Dinosaur nuts emerge!

It again shows how our understanding of dinosaurs have come a long way.

Yes, I'm definitely not blaming them. They used with what little information they had (a few fossilized bones), and filled up the rest with their imagination and traits of living animals (in this case, mostly lizards).

It's also cool that as early as 1852, they made life-sized statues of dinosaurs.

While both the fun little predators like Veliciraptor and Dinonycus as well as the big ones like T-rex and Allosaurus are fun and have a place in my heart are the most interesting ones those that inspired real myths. Take the griffin for example. It was maybe invented in ancient Central Asia by persons discovering fozzils of Triceratops and its relatives.

Indeed, ceratopsian skulls look a bit like giant eagles (especially if they are hornless species), so they are likely inspiration for the griffin. Similarly, the cyclops myth is said to be inspired by fossilized elephant skulls, with ancient people mistaking the nasal cavity for an eye socket. Also, Elasmotherium is just a big, bulky unicorn. ;)

Okay, that is officially the best depiction of an Elasmotherium I have ever seen.

In case if you are not familiar with Dane Pavitt's beautiful size comparison videos, here they are:

• Dinosaurs
• Cenozoic beasts
• Prehistoric animals of all sorts

Edited by Snicka on May 29th 2020 at 6:26:36 PM

Now that's taking Walking with Dinosaurs a bit too literally.

But seriously, I've seen those vids before, and I absolutely love the Cenozoic creatures one (Walking with Beasts...literally). However, I think a few of the reconstructions might be outdated/inaccurate (I think it's believed by scientists Procoptodon the giant kangaroo didn't hop). Regardless, great stuff.

Speaking of Walking with Beasts, I would like to remind everyone that the opening theme song was incredibly badass.

Edited by MagnusForce on May 29th 2020 at 4:12:19 AM

Yeah, with prehistoric animal stuff, you can't avoid some of the models getting outdated. I like that in the third video the Spinosaurus is updated, portrayed as a swimmer rather than a knuckle-walker like in the first video. It still lacks the big, broad tail which was discovered this year, though.

Regarding the Walking with Beasts intro, one thing I found a bit funny about it is that you have all these violent scenes with the animals fighting and killing each other - and a Moeritherium swimming across the screen. It always stood out to me as the odd, non-violent moment in the intro.

I always got turned off by the cheap cgi by the more recent series. The ones that stuck to traditional animation have always been more my speed, like this one: [1].

That's some really nice hand-drawn animation, comparable to "The Rite of Spring" from Fantasia or some of the less cartoony moments from The Land Before Time.

That said, I don't think WWD's CGI looks that cheap. Sure, it glitches sometimes, but I think the animals blend pretty well with the live-action backgrounds most of the time and the movements look fairly natural compared to the more stiff movements of cheaper CGI dinosaurs. And it's nice that they used puppets and other practical effects for the close-ups.

It would be nice seeing 2D animated dino movies again.

It's not a movie but a TV show, but Primal (2019) is hand-drawn and prominently features dinosaurs.

Yeah, but it's more about being fantasy based than accurate.

Here is a really fun little educational animation by TED-Ed about the Kem Kem Beds fauna, which funnily enough looks more Samurai Jack-like than Primal (2019) does.

Interesting.

Stop Motion is another awesome technique to recreate prehistoric animals (employed since 1925's The Lost World). 64,000,000 Years Ago is a nice example. You can watch the whole short here.

And I just found this nice montage of nearly a century of cinematic dinosaurs.

Bumping this thread out of extinction.

Is any of you familiar with the work of the animator Julian Johnson-Mortimer? He's doing CGI clips of realistic-looking, mostly aquatic prehistoric animals; most notably, a Spinosaurus family with the modern, flat-tailed design. I must say, I love how he portrays Spinosaurus as an animal with advanced biparental care.

That's an unfortunate thread name

Hello, dino-peeps!

Fellow dino nerd here.

That said, I do hope to see more dinosaur-centered works get more attention and praise in the near future. Or at least, something that isn't Jurassic Park (I like the series, but they're more to dinosaurs in the media than just JP).

Jurassic Park at this point has a monopoly on dino interest. Seriously, I always love to see what obscure dinos they can put into the mainstream eye. Seriously, this series really put raptors and Spino on the map.

*Prays for Therizinosaurus to appear in the next JP/JW movie*

Edited by MagnusForce on May 1st 2021 at 6:58:00 AM

I love the Jurassic franchise, but I wish they'd get more creative with the dinosaur designs. Why are all the dinosaurs the same color, for instance? Real dinosaurs were probably very colorful, right? Just look at all the colors and patterns we see on modern animals. A very camouflage-focused dino like stegosaurus probably wasn't just dull brown.

How about something focusing not on dinos?