Released back in 2024 is this interesting little Danger Pack set consisting of Eoraptor and Stegouros for the Mattel Jurassic World Epic Evolution line. Both dinosaurs were from what is now South America, with Eoraptor hailing from the Ischigualasto Formation of Argentina, and Stegouros from the Dorotea Formation of Chile. However they couldn’t have been more far apart, as Eoraptor...
Over the many years since Mattel has had the Jurassic World license, the toy line has seen its fair share of ceratopsians (with a total of 18 genera at the moment), despite a handful featuring in the films (including the new Aquilops). Last year finally introduced one of my favorites, the Chasmosaurus. It’s not the first time Chamosaurus has popped...
Discovered in Russia, Kileskus is a relatively small tyrannosauroid that lived during the Middle Jurassic period some 166 million years ago. While its remains are rather fragmentary, they are enough to determine that their owner was a proceratosaurid, closely related to Guanlong and Proceratosaurus itself. Mattel released what I believe to be the very first toy of Kileskus in 2024....
Discovered in the Woburn Sands Formation in England and formally described in 1874, Craterosaurus was a relatively small stegosaur that lived during the Early Cretaceous some 113-112 million years ago. Mattel released the first and so far only Craterosaurus toy in 2024 as part of their Danger Pack series. It is sculpted in an alert pose with its legs bent and its tail...
Imagine yourself for a moment in a swamp. Not just any particular swamp. There’s mangrove trees with many vines hanging off their branches, tall reeds and cattails, and a strange assortment of prehistoric fauna. There’s a herd of ginormous Paraceratherium feeding on the trees, Phiomia fleeing from ravenous Titanoboa, Baryonyx fishing, and Beelzebufo hopping around. As you try to admire...
Mapusaurus is a carcharodontosaurid that lived in Argentina during the late Cretaceous and is also one of the largest theropods known. It was only slightly smaller than its close relative, Giganotosaurus, and the skeletal differences between them are minimal. Today we’re looking at Mattel’s Mapusaurus. Spoiler alert, it’s a really cool toy but a pretty bad Mapusaurus. The Mattel Mapusaurus...
Recently, Mattel has started dabbling with small-figure two packs, first with an Eoraptor vs. Stegouros pairing and then with the set we’re looking at today, Guanlong vs. Lystrosaurus. I think these two packs are a fantastic idea and hope that Mattel will produce more of them in the future. With both these sets you’re getting smaller scale toys of some...
Rauisuchus is a genus of pseudosuchian that lived in the late Triassic of what is now Brazil. It is also the latest pseudosuchian and Triassic taxa offered from Mattel, who has miraculously produced more of these animals than any other toy company I can think of. Moreso than their mega theropods, gigantic sauropods, or even many of the offerings in...
Leave it to the Jurassic World franchise to once again thrust an exceptionally fragmentary dinosaur into the limelight and give it the wrong name in the process. Becklespinax is one of many synonyms for the early Cretaceous English theropod now known as Altispinax. The paleontological history of this dinosaur is more interesting than the dinosaur itself, since all that’s known...
Even before Monolophosaurus was featured in Camp Cretaceous, Mattel was making toys of them and they started pumping them out with the first wave of Jurassic World toys in 2018. Since then, they’ve produced at least nine of them, maybe more. And they aren’t all repaints either. There are at least a few different sculpts with different gimmicks. I acquired...
There is no shortage of Pachyrhinosaurus toys. As ceratopsian toys go it is only outnumbered by Triceratops and Styracosaurus, which have been more popular for far longer than Pachyrhinosaurus. But here’s the thing, all those Pachyrhinosaurus toys represent the same species, P. lakustai, immediately recognizable thanks to three prominent horns above and behind the eyes on the midline of the...
Now here’s a new one for the blog, and another dinosaur I had never heard of until Mattel made a toy of one… Guaibasaurus. Guaibasaurus is a genus of basal saurischian from the Late Triassic Caturrita Formation, in southern Brazil. It was described in 1999 by José Bonaparte and was classified as a basal theropod. Some recent cladistic analyses place...
