Indholdsfortegnelse for Fall #151 2024 i Prehistoric Times

An interview with Dr. Darin Croft of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lectures on anatomy and conducts research on extinct South American mammals (ESAMs). John Lavas (JL): Thank you, Darin, for agreeing to be interviewed for Prehistoric Times (PT) magazine. As you know, we recently published three articles reviewing ESAMs in PT 147-149, one each for xenarthrans, sparassodonts, and South American native ungulates (SANUs). ESAMs have fascinated me ever since I as an undergraduate read George Gaylord Simpson’s Splendid Isolation (1980). Some SANUs including Toxodon and Macrauchenia played a role in Darwinian evolutionary theory, and many sparassodonts represent textbook examples of convergent evolution. Even so, there have been very few English language books dedicated to these unusual mammals. That makes your 2016 monograph Horned Armadillos and…

The idea that a lot of dinosaurs were very big is unlikely to come as a surprise to anyone. In fact, if you had to sum up this lineage in a single word, then ‘big’ might be a pretty good one; it is, after all, one of their defining traits, and surely a major reason why we find them so fascinating. Elephants, rhinos, blue and sperm whales, tigers, grizzly and polar bears, large sharks – any and all big animals carry with them a certain awe not reserved for smaller members of the same groups. And large size is a trait that the dinosaurs absolutely have in spades. The terrestrial fauna we live with now is one of the smallest of the last 200 million years, with only a couple…

Mike Fredericks of Prehistoric Times: Please tell us about yourself, Sean Sean Cooper: I’m not married and currently live in a rural area of Northeast Oklahoma. The closest city is Tulsa, about an hour drive away, where I attended the University of Tulsa in the early 1990s. While I was there I studied design and engineering and eventually graduated with a BA. Post college I started out doing computer aided design and graphics, but after a few years of that I decided I just hated it and wanted to do something different. And that’s when I started to take an interest in sculpting. I had played around with sculpting when I was younger but really had no formal training, so much of what I do is self taught, and I’m…

Introduction In PT 150 we reviewed three distinctive groups of archaic horned mammals, brontotheres, dinoceratans, and embrithopods. These cumbersome rhino-like beasts of Palaeocene to Oligocene times were among the earliest large-bodied mammals. Apart from indricotheres (or paraceratheriids, the giant hornless rhinos of the Oligocene), the largest terrestrial mammals are in the Order Proboscidea. This includes living elephants and their extinct mammoth relatives, plus four extinct groups: mastodons, deinotheres, gomphotheres, and stegodonts. Early proboscideans were small-bodied semiamphibious animals that either lacked trunks or possessed short ones. By the Eocene they had attained only modest sizes (est. 17 to 230 kg) although some genera approached 2,500 kg by the Oligocene. Several key basal proboscideans were discovered in the same strata of Egypt’s Faiyum Depression that also yielded remains of the embrithopod Arsinoitherium…

What if visionary artists throughout history could somehow have peeked beyond the impenetrable walls of time and caught a glimpse of unknown prehistoric worlds to inspire sublime palaeontological art? Imagine, if you will, an improbable alternate timeline where aeons past intertwined with future tech, and great artists across movements and cultures gained knowledge of long-extinct species. I guided their virtual hands — with the non-negligible help of my artifificially intelligent acolytes — to reenvision vanished eras through an imaginative new lens. Welcome to our anachronistic palaeoartistic rêverie… Next issue look for part 2 of Alain Omer Duranceau’s Paint Strokes in Times…

As one of the Old Masters of paleoart, Charles R. Knight created many iconic depictions of prehistoric animals that inspired countless successors and imitators. Among his signature pieces is his 1897 painting of the ceratopsid dinosaur Agathaumas sphenocerus (Fig. 1). Knight’s Agathaumas strikes a regal pose, decked out in a suit of armor plating and brimming with horns and spikes. It is highly detailed and the center of focus, in contrast to the more impressionistic foliage. The naturalistic style really sells it as being a real creature alive in its own habitat. Overall, it is very aesthetically pleasing and all the more impressive considering it was one of the first dinosaurs he ever painted. These attractive qualities would give rise to its popularity with his turn-of-the-century peers. Knight’s Agathaumas was…

The Natural History Museum of Norway acquires two new dinosaurs In December, it was announced that Norway would receive its first complete dinosaur skeleton. Now, the Natural History Museum reports that they have bought another dinosaur. Last year, the duck-billed dinosaur Zelda was acquired for permanent exhibition at the Natural History Museum in Norway’s capital, Oslo. Now, visitors will be able to enjoy seeing an additional dinosaur on future museum visits – a smaller dinosaur of the same species. “I knew that Zelda, which the DNB Savings Bank Foundation bought last year, was found with a smaller skeleton of the same species, but I didn’t think it would be possible to exhibit both,” says Jørn H. Hurum. He is a professor of palaeontology at the Natural History Museum. The dinosaur…

When David Krentz announced his 2022 “Uncle Beazley” kit, I might well have been the first on the pre-order list. This truly magnificent Triceratops horridus offers the most effective pose I think I have ever seen. Krentz listed this as 1/18 but at 17 inches long, it works in 1/20 scale too. PREPPING THE KIT: Test fit the parts and use a hobby knife to trim as necessary. Then, wash the parts in warm, soapy water, rinse thoroughly and allow to dry. With small parts like the birds, using a bucket or tub and straining them guards against losing them down the drain. Once dry, you can assemble the pieces. On big kits like this, I often use pins and two-part epoxy, but on this light hollow body, CA glue (superglue)…

Greetings from Utah, where I have a couple of questions for you and your readership. I became hypnotized by all things prehistoric when the Sinclair Dinosaur roadshow came through Grand Rapids, Michigan way back in the 60s. As you know these beasts made their debut at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City, and were created by sculptor Louis Paul Jonas. I have been on the hunt for an original Louis Paul Jonas Dinosaur Statuette, based on his World’s Fair creations. Any leads? And, anyideaoftheirvalue? I believe they came in two sizes — desktop and a tabletop version for museums. Best wishes, Paul Trap Hi Paul, for a second I thought you were looking for the lifesized statues like in your photo here. Do you live in a warehouse?…

Rendition of Maraapunisaurus made deliberately vague because we really have no idea what it looked like. The perspective is to emphasize its great size towering over the viewer, yet there were trees in the Jurassic that were taller. Kenneth Carpenter Maraapunisaurus means ‘huge lizard’ based on maraapuni, the Southern Ute for ‘huge’. One of my favorite things about writing for the Prehistoric Times Magazine is all the people I get to interact with. It’s hard not to geek out sometimes when I find myself chatting with someone I previously knew by watching them on a TV documentary or reading a book penned by them. Our article on T. rex in the last issue for our 150th was one such time, well this is another… When I began my research on…

In Feb. 5, 2017, the Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium announced they finally had to euthanize the lungfish that had been displayed there since 1933. It was estimated “Grandad” had been well into its teenage years when it first arrived from Australia, making it the oldest captive fish in the world when it was put down for humane reasons. In 2023 the California Academy of Sciences announced the current oldest living aquarium fish in the world is Methuselah, another Australian lungfish estimated to be 94 (give or take a decade). This ability to live a long time is one reason why these fish have survived into the modern world. The capability of hanging around when conditions are poor ensures there are breeding-aged adults still around to spawn when conditions are good. Today…

The Student Becomes the Teacher … Hey everyone this is Mic. I hope you liked stuff I did in the triumphant Dinolympics issue and I want to show you some cool new things I made. Over the years Robert has shown me a few pointers in his workshop and after working on the Dinolympics characters, I told him I wanted to do my own art-icle (with his editorial help while keeping my voice.) He thought it would be a great exercise in developing my skills and character as well as quickly picking out the features that define and distinguish a certain creation. So that gave us the idea. We decided that the theme of my art-icle would be pop culture’s overlooked or undervalued saurian characters: ones from comics, television, movies…