hunters as ‘proof’ of the existence of a living plesiosaur in the Loch. So what do we know about this find? Firstly, although it has been confirmed as plesiosaurian by staff of the National Museums of Scotland (NMS), it contributes nothing...