Add
Private Notes
t's messy, but we have our first production blog! Liz gets you up-to-date on how production is going so far, makes a temporary soundproofing setup, and Steven goes over his research into our upcoming Velociraptor episode so far.
We've been quiet, but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy. In this short blog Liz talks about and shows a bit of what has been going on with general production, and Steven shows where he's at with an important piece of Velociraptor's animation.
We have a new set, and it's awesome! We are so ready to get back into filming new episodes.
We reveal the next episode that our Patrons voted for, show/ talk about some of the work we've been up to lately, and share some silly moments from the Velociraptor shoot!
In a new experimental series, Steven Bellettini (our Head of Animation) demonstrates his dinosaur knowledge by looking at generic toys and pointing out what's wrong with them. Because, why not? Today we take a look at what we believe to be a Scelidosaurus, and Steve breaks down what the manufacturer got right, and what they got very, very wrong. In addition there's a little history of its discovery, naming, and a reveal of what it should really look like if the toy were to be accurate!
Episode two features Steve breaking down what he believes to be a Stegosaurus. He reveals more anatomical inaccuracies, and delves into the history of the dinosaur's naming, and a little of what it was first thought to look like. And then he rants about the two-brain theory. Because dinosaurs weren't stupid.
Steve takes a look at a toy that could be several possible types of dinosaurs, and decides it's actually a Plateosaurus. On the pick-apart-list this week includes common faults with bipedal dinosaur toys, a detailed look at how the toy's limbs should look and work, and why studying parts such as those is important for understanding how these creatures lived.
Okay, so it's not a dinosaur...but instead of ending the episode, we're going to tell you why! Steve picks over a Dimetrodon, which probably makes it into the dinosaur toy roster because it has the dino look and posture most people tend to think of. Included in today's lesson is the criteria needed to make an organism a synapsid, the type of environment that existed before the Triassic period, and basic anatomy comparisons to dinosaurs.
For our first audience request, Steve looks at a very tiny Dilophosaurus toy. This guy was not like the poison spitting, frilled little monsters in Jurassic Park, it turns out! Included are highlights of problems in the skull, general body build, and details on the teeth!
By the most popular demand yet, we tackle our first flying prehistoric creature. Turns out, we don't have Pterodactyl like everyone asked for. So we're doing a Pteranodon instead. Steve covers everything from posture, to major corrections to hand/wing anatomy, and even provides background on how the creature actually relates to other creatures.
This week we were sent a Parasaurolophus by viewer Rebecca Helm, who was wondering especially about the crest. Steve covers not only the crest, but also covers stance, soft tissue, and even a little about the absurdity of paleontological naming devices.
Member NameNotFound's daughter was rather enamored with this dinosaur when she came to tour Galactic Headquarters. So, of course we had to feature it as a special treat for her.
This week: a dinosaur that's surprisingly accurate, but still manages to be very wrong in other ways. The armored dinosaur Euoplocephalus was a Cretaceous Period specimen that was indeed very much as the toy portrays, but Steve's gonna get nit-picky with it. For science!
Steve picks over T-Rex itself! Well, its bones anyway. Thanks to Herb from tinysaur.us, we're going over the ubiquitous T-Rex skeleton wood puzzle kit to see what's accurate and what's not!
Brontosaurus has been a popular request over the last few months. After a modest correction relating to naming conventions, Steve obliges! Using a rather jiggly example, he covers what made these creatures extremely successful for their time.
This time Steve has a Pachycephalosaurus, and talks about its long, strange history of (re-)classification. Also, ornithopods are (roughly) animals more closely related to Iguanodon than to Triceratops. He forgot to talk about that in the video.
We have a very, very inaccurate one this time around. Steve looks at the animal that (for better or worse) was the catalyst for our current ideas about dinosaurs!
Steven looks at what paleontologists currently understand about the evolution of feathers in Dinosaurs, how they know it, and why it matters.
It's one of our most requested dinosaurs! Steve covers the inaccuracies of one of the several toys viewers sent in for this episode, talks Triceratops's crest and horn development, and touches on the popular, yet erroneous notion that this particular dinosaur never even existed.
Turns out we had several people who REALLY wanted us to talk about Triceratops. So we didn't leave them hanging, Steven does a quick rundown of the extra toys fans sent in for us to talk about while the full episode was being made.
It's finally here, the oft-requested episode looking at Spinosaurus! Steve picks the toy over, and shows why spinosaurus is much more unique than just "the meat eater with the sail on its back."
You've heard of Brachiosaurus, but is the dinosaur you're picturing actually that genus? Steven takes a look at the giant African high-browser, Giraffatitan.
Carnotaurus has a lot more going for it than just being the meat-eater with the horns!
In which we take a child's drawings completely seriously.
There's an enormous body of publications & discussions on the anatomy & behavior of Allosaurus. Let's talk about it! And also these two toys people sent us.
Archaeopteryx: the first bird! Except when it isn't. We'll have to look at how cladistics works to understand why this little fluffy dinosaur is so hotly debated.
This time, probably the second-most-popular ceratopsid, Styracosaurus--and by extension Rubeosaurus. Hope you're ready to learn about the environmental and social forces that shaped this giant pig-antellope-bird. ...and also what a parietal spike is.
Turns out our Stegosaurus was wrong, too. In the first of our new side-series for YDAW, we explain how!
This is one of the less accurate toys we've gotten. It would be difficult to restore a young Apatosaurus _louisae_ further from the truth.
We happened to go to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and of course Steven had things to say about some of the displays. The museum was kind enough to let us film comments about their Brachiosaurus, "Apatosaurus," Patagotitan, some exciting Antarctic dinosaurs, and of course Tyrannosaurus. Mounted skeletons have advantages over illustrations or models, but they're no more immune to ongoing science.
Part 1 of 2. Why is it such a big deal that Theropods might be more closely related to Ornithischians than either is to Sauropods? A (very) brief history of high-level dinosaur phylogenetics.
Part 2 of 2. What can we learn from the choices researchers made when testing this new phylogeny?
This is not the full Velociraptor episode, but rather a small taste of what's to come. The awesome folks at Everything Tiny (who previously sent us the teeny T. rex from the skeletal episode), we kind enough to ship us their Velociraptor model for Steven to look at! So we decided to make a shorter episode focusing on it, and trying to represent a creature at such a small scale.
Finally, it is here! We can thank Jurassic Park for turning Velociraptor into a household name, but since then the real animal has managed to step out of its movie monster counterpart's shadow. Watch to see how!
Mistakes were made. So here's a brief video correcting them!
It seems like a weird creature compared to what is thought of as the 'standard' sauropod due to its spines. But when we consider it comes from a group of short-necked low-browsers, Amargasaurus makes a lot more sense!
New research came out this year with bearing upon everyone's favorite centrosaurine(s), so here's more than you probably wanted to know about parietals.
Iguanodon's been with us for nearly as long as paleontology itself. Consequently, the way we reconstruct this animal has changed over and over, right down to the present day.
We revisit the Triassic period to examine Herrerasaurus--possibly the first dinosaurs to figure out how to be large carnivores.
