Paleontology

 The following is an article by John C, McLoughlin, published in Science Digest , a popular science magazine for the general public in October 1982. I was looking for this issue, which I owned as a child, for this blog. it and two other issues, got torn up too much, and I had to throw them away. I have managed to find this one with Argentavis Magnificens , which was a recent discovery back then. It assumes that Argentavis was a giant condor, a type of teratorn related to Teratornis , the giant condor of North America, whose remains have famously been found among the La Brea tarpit fauna. Argentavis may not have been an actual teratorn, however, and could have been more of an active hunter than scavenger, and may have hunted like a colossal eagle. The article shows it bearing off prey, possibly a thoatherium calf.  There is also a common mistake for the time, the assumption that diatryma , now known as gastornis, was a predator, when we now have confirmed evidence that it was in fac

Extinct animals of Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, and nearby islands. Clockwise from right: Reunion White Dodo, Mauritian Common Dodo, Mauritian broad-billed parrot, Mauritian Blue Pigeon, Magaladaptis (Madagascar Giant Lemur), Reunion Solataire (a dodo cousin), Reunion Parrot, Seycelles Giant Tortoise, Mauritian Red Rail, Madagascar Coua, Reunion Crested Starling, Madagascar Elephant Bird, Madagascar Pygmy Hippo The above painting is from the Time Life Nature Library volume on Africa. All of the animals are now extinct, and only three of them are actually from Madagascar, the rest from nearby islands. These happen to be the most striking and the largest, however: the elephant bird, the pygmy hippo, and the giant lemur Magaladaptis .  The island of Madagascar once harbored a unique megafauna all its own. It was not originally part of Africa, but split off from the Indian subcontinent, which at the time had to have sported a great assortment of pro-simians from before true monkeys evol

These are some sketches of the South American marsupial sabertooth, thylacosmilus carnifex by Jay Matternes. Since I've been posting artwork of marsupial carnivores lately (perhaps I should have a blog devoted to just those), I've searched out some others that I also remember growing up with. This one is from the volume of Time Life Nature Library on South America. I remember this and the other Time Life books I used to get out of the public library, but which I never owned until now. You gotta love ebay! I just got this and one on Africa, having remembered the artwork in these two volumes of extinct animals.  These sketches of the animal and how it might have moved were unfortunately not included in the recent tome showcasing Matternes art, but only focused on his most famous mural-like paintings.  The sketch of the musculature, showing the smaller, related animal seems to be a small species of Borhyena , possibly Prothylacinus , an ancestral form of the borhyeanids, that loo

  Back in college, I once wrote a story about the first human clone, a boy named "Nolan Williams" after Logan's Run author William F. Nolan. That story, like most of mine, was never published. I'd recently read a book on the possibility of discrimination and persecution of real human clones, were they ever to exist. The false, and grotesque portrayal of a cloned boy in the movie Godsend , is an example of the negative attitudes toward cloning that could very likely lead to the persecution of human clones themselves.  The portrayal of the cloned child in the final two JP films is virtually the opposite of that in Godsend . Meaning its' way more realistic. She's an average kid, save merely for the manner of her conception. For that, we see her as a hunted child. However, in this case, they don't really mean her harm, merely consider valuable property. Actual cloned kids might suffer far worse.  In the previous film, there is a brief scene where the villain i

 Someone of Facebook shared with photo with me on Facebook, on the Save the Thylacine group's timeline. The man's name was Steve Rushton. What he said regarding it was this: Here's another type of Quall, a Queensland animal was known as the "Northern Wonder" As big as a medium sized dog, sadly this one was shot in Kenilworth Qld in the early 1920s What is this then? A quoll the size of a medium size dog? Is it just an extra large tiger quoll? or a possible candidate for the fabled Queensland tiger, thought by some to be a surviving thylacoleo.  I get the idea that perhaps here is a marsupial analogue to the now-infamous DeLoys ape photo. You can't really get the actual size of it, but it looks large compared to the crate, and what looks like a regular-size paint can. The DeLoys photo, purportedly showing an "American ape", was actually an average-sized spider monkey with its tail concealed.  So waht's up here? 

 I've already discussed this a bit in the Our Continent post.  It is a painting by Czech artist Zdenek Burian that had already appeared in his Life Before Man book. It is shown here in Our Continent . I used to take these books out from the library all the time. I now own copies of them.  Our Continent was one I begged my folks to order from NG, and as I re-discovered, it was for my twelfth birthday.  It shows what I first assumed was a Eurasian cave bear ( Ursus Spelaeus ), among the vastness of the Eurasian taiga. However, taiga stretched across North America as well. Our Continent , suggests this is a North American short-face, the largest and probably fiercest bear species of all time. If so, it should actually be taller and rangier, so I still have my doubts as to what species Burian sought to depict.  The painting is mesmerizing to me, giving the impression of the vast wild wilderness before any civilization on earth. Humans were around, Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal, but the

 Back when I was  kid, I remember book pictures of Spinosaurus , depicting it as a generic theropod, like Allosaurus or Megalosaurus , with an enormous Dimetrodon -like fin on its back. Even the dinosaur toy-company Carnegie named for the Carnegie Museum depicted their Spinosaurus that way at the time. Some depictions even showed it in a quadrupedal, Dimetrodon -like pose. Spinosaurus Aegypticus was first discovered in Egypt during the early part of last century, and was only known from a series of gigantic spines arising from its back and few jaw fragments, indicating a large theropod. The remains were housed in a museum in Germany until they were infamously destroyed in a bombing rid during WWII. So even these valuable remnants were destroyed, having survived millions of years and we had merely that photographs of these to go by.  Since there was virtually nothing to go on so far as what the rest of it looked like, some Spinosaurus depictions in fiction tended to be downright fanc

Robert Bakker's The Dinosaur Heresies, a book I got as a teen one Christmas, was  one I still might not have taken the best care of, because of the smudges seen here. This was one of my favorite books, once again.The concept of hot-blooded active dinosaurs, which had been been going on since the seventies, was at last coming into vogue.  John Ostrum's discovery of D einonychus was what got the ball rolling, but it was Robert Bakker who took to it so enthusiastically. I remember so many books from my childhood that still taught a very unflattering portrait of dinosaurs. You know all that--that they were cold blooded, tiny brained, clumsy, had brains in their rear-ends, all of it. Even comics, like I talk about so often did this; the old fifties Tor issues, reprinted in the seventies, talked about the superiority of man, how he survived, while the "the mighty titans of prehistoric times" died out". Never that dinosaurs never existed at the time of man--but that wa

 The alternate cover I got the other day, for one of the "Zorro in the Land That Time Forgot" issues, shows him fighting  pterosaurs that look like dimorphodon at first blush, but appear to be feathered!    Were there feathered pterosaurs, and is there relation of the feathers of theropod bird ancestors and the fur-like structures of pterosaurs? Maybe pterosaurs are not as distant from dinosaurs (and true birds) as once thought. 

 As a child, I was very familiar with the illustrations of Rod Ruth, both for the Album series of books, including Album of Dinosaurs , Album of Prehistoric Animals (which was actually a book on mammals) Album of Prehistoric Man, Album of Sharks, Album of Whales, Album of Astronomy, and Album of Birds . That last I never got because I mom told me I was too old when it came out. He also did the illustrations for the young adult anthologies Science Fiction Tale s and More Science Fiction Tales , edited by Roger Elwood, (Black and White) and the more popular Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures (in full color). The above illustration is from the introduction to Album of Whales , obviously. I thought of included it in the post on whale evolution, but I thought it deserved a post of its own where people can see it. It seemed back then, most children's book called the whale zueglodon , and it was only later that I saw basilosaurus as its official scientific name. The small illustration

  There isn't really a lot more to say about Gendy Tartakovsky's animated series Primal that hasn't been said already by others. Only that the genres of both "caveman vs. dinosaur" that once belonged to Joe Kubert's Tor , and "sword and sorcery" (a term coined by Fritz Leiber) pioneered by Howard's Conan are still alive and well in this series.  This is the first series on Adult Swim that I actually enjoy. "Love" is more like it. At this pointed, it's actually a breath of fresh air to come upon a series set in a fantasy version of prehistory, where creatures of all ages live side by side with prehistoric humans and other hominids. Tarakovsy uses a Neanderthal hero rather than a Cero-Magnon like Kubert did and explores the both the man and tyrannosaurus characters with depth is what's innovative here. It might be difficult for me, but Tarakvsky pulls it off. Viewers enjoy watching the relationship between the two main character

                                                  Darwinius Masilae by Julius Csotonyi Darwinius was a small pro-simian from the middle Eocene, first discovered in 2009. The fossil showed definite prints of its fur, and that it was a female specimen.  It was at first sensationalized as being the first direct ancestor of humans. This was unlikely to be true, and very misleading. Technically, the creature seems to represent a fossil link between lemur-like primates and monkeys. Such an ancestor might well have resembled darwinus , or even have been a near-relative. Though it is less likely that this one species led directly to humans. The probability of this individual of leading directly to us (as sensationalism often implies) is infintesimally small to say the least. Little wonder so many people misunderstand evolution. Nevertheless, she represents a least a near-cousin of our probable ancestors from this time.  Art by Brent Anderson, for a comics project he is currently working on fo

 In Savage Sword of Conan #151, the story, called "Fury of the Near-Men," writer Chuck Dixon takes Howard's barbarian hero into the lush savanna's south of the Black Kingdoms of Kush in what would now be sub-Saharan Africa. Though at this time, Africa is merged with what will later become Europe, and the Mediteranian Sea does not exist. James, Silke, author of Frazetta's Deathdealer series, may have borrowed that last idea from Howard's already-established Hyborian age.  Anyway, Conan encounters a number of prehistoric survivors in Hyborian-age Africa. First he battles a pack of (extant in our time) painted wolves, also known as African Cape hunting dogs.  Then he encounters a wagon-train, bearing a family of travelers from the north, including the obligatory pretty girl, from the European region of the Hyborian world-continent, with a few native guides (I forget if this was an acting troupe, or the Hyborian equivalent of a safari; I'll guess the latter)

The Arsinoitherium , a spectacularly horned extinct mammal of Miocene Africa, named for the Egypttian Queen Arsino, has been opted for many prehistoric fantasy and adventure films over the years, but never made it into any. The above production image was for Creation, am early film by Willis O'Brian, above a pleasure cruise ship that becomes stranded off the coast of South America, on an island full of prehistoric beasts. It was barely missed production, RKO opted to produce King Kong instead. The only footage of Creation that was filmed was of a bad guy among the group shooting a baby triceratops and being chased (and gored to death, according to the script) by its enraged mother.  Above: Production drawing from Kong showing the men running into the Arsinoitherium. Below: the deleted  Arsinoitherium log scene from Kong, as envisioned by artist William Stout In King Kong , it was the A rsinoitherium that was first optioned to be the the beast that chased the men out onto a lo