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In order to make Dinosaurs so striking, a lot of work was put behind the scenes, which lead to a variety of fun facts and stories.

Remember Dinosaurs, the 1990s children's sitcom about a suburban nuclear family of Jurassic creatures? Today, it is fondly remembered as one of the most iconic shows on ABC's famous TGIF lineup. Dinosaurs was a visual feast and relic of its time.

The puppetry and animatronics were stunning, and watching it today provides a rush of nostalgia like no other. In order to make Dinosaurs so striking, a lot of work had to be put in behind the scenes, which lead to a variety of facts and stories that happened during the making of the show. Here are 10 things you probably didn't know about it.

10 - Jim Henson Thought Of The Show In The Late 80s

Legendary puppeteer and television producer Jim Henson tragically passed away in 1990, one year before Dinosaurs aired its first episode on ABC. However, the show still sprouted from the man's creative mind, as he came up with the idea back in 1988 whilst developing technology for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie (more on that later).

Unfortunately, Henson did not live long enough to see his dino-vision come alive on screen, but the Muppets creator's influence is still all over the series, from the one-of-a-king aesthetic right down to the irreplaceable humor.

9 - The Dinosaurs' Names Are Oil Companies

The primary family in Dinosaurs is the Sinclair family, transparently named after the Sinclair oil company whose gas station mascot is a giant green dinosaur. As kids, we may have been able to pick up on that one, but we probably missed how several of the other dinosaurs' names came from big oil corporations as well.

Roy Hess, B.P. Richfield, and Grandma Ethyl Phillips were all characters on the show. Reading their names today, we cannot help but notice a pattern, a cryptic nod to what these prehistoric beings would slowly turn into over a few million years.

8 - Jim Belushi Turned Down Playing Earl Sinclair

Earl Sinclair is the main character and blue collared patriarch of the Sinclair family on Dinosaurs. He was played by none other than Stuart Pankin, yet Pankin was not actually ABC's first choice for the role. The network originally offered the role to Jim Belushi, brother of comedy legend John Belushi.

Jim turned down the role of Earl because he wanted to become a movie star rather than a TV actor. Ironically, Belushi would eventually become best known for playing a family man in the hit sitcom According To Jim. His role on that show is not that different from Earl Sinclair... except, of course, According To Jim didn't have any dinosaurs.

7 - The Baby Shared A Voice Actor With Elmo

Ever noticed that the iconic Baby dinosaur in the Sinclair family had a familiar voice? One that sounds similar to that of a certain little red monster on Sesame Street? Well, such is probably because Dinosaurs' "The Baby" was voiced by Kevin Clash, the man best known for voicing Elmo.

Clash created Elmo's signature falsetto tenor and worked as the character's primary puppeteer from 1985 to 2012. Between 1991 and 1994, he evidently made time to voice The Baby as well. He also performed in Labyrinth, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and several Muppets films, more than giving back to the Jim Henson Company that launched his career.

6 - TMNT Led The Way For Dinosaurs

We promised we'd say more on how Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles influenced Dinosaurs, well here it is! Not only did working on TMNT inspire Jim Henson to create Dinosaurs, but the 1990 film also provided his Creature Shop with the technology that would bring the show to life.

Animatronic costumes being operated remotely via radio controllers was very novel stuff in the early 90s. As an homage, there were tentative plans to have a crossover between the Turtles and the Dinosaurs, but the former being a New Line Cinema production and the latter a Disney property sadly ensured that this never took place.

5 - The Simpsons Tried To Mock The Series

In 1992, Dinosaurs got jabbed at by another iconic family sitcom, The Simpsons. At the beginning of The Simpsons' season 3 episode "Black Widower," the titular family is watching a show that resembles Dinosaurs on their television.

Bart exclaims, "It's like they saw our lives and put it right up on screen," suggesting heavy-handedly that Dinosaurs ripped off The Simpsons. In reality, as we know, Henson conceived Dinosaurs in 1988, one year before The Simpsons aired its first episode. Still, getting mocked on The Simpsons is somewhat of a badge of honor, even if that badge is factually unwarranted.

4 - There Was Almost A Movie

During Dinosaurs' fourth and final season, Disney was considering a feature film spinoff for the show. Unfortunately, the series was facing declining ratings at this point in its run, leading to its cancellation and no movie. Plans for the film were still just developmental by the time it got scrapped, so we have no idea what it would have been about, or whether it would have been a theatrical release or a television special.

From the likes of The Muppets Movie, though, we know that the Jim Henson Company usually does a fantastic job transitioning from TV to the movies. Seeing what they could do with Dinosaurs would've been a sure treat.

3 - Nintendo Considered A Video Game

The Dinosaurs movie was not the only alternative media spinoff considered for Dinosaurs. For a while in 1993, Nintendo was contemplating making a video game based on the series for its Super Nintendo console.

Discussions for the game took place in a time when many popular TV shows were getting video game adaptations. These games rarely succeeded, though, often straying from their television source materials and facing scathing reviews. Thus, the TV-to-game model of the 1990s passed by the time Dinosaurs reached its height, and Nintendo lost interest in the project.

2 - It Was Outrageously Expensive

On top of the declining ratings, one of the biggest reasons that Dinosaurs met cancellation after its fourth season was the series' unbelievably costly budget. Each half-hour episode allegedly required over a million dollars to make. Between the elaborate sets, special effects, animatronics, puppets, skilled crews, and actors, the show was simply far too expensive to sustain.

Today, a million dollars per episode is somewhat standard for a sitcom, but back in the 1990s, the dollar went farther and shows were put together more frugally, placing Dinosaurs in a pricey class of its own.

1 - The Finale Was Planned From The Beginning

Dinosaurs' harrowing final episode remains far too ripe in our childhood memories. During the finale, Earl's company accidentally wipes out all vegetation on earth and then creates a global winter. The episode ends with the Sinclair family huddled in their freezing home as the outside world becomes an ice age.

Evidently, this is the end of dinosaurs everywhere and watching it more than frightened the show's young target audience. To make matters more disturbing, this ending was planned from the show's very beginning, as the creators always knew that extinction was on the horizon for the dinos and could not imagine wrapping up the series without depicting it.

Source: https://screenrant.com/

In the age of giant reptiles, sauropods were the biggest of all. Long-tailed, long-necked species like Diplodocus and Apatosaurus were the largest dinosaurs. From tip to tail, some sauropods were up to 40 metres long.

These giant herbivores ranged across the globe and thrived throughout the age of dinosaurs, nearly 150 million years.

"Sauropods are the one group that was successful from the beginning of the age of dinosaurs until the very end," says Robert Reisz, a paleontologist and professor of biology at U of T Mississauga.

Despite their enormous size, sauropods had relatively small heads and mouths. They fed by ripping plant material from trees and bushes, and would have needed to eat almost constantly.

But sauropods did not have the extensive chewing capabilities of the large headed duckbill dinosaurs which are well known for their massive dental batteries. Instead, sauropods like titanosaurs and diplodocids evolved a different strategy for dealing with harsh, hard to process plant materials, using simplified, small, pencil shaped, rapidly growing new teeth that were worn down and replaced very quickly.

In research published in Nature Communications, Reisz examined fossils from the embryos of Lufengosaurus, an early sauropodomorph species that predates more recognizable sauropods like titanosaurs and diplodocids, which came later. Found in China's Yunnan province, the fossils provided a record of Lufengosaurus at different stages of development, and showed distinct phases of tooth development.

In one of these phases, Lufengosaurus embryos had pencil-like teeth that resemble those found in some adult diplodocid and titanosaur sauropods. The finding suggests that the similar tooth structures that emerged in later sauropod species evolved through the retention of features present in the early stages of development of their distant predecessors.

"This evolutionary phenomenon, called paedomorphosis, is more frequently associated with small animals, but in this case, we seem to see it in big animals too," Reisz says.

While Reisz' sauropod research relied on rare embryo fossils, his examination of an even more ancient reptile relied upon a relative abundance of specimens.

Captorhinus aguti is a reptile that lived in the Permian Period (289 million years ago), well before the age of dinosaurs. In research published in Current Biology, Reisz studied 95 Captorhinus fossils to identify whether these four-legged reptiles displayed traits associated with brain lateralization—the asymmetrical brain function that can be observed in humans, birds, mammals and reptiles.

"The best-known lateralization is human right-handedness, and we know that right-handed people also prefer to eat on the right side," says Reisz.

This project came about because Diane Scott, research assistant to Reisz, noticed that in one nearly perfect skull of this reptile one side of the dentition was more worn than the other side. Reisz's team used the large number of lower jaws of this reptile, all from a single site, in order to understand it's population-level chewing preferences.

"When you only have one specimen, it doesn't really tell you a story," says Reisz. "Maybe there was something wrong with that individual—a muscle anomaly that caused it to happen. But here, we have a population-level examination, all from a single pocket."

The right jaws of Captorhinus showed more wear than the left, suggesting that even 289 million years ago, reptiles were displaying traits associated with brain asymmetry.

"It's circumstantial evidence, but we think this indicates a subdivision of the brain, and suggests that functional brain asymmetry is a deeply nested phenomenon in vertebrate evolution, and this is the first time that we've seen it in fossils."

More information: Robert R. Reisz et al. Early Jurassic dinosaur fetal dental development and its significance for the evolution of sauropod dentition, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16045-7

Robert R. Reisz et al. Lateralized Feeding Behavior in a Paleozoic Reptile, Current Biology (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.04.026

Journal information: Nature Communications , Current Biology 

Provided by University of Toronto Mississauga

Source: https://phys.org/

Non-avian theropod dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex relied less on speed, more on energy-saving, according to a new study published in the journal PLoS ONE.

Theropod dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial carnivores during much of the Mesozoic era.

These dinosaurs ranged in mass from 200 g to 9,000 kg and occupied much of the available niche space.

While no single adaptation is likely to explain such widespread dominance and diversity of form, the bipedal locomotory system employed by theropods is invoked as an important reason for the success of this lineage.

Plenty of research has explored the relationship between their locomotion and lifestyle. Much of this work has focused on running speeds, but Dr. Alexander Dececchi of Mount Marty College and colleagues argue that speed might not be the most important factor, especially for the biggest theropods.

The researchers gathered data on limb proportions, body mass, and gaits of more than 70 species of theropod dinosaurs.

They then applied a variety of methods to estimate each dinosaur’s top speed as well as how much energy they expended while moving around at more relaxed walking speeds.

Among smaller to medium-sized species, longer legs appear to be an adaptation for faster running, in line with previous results.

But for the real titans, top running speed is limited by body size, so longer legs instead correlated with low-energy walking.

Running is important for hunters, but they generally spend much more time roaming around in search of food.

“While speed was a major advantage for dinosaurs who needed to hunt prey and also escape predators, the biggest theropods relied more on efficiency while foraging,” Dr. Dececchi and co-authors said.

“Among giant theropods, the champions were tyrannosaurs like T. rex, whose long legs were apparently well-adapted for reduced energy expenditure while prowling for prey.”

“Size matters. Smaller theropods were both hunter and the hunted, so their lives were lived at high speed. For giants like T. rex, a top predator with no natural enemies, life was a marathon not a sprint.”

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T.A. Dececchi et al. 2020. The fast and the frugal: Divergent locomotory strategies drive limb lengthening in theropod dinosaurs. PLoS ONE 15 (5): e0223698; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0223698

Source: www.sci-news.com/

A team of paleontologists from Australia and the UK has found fullerene-like structures in Cretaceous-period crinoids, marine animals related to starfish, sea urchins, and brittle stars. The researchers believe these strange structures might have acted as a buoyancy chamber to allow the animals to float in seawater but also protect them.

Crinoids, also known as sea lilies or feather-stars, are part of a large group of marine invertebrate animals called echinoderms. Other echinoderms are starfish, brittle stars, sand dollars, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers.

The skeleton of echinoderms is made of the mineral calcite, and consists of hundreds of individual plates of different shapes and sizes.

All living echinoderms have what is called pentameral symmetry, which means their bodies are organized in patterns of five; for example, the five arms of the common starfish. Crinoids may have as few as five arms, but usually they have arms in multiples of five.

Crinoids are unusual looking animals because they look more like plants than animals. Superficially, the stem or column of a crinoid resembles the stalk of a flower, the calyx or head resembles the sepals of a flower, and the arms resemble the petals of a flower.

These marine animals first appeared in the seas of the Cambrian period, about 300 million years before dinosaurs. They flourished during Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras, and some survive to the present day. Around 600 living species are known; most are free-living feather stars or comatulids living in the shallow seas.

“Crinoids were in a very dangerous place millions of years ago when the oceans were shallower and they shared them with predators such as crabs and fish,” said co-author Dr. Aaron Hunter, a researcher in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Western Australia and the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge.

“Survival was critical and the ball-like structures, able to withstand very heavy loads, formed around them to protect them from the harms of the ocean and aid buoyancy.”

“These animals could then spread around the world and have been found in chalk rocks from Texas, US to Kalbarri in Western Australia. They could form a snow shoe to sit on the bottom of the shallow oceans or float and relocate to safer places.”

Dr. Hunter and his colleague, Dr. Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill from the Institute of Analytics & Data Science & School of Life Sciences at the University of Essex, the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge, and the Earth-Life Science Institute at Tokyo Institute of Technology, analyzed the fossilized remains of Marsupites testudinarius and Uintacrinus socialis, two crinoid species that lived 80 million years ago (Cretaceous period).

Both species possessed long feeding arms and an enlarged, close-to-spherical head, composed of 16 large plates in Marsupites testudinarius but many more, small plates in Uintacrinus socialis.

According to the team, the heads of these animals show structural similarities to carbon fullerene and fulleroid molecules, respectively.

“Marsupites testudinarius had fewer but relatively large plates, creating a stable structure,” Dr. Hunter said.

“Uintacrinus socialis on the other hand has far more complex plates that form a dome.”

“The structures are also found in the carbon molecule buckminsterfullerene but this is the first time we have found such a structure in fossils and it still remains a mystery why these successful structures did not evolve again.”

The findings were published in the journal Palaeontology.

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Jennifer F. Hoyal Cuthill & Aaron W. Hunter. Fullerene-like structures of Cretaceous crinoids reveal topologically limited skeletal possibilities. Palaeontology, published online February 18, 2020; doi: 10.1111/pala.12474

Source: www.sci-news.com/

Fossil footprints discovered nearly 80 years ago in a sandstone quarry at Berowra have been identified as the traces of a four-legged animal swimming in a river nearly a quarter of a billion years ago.

The footprints were identified by Roy Minden Farman, a former masters student at the University of New England in Armidale, who noticed them in a storage facility of artefacts belonging to the Australian Museum. The study was published last week in the Journal of Paleontology.

The footprints come from rocks that formed at the bottom of large rivers that once covered the Sydney region in the Middle Triassic period (around 240 million years ago) before the appearance of dinosaurs. The sand at the bottom of these rivers eventually turned to stone, and is now famously used as building materials across Sydney region, where it is referred to as Sydney sandstone. The owner of the sandstone quarry at Berowra, Geoffrey Scarrott, first noticed the footprints as they were being unearthed in the 1940s. They were eventually transferred to the Australian Museum in Sydney, where they were displayed for a short period in the 1950s, but were later moved into the research collections.

The trackway measures 4.2 meters long and consists of at least 35 foot and handprints. Only two fingers from each hand and foot made their impressions in the sandy bottom, making the precise identity of the animal difficult to establish. Researchers at the University of New England determined that it was likely a temnospondyl (an extinct group of salamander-like amphibians) between 0.8 and 1.35 m long, the bones of which are reasonably well-known from rocks in the Sydney region. Despite this, animal fossils are extremely rare in Sydney sandstone.

The tracks are also significant because they are the oldest record of a swimming tetrapod—that is, all animals with four legs, including humans—from Australia. "The foot and hand prints, along with the gaps between the sequence of traces, were unlike anything I had seen before. This led me to believe the animal was swimming in water," said Farman, who led the study. Farman later confirmed that the animal was merely brushing the river bottom with its hands and feet rather than making full contact with the ground, as would be expected if the animal was walking. All tetrapods evolved from fishy ancestors and emerged onto land 360 million years ago, roughly 100 million years earlier than the Berowra footprints. The footprints of these early tetrapods are usually made on land, therefore, the tracks made by a swimming animal are a valuable insight into how these animals moved 240 million years ago.

The original quarry where the fossils were found has since been developed, and is no longer accessible.

More information: Roy M. Farman et al. Australia's earliest tetrapod swimming traces from the Hawkesbury Sandstone (Middle Triassic) of the Sydney Basin, Journal of Paleontology (2020). DOI: 10.1017/jpa.2020.22

Journal information: Journal of Paleontology 

Provided by University of New England

Source: https://phys.org/

A MUM and dad have revealed how they have made an epic Jurassic Park-themed bedroom for their son which includes an incredible Jeep bed.

Abigail Talbot, 23, and Darren Block, 42, spent just £250 on the amazing room transformation for their son Horatio, two.

Abigail, a support staff for engineers at energy company SSE, and Darren, a blacksmith and bicycle mechanic, live in Manchester and are also parents to Aria, one.

The Jeep was the perfect focal point for the dinosaur-themed room, which they cut from MDF and softwood timber and accessorised with products from eBay and Amazon. 

Abigail told money-saving community LatestDeals.co.uk: "We assembled the jeep body, added the legs, filled and sanded the screw holes with body filler and sand flat, then added the wheel arches and filled and sanded the joints and also wood slats for the bed.

“The trickiest bit is getting the angles of the cuts to fit. Car body filler hides a lot of mistakes.”

Abigail said she then added the grille and primed the wood with spray paint, before adding a few coats of paint. 

She said: “I used exterior paint as it's more hard wearing. I also used car pinstripe tape to make the finish neater where the colours join.

"Next was the wallpaper, before moving the Jeep into position. We added the wheels and grille and painted cracks on the wall to add to the feature using scrap off cuts of MDF.

"I used cheap plastic plants and firewood logs from Aldi to create the scenery and stuck it down with car body filler.

“We covered the rest of the MDF with a thin layer of filler and pressed in some cheap gravel. I used all the MDF I had left instead of throwing it away.”

The couple then added cheap artificial grass under the Jeep to create an area for Horatio to play, and this was stuck down with double sided tape.

She added: "Cheap plug-in LED light strips from Amazon added to the Jeep. He can change the colour to what he likes with a little remote.

"The process is messy due to the woodwork and with the MDF you need appropriate ventilation.

"Once all the pieces of wood have been cut, you will need to build the bed in the room you are putting it in as it's heavy and won't fit through door frames.”

Abigail said the overall cost was around £250 for the entire bedroom, with the bed costing £200. 

She said: "Our local timber yard is still open so we were able to source all of our materials from there but B&Q stock all the products required. 

“The headlights were from Halfords. We tweaked them so they could be wired to a plug.

"The wheels were gifted to us by one of our local scrap yards, Gadbury Auto Salvage.

"Car body filler to fill all the joints and screw holes just finishes the bed off, and truck bed liner paint which you can buy from Halfords was also great and cheap too.

"It doesn't scratch or wear easily so we have used it on all the areas that our boy comes in contact with often.

"All the fake plants are from eBay and were as cheap as chips and the bookshelves are spice racks that were painted to match his bed. The wallpaper was from Amazon for less than £30.

“The sky is painted to look like the stars at night. This was done prior to the lockdown by Marshalls Night Sky Ceilings but it really adds to the overall look at night time.”

Abigail says that getting stuck into a DIY challenge such as this one is a great way to be creative and productive during what is a stressful time for families.

She said: “It's a great little project that will keep people busy during lockdown and it's something amazing for the kids.

“I’m relieved now it's done and so happy that our little boy loves it. It was a big step for him because it was the transition from a cot to a bed.

"The next project after the garden will be a bed for Aria!”

Source: www.thesun.co.uk/

That talking raptor will be seared in our brains for eternity.

A sixth Jurassic Park film is on the way! Whether you liked the last film or not, it's always fun to see dinosaurs on a big screen tearing each other (and humans) apart for our amusement.

From the spectacular Steven Spielberg outings to the dividing Colin Trevorrow (directed and produced) installments, we've been dazzled, delighted and horrified by the adventures on screen.

After five movies (so far), the series has taken a number of bizarre turns, and while a few have been greatly received, there have been a number of crashes in the series. These could have flattened the franchise, and the big ones almost killed them forever, and in their honour its best we address them.

The filmmakers behind the Jurassic Park movies have made some wild decisions over the years, and most of them have been downright dumb. Whether it was to appease fans, or serve a greater purpose in the franchise is yet to be seen, but in the meantime they are just gosh-darned awful.

Let's take a look at twelve decisions from the Jurassic Park movies that were so dumb that we have to question where the heads of the people who made them were at.

13. The Mitchell Brothers' Backstory - Jurassic World

12. Dr. Ian Malcolm's Cameo Appearance - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

11. Talking To The Velociraptors - Jurassic Park III

10. T-Rex Loose In The City - The Lost World: Jurassic Park

9. Zara's Brutal Death - Jurassic World

8. Nostalgia For The First Park - Jurassic World

7. Gymnastics Save The Day - The Lost World: Jurassic Park

6. The Indoraptor - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

5. Killing The T-Rex - Jurassic Park III

4. Making Humans The Big Bad - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

3. The Granddaughter Is Actually A Cloned Daughter - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

2. Freeing The Dinosaurs To "Find Harmony" - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

1. The Talking Velociraptor - Jurassic Park III

Source: https://whatculture.com/

Scientists worldwide have long debated our ability to identify male and female dinosaurs. Now, research led by Queen Mary University of London has shown that despite previous claims of success, it's very difficult to spot differences between the sexes.

In the new study, researchers analysed skulls from modern-day gharials, an endangered and giant crocodilian species, to see how easy it is to distinguish between males and females using only fossil records.

Male gharials are larger in size than females and possess a fleshy growth on the end of their snout, known as a ghara. Whilst the ghara is made from soft tissue, it is supported by a bony hollow near the nostrils, known as the narial fossa, which can be identified in their skulls.

The research team, which included Jordan Mallon from the Canadian Museum of Nature, Patrick Hennessey from Georgia Southern University and Lawrence Witmer from Ohio University, studied 106 gharial specimens in museums across the world. They found that aside from the presence of the narial fossa in males, it was still very hard to tell the sexes apart.

Dr. David Hone, Senior Lecturer in Zoology at Queen Mary University of London and author of the study, said: "Like dinosaurs, gharials are large, slow growing reptiles that lay eggs, which makes them a good model for studying extinct dinosaur species. Our research shows that even with prior knowledge of the sex of the specimen, it can still be difficult to tell male and female gharials apart. With most dinosaurs we don't have anywhere near that size of the dataset used for this study, and we don't know the sex of the animals, so we'd expect this task to be much harder."

In many species, males and females can look very different from each other. For example, antlers are largely only found in male deer and in peacocks, males are normally brightly-coloured with large, iridescent tail feathers whereas females are much more subdued in their colouration. This is known as sexual dimorphism and is very common within the animal kingdom. It is expected that dinosaurs also exhibit these differences, however this research suggests that in most cases this is far too difficult to tell from the skeleton alone.

Dr. Hone said: "Some animals show extraordinarily high levels of sexual dimorphism, for example huge size differences between males and females. Gharials sit somewhere in the middle as they do possess these large narial fossa that can help with identification. Our study suggests that unless the differences between the dinosaurs are really striking, or there is a clear feature like the fossa, we will struggle to tell a male and female dinosaur apart using our existing dinosaur skeletons."

The new research also challenges previous studies that have hinted at differences between the sexes in popular dinosaur species such as the Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex), and led to common misconceptions amongst the general public.

"Many years ago, a scientific paper suggested that female T. rex are bigger than males. However, this was based on records from 25 broken specimens and our results show this level of data just isn't good enough to be able to make this conclusion," Dr. Hone added.

More information: Ontogeny of a sexually selected structure in an extant archosaur Gavialis gangeticus (Pseudosuchia: Crocodylia) with implications for sexual dimorphism in dinosaurs, D Hone, J Mallon, P Hennessey, L Witmer. PeerJ, 2020.

Journal information: PeerJ 

Provided by Queen Mary, University of London

Source: https://phys.org/

An international team of paleontologists from the University of Plymouth, the University of Kansas and the Forge Fossils has found a specimen of the squid-like cephalopod Clarkeiteuthis montefiorei preserved with the herring-like fish Dorsetichthys bechei in its two arms; the bones in the head of the fish are broken in a manner that suggests a quite violent attack.

The 195-million-year-old specimen was found in the 19th century near Lyme Regis on the Jurassic coast of southern England.

The fossil predates previously recorded similar specimens by more than 10 million years.

“Since the 19th century, the Blue Lias and Charmouth Mudstone formations of the Dorset coast have provided large numbers of important body fossils that inform our knowledge of coleoid paleontology,” said lead author Professor Malcolm Hart, a paleontologist in the School of Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Plymouth.

“In many of these mudstones, specimens of paleobiological significance have been found, especially those with the arms and hooks with which the living animals caught their prey.”

“This, however, is a most unusual if not extraordinary fossil as predation events are only very occasionally found in the geological record.”

“It points to a particularly violent attack which ultimately appears to have caused the death, and subsequent preservation, of both animals.”

The fossilized remains indicate a brutal incident in which the head bones of the fish were apparently crushed by its attacker.

The researchers have two hypotheses for how the two animals ultimately came to be preserved together for eternity.

“Firstly, the fish was too large for its attacker or became stuck in its jaws so that the pair settled to the seafloor where they were preserved,” they said.

“Alternatively, Clarkeiteuthis montefiorei took its prey to the seafloor in a display of ‘distraction sinking’ to avoid the possibility of being attacked by another predator. However, in doing so it entered waters low in oxygen and suffocated.”

The scientists presented their findings this week at Sharing Geoscience Online, a virtual alternative to the traditional General Assembly held annually by the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

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Malcolm Hart et al. Life and Death in the Jurassic Seas of Dorset, Southern England. EGU 2020, abstract # 1466; doi: 10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-1466

Source: www.sci-news.com/

Funko has unleashed a phenomenon with its Pop! vinyl figures. Many popular characters have been immortalized as figures including Mickey Mouse, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Iron Man, Geralt of Rivia, Daenerys Targaryen and many, many more. The next step in the Funko Pop! world is the Funkoverse Strategy Game, a board game that includes exclusive Funkoverse Pop! Game Figures.

We were able to test out two different Funkoverse Strategy Games from Jurassic Park, one made for 2-4 players (see it on Amazon) and the other for 2 players (Amazon). The best part about these games is the cool collectible figures, and they’re smaller than the regular Funko Pop! vinyl figures.

The 2-4 Player base game includes figures for Dr. Alan Grant, Dr. Ellie Sattler, Ray Arnold, and a raptor. It has 2 playable maps: Visitor Center and Raptor Paddock.

The game has you playing as different characters, and name of the game is to defeat your rival by scoring the most points. Each character has basic moves and unique abilities to help give them an edge against other players. If you’ve played Magic the Gathering, this should feel familiar to you.

There are four available game scenarios, and with 2 different maps, players will encounter familiar moments from the film. It comes with instructions, and it can be overwhelming when you’re starting out and reading to understand the rules. Once you get the hang of the game, it becomes easy, and it helps with the many scenarios and maps for extended playtime. The scenarios are like the different modes in a multiplayer video game including Capture the Flag, Control Points, King of the Hill, etc.

What makes Funkoverse even better is that you can use the Funkoverse figures in other Funkoverse boards. Jurassic Park characters can enter the world of Harry Potter and DC, and Harry Potter can fend off dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, and Batman can go up against Voldemort. It’s kind of like the discontinued Disney Infinity and Skylanders where you can use different figures in different worlds.

The game also includes little items like dice and points, and in the Jurassic Park game, the points are amber with mosquitos.

Jurassic Park Expandalong with Dr. Ian Malcom and T. rex

The 2 player version includes the Funkoverse Pop! game figures for Dr. Ian Malcolm and the T. rex and 2 playable maps (the T. rex Paddock and Isla Nublar Lab), and two scenarios. The real reason to get this is for those who are fans of Jeff Goldblum and the T. rex.

Final Reaction

The games can be simple, but to make it really fun, we suggest playing with the maximum number of players allowed and the different scenarios. With more players, you’ll have to plan your moves even more carefully as you deal with different minds. With the figures and their unique abilities, different maps, and scenarios, it adds to the game’s replayability. Some of the scenarios will be familiar for those who love video game modes like Capture the Flag and King of the Hill.

The Funkoverse Jurassic Park Strategy Games are now available on Amazon.

Source: https://nerdreactor.com/