Ah, Yowie! It’s a great company, educating people on animals old and new, along with how their environments changed or can be saved. The prehistoric line really opens the eyes to many species most will never have heard of, learning something new. Many species, however, are based on very limited material, so can cause headaches when trying to assess them.
Brand: Yowie
Review: Giralia Pterosaur (Lost Kingdoms Series B by Yowie)
4.4 (5 votes)
I do like Yowie for it’s diversity, especially among the animals of Gondwanaland. What I often get irritated about is that a proportion of them are based on very limited fossil material. I have reviewed several already, all named. This one, however, is not.
Review: Dawn Bird/Nanantius (Lost Kingdoms Series A by Yowie)
3.5 (4 votes)
Some of the hardest prehistoric animal groups to find are birds, second to sharks. The light weight bones are subject to breaking easily, so it’s usually only in lagerstatten. There are features that can indicate a bird, and so identify them as that and not a dinosaur.
Review: Kronosaurus (Lost Kingdoms Series A by Yowie)
3 (8 votes)
The titans of Greek myth were beings of great strength and power, so it is no surprise that prehistoric creatures of great size and strength were named after them. The leader of this group during their golden age, according to legend, was Kronos, the father of Zeus, and a mighty marine monster was named after him: Kronosaurus, a 30 ft Pliosaur from the early Cretaceous of Queensland.
Review: Tingamarra Soft-Shelled Turtle (Lost Kingdoms Series A by Yowie)
3.5 (4 votes)
I adore lines like Yowie for bringing out models of animals that are comparatively rare in terms of being immortalised in plastic. Animals from the Paleogene and Eocene are rare. Extinct turtle species are rare. And yet Yowie made a figure of an animal that fits both criteria, the Tingamarra Soft-Shelled Turtle.
Review: New Zealand Giant Eagle/Hieraaetus (Lost Kingdoms Series A by Yowie)
4.2 (5 votes)
When a species goes extinct, you take out one piece of the food web, affecting everything above and below it. When the Moa went extinct, so too did it’s main predator, the largest eagle to ever have existed, Haast’s eagle, Hieraaetus.
Review: New Zealand Grayling (Forgotten Friends Series A by Yowie)
4.3 (4 votes)
Across the globe, fish populations are under threat as a result of human expansion, altering the environment to suit us. From the Yangtze to the Atlantic, aquatic populations are struggling. This has led to many extinctions, such as the subject of this review: the New Zealand Grayling (Prototroctes oxyrhynchus).
Review: Ceratopsian Dinosaur/Serendipaceratops (Lost Kingdoms Series B by Yowie)
3.5 (4 votes)
A lot of fossil species are erected by the slimmest of evidence, be it a toe bone, vertebrae or something else. This can make it very hard to discern where they fit into the scheme of life. This review’s subject, Serendipaceratops, is such an example, known only from a single leg bone, the ulna specifically.
Review: Eric the Pliosaur/Umoonasaurus (Lost Kingdoms Series B by Yowie)
3.5 (4 votes)
Fossil discoveries can often turn up in the most unlikely places. From quarries to Chinese medicine shops, fossils may appear where least expected. This was the case for the species Umoonasaurus, better known as Eric the Pliosaur. The bones of this animal had not only fossilized, but opalized, making them appear like jewels, hence why they were nearly sold to a jewellery shop, if it hadn’t been sold to a business man.
Review: Fleet Footed Dinosaur/Fulgurotherium (Lost Kingdoms Series A by Yowie)
2.8 (5 votes)
Speculation makes up a lot of palaeontology. Often it’s behaviour, or diet, but sometimes it can be what the entire creature actually looked like, based on the fragments of bone found. Many a species has been erected based on the tiniest fragments. Here, we see one such example: Fulgurotherium, a dinosaur species based off a opalized femur from the Griman Creek formation of New South Wales, Australia.
Review: Austrosaurus (Lost Kingdoms Series A by Yowie)
2.8 (6 votes)
Across the globe, the bones of mighty giants of the ancient world are waiting to be found. The largest of the land animals are the Titanosaurs, giant sauropods found across the globe. Here, we examine one early titan from Australia, Austrosaurus, a 5 metre tall sauropod found in the Albian rocks of Queensland.
Review: Muttaburrasaurus (Lost Kingdoms Series A by Yowie)
2.4 (7 votes)
Of the various dinosaur clades, one of the most successful all were the Iguanodontids. Found on most continents in vast numbers, often found in large numbers and well articulated in terms of fossils. One of the most complete species in Australia is one of said clade, Muttaburrasaurus.