Ornitholestes (Jurassic Hunters by Geoworld)

There is a line in the play “Arcadia” by Tom Stoppard that I feel encapsulates science, especially palaeontology, brilliantly: “The greatest moment in life is when you find everything you thought was true was wrong.” The number of changes in thoughts about prehistoric life certainly proves this, as with the species I am reviewing here, Ornitholestes. For years it was believed this small predator had a nasal horn, like Ceratosaurus, thus making it stand out. Further analysis, however, has shown that this was a result of postmortem crushing on the single skull that exists for the species, thus debunking the horn theory, which should reflect on later models. Or so you would think.

As with any of my Geoworld reviews, we start with the fact card. The design on the front side looks like the design of the other cards, which looks unnervingly like early dinosaur book pictures, with a fairly generic colours seen on a lot of said pictures. the back is more worrying, a very different design which I think could well be plagiarised, though I can’t prove this here.

To the figure proper, and oh boy, that colour scheme! While looking similar to the one on the card, this looks atrocious in comparison. The light green and yellow stripped would have worked well, giving it the look of a forest hunter. Instead, the dark green and yellow spots looks gaudy, with the awful orange horn. This reveals the low quality control on these figures, as mine has a yellow splodge on the back , something that shouldn’t be there. The pose is dull, standing and roaring at something. The scale is 1:10, with a length of 8.5″ and height of 4.8″ (5″ with rock), meaning it will fit in with very few lines.

To accuracy, and lets start with the horn. This was officially debunked in 2010, and this figure was made in 2012, so you would think that would be how the figure is presented, hornless. It doesn’t help that it looks like it has a massive orange zit on it’s snout, as opposed t a sharp horn. The other major issues are the hands, which are too uniform, not having the varying finger lengths of the actual animal. Also, the feet could do with being more talon like. This is a very scaled creature, it’s nakedness making it ugly, Geoworld once more avoiding the fact it would have been feathered. The rest is fine, but doesn’t save it.

This figure, from Geoworld’s second expedition, shows a start in the right direction for the company, but doesn’t make this figure any more recommendable. It’s garish, ugly and feels cheap. There are far better examples of this species, just takes a bit of hunting. Avoid this one.