Posts

Showing posts from April, 2022

Old Dinosaur Art

Image
 I love old dinosaur art. The kind that depicts them with their tales dragging. Growing up, this was what dinosaurs were. All the books, pictures, movies, even documentaries depicted them this way. These were dinosaurs for me. But in the 80's new research altered the way paleontologists portrayed dinosaurs and in the 90's with Jurassic Park  the way dinosaurs were depicted changed forever. I always hated the way the new dinosaurs look. The horizontal Tyrannosaurus looks stupid. The upright one looks so much more elegant, menacing, and powerful. I won't debate the science since I'm not a scientist, but this is just a short post to show appreciation for the old-style dinosaurs. Triceratops. Brontosaurus. Ceratosaurus.  Anchisaurus. Tylosaurs. For more old dinosaurs, check out these books: The Lost World: Movie Edition (kindle ebook) The Lost World: Movie Edition (paperback) Legends & Lore of Sea Monsters Sources: Fig 1.  Page  Attrib. Hutchinson, H. N., Public domain,

Biggest Jurassic Pterosaur Fossil Ever Found in Scotland

Image
 According to a  Smithsonian Magazine article  by Corryn Wetzel, a fossil-hunting expedition in Scotland discovered the jawbone of the most massive Jurassic-era pterosaur ever, "protruding from the limestone."[ 1 ]  For those who don't know, "Pterosaurs,  from Greek pteron and sauros, meaning "wing lizard" were flying reptiles of the extinct clade or order Pterosauria. They existed during most of the Mesozoic: from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 to 66 million years ago). Pterosaurs are the earliest vertebrates known to have evolved powered flight. Their wings were formed by a membrane of skin, muscle, and other tissues stretching from the ankles to a dramatically lengthened fourth finger."[ 2 ] Scientists associated with the discovery say it is not only the biggest skeleton of a pterosaur, but the most well-preserved ever found in Scotland. The new species had a wingspan that measured over eight feet.  However, it still isn't t

Scientific Evidence Makes Existence of Loch Ness Monster More Unlikely

Image
In the sixth chapter of my book  Legends & Lore of Sea Monsters I wrote of the similarity of sea serpents and prehistoric marine animals such as the plesiosaurus, "that curious compound reptile, which has been compared with "a snake threaded through the body of a turtle," is described by Dean Buckland, in his Bridgewater Treatise, as having "the head of a lizard, the teeth of a crocodile, a neck of enormous length resembling the body of a serpent, the ribs of a chameleon, and the paddles of a whale." In the number of its cervical vertebrae (about thirty-three) it surpasses that of the longest-necked bird, the swan."[1] I even talked about the theory that perhaps sea serpents were living-fossils such as plesiosaurs, "sea-serpents certainly do bare a strong likeness to the plesiosaur, as many others have noticed, including Frederic A. Lucas, "the sea-serpent flourishes perennially in the newspapers and, despite the fact that he is now mainly r