For a decade now, I’ve been reviewing toys of prehistoric fauna from across the entire globe, including Canada, the United States, Patagonia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Romania, Russia, Morocco, Niger, Egypt, Tanzania, Madagascar, India, Mongolia, China, Japan, Australia, and Antarctica. Now here’s the very first one from the magnificent nation of Mexico:...
Gastonia was discovered in the Cedar Mountain Formation of Utah, USA. It lived during the Early Cretaceous period from 139 to 134.6 million years ago and is one of the very best known nodosaurids. Its name honours Robert Gaston, an American paleontologist and the CEO of Gaston Design, Inc., which makes and sells skeletal replicas of various dinosaurs and other...
Review and photos by Torvosaurus, edited by Suspsy Howdy from wonderful, windy Wyoming! Well, summer is long over, my list of honey-do’s from the wife is finally just about complete, and today I’m back behind the computer. Originally, my interest in dinosaur figures was in finding ones that scaled well with 28 mm gaming pieces, for roleplaying games and “war”...
Before we begin the review, I would like to extend my gratitude towards Happy Hen Toys for sending this figure along as a review sample. Check out their large selection of animal and dinosaur figures by clicking the banner below. When Haolonggood announced their Diabloceratops it was one of the few ceratopsians by the company that I didn’t intend to...
Unlike most other prehistoric toy companies, the vast majority of Haolonggood’s dinosaurs have been herbivorous ones thus far. And the carnivores that they have tackled are mostly genera that have already been done by many of those same other companies: Allosaurus, Baryonyx, Carnotaurus, Daspletosaurus, Dilophosaurus, etc. There is, however, one notable exception at present: Megaraptor....
I’ve been in the dinosaur collecting hobby for about 14 years now and this hobby has evolved rapidly within that time. In 2010 most collectors were content to just get good models of their favorite genera. Nowadays, a figure of a genus isn’t enough, collectors want dinosaurs identifiable at the species level. They don’t want Triceratops, they want T. prorsus....
Although I grew up with dinosaur toys around me for as long as I can remember, there was one dinosaur missing from my collection as a small child. This dinosaur, which I desired more than almost any other, was the “two-crested reptile”, Dilophosaurus. With its elaborate head crests and fierce-looking notched jaws, Dilophosaurus was an early favorite of mine. The...
As Waylay bursts out from concealment, the big male champsosaur that was basking placidly on a sandbank immediately slides into the water.* But the pools in these marshlands are half a metre deep at most and Waylay simply wades in and seizes the fleeing reptile’s tail in her jaws. Her victim flails and twists and snaps its narrow jaws frantically...
Edmontosaurus has been a staple in dinosaur toy lines since the very beginning of dinosaur toy production with Marx in the 1950’s. It’s a quintessential dinosaur, right up there with Triceratops, T. rex, and Stegosaurus, even if it was historically regarded as nothing more than theropod fodder. Although I have a few Edmontosaurus sitting around in my own collection, I...
In 1971, Water Coombs published a paper titled The Ankylosauridae. In it, he argued that there was only one species of ankylosaurid living during the Campanian age of Late Cretaceous North America and synonymized Anodontosaurus, Dyoplosaurus, and Scolosaurus with Euoplocephalus. More recent papers would overturn Coombs’s paper, finding each of those genera to be valid, but the implications of that...
Haolonggood has once again given us another high demand dinosaur that’s been mostly ignored by other toy companies. In doing so, they’ve helped me complete my decade long quest to own my favorite ceratopsids: Pachyrhinosaurus, Nasutoceratops, Einiosaurus, Centrosaurus, Pentaceratops and now finally, Chasmosaurus. To see them all lined up alongside each other is a rewarding experience that adds a level...
Review and images by bmathison1972; edited by Suspsy Sinoceratops zhuchengensis is a centrosaurine ceratopsid that lived during the Late Cretaceous of present-day China. The holotype specimen was discovered in 2008 from the Hongtuya Formation in Shandong Province and was formally described in 2010. It was the first ceratopsid formally described from China! The holotype specimen includes a partial skull with...
