Movie Review: Dinosaurus! (1960)

Today’s movie review is about an odd little 1960 film. At first glance, it’s a typical kid’s adventure film mixed with some horror elements. On the other hand, it’s a pile of tired clichés with many depressing and dark moments. It’s an odd little movie, and it’s worth a look.  It’s not part of my childhood, but it certainly was for a lot of people.  This is the Jack Harris-Irvin Yeaworth collaboration Dinosaurus! (the exclamation point is theirs). Thankfully there is a rifftrax for this film, so I’ve added their best jokes when appropriate. 

Pictures At An Exhibition 4

Today I’m returning to my Pictures At An Exhibition. In case you haven’t read part 1, here’s the link http://davidsamateurpalaeo.blogspot.com/2015/03/pictures-at-exhibition-part-1.html

This time we’ve moved on to the late Silurian, specifically in Chicago in Cook County Illinois about 425 million years ago. It’s only fitting that the paintings depict one of the few faunas known from the area of the museum itself, and the very brief Silurian period is well-represented in the Field Museum’s fossils. Indeed, the fossil collection began with mostly local geology from this period, and until 1990 there was a hall of Paleozoic fossils and dioramas in the museum.  As of now, they still have a corner in the Evolving Planet exhibit. Above the fossils of the Chicago region and a diorama of a Silurian reef is Charles Knight’s depiction of the city to which he dedicated this work of art. 

Like the previous Ordovician mural, this depicts a coastline, with both land and sea depicted and no animals seen swimming.  However, as the Ordovician mural, marine animals are nevertheless present. In this case, it’s the coral reefs. Despite the massive extinction event that began the Silurian and the three minor extinctions that followed, the last two during the Ludlow epoch, corals still prevailed.  In these extinctions, the temperature dropped, and with it the sea level. This is depicted in the mural as the reefs protrude from the surface, exposed to the air.

This may be the most colorful of the Paleozoic murals-the corals are maroon and white, with drifts of algae and seaweed adding green to the bright blue ocean. My knowledge of corals is limited, so I cannot comment on which species are being represented.  The background has rock formations, sea, and a cloudy sky, with a peninsula on the horizon, much like the Ordovician mural. The geological evidence does suggest that Chicago was a tropical bay with a coral reef, so this depiction is still accurate. 

It is interesting that in the Paleozoic murals, the coast is depicted and not marine ecosystems. It’s not a question of knowledge-by 1930 the fossils of the Midwest marine faunas were well-known and catalogued. It’s not a question of ability-Knight repeatedly depicted these faunas in other murals for New York and National Geographic.  It might have been time constraints-on the other hand, he had the time to depict the sea creatures of the Ordovician and the coral reefs of the Silurian. It could simply be a creative choice-there are no underwater scenes at all in this series, and he wanted thematic continuity to match stylistic and palette continuity.

One more note- the Silurian seen here represents the Thorton Quarry Reef site, dating to the Niagara formation in the late Silurian.  This quarry has provided a great deal of stone for the local area, and so local collectors have found thousands of specimens from this region, including the aforementioned collection in the Field Museum.  For more on the reef, the Milwaukee Public Museum has a website on it: https://www.mpm.edu/content/collections/learn/reef/thornton-front.html

I apologize for the short essay-it comes down to my ignorance of the subject matter.

Paleofest 2018 Report

Two months ago, I had the privilege of attending Paleofest, the yearly Paleontology symposium at the Burpee Museum in Rockford, Illinois. The Master of Ceremonies remains Scott Williams, now at the staff of the Museum of the Rockies, and once again there was an excellent variety of speakers. There was no particular theme this time, predominantly dinosaurs but with a fair amount of other paleolontology.  While there was mostly American paleontology, other continents were represented in some talks. Unfortunately, my camera malfunctioned, so if you want pictures, please contact my and Scott’s friend Todd Johnson for his excellent photojournalism.

 

Top Ten Dinosaur Movies Never Made

As you’ve noticed, dinosaurs have been featured in a lot of terrible movies. From Lost Continent to Jurassic World, from King Dinosaur to Ice Age 3, not to mention any Asylum movie on the Sci Fi Channel, it’s easy to put a dinosaur on screen, but it’s hard to make the experience worthwhile. Sometimes the effects are terrible. Sometimes the dinosaurs are cliched. Sometimes the film is just plain badly written and shot.  So it’s a shame to find out about great movies that were never made. 

In Hollywood, it takes a lot of luck for a project to see work, especially one with an ambitious 

 premise or one demanding expensive special effects. Even filmmakers like Kubrick or Spielberg have had projects die before seeing light.   Fortunately, big ambitious projects are remembered, especially if they’re by people who have made other hit films but somehow were thwarted other times.  In this case, Mark Berry’s excellent Dinosaur Filmography came very much in handy.

These projects all sound like a lot of fun-it’s not often dinosaur movies get made, simply because of the limitations in budget, writing ability, and marketability inherent in the genre. Frankly, if we had these made, they would have turned out far superior than most dinosaur films that actually saw light. These were dream projects, vast in scope and ambition. Some of them were salvaged and recreated into excellent films. Some of them turned out into disasters. But it’s fascinating to learn about them, and dream about what could have been. Who knows? We may see them someday even after their originators have long been dead. Anything can happen in Hollywood, and they love to remake and revisit. Maybe someday these will be made. 

Happy 30th: The discoveries of 1988

This weekend, I turned 30 years old. It’s a milestone for me, of course, but it reminded me about how much can change in 30 years.  30 years ago the dinosaur film was Land Before Time, when dinosaurs were inspired by the works of Charles Knight and William Stout before the Jurassic Park paradigm took over.  30 years ago,  the Berlin Wall still stood dividing Germany, the first Bush became president coasting in on Reagan’s popularity, and computer graphics in film were limited to a short by Pixar. 

There were many milestone in paleontology as well-new species were described, that would become iconic many years later.  So, I’ve decided to showcase all the fossil tetrapods described in 1988.  I can’t go into any depth about each, but there will be quite a few of them, so hold on your butts.

Book Review: Starring T.rex

As you’ve probably guessed by now, I’m fascinated by pop culture’s views on dinosaurs. Fortunately, I’m not alone. Allen Debus, Don Glut, and many others have documented our obsession with prehistoric creatures, and today I’m going to look at one of these documents.

Species that don't get enough publicity #13: Bison

Today’s overlooked species is rather paradoxical; it’s not really overlooked as the genus has become a symbol of an entire continent. People of that continent can recognize one instantly. Empires have risen and fell because of them. Their meat is expensive but delicious. Their herds range over thousands of miles, and only centuries before covered the entire continent in a thick swath. They are the last American megafauna, and they escaped the fate of their neighbors by the skin of their teeth. That’s right, we’re talking about American bison. Yesterday was Bison Day, and I’m going to celebrate our last great mammal before it too is lost to human hunger and short-sightedness.