Happy World Elephant Day!

Today, 12 August 2016, is World Elephant Day - a day dedicated to the largest living land animals and raising awareness for their conservation. These days always seem to sneak up on me, meaning I didn't have time to prepare anything in advance. So for World Elephant Day, enjoy these photos of African bush elephants Loxodonta africana at the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro. I visited the zoo in July; it's the largest natural habitat zoo in North America and a wonderful institution of education and conservation. I'd highly recommend visiting if you ever have the chance.

Saurian - And Why You Should Care About It

Dramatis dinosaurae: Tyrannosaurus rex, Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis,
Dakotaraptor steini, and Triceratops prorsus, from left to right. These are four
of the playable animal species in Saurian, with two more yet to be revealed.
[image from Saurian's blog]

Saurian. If you've had any interaction with the palaeoblogosphere for well over a year, there's a pretty decent chance you've come across something involving this in-development computer game. Since the end of May, Saurian has been even more prominent in the online palaeo community because of the launch of its Kickstarter - which closed a couple weeks ago after successfully meeting the original goal for funding the game, and several of the stretch goals too. But why is this upcoming video game such a big deal among dinosaur lovers, and why is the fact that it is a big deal important?

Day of the Diplodocids Redux

And he means business -- just check out that switchblade comb.
[by the author]

Remember Tschopp et al 2015? You know the paper... Brontosaurus is back! Huzzah and tally-ho and all that. I wrote about it here, nearly 15 months ago. I'm bringing it back up now because it will be relevant to a post that I've had in the works for a little while now. That should hopefully materialise here within the next little while but before it does, let's look back at good ol' Brontosaurus and see what was really important about its resurrection from the open grave of taxonomic obsolescence...

It Came From Dinovember III: The Dinosaur Drawings That Would Not Die

Never fear, Raven Lunatics, Noah's Ravens is back from another totally unplanned and largely unnecessary hiatus. Before we dive into new material around these here parts, it's high time I finished up my Dinovember recap, a shameful seven months after the actual event. Without further ado...

It Came From Dinovember II: Return of the Dinosaur Drawings

Well, so much for getting a lot of posts in! Dinovember wrapped up well over two months ago, and over a month has passed since I began my review of what I produced for it, but... well, better late than never, right?

Kileskus aristotocus was tyrannosauroiding before T. rex made it cool.
[by the author]

It Came From Dinovember

Firstly, I would like to apologise for the total lack of content here over the past several weeks months. I've been busy transitioning back to college life and I haven't really given Noah's Ravens the attention I'd have liked to. I've got a lot of ideas for some new posts so the plan now is to begin posting regularly with a lot more content!

Now then - last month I participated in what some have called 'Dinovember,' a 30-day celebration of dinosaur art; I produced a drawing a day.* I'd like to share them here (click to embiggen, of course), with a little bit of background on the animals pictured and how I restored them. Click the break below to continue...

* Well, I produced 30 drawings. I got behind several times and had to play catch-up, but did get all 30 done by the end of the month. Haha! My most productive bout of artiness since I was about nine.

A Visit To the McWane Science Center, Part II: Southern Sea Monsters

In the previous post, we took a look at the Alabama Dinosaurs exhibit at the McWane Science Center in Birmingham, Alabama. However, as you may remember from the last post, much of Alabama was underwater during the Cretaceous Period, submerged by a shallow seaway.

Notice how much of Alabama is submerged by a shallow seaway.
[image from Sampson et al, 2010, 'New Horned Dinosaurs from Utah Provide Evidence for
Intracontinental Dinosaur Endemism', under CC Attribution 2.5 Generic licence]

The warm waters of this shallow sea teemed with life, and after more than 75 million years, the fossil record of these marine organisms can be found in Alabama, with a diversity and richness far surpassing the state's known collection of dinosaur fossils from this time. McWane presents a sampling of this prehistoric marine life in the sister exhibit to Alabama Dinosaurs, fetchingly entitled Sea Monsters...

WARNING: Clicking the 'read more' link below without having this open in another tab is highly dangerous. Proceed at your own risk.