Paleontology

 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 N...

 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 ...

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...