Having already covered two of the line’s highlights with the Edaphosaurus and Eryops it’s time to look at one of the more mundane toys in Diener’s series of rubber erasers, the Dimetrodon. Like the two previously reviewed toys the Dimetrodon hails from the Red Beds of Texas, which makes in a fitting toy to round out this trio, but since...
Before I start my review, I must thank our friends and colleagues at Happy Hen Toys for sending along this review sample. If you are in the United States, Happy Hen Toys is the place to go for all your prehistoric pals in plastic! Meraxes was one of three legendary dragons used during Aegon’s Conquest, the campaign in which Aegon...
This year has been an exciting one for Haolonggood collectors as it has seen the company broaden its horizons and release a range of non-dinosaur prehistoric animals. They include a few Cenozoic mammals and the model we’re looking at today, a Sarcosuchus. Sarcosuchus is an early Cretaceous crocodyliform that superficially looks like a gigantic gharial but belongs to a clade...
Before we begin the review, I would like to thank Happy Hen Toys for sending this figure along as a review sample. Check out their large selection of animal and dinosaur figures by clicking on the banner below. Birds of the Phorusrhacidae family, commonly known as terror birds, are some of the most impressive dinosaurs to evolve in the post-Mesozoic...
Special thanks as always to Happy Hen Toys for sending this one out. If you want this figure or anything else from Schleich and more, prehistoric and extant, they have you covered. Now on to the review. One of the most famous prehistoric animals out there is Dimetrodon, and as a result it is commonly represented on the toy market....
Last summer PNSO released a wave of Triassic, Chinese marine reptiles that included the already reviewed Guanlingsaurus and Guizhouichthyosaurus. Now it’s finally time to look at the last one, the Dinocephalosaurus. Dinocephalosaurus was described in 2003, but it generated significant buzz when a new specimen was announced in 2024 that basically doubled the known size of the thing. Dinocephalosaurus was...
If my research is correct, it has been 13 years since Safari Ltd. released a prehistoric animal TOOB. Their last was the Cambrian Life TOOB, released in 2013 and retired from production 4 short years later. And in fact, all of the best Safari prehistoric animal TOOBs were retired in 2017, including the Prehistoric Sharks, Crocodiles, and Sea Life TOOBs....
After the woolly mammoth and Smilodon, the third most famous prehistoric mammal is arguably Megatherium americanum, the original giant ground sloth of Pleistocene South America. Discovered in 1787 and named in 1796 by none other than George Cuvier himself, Megatherium was of the most popular museum draws during the 19th century–until it was muscled out of the spotlight by dinosaurs....
In some past reviews, as well as on the Dinosaur Toy Forum, I have confessed that I find carcharodontosaurids somewhat dull, at least when compared to other large theropods, such as tyrannosaurids, spinosaurids, or abelisaurids. Carcharodontosaurids are mostly basic in form and virtually identical to each other, to my eye. As I learn more about them though, I’m coming to...
Edaphosaurus was a sail-backed genus of synapsid that lived during the late Carboniferous and early Permian periods in what is now the famous Texas Red Beds in North America. Remains have also been found in West Virginia, Ohio, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. Fragmentary remains found in Germany have also been attributed to Edaphosaurus. The Texas Red Beds are also known...
”Tiantaiosaurus/Tiantaisaurus sifengensis“ is the informal name of an undescribed Early Cretaceous therizinosaur from the Laijia or Liangtoutang Formation of Zhejiang Province, China. Discovered in 2005, the specimen is said to consist of an ischium, an incomplete pubis and ilium, a femur, a tibia, a talus, and a good many vertebrae from across the body. Not a large amount of fossil material, but it’s actually pretty much par for...
If you grew up between the 1960’s and 1990’s you no doubt had at least a few Diener brand erasers in your toybox or backpack. They were ubiquitous through the latter half of the 20th century. Launching in 1955 with Disney themed pencil-top erasers, Diener Industries would go on to produce novelty erasers representing all manner of animals, mythological creatures,...
