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    #76
    Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
    VA, I can only apologise. I’d wondered why you weren’t all over this thread as well...

    But please tell me that the book to which you allude was Dinosaurs and More Dinosaurs (possibly since retitled)? My mother bought me that from the school paperback club when I was five (ie, when it was published - old ghet that I am) and the illustrations within it utterly captivated me, so vivid and terrifying were they - particularly that of Antrodemus. This was indeed the tome that cemented my dino-obsession. My original copy has long since fallen apart, but I found another edition via eBay about a decade ago. The years, they simply rolled back. (I’d embed it here if I could ever seem to do that successfully.)

    This is your cue to say that it wasn’t that book at all, eh?
    Oh. My. Goodness.

    Bloody hell. Yes!


    This is the one. And I mean, just look at that cover illustration – these dinosaurs were made to look truly monstrous. As you say, they were so vividly captured, with all the heft and shadows and tangible sense of a vanished age of real darkness and tooth-and-claw danger, it was simply riveting to a small boy such as me.

    That's a Ceratosaurus ("horned lizard"), which back in 1965 when this was published was one of the 'stock' theropods every child would've learned about, though it's greatly fallen from prominence since I was a kid – certainly you'd never find it on the cover of a dino book again. To me though this picture alone put it right up there in the pantheon.

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      #77
      Originally posted by Various Artist View Post
      An odd outlier, meanwhile. One truly frightening picture in one of my childhood dino books (which was of a fair vintage before I ever owned it, crucially) was of a beast, in its own words, like something out of a nightmare – Antrodemus. That's the dinosaur that everywhere else is infinitely more commonly and famously known as Allosaurus, the great Jurassic theropod carnosaur and stock 'top predator' in the age before the mighty Cretaceous tyrannosaurids. For half a century up to the 1970s, I believe, the two were synonymous and hence it was known by the older name.. but then some palaeontologist pointed out that the identification of the fossils bearing that name had been based on frankly indeterminate features. So the Allosaurus moniker returned, as it was only the bones identified as such that were actually definitely identifiable as this dinosaur. Still a great dinosaur under any name, but it'll never compare with the cooler-sounding and scarier-looking version I knew as a small boy.
      And, as I was saying – though I misquoted slightly, not "something out of a nightmare" but "like somebody's bad dream" – here is that description and illustration of Antrodemus that so captivated me and Jah alike, it appears:


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        #78
        My brother’s and my dinosaur template was forged mostly by this series of kits which my Dad embraced in the late 60s:



        I got the T-Rex (featured above), Brontosaurus and Stegosaurus. My brother got the Triceratops and Dimetrodon as above, and an Ankylosaurus with a moveable tail club. The first pair each were painted but he’d obviously run out of puff/inspiration and my Steg and bro’s Dimetrodon were still in that purply-brown finish.

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          #79
          Although a mate of mine had three big shelves of the Aurora dinosaurs which were really impressive.

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            #80
            Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post

            I think the consensus view has shifted more toward the latter, but the big ones wouldn’t have had fluffy feathers. They would have been warm enough without them.

            Like I said, in school in the early 80s, we were told they were cold-blooded reptiles. I’m not sure that was even the scientific consensus at the time. All of my teachers went to school in the 70s and 60s.

            The understanding that dinosaurs were birds and not reptiles emerged in the 60s and 70s. I suspect kids and elementary teachers these days are much more clued in to current science, but in my day, the teachers didn’t know much more than our books, many of which were from the 50s or earlier.
            it's a bit more complicated than that, i think. birds are theropods (alongside non-avian theropods such as tyrannosaurus and velociraptor) which share a distant common ancestor with other dinosaurs like tricerotops and stegosaurus and diplodocus, which in turn share a common ancestor with crocodiles. That branch (archosaurs) is part of the clade eureptilia ("true reptiles") alongside a branch containing lizards and snakes and turtles and stuff.

            So birds are all dinosaurs and dinosaurs (including all birds) are reptiles but dinosaurs are not all birds and no dinosaur is a lizard.

            Whether they were cold blooded or not is interesting and the answer seems to be some (especially the large ones) almost certainly were while others almost certainly weren't.

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              #81
              Originally posted by Various Artist View Post
              Oh. My. Goodness.

              Bloody hell. Yes!


              This is the one. And I mean, just look at that cover illustration – these dinosaurs were made to look truly monstrous. As you say, they were so vividly captured, with all the heft and shadows and tangible sense of a vanished age of real darkness and tooth-and-claw danger, it was simply riveting to a small boy such as me.

              That's a Ceratosaurus ("horned lizard"), which back in 1965 when this was published was one of the 'stock' theropods every child would've learned about, though it's greatly fallen from prominence since I was a kid – certainly you'd never find it on the cover of a dino book again. To me though this picture alone put it right up there in the pantheon.
              Ah, how good it is to know that, VA! I acquired that book around 1967-68 - I absolutely loved it and it went everywhere I did for several years.

              Yes, George Solonevich's voluminous illustrations were very much from a time when dinosaurs were thought to be heavy-set, lumbering, scaly monsters - and not the fleeter, bird-like creatures in which experts believe today. The carnivorous species really were made to look like evil beasts - Megalosaurus (p28) looks like a violent gangland killer planning a hit. For the reasons you suggest, Ceratosaurus on the cover was among my favourites as a kid: not to be confused with Teratosaurus ('monster lizard' - they thought long and hard about that one, eh?) which existed in the Triassic Period, but is now thought to have been quadrupedal. (This book gives him a kind of 'henchman' look - p17.)

              I can remember coming back from the Natural History Museum with Aurora T Rex and Triceratops kits - I think I later had a Dimetrodon and Protoceratops, among others. There were also other kits, with movable limbs: I think they may have been made by Bandai, or another Japanese company.

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                #82

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                  #83
                  Originally posted by Sean of the Shed View Post
                  the food bill would be somewhat extortionate, and the size of the pet bed doesn't bear thinking about.
                  Not to mention picking up after it when you took it for walkies.

                  (In a real cloned return from extinction situation, there are some tiddly ones that I imagine would be kept as pets. It depends how easily they could be trained. And just like now, when you get the odd mad person who keeps a bear or a tiger or something, there would be bound to be some twat who tries to keep a velociraptor in a garden shed.)

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                    #84
                    I always liked Dimetrodon the best, even though it isn't a 'proper' dinosaur. Also Moschops. Both of these were in the Top Trumps Dinosaurs, which may have been a Top Trumps you had to send off for (like the fastest vehicles one. I liked Top Trumps, they were the first thing I ever shoplifted (at 6, go me). I'd have got away with it if my mum hadn't found the loot and asked me how I'd got it. She took me back to Woolworths and I had to give the TTs back and listen to a pompous lecture from the manager which some years later she admitted made her regret doing the responsible parent bit.

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                      #85
                      Was it your continued shoplifting from Woolworth's that eventually led to them going bankrupt, the manager losing their job, defaulting on their mortgage and ending up homeless?

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                        #86
                        The first, and only thing, I ever softer shoplifted was a packet of stick-on glittery earrings which my mum wouldn't let me legitimately buy. I was also about 6 and I accidentally left them in the pocket of my school dress when it was put through the laundry. In the end, all that was left was some mulched cardboard, the earrings probably ended up in pipes in the washing machine. I denied all knowledge of the origins of the mulch, and kept it as a dirty secret for a good 15 years.

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                          #87
                          Is there a definitive way to pronounce diplodocus? I always pronounced the "docus" part like "dockers". Then a TV programme pronounced it to rhyme with "focus". Then a friend who went to a different primary school insisted that the stress was on the second syllable, not the third, which sounded horribly wrong.

                          I am trusting in the dinosaur brains of OTF to resolve this dispute.

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                            #88
                            I grew up pronouncing it as dip-low-dough-cuss then heard it pronounced "di-plod-oh-cuss" but have heard since that both are considered valid pronunciation options, and now I have no idea how to pronounce it.

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                              #89
                              The latter is the way to go.

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                                #90
                                Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post

                                Not to mention picking up after it when you took it for walkies.

                                (In a real cloned return from extinction situation, there are some tiddly ones that I imagine would be kept as pets. It depends how easily they could be trained. And just like now, when you get the odd mad person who keeps a bear or a tiger or something, there would be bound to be some twat who tries to keep a velociraptor in a garden shed.)
                                My children watched Steve Backshall's dinosaur programme (recommended) where he demonstrates that Argentinosaurus passing a motion would destroy a caravan.

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                                  #91
                                  Ah, here you go, about 4 mins in:
                                  https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...land-of-giants

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                                    #92
                                    If any of you dinosaur enthusiasts decide to visit Dinosaur Isle on the Isle of Wight, feel free to drop my name when you get there, as the curator and general manager is an old college chum of mine. I mean, I haven't seen him for almost 40 years and I'm not telling you my name. I'm not even convinced that he'd offer you a discount or any of his time, but what have you go to lose.

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                                      #93
                                      I'll give it a go, but if I tell him that 'Mr Submission sent me', I'll likely get arrested.

                                      Originally posted by Kevin S View Post
                                      My children watched Steve Backshall's dinosaur programme (recommended) where he demonstrates that Argentinosaurus passing a motion would destroy a caravan.
                                      Indeed, with a length of up to 130ft and a weight in the region of one hundred tonnes - around a dozen elephants - the Argentinosaurus is widely believed to be the largest land animal ever to have existed. One of these pooping would likely resemble a minor landslide. (Until an entire skeleton is unearthed, however, measurements remain estimated.)

                                      Originally posted by Kevin S View Post
                                      Just watched that - what a great show. (Wish we'd had something like that fifty years back.)
                                      Last edited by Jah Womble; 01-09-2020, 16:12.

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                                        #94
                                        Are 'we' sure that all the pteradon and pterodactyl type flying creatures were bat like rather than feathered?

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                                          #95
                                          Bruntosaurus Stokasaurus*

                                          * pity he turned them down for Brittle City

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                                            #96
                                            Last year I took my then 5 year old son to the Natural History Museum, he loves dinosaurs of course

                                            He took one look at this and sprinted out of the room and almost got to the front entrance before I caught up with him - he was shaking with terror

                                            Even now, although he knows dinosaurs are extinct, he is still convinced this was a real T Rex
                                             

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                                              #97
                                              That Steve Backshall bit about Argentinosaurus poo is hilarious. It'a clip on youtube.

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                                                #98
                                                Here is the clip Rogin mentions, for anyone else who wants to see it (I know it was also linked on iPlayer above, but not all of us are in the UK).

                                                Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                                                (In a real cloned return from extinction situation, there are some tiddly ones that I imagine would be kept as pets. It depends how easily they could be trained. And just like now, when you get the odd mad person who keeps a bear or a tiger or something, there would be bound to be some twat who tries to keep a velociraptor in a garden shed.)
                                                Among the differences Jah and VA have hinted at between the real-life velociraptor and the actually-a-Deinonychus depicted in Jurassic Park is that the velociraptor was only about the size of a modern turkey. So a shed wouldn't necessarily be an inappropriate place to keep one. Although you'd still want it to be a pretty secure one obviously, because they could probably fuck you up if they wanted to.

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                                                  #99
                                                  Originally posted by colchestersid View Post
                                                  Last year I took my then 5 year old son to the Natural History Museum, he loves dinosaurs of course

                                                  He took one look at this and sprinted out of the room and almost got to the front entrance before I caught up with him - he was shaking with terror

                                                  Even now, although he knows dinosaurs are extinct, he is still convinced this was a real T Rex
                                                  My sister-in-law took my son to see this last summer when the kids stayed with her for three days (and we built a bunk bed at home). He also believed it was a real T-Rex but had almost the opposite reaction. He loved it so much that when they left and went to another room, my son escaped and ran back to see the T-Rex. My sister-in-law was terrified that she'd lost him, but found him standing right with his nose pressed up against the barrier.

                                                  So, my son simultaneously was convinced that it was a real T-Rex, and also wanted to spend as much time as possible, as close to it as possible, with no concern for whether there was an adult there to keep him safe. This is why I have to have eyes like a hawk. My son has very little concept of staying away from danger.

                                                  Although, bizarrely, he's very good with road safety. I can let him scoot ahead because he'll always stop for the roads. Right on the edge of the pavement kerb, nearly giving me a heart attack, but he always stops.

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                                                    Balderdasha I suspect your son is a likely candidate for "type of person to keep a pet velociraptor in his shed" when he's a bit older.

                                                    He sounds like a fab kid btw. I think we'd be mates.

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