boy are our faces pink...

as much as i "like" waiting for things to happen, i actually bore quite easy. while we vivus-dinosaurs wait around the royal british columbia museum for the convention my special talent agent peter bond has organized, i decided to put together my own event. especially since we're all just standing around victoria doing nothing at the moment.

over on ART Evolved they're just about to wrap up their pink dinosaurs for cancer research event, and i realized with great embarrassment that none of us vivus-dinosaurs have done anything for it!?!

so i called in every friend and favour i could!

i started off with lillian the albertosaur, as my idea was quite public and there was a chance some celebrity could result from it. this was enough to get her to agree. though i made sure to keep out the other dinosaur involvement. lillian has been quite volatile about being around other dinosaurs lately.

like i thought, apart from her sensitive snout (which i predicted given how my own nose is), lillian didn't mind my paint job.

norman a. centrosaur on the other hand was a lot more skeptical about my motives, not that he minded the paint job.

`

"are you sure about this?" he demanded multiple times throughout my covering him in paint.

`

"of course i am," i'd try to assure him.

`

"i know you think you're sure," norman would retort. "i just want to make sure this isn't one of those times you've convinced yourself of something, only to find out it was your brain making it up, leaving us in the lurch."

"why are you suddenly so sensitive?" i finally asked him, wondering what his sudden concern about our cause was. "back in the old days you were never this worried about me making a tiny brain mistake."

`

clearly he was embarrassed by whatever he was worried about, as he awkwardly recomposed himself before saying. "true, but normally you weren't making me change my colouring into something that might be seen as ridiculous by the outside world."

i guess norman did have a point there. normally a pink dinosaur would be cause of ridicule and amusement, but i had it on good authority pink was not just acceptable in october, but really the classy thing to do. norman relented after i explained it to him.

the best of my art subjects had to be dollie the stegosaur my new friend from the OH-lympics. unlike the other two she didn't need to told a reason, other than i needed her help. dollie and me had a lot in common, wanting to help others out seemed to be high up the list.

getting my three master pieces together on the front lawn of the royal british columbia museum, i had the vivus contribution to the pink dinosaur event together!

`

i think they look pretty sweet, don't you?

just after i'd taken the necessary photos, i was about to wrap up when norman mischievously said "one second, traumador. there is one thing missing from your pink dinosaurs."

`

"what's that?" i asked starting to turn around.

norman with mouth half full replied. "a pink tyrannosaurus rex," and with that he dumped the last of my pink paint all over me!!!

fossil of the weekend #83

a skeleton of the cretaceous ichythosaur Platypterygius americanus, from the royal tyrrell museum's 25th anniversary display "alberta unearthed".

royal british columbia museum

me and norman have arrived in victoria british columbia, after our nice (but slightly sad) ferry ride. our reason for being here was this special dinosaur OH-lympics convention that my special talent agent peter bond has organized.

i wasn't quite sure what to expect from the convention, but i was really excited about the venue!

norman and i earlier this afternoon went to scope out our new "workplace" for the next week. the royal british columbia museum!

now as i'm sure my regular readers know, i LOVE museums! (for you new people out there, i LOVE museums... there now you're up to speed :P). so i'm always pretty stoked when i get to check out a new one!

i have to say this museum is one of the coolest i've ever been to, and as you'll see this is kind of surprising. there isn't a single dinosaur in the place!

no dinosaurs isn't the same as no fossils or palaeontologic displays though, mind you. this is one of two similar cases show casing british columbia's fossil diversity... and that's about all the fossils to be seen in the museum.

i've show cased some individual specimens for my fossil of the weekend feature. you can check these out here, here, here, here, here, here, there, here, over here, and finally there. not exactly a palaeontologic hotspot... though this is WAY better than none at all.

the RBCM does boast on very fine palaeo related display, and that is their fleshed out wholly mammoth sculpture!

what makes this display cool (pun intended as you'll see!) is the amount of detail and attention they put into it (though this is not an exception for the royal BC! just an exception compared to other museums!). they've gone all out to capture the ice age feeling... not only does really cold air blow at you from the exhibit, but the ice covering the terrain around the mammoth is actual ice!!!

from the prehistoric section one wonders into the modern natural history area. here you are treated to some great diorama's of BC's ecology.

one of the highlights was the coast's of BC displays, complete with an actual living specimen tidal pool!

(it was this point in our tour that norman and i ran into some of our fellow dinosaur olympians... team australia's boom and rang decided to tag along with us. so they'll pop up in many of my pics)

one of the most off topic, but awesome, exhibits in this section had to be the underwater display. rather than setup a normal deep sea recreation, the designers at the RBCM opted for a fun "vehicle" to bring you to the ocean (rather than the ocean to you). their choice of a rather jules verne style submarine definitely a big hit with me... i love the nautilus and 20000 leagues under the sea!

it felt a bit like sneaking into captain nemo's personal study, with all his personal specimens and collections scattered about the place.

way too cool!

after the "first" floor (i say first with quotation marks as technically this was all on the 2nd floor, the 1st floor is just the lobby, gift shop, and theatres/auditoriums) on proceeds up to the next floor...

here you encounter the human history of BC. the 19th century victoria area was really cool...

i've been to a few places (example here) with these old skool versions of a city, but the RBCM's is truly a jewel example of one. all the little touches are there. like steam coming off the pots in the kitchen (along with a mouse scurrying along the floor!). a train comes by the train station every 10 minutes (okay its a clever set of lights with sound effects, but it sure feels like a train it is that loud!).

we also ran into all of team australia here. ms. rhonwyn and logan the muttaburrasaurus were busy checking it out too.

next was probably the highlight of the museum. the aboriginal gallery.

i can't go into detail... not because it wasn't amazing. it was... it's just that my magic sense was nearly going off, and you all remembered what happened last time that happened. so i didn't stick around too long.

from what i saw it was unbelievable though... though for some (really ominously magically) reason i have a feeling this isn't the last i've seen of this spot in the museum...

the history of BC stuff was cool. they had a whole bunch on the fishing and forestry heritage of the coast.

its just too bad that my time here was disrupted somewhat by misbehaving hypsilophodons! i have to say i'm glad i don't live or work with boom or rang. they are really nice to visit or goof around with. however they never stop, and are a real hand full. poor logan had to chase them all over the forestry exhibit. in the end the two leaellynasaura stopped more because they'd climbed or jumped on every inch of the display, and got bored being chased.

my favourite display in the whole RBCM was this replica of captain vancouver's ship the hms discovery. which is weird, as it is not palaeo or prehistoric...

i don't know how, the boat doesn't move or anything. yet still when you go on it...

you feel slightly sea sick everytime you go on it! the boat is seriously stationary, and yet it pulls off this illusion!?! incredible...

anyways overall a fantastic museum they have here in BC. my only suggestion: needs more dinosaurs :P

Pink Dinosaur Fundraising

ART Evolved is running a big cancer fundraiser this month.

be sure to draw, sculpt, make, or create a pink dinosaur for cancer research! the boys at AE are going to donate money for EVER pink dinosaur they receive.

the event page is here.

fossil of the weekend #82

a lovely skull of edmontonia from the royal tyrrell museum's 25th anniversary display "alberta unearthed".

fun fact, this is the same skull of "edmontosaurus" that was being prepped in john accorn's video on preperation still shown in the museum these days (though they covered up this mistake on the in house version with a re-recording, you can still buy the original version on DVD at the gift shop).