U of Alberta VP Exhibit, 1935

Thanks to Clive Coy for the image.

How Many Dinosaurs Are There?

Palaeodiversity and formation counts: redundancy or bias?. 2015. M. Benton, Palaeontology.

In a new study published this week, Professor Mike Benton has explored how knowledge about dinosaurs has accumulated over the past 200 years, since the first dinosaur was named in 1824.

His research does not answer the question once and for all, but it suggests that strong caution is needed with some popular methods to 'correct' the fossil record. From: http://phys.org/news/2015-08-good-bad-fossil-dinosaurs.html#jCp

Brontosaurus & Diplodocus, 1904

From Prehistosaurio

Premiered This Day (1978): Planet of The Dinosaurs

Directed by James Shea in 1978, this film featured some nicely animated dinosaurs.

Gueragama sulamericana, New Lizard from the Cretaceous of Brazil

A stem acrodontan lizard in the Cretaceous of Brazil revises early lizard evolution in Gondwana. 2015. Nature Communications

University of Alberta paleontologists have discovered a new species of lizard, named Gueragama sulamericana, in the municipality of Cruzeiro do Oeste in Southern Brazil in the rock outcrops of a Late Cretaceous desert, dated approximately 80 million years ago. PR

Premiered This Day (1975): The People That Time Forgot

Directed by Kevin O’Connor, this 1977 film starring Doug McClure was a sequel to “The Land That Time Forgot” (1975).

Happy Birthday to Lori Nelson

Nelson played Helen Dodson in the 1955 film, “Revenge of the Creature”. imdb info

Died This Day: Lorenz Oken

Lorenz Oken (Aug. 1, 1779 - Aug. 11, 1851) was a German naturalist who offered early evolutionary ideas and stimulated comparative anatomy. He theorized (incorrectly) that the skull was a modified vertebra, but formed some fundamental concepts which stimulated further thought from later scientists.

In Die Zeugung, he discussed “the infusoria”—elementary units of living organisms—into which all flesh can be broken down. Higher animals, he proposed, consisted of constituent animalcules. Entities, whether plants or animals, became organisms by the fusion of these primal animals. Those elements lose all individuality and create a higher unity. From Today In Science History

More here

Premiered This Day: Dinosaurus! (1960)

Dinosaurus! (1960) was directed by Irvin Yeaworth and produced by Jack H. Harris. The movie poster is pretty bland so I’m presenting the cover for the comic adaptation instead.

The film is most notable for the fact that the 'Brontosaurus' model and miniature jungle from the film were used for an episode of the The Twilight Zone (1959) ("The Odyssey of Flight 33). Wikipedia