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As those of you who attend the hunts and meetings and such will have noticed, I haven't been to any in quite a while, mostly due to uni work- dissertation, field trips and at the moment exams- but I'll be back on the hunts soon, hope to see some of the newer members among you then..
I'm not really sure what to talk about here so I thought I'd just talk about some of my favourite dinosaurs. Because, you know.. They're awesome.
I'll try not to go too in depth! I ran out of time in one of my exams this week through attempting to write 10 pages about sauropods when I really only had time to write about 4 or 5 before moving on to my second essay! I'll also hopefully be doing something for the Trilobite Times soon about my trip to Germany- including 4 museums, Solnhofen, Messel and the Posidonia Shale!
I've never really been one for liking the more commonly-known of the dinosaurs, apart from the first few weeks or so after I first saw Jurassic Park Tyrannosaurus has never really been among my favourites at all. One of my favourite sauropods has recently sought to change that however, but I'll mention that later.. Most of my favourites were actually impressed upon me yonks ago in the mid-late '90s while reading the Orbis kids magazine series "DINOSAURS! Discover the Giants of the Prehistoric World!"
Some of you may even remember them, personally I still have the 3D glasses, they're currently Blu-Tacced to my door, although unfortunately the Tyrannosaurus and Stegosaurus skeletons have been lost to the ravages of time and parents who think throwing everything away is an acceptable method of cleaning! It was mostly the artwork that won me over. Especially the front covers and centre-page artworks at that. So the dinosaurs..
I can't find the right pictures for all of them I'm afraid.. Perhaps when I go home over the summer I'll dig them out from the original comics, I've still got them somewhere.
There're quite a lot to do, so for now I'll start with the theropods. I'm generally not a theropod person, my favourite three dino's may be theropods but I actually prefer ceratopsians and sauropods. But hey.
So, the first is Piatnitzkysaurus. Who couldn't love Piatnitzkysaurus? It has an awesome name, helped solve mysteries of the Mid Jurassic, at a time when barely any MJ dinosaurs where known in the entire world, and generally is awesome. It's from South America living around 170Ma, was around 6m long and was closely related to Megalosaurus.
Okay, the first pic' is a little underwhelming, but then..
Damn.
Noasaurus. The noasaurids are weird animals. When they were first found, it was thought that they'd independently evolved their own deinonychid-like sickle claws, however they were soon found to be oversized hand claws. Similar to the neovenatorid Megaraptor, but that's another story altogether. This wasn't known until about 10 years after these comics were made however, so Noasaurus is here in all its clawed-glory. It would have been only a couple of metres long, and lived in South America at the very end of the Cretaceous Period.
Awesome.
Chilantaisaurus. When it was first found, nobody was sure what this dinosaurs was. It was thought to be an allosaurid, spinosaurid, therizinosaurid (one of the specimens of Chilantaisaurus may actually be from one!) and a couple of others to boot, but then in 1996 Neovenator was discovered and a new group was quickly formed around that when experts realised how similar various then-mysterious some dinosaurs were. Chilantaisaurus was big for a neovenatorid, reaching 11-13m, and like all other members of the group had fairly large hand claws. It lived in the Early Cretaceous of China.
Epic. But without the massive hand claws that were found a little later..
Indosuchus. Closely related to Abelisaurus, Indosuchus lived in India at the end of the Cretaceous, and was probably 9ish metres long. Like all abelisaurids, it would have had tiny arms (abelisaurids had much smaller arms than tyrannosaurids, look at aucasaurus or carnotaurus for example!)
Finally for now, Gasosaurus. Named after the gas plant that was being built on it's discovery site, this guy is from the Early-Mid Jurassic of China, and was around 4m long.
Again, not the best of intro pics, and unfortunately I can't find a good picture of the amazing double page spread...
That's it for now I'm afraid!
I'll do some sauropods or something after my next exam I think, if you want to know any more about any of these, or you've got any ideas for something you'd like me to talk about then comment below as always
.Toodle-pip!
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