Indholdsfortegnelse for Spring #145 2023 i Prehistoric Times

Between it being our thirty year anniversary and this being our 145th issue, I suppose we have a bit to celebrate this time. We again thank Southern California artist Kurt Miller for his Kelenken vs. sabertoothed cat art on our front cover. Nice artwork, Kurt! Speaking of anniversaries, can you believe it will be thirty years come this summer that Jurassic Park hit movie theaters with a loud roar? I can still remember sitting in the theater excitedly waiting for it to begin. Well, I think we have another fine issue of PT for you. Of course we’re very happy to have paleontologist Phil Currie be a part of the magazine again; this time with a fun ‘before and after” article he wrote on dinosaur digs. Steve White has a…

a portrait – by Phil Hore Dust danced through the shaft of sunlight spearing through the half-open curtain, which cast a warm light into a study full of books that seemed to crowd around the large wooden table in the middle of the room. Its surface all but hidden under the hundreds of chaotically stacked manuscripts and scientific papers, one day this desk will be in a painting hanging in the national portrait gallery with its owner leaning on a stack of books and holding a human skull, but today its purpose is more utilitarian. Thomas Huxley, recently named “Darwin’s Bulldog” after he debated the highly religious Samuel Wilberforce over the merits of On the origin of species, walks into the room and past the bookshelf containing his leatherbound volumes…

In an alternate-reality world where the American Civil War lasted ten years, technology has advanced rapidly. A decade after the guns of the South were silenced, the embers of war still burn white hot. English Canada and French Mexico still snarl at the Union, but a new terror faces the country. Former army major John Morton, now a museum professor, is recruited by his old army comrade, now a Catholic priest, to find missing parishioners. As they will learn, the solution to the riddle is only the start of a cross-county adventure. Recruited to join an eclectic undercover government team, Civil War veteran Morton joins a priest, a beautiful female assassin, a genius black tinker, and an orphaned girl in the race to find a way to preserve the Union.…

All extant and fossil sea turtles nest in the terrestrial sandy sediment fringing contemporaneous oceans in which they spend most of their lives; defining boundary of the Terrestrial and Marine Ecosystems; and thus, the edge of the terrestrial habitats that were home to dinosaurs. Recent work on St. Catherines Island, Georgia by a team of paleontologists, under permits from the USF&WS and GaDNR, has documented the ecology of sea turtle nesting on the fluctuating sandy shorelines of the modern ocean, transferred to the ancient seas including those of the Mesozoic (Blakey 2006; Bishop, et al. 2007; Kržič and Bishop 2021; Kržič et al. 2022). Western Interior Cretaceous shorelines are represented by 62 black sand deposits of Heavy Mineral Placers (Houston and Murphy 1962; 1977; Force 2000) throughout the Western Interior…

See article on page 58…

It’s been over a decade since Dinosaur Art: The World’s Greatest Paleoart was published by Titan Books. It’s fairly safe to say that the book was generally well received – it remains in print and even though some of the science is now a touch obsolete, it doesn’t matter because it’s first and foremost an artbook. It remains ageless in the same way a collection of work by Charles R. Knight, Zdenek Burian or Rudolph Zallinger remains ageless. The art transcends the science. By coincidence, it was my birthday when the first advance copy of the book landed on my desk at Titan’s offices in London. Two years of waiting around to pitch the book to the company owners, six months of gathering the artists, sorting the artwork, getting the…

This is the second kit by Joe Laudati based on the life sized dinosaurs displayed in the Sinclair Oil exhibit at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. The model stands 9 1/2" tall and about 18" long from nose to tail. It is cast in 8 resin pieces and a nameplate. No base is provided (photo 1). Standard for all resin kits, the parts were first washed in dish detergent to remove any mold release. Any mold seams were then easily removed with files and sandpaper. However, in doing so, I sanded off some bumps that were sculpted on the back of the head and neck. I replaced these with drops of 5 minute epoxy applied with a toothpick (photo 2). I also needed to do a little dental…

The wildly popular book by Jeff Pfeiffer is once again back in print (with a brand new cover!) and ready for purchase! The most complete and comprehensive source for the dinosaur playsets of Marx and MPC available, bar none! Presented in a totally unique format using FULL COLOR photos of each and every prehistoric playset & figure produced by these two iconic (and VERY similar) companies. Say good-bye to grainy line drawings or hard-to-see black & white photos. Each set is photographed fully assembled and 100% complete! Plus chapters on other companies who used the original Marx and MPC molds for dinosaur sets of their own, such as Superior, Dapol, Toy Street, Spaulding, etc. This brand new edition features over 260 full color photos of every playset produced by Marx…

www.dinosaurcollectorsitea.com Dinosaurios De México: When prospecting for dinosaurs in Mexico City, there is a Mercado on Reforma named "Comic Rock Show" every Saturday that you must visit. I start at a nook, “Prehistoric Creations,” near the interior entrance run by Arturo Perez de la Cruz. It caters to collectors; even taking requests for rare and distinct collectables that can be searched for much like you might ask of a rare book specialist. Further in is “Impressions 3D” where you can purchase competitively priced 3D prints from their stock, or bring your own design on a thumb drive for them to print. I picked up a toob size original Olorotitan. I have always been interested in fossils, but I am reluctant to purchase them because I do not want to support…

In the last issue, Safari Ltd and CollectA were kind enough to send us samples of all of their prehistoric animal figures for 2023. This time I can list the new prehistoric animal figures coming from Papo of France and Schleich of Germany but unfortunately have not been sent samples. To the right you can see the four new figures coming out from Papo. Papo intends to add the Late Cretaceous ceratopsian from Montana withe odd nose horn called Einiosaurus to their line and there will also be a replica of the “hunchback” from Spain, the Concavenator meat-eating dinosaur too. The Papo Concavenator will have an articulated lower jaw. In addition, Papo will be introducing two marine reptiles. The Mosasaurus figure is finally arriving late from last year. The other…

In 1962, MPC introduced a blister card, showcasing prehistoric figures; it remained in production until at least 1984. During those 22 years, MPC consistently identified it only as No. 873. That is not to say that the product itself was unchanged. While the MPC identifier remained static, many subtle, and, not so subtle changes occurred to the card and its contents. Having just a number is not enough to be able to track the history of a product or to determine variants. But if one looks closely, one can see the card evolve, and use these changes to identify any time distinct versions of it. There are 6 specific types of change affecting the card. In 22 years of production, the card morphed 15 times after its initial offering in…

Ancient Sea Reptiles: Plesiosaurs, Ichthyosaurs, Mosasaurs, and More by Darren Naish, Smithsonian Books, English, Hardcover 192 pages, ISBN-10: 1588347273, ISBN-13: 978-1588347275 Certainly a book to be celebrated, paleontologist Darren Naish examines the anatomy, behavior, diversity, lifestyle, and evolutionary rise of creatures who dominated the seas for 150 million years during the Mesozoic era. In this beautifully illustrated book he places these fearsome creatures of the oceans into clear focus and transports readers into their wild and primeval waters. Each full color chapter covers subjects like evolution and the animal’s form and then divides into the various different types of animals that once lived including shark-like reptiles: the ichthyosaurs, the long necks: plesiosaurs and their kin, and then sea crocs: The tha-lattosuchians, and finally the great mosasaurs and sea turtles. On…