Plateo-bot part 2

Last time, I showed you these photos of the Plateosaurus maquette made by Jeff Matney, the lead sculptor at Billings Productions Inc.

Steve P. commented:

Can I preempt a few of your reactions?
1) Overall too slenderly built, especially belly and tail;
2) Hands should have five fingers, not four, and the fingers should not be stubby (and should, of course, not all be the same length);
3) Feet should have five toes, not four, and the first and fifth should not be touching the ground;
4) M. caudofemoralis longis atrophied / non existent;
5) Head looks more like that of Coloradisaurus (on full body model);
6) Neck shouldn’t meet chest so smoothly – there should be a very distinct chest “shelf”.
Right ballpark? The sculpt looks nice, just not accurate.

Mammal Monday 13: giraffes and consorts

The giraffe house in the Zoologischer Garten Berlin is a beautiful old building in Moorish style – one of the few buildings that survived the war. Today, its interior has been adapted to modern standards, and it houses the giraffes plus a number of antelopes.

Plateo-bot part 1

On June 8 of last year I received an email from one Robby Gilbert. Robby is the Prehistoric Display Advisor for Billings Productions Inc., a company that makes robotic dinosaurs. Now, robotic dinosaurs – I feel quite strongly about them, and it normally is not a feeling that’s associated with flowers and butterflies, but rather with daggers, dark clouds and lightning. But I took a look at their website and what I saw looked a lot better than many dinosaur models I’d seen before (and have seen since). Additionally, the text of the email intrigued me (and, admittedly, flattered me as well): they were, as opposed to 90% of all such requests, asking for feedback and input at a time when it could actually matter! After lauding my Digital Plateosaurus I paper in Palaeontologia Electronica, Robby wrote:

Big Mike

“Big Mike” is a tyrannosaur. Not just any tyrannosaur – Big Mike is a Tyrannosaurus rex specimen, number MOR 555. To be precise, “Big Mike” is the name given to the bronze casts of the specimen, which itself went by the rather un-cool nickname of “Wankel rex”. One of the casts is on display in front of the MOR:

Theropod Feeding Frenzy

Sharks are many people’s nightmares, especially during nighttime swims under the influence. JAWS is on everyone’s mind. The steel jaws suddenly coming up behind and biting half of you off….

In fact, sharks are quite cautious animals. And shark attacks on humans are rare, even if global warming and tourism bring new migration patterns and thus doubled lethal attacks last year. When a shark approaches an unfamiliar object it will usually circle it, the swim by and rub it a bit. There’s a good reason for this: a shark’s skin has gazillions of little denticles, which is why shark skin makes pretty good sand paper. What that does to an edible animal in the water is pretty obvious – it rips open the skin, and starts a bleed. And blood in the water now tells the shark that it is dealing with an edible object, as opposed to a tree trunk or so. Some animals may be too big and sturdy to bleed this easily, but then, an animal that won’t have a slight bleeding wound from such a test is likely too big and tough for the shark to tackle.

Dusky shark (Carcharhinus obscurus) SEM photo of denticles.
Photo: Sue Lindsay © Australian Museum,

http://australianmuseum.net.au/image/Dusky-Shark-denticles-Carcharhinus-obscurus

Dinopic of the Day 18: Iguasnowdon, the Ornithischian Who Came in from the Cold

The Ornithischian Who Came in from the Cold: The Iguanodon model in front of the Berlin Aquarium – previously shown without snow here.

Mammal Monday 12: Urzeit Park’s Tertiary

We’ve had a look at the Palaeozoic of Urzeit Park in the last installment, so let’s jump ahead to the second-youngest time covered: the Tertiary. There are seven models in this section, and admittedly two of the them are better suited for a Thursday, being theropods. I’ll lump them into this post though, out of sheer laziness.

Let’s begin with an appropriate scale comparison.