Yes, thank you for those Dave.

It has been SVP 2014 recently so there is a shitload load of stuff that will be in the media shortly.

Apparently it will be confirmed that the gigantic Titanoboa (at 12-14 + metres long by far the biggest snake in history) was adapted for a totally aquatic lifestyle.

Time for kip!

Nice article on Titanoboa with an excellent size comparison chart as well.

http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/...titanoboa.html

That whole website is a very handy reference for beginners to the huge variety of prehistoric animals so I will post the link.

http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/index.html

More on Phytosaurs.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...saurs-part-ii/

A few recent news stories that people may find interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/op...=fb-share&_r=2

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=32345105&nid...=latest_videos

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ology-excerpt/

A beautifully preserved sub-adult Stegosaurus skeleton (at 'only' 5.8 metres long) is to be unveiled at the Natural History Museum. The great importance of this particular specimen is that is is virtually complete which will vastly improve our knowledge of the beast.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/d...ry-Museum.html

http://newviewsonoldbones.blogspot.c...e-of-plum.html

More on the new Stegosaurus specimen at the Natural History Museum and an article on the evolution of feathers.

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/l...ert/index.html

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic....inner-feather/

Brief teaser trailer for Jurassic World (JP4).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvu-zlR5A8Q

It looks pretty awful - the Ornithomimosaurs are still naked - no feathers and they also have the hideous 'bunny hand' orientation that is just plain wrong.

Amazing that the original film is over 20 years old and the film makers have ignored every single thing that has been discovered since - the original had it's faults (T. rex not being able to see you if you stood still - lol) but at least it tried.

What could have been a triumph and an education for the public (at least about what dinosaurs actually looked like) is yet another dumb popcorn monster movie movie.

Rant over.

Thomas R. Holtz one of the world's leading Tyrannosaur researchers gives an excellent interview on what we currently know about T.rex.

http://www.rnzi.com/national/program...annosaurus-rex

And a nice new reconstruction of a male with iridescent belly and tail feathers for a mating display to attract those bloody choosy females.

http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/i/20...in-d8764w2.jpg

Yeah, pity about the upcoming movie. I guess being entertaining AND somewhat educational wasn't an option?

As for that iridescent male, I would. If I were a female TR that is

Well Crichton did his research and they based it on the book so a lot of it was quite accurate for the time.

And the film changed the public's perception of dinosaurs forever.

However notice that the Tyrannosaurus a predator with the greatest bite force in terrestrial earth history 'only' shook the Gallimimus and Velociraptor to death rather than simply biting them clean in half.

That was artistic license as was the tiny, frilled and spitting Dilophosaurus.

The less said about the sequels the better especially the bloody Jack Horner advised T. rex hating JP3 (thankfully despised by most).

Jurassic World is a disgrace and they may have made a huge mistake - of all people children know the latest research and will not be very happy with the dinosaurs simply looking like giant naked lizards.

As for that male rex - I bet you would!

Truly bloody awful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFinNxS5KN4

Forget about any plumage even the incredibly dull colours are from the bloody 1950's ideas of what these animals looked like.

When imagining dinosaur pigmentation just think of the living Maniraptoran Theropods (Birds) and we all know how incredibly boring they are to look at.

Honestly they could not have made a worse attempt at scientifically realistic dinosaurs if they tried.

Totally pathetic.

How about forgetting about Jurassic Park for a bit and distracting yourselves with a few colourful early perissodactyls that may shed a bit of light on some puzzles of Indian geology
http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology...dia-02293.html

They weren't trying, and never suggested they were. In fact the director tweeted as much earlier this year... #NoFeathers

"Now what John Hammond, and Ingen, did at Jurassic Park was create genetically engineered theme park monsters. Nothing more and nothing less" Alan Grant, Jurassic Park 3

These films are a bit of fun, they're not a documentary. Dinosaurs are cool, and so kids want to see them... a film is going to be more successful if it shows a T-Rex ripping things to shreds, than if it depicted it as an overgrown scavenger...as one example. And for what it's worth the original inspired my interest in dinosaurs...it was by no means scientifically accurate (to the point it even spelt a famous dinosaurs name wrong in one scene) but it sparked the interest in the facts and I dare say did the same for a whole generation. This new film may very much do the same.

I enjoy a good rant.

Even Horner now admits he was totally wrong on this pitiful theory - and despite all the media coverage he was just about the only palaeontologist on the planet who ever thought that T.rex was a scavenger - but it got him money and publicity for his research and I suspect that he was playing the Devil's advocate anyway.

Jurassic Park was not totally accurate at the time but it was not scientifically bad for a massive blockbuster film and was also fantastically entertaining - it made a shitload of money and changed the public's perception of what dinosaurs were like.

As for Jurassic Park 3 Horner's hatred of T.rex reached new heights of absurdity (he was the adviser) Spinosaurus beating rex my arse.

And the film was so awful I watched it once and never will again.

JP4 will make money but it is a missed opportunity - I just hope people get interested in the real discoveries and research that are going on - anything that can reduce the belief in Creationism in the USA can only be a good thing in my opinion.

New ceratopsid found among specimens in Canadian museum -
http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/news/...ur-discovered/

Dr Longrich was on R4s 'Today' this morning talking about it. It's available on BBC iplayer
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02ct3k4

Definitely

I think people are smart enough to realise that the films make creative choices about the dinosaurs they are depicting - I think the only example that has gone over many people's heads was the Dilophosaurus in the original being able to spit venom at its prey - I think a lot of people also misinterpret that as the full size of the dinosaur.

The third was full of inaccuracies galore, but then the public perception of the film is somewhat lower than the others - certainly more so than the original.

If this new film can inspire people like the first did for me, then there'll be a whole new influx of kids and teens who will learn the truth about Dilophosaurus and the lies about Spinosaurus and so on

My hope is that hopefully one day the BBC will remake Walking with Dinosaurs. It was a brilliant series that also delved into some lesser known aspects of the Mesozoic, but it too also made some creative choices that seemed very bizarre - the Lipleurodon as one example. I'd hope for a more accurate depiction next time - dinosaurs and paleontology in general is fascinating enough without bigging it up... and Jurassic Park is just a popcorn flick that is good for a few hours of harmless entertainment

Good post.

For reasons far too dull to go into the Liopleurodon from WWD was actually Pliosaurus macromeras which has also been called Stretosaurus but the classification of giant pliosaurs has always been a bit tricky.

Wiki gives a great overview of the Pliosaurus genus and the classification history of macromeras.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliosaurus

True Liopleurodon was only around the size of an orca but macromeras may have been the largest pliosaur of the lot with estimates of up to 18 metres from the (fragmentary) remains available .

Did you watch Planet Dinosaur on BBC1 in 2011?

That was pretty good.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014m55k

I liked JP3.

Thanks to this thread which I haven't looked at before, have just found out dinosaurs have feathers.
So well done.

But you can kind of understand why the film makers ignored that. It goes back to the original when the kid says "it's like a big turkey".
JP is a monster movie and monsters need to look like monsters.

Thanks.

But I disagree on your point.

A bird of prey like a Harpy eagle looks incredibly menacing.

http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/1...1314488210.jpg

And all the Dromaeosaurs look fantastic in full plumage, so do the Tyrannosaur species (just look on the web or even on this thread).

Let's meet Rhino-horse:

A portly hoofed animal about the size of a wild pig just might help solve a 55-million-year-old mystery of evolution and continental drift. The mammal, which likely weighed 45 to 75 pounds, probably occupied a branch of the evolutionary tree right beside a broad group that has since radiated out into the modern rhinoceros, horse and hippopotamus, according to a study published online Thursday in the journal Nature Communications.
http://www.latimes.com/science/scien...120-story.html
http://news.discovery.com/animals/an...dia-141121.htm

It's time to buy some cards and bunting because it's Lucy's birthday!

Australopithecus discovery 40 years on - 23rd November 2014 was a significant 40th birthday. Or, to be a bit more precise, it was a 3 million, 200 thousand and 40th birthday. On that day in 1974, Donald Johanson and his team in Ethiopia discovered the fossilised remains of AL 288-1, who became universally known as Lucy. Don talks to Adam Rutherford about the young woman who changed his life.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04pvdhm

Thanks for those.

Also as I just cannot resist another little grumble.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...perts-science/

Will definitely go and see this next time we are in London.

How much did they pay for it, does anyone know?

That reminds me, who ended up buying that mammoth skeleton that was being sold at auction the other day? I can only hope that it went to a museum for pro bono use.

Monty the mammoth sold for £189,000 and as a sidenote the international trade in rare fossils is an utter disgrace but not very surprising - like so many antiquities some rich bastard buys them and then sticks them in his private vault so that he can gloat and no one else - scientists or the public - ever gets to experience or study them.

There was a news item on Channel 4 many years ago of rumours of a find similar to Tutankhamun that simply disappeared into some collector's private collection.

Thankfully 70 very generous donors made the purchase of the new Stegosaurus possible.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...nds-at-auction

just a word of thanks for all the posts you've been posting with links like the above, totally fascinating i've loved reading them all thank you so much for sharing them.

Thank you very much for your kind words - they have really cheered me up.

awh i'm glad i posted then, i was in two minds whether to or whether it would look a bit odd i like to lurk and the two threads i've really loved following all the links for are this one and the one about the Alexandrian tomb they are unearthing, i really appreciate the links because i'd never find this information if it wasn't for you, and other FMs, taking time to share the links. It's stuff like this that makes me love the internet