Review and photos by Faelrin, edited by Suspsy
If you had to ask me what my favorite prehistoric marine reptiles are, there’s probably only about a handful or two of them compared to the dinosaurs that they shared the Mesozoic with (and which they often are assumed to be, unfortunately).
As far as my “knowledge” goes, Horizon was a small model making company of Chinese origin located in California. It ceased production in the late 90`s or early 2000´s and was famous for making high detailed models of movie characters, like Terminator, Robocop, classic monsters or Jurassic Park.
Marsupials are a fascinating group of mammals. With the ability to have multiple young at once and pouches to keep them safe. They have been around for millions of years, now restricted to Australia and South America. Australia once had the largest member of this class: Diprotodon, a giant Wombat relative the size of rhinos, they died out 50,000 years ago, just as the first Aborigines came to Australia.
Review and photographs by Funk, edited by Suspsy
Can there ever be too many Tyrannosaurus toys? Chap Mei didn’t think so, and made several versions, that, while they differed in colouration and other details, all seem to have taken most of their anatomical cues from the way this genus was portrayed in the Jurassic Park franchise.
Time has eventually come, for one of the most impressive CollectA figures of 2020 to hit the European continent. And fittingly, it represents a European species.
In 2006 paleontologists Jerzy Dzik, Tomasz Sulej and Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki discovered large bones in a clay pit in Poland.
As a volcanic island chain, Hawaii is not known for it’s ancient fossil fauna, but it has a selection of modern extinct species. The ‘O’ o (or Moho, based on the scientific name) were a group of birds that were native to Hawaii, now all extinct, the last being recent enough to have recordings of it’s mating call (worth hearing, though prepare to be moved to tears).
Where abelisaurids are concerned the genus Majungasaurus is second in popularity only to Carnotaurus. It has a few things working in its favor. It lived at the very end of the Cretaceous period in what is now Madagascar and was the dominant predator of its ecosystem.
Review and photos by Faelrin, edited by Suspsy
The fauna of the Triassic period was highly diverse with many new branches of life, including those that would soon dominate the globe from the Mesozoic onwards, particularly the archosaurs. Early dinosaurs and pterosaurs themselves aside, perhaps one of the most popular of those Triassic era archosaurs is none other than Postosuchus, having been put in the spotlight thanks to the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs series in which it featured many years ago.
In spite of their fame and importance to biostratigraphy, trilobites rarely ever get models made of them, outside of toobs and box sets with other Palaeozoic creatures. This year it seems CollectA is tackling the common creatures of the past that rarely get figures.
Some more unboxings to catch up on including an unusual Monster in my Pocket depicting ‘Compsognathus corallestris‘ (figure subsequently received a written review on the blog here), several mystery critters, a bunch of Weetos cereal dinosaurs, and an Ichthyosaurus gift from Safari Ltd sculptor Doug Watson (figure reviewed here).
Title graphics by Patrx
Part 3 of 4 – Large Play visions Prehistoric mammals
Dust funnels swept across the dry and hot landscape. It’s been months since the last rain and the vegetations, once lush, has now turned brown. Animals that inhabit this environment are under tremendous stress as they seek out food and shelter from the exhausting heat.
When anatomist Richard Harlan was presented with the fossil remains of a huge marine creature in 1834, he thought it must have been a reptile like Plesiosaurus or Mosasaurus, and therefore bestowed upon it the name Basilosaurus, “king lizard.” But when Sir Richard Owen later examined the teeth, he noted their double-rooted nature, which is a signature of mammals.
