First impressions can be entirely wrong .
When I first saw a picture of the 2017 Safari Ltd. Parasaurolophus, I didn’t think very highly of it. In the stock photo from Safari’s website, I thought it looked rather plain and uninteresting.
Classification: Ornithopod
Review: Prehistoric Diorama (Usborne)
Paper is usually not the material of choice for collectors of any sort. I anyway want to introduce you to something that may be of interest for a dinosaur collector, though it are probably not the figures….
The introduced cut out model was first released in 1993 under the title “Make these Dinosaurs” and the art of it, especially the dinosaur desgin, certainly represents this time.
Review: Prehistoric Tube A (CollectA)
Review: Prehistoric Tube C (CollectA)
Since they first started producing tube sets back in 2015, CollectA has covered a pretty decent variety of prehistoric life, wild animals, sea creatures, and farm stock. In 2021, they went back to the beginning with a third dinosaur (mostly) set consisting of ten figures, all based on previously released toys.
Review: Saurolophus (DinoWaurs Survival)
When it comes to Hadrosaurs, Parasaurolophus always seems to steal the lime light. The number of figures made of the species is huge, from high end to low end, from adults to juveniles. This leaves many of the rest of the family with very few figures, so any opportunity to grab copies of the more elusive species is often jumped upon.
Review: Saurolophus (Favorite Co. Ltd.)
Back in 2012, the Osaka Museum Of Natural History launched an impressive special exhibit highlighting the impressive diversity of dinosaur fossils found in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert. This special exhibit was aptly named “The Gobi: Cradle of the Most Enchanting Dinosaur Fossils” and consisted of beautiful specimens of some of the most famous Mongolian dinosaurs for the public to admire.
Review: Saurolophus (Tyco)
Review: Seven Little Dinosaurs (China Post by PNSO)
Within the unfortunately short time of its existence, Chinese company PNSO released two products in collaboration or commission for China Post. One is their glorious Mamenchisaurus, the other is a boxed set of “Seven Little Dinosaurs”. Unlike the “Six Little Dinosaurs” the seven do not depict juvenile dinosaurs but rather adult ones, though they are indeed not big figures.
Review: Shantungosaurus (Age of the Dinosaurs by PNSO)
Review: Shantungosaurus (Dinotales Series 4 by Kaiyodo)
Review: Tenontosaurus (Antediluvia Collection)(David Krentz)
Review: Tenontosaurus (Collecta/Procon)
Tenontosaurus was an Iguanodontid ornithopod dinosaur that lived in the Western United States during the early Cretacious period. In life it would have co-existed with dinosaurs like Iguanodon, Dienonychus, Utahraptor and Acrocanthosaurus. Thanks to a Tenontosaurus skeleton discovered with Dienonychus chew marks on its bones in addition to Dienonychus skeletons nearby, the idea of pack-hunting Dromaeosaurs is now widely accepted. Unfortunately this has also lead to the image of poor Tenontosaurus to ALWAYS be the prey item for Deinonychus. (Seriously, google image search “Tenontosaurus”. Like 80% of the images that pop up will be of it being attacked and/or eaten by the Deinonychus.) Medullary bone tissue, which is used by modern birds for laying eggs, has also been found on the bones of Tenontosaurus fossils.
Review: The Dinosaur Expo 2016 set (Kaiyodo)
Review: Tianyulong (Age of the Dinosaurs by PNSO)
A lot of ornithischian dinosaurs lacked teeth in the front of the mouth, having only cheek teeth that ground up food, and often a beak for clipping vegetation. The family Heterodontosauridae (“different-toothed lizards”) was unusual among ornithischians in having three different kinds of teeth in different parts of the mouth.
Review: Trachodon (Edmontosaurus) (Marx)
Trachodon is, or was, a genus of hadrosaurid described by Leidy in 1856 for which the only material known was a mix of teeth from both hadrosaurids and ceratopsians. That’s not much to go by and Trachodon is now considered nomen dubium. During its day however, Trachodon was a household name and the classic “duck-billed” dinosaur of pop culture.