Paradigm Shift (The Game part 0)

i'm SOOOOO mad right now people of the innerweb, and

for once i know exactly what to direct this anger at... or in this case WHO!

that jerk (though he's still not quite in my cousins league of JERKiness...), professor paradigm has not only managed to ruin my second date with the girl of my dream's, but also completely destroyed lillian's life!!!

the worst part is neither me nor lillian know why... and though lillian may not be willing to put up a fight about it, i am!...

it's not lillian's fault mind you. we dinosaurs that are still alive (a vivus-fossil paradigm calls us) have it rough in the human world. the only way for us to make a living is to do what you humans want us to do...

for some reason being around lillian i don't care about that. i don't care that professor paradigm has major ties with the international palaeontological community, the world of museums, or perhaps most importantly my boss ms. rhonwyn. i don't care that through these he could probably ruin my finally back on track life. i certainly don't care that he may be the head of a powerful secret organization (by this i mean palaeo central).

so not caring i phoned up the melbourne museum with the intent of demanding paradigm explain himself to me... and you know what he said?

nothing. absolutely nothing.

the girl at reception informed me that the professor had not only left the museum this morning (right after confronting lillian), but that he had left the country!!!

ah man people of the innerweb! the one time i finally work the courage to do something great (and impress the girl i want to love me), and i'm robbed by the bad guy running away before i even find out there was a problem...

now my only way to help lillian is my really desperate, and probably stupid plan... all i can do right now is take her to my super duper mystery mega surprise location to cheer her up in the meantime, and while she is distracted try to set her up something resembling a successful life again.

so maybe its for the best paradigm left without me yelling at him. now that i think about it (with my limited mental capacity) what were the odds that my yelling at the mean old professor would get him to change his mind, and make things right for lillian?

yeah okay. so sure i didn't get to vent my anger, but at least this is the last time we'll ever have to see the professor again. i mean when's the next time i'm going to need a check up this bad (i've already been overdosed with magic after all!)? and lillian, if my plan goes right (please JUST once have one of my plans go right!) she'll be so famous that paradigm won't dare go near her again... good riddance is all i have to say! he can go ruin other people's lives!!!

uh okay so long as their not people i know...

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Meanwhile back in Canada at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology...

(From the personal journal of Craig)

It's been a long time since I've been in this place. A long time indeed, and I'm not sure either of us is ready for my being back so "soon"...

Only he would arrange for a meeting to be here. Though he tries to hide the fact he has emotions, occasionally his grossly dark sense of humour wriggles its way to the surface. On these rare occasions you get a rendezvous that is as appropriate as today's.
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Obviously both me and the museum have changed. Fortunately for me, the museum's differences are more noticeable at first glance. I won't want any of my old colleagues or friends here to suspect what I've become in my absence.

The change to the museum helps make me forget that this was once my home. Forget all the experiences, good times, bad times, and especially the betrayal. Not that Traumador restricted his betraying to the Tyrrell alone.

Some of the new displays, like these Albertosaurs, are a nice addition. It's good to see the mission of teaching and informing the public goes on.

Some of the new displays like this sauropod leg, are maybe less nice than you'd think. Not that it doesn't have a great educational value. Yet at the same time it has a far more interesting secondary purpose that the majority of the museum's visitors will never even suspect.

The funny part is many of them will have enjoyed its infrastructure. Beside this massive leg of Camarasaur is a spot for people to stand and compare their size to this long dead giant. A very fun and interactive use of the spot, and most beautifully deceptive.

I too jump on up for a go. Not that I don't already know how much larger than me this dinosaur's leg was. Not that I have anyone with me to take a picture. In fact my visit is perfectly timed for when there is only two other visitors in the gallery, and their far from me at moment. Only the museum's surveillance is here to take notice of me. Which is preciously why I'm up here.

Man this satchel is getting heavy as I wait for it to work.

This display's secondary purpose is in the marked footing pads. 99.99% of shoes don't do a thing here. Mine are in that .01%. Having the special transmitters in my shoes, I set off the sensor inside the pads thus deactivating the security surveillance system for 15 minutes. Not for my benefit of course, but for his.

He can't afford for his enemies (my "allies" in his little game) to know that I am meeting him here. Of course it won't be an issue if he hadn't picked this museum as the meeting place. Like I said dark sense of humour.

Man this place has changed a lot. Lillian gone, and replaced with Ceratopsians.

The scary thing is I've changed more than this place many times over. Changed by the very people I was supposed to be able to trust. All for what? The greater good he keeps telling me.

A greater good maybe, but not mine that's for sure!

All his!

Paradigm as usual plays it like business as normal when I arrive at the meeting place and play that he is calm and cool, but I know better. He is actually relieved to see my satchel hanging heavy and loaded off my shoulder. Not relieved to see me mind you. Just the satchel.

After the hand off, and his prompt (and rather rude frankly) inspection of the "goods' he thanks me. Not that it is actually a thanks for the trouble he's put me through. Rather he thanks me because it's what he's observed other people do in these situations.

I ask for my leave. Unlike him, I still have a cover story to keep up, and this is the last place I want to turn up if I'm to keep it up. Those eggs I stole won't go unnoticed much longer.

Than he pulls a fast one on me, and considering who its coming from it's quite a fast one indeed. He has a new place for me to lie low in. Which isn't exactly standard procedure. The whole point of my lying low is so that my connection to him isn't obvious.

Of course no, like usual he "has a better use for me". Isn't that nice. Like I'm not feeling enough like a tool, without him essentially calling me one.

I politely (only in tone and wording, but we both know I'm not being polite about anything) remind him I don't actually work for him. I'm not one of his precise, and apparently completely obedient, "agents". I'm only on contract, and frankly he's over stepping his boundaries here (like always).

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In reply as he often does, Paradigm proceeds to hold the things I've done for him over me as blackmail and threatens to take me in for them. And he wonders why I don't trust him ever?

I tell him where to stick it and that I'm through. Whether he throws what I've done (for him) out in the light of day for all to see or not. Than comes the fast one.

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He wants me to go back to New Zealand! New Zealand of all places! Just when I thought the sense of humour couldn't get any darker.

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I flat out tell him no, and start to walk away. Go me! I never thought I could pull it off. Yet here I did it.

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Than he does something I've never seen before. He ran after me, and blocks me off. I expect for another round of threats. Instead he pleads with me to just read the job. Of course there'd be a job. With him there's always a job.

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A job in New Zealand. I don't even need to look to have a guess. Exactly what my greatest little "discovery" has gone off and done I couldn't have said, but it wasn't like I didn't know what this would be about.

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I can't believe my eyes when I read the summary. I look at Paradigm to see if this is a joke. He just nods to alert me to the fact he isn't joking. Of course I should know better, he "never" jokes.

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Before I know it I'm in contact with this Agent Hamilton of the New Zealand Department of Conservation arranging for me to assist with this case of "hers". In reality it's his case like always, but I don't tell her that. She probably won't like to hear that he's likely to swoop in at the last minute and steal all the credit. I don't care.

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This one might actually have something in it for me...

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To be picked up soon...

new zealand dinosaurs in a new study!

i may not exactly be a local, but i have to say i am proud of kiwi dinosaurs playing a key role in a recent study just published on arctic dinosaurs. the reason i say i'm proud is there just isn't a lot of remains of these kiwi dinosaurs to be studied (at most 2 known bones for any one animal! and that's IF they are from the same type of animal). the fact that such partial fossils are an important clue is something in and of itself!

researchers phil bell and eric snively (both based in alberta! i've met them back my in drum days, and their cool dudes) examined the theory that: dinosaurs found in prehistoric polar regions all must have migrated to and from these cold regions every year to take advantage of the abundant summer resources yet escape the harsh winters (harsh by mesozoic standards anyways).

they came to the conclusion that NOT all these dinosaurs had to leave the poles before the winter, and in fact many were adapted to thrive in the cold. among the key dinosaurs they used to prove this were new zealand ones!

now i admit before entering my palaeo FACT on this topic, it touches on a lot of other topics that i owe you people of the innerweb more palaeo FACTs on. please bear with that right now, and i promise someday i'll catch up to this point.

as for polar dinosaurs well...

based on a number of dinosaurs found in places that during the cretaceous would have been in either the north or south poles, it has become clear that dinosaurs were not restricted to constantly warm environments as once was assumed.

despite this fact, due to older scientific beliefs that dinosaurs were cold blooded it was originally believed that these polar dinosaurs must have only been visiting these colder regions in the summer as otherwise they wouldn't have been able to survive. this rule that all polar dinosaurs must have migrated hadn't been really challenged... until now... because modern thinking suggests, at least some, dinosaurs were warm blooded which would mean it is possible some might have been able to survive the cold.

locations in northern alberta, alaska, australia, and new zealand show a diverse range of dinosaurs (and other animals) lived in polar areas. among these dinosaurs were hadrosaurs (duckbills), ceratopsians (horned dinosaurs), ankylosaurs (armoured dinosaurs), iguanadonts, hypsilophodontids, sauropods, and theropods of varying sizes (large through small). this is quite a shopping list of dinosaurs, which led bell and snively to think they should look at each group of dinosaurs and evaluate their individual capacity for migration rather than make broad assumptions about them all.

(Production Note: All maps are from Wikipedia)

now it is important to keep in mind that the world looked different in the cretaceous than how it does today (like this pic illustrates). clearly parts of the continents were in the polar circles like today (and unlike earlier in the dinosaurs rule of the earth). the migrations that these two palaeontologists were concerned with were the western north american and the australian ones (new zealand as we shall see is a special case).

as you can see north america during this time was split into three chunks, of which both the western and northern could have been the place of migrations to the north pole. however as next to no dinosaurs have so far been found from the north sub continent nothing can be said about their behaviour at moment.

as for the western sub continent, it is one of the most understood palaeo regions in the world. the theory went that dinosaurs would wander up and down the continent from mid regions such as montana and alberta up to alaska throughout the year.

similarly australia was a focus. though it was connected to antarctica (to form the last super continent of gondwana) little is known about cretaceous dinosaurs from antarctica (though there were almost certain some down there), and again nothing could be said safely about them till some are found.

dinosaurs have fortunately been found in southern australia which was much further south during this time than it is today. as you can see in the pic it dipped past the polar line. these dinosaurs have traditionally been thought to have migrated there from the north during their summer.

with these routes in mind lets look at the studies findings.

one of the first dinosaurs bell and snively examined was the ever common edmontosaurus. using biomechanical predictions (which is fancy science talk for how they think edmontosaurus' body should have worked) bell and snively came to the conclusion these duck bills were very likely to be capable of making the long migrations up and down the western sub continent of north america.

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they had several reasons to come to this conclusion.

though it may not have been the fastest dinosaur in running (which is of course short distance speed), edmontosaurus being such a large animal (13m long!) would have been able to easily cover long distances due to its long legs (which gave it a great long distance speed). even though this long journey would have burned a lot of energy, because it was such a big animal this was efficient energy use, as any moving around would use lots of energy anyways.

so the two palaeontologists thought it was reasonable to suspect that edmontosaurus could at least make the journey. whether it did make this whole trip or not, no one can be sure... at least from current evidence.

another common north pole dinosaur is pachyrhinosaurus. now the recent addition of a new species of pachyrhino might muck things up a little for this study, as bell and snively would have been unaware of its existence when they did their research.

despite this the two researchers had similar findings for ceratopsians, at least in concept to edmontosaurs and other hadrosaurs (more research probably needs to be done on the different types of pachyrhinosaur, whether one is strictly polar and the other not or whether both turn up north and south). which is too say it is quite possible the ceratopsians could have made these migrations efficiently too, because they too were also large animals.

this is supported by research coming from southern alberta in dinosaur provincal park (which was well out of the arctic circle in the cretaceous). there is strong evidence of ceratopsian migration in this region during this time.

ceratopsians are relatively rare in the dinosaur park formation, except in occasional layers where they are almost the only thing found... these ceratopsian packed layers have been found to be the aftermath of major disasters (probably a tidal wave or tropical storm) which trapped the majority of a herd of horned dinosaurs while they were in the area.

david eberth of the tyrrell has done extensive studies on these layers and disasters, and i will palaeo FACT about this research in more detail later, but they suggest that ceratopsians roamed in and out of dinosaur park throughout the year. meaning a lot of the time there would have been few or no horned dinosaurs about the place.

does this mean that the dinosaur park ceratopsians were wandering up to the north pole? maybe, for example a new pachyrhinosaur was found there in 2006, but it is just as likely (if not more so) that they were wandering up into the highlands to the west though.

in conclusion of their pro migration findings the research team noted that the larger the animal the more energy efficient it was for it to make this long journey. the bigger animals were not only more likely to have evolved migrational habits to take advantage of this fact, but they also would have benefited more off the food (aka energy) they'd gain by wandering up into the polar region.

they also noted that the bigger the animal the longer the wandering range. thus edmontosaurus being among the largest of duck bills had the longest range of the animals they looked at. most other hadrosaurs and horned dinosaurs would have had shorter ranges due to being smaller and having shorter legs.

the big finding here was that even the edmontosaurus (the dino they found with the longest range) had a much shorter realistic distance capability than previously thought! in the old scenario it was suggested that dinosaurs were wandering 9 times further than mule deer or 4 times those of wildebeest!!!

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those were the pro migration findings though mind you...

(Production Note: Dromaeosaurid picture courtesy of Peter Bond)

in their study bell and snively showed there were a large number of polar dinosaurs that were extremely unlikely to be able to migrate.

smaller animals for example didn't work on the energy efficiency scale.

sure many of these smaller animals were pretty fast runners, but again that's short distance speed... they're not going to be sprinting the whole way from alberta to alaska. meaning that on their shorter legs that was a lot more effort to make the same distance as a longer legged animal. for example a dromaeosaur (like the one pictured above) would have had to take 4-8 steps for every single step an edmontosaur took. meaning that was 4-8 times the effort.

furthermore smaller animals need less food to get their energy needs. meaning they don't have to eat so much. if you eat less than you don't eat all the food in an area. large animals usually end up having to migrate naturally because they literally eat themselves out of a home, and have to go somewhere else where their food supply has been able to grow back from the last time they were there!

(Production Note: Ankylosaurid picture courtesy of Peter Bond)

they also found that some types of dinosaurs seemed to show up in these polar environments again and again. meaning there was probably a reason they were being always being found there.

bell and snively came to the conclusion these commonly found polar dinosaurs were probably adapted to living in the cold, and thus lived there year round (meaning they were more likely to die and fossilize in the poles). among these were ankylosaurids and hypsilophodonts in the southern hemisphere (i'm not certain of northern ones found in alaska... do any of my readers know?), and troodontids in the northern hemisphere (though based on partial remains in the southern it is quite likely there were polar adapted small theropods were down there as well).

this stands to reason as one australian hypsilophodont leaellynasaura (the same species as my friends boom and rang) has been suggested as being polarly adapted already. this is due to leaellynasaura's huge eyes which would have been ideal for seeing in the darker months of the year (cause again at the poles sunlight varies to the extreme with the seaons!).

for both the north and south continents bell and snively suggest a model where the larger herbivores were migrating throughout the year to and from the pole, and then probably were followed by the larger carnivores. while the smaller animals were native to those environments and adapted to survive the harsher cretaceous winters (harsher compared to the winters of either the triassic or jurassic in any case).

the question someone old skool could ask the pair though to disprove their findings is: is there any proof of dinosaurs that couldn't migrate out of a polar region, and thus had to be surviving the winters? because maybe unlike modern land animals dinosaurs could make HUGE trips (which seems unlikely to be honest).

bell and snively had an immediate answer for this question. of course there was a place with dinosaurs who couldn't escape the winter. that place was new zealand!

around 83 million years ago new zealand had separated from the greater super continent of gondwana and drifted into the southern pole (as you can KIND OF see on this map, sorry it was the best i could find that was copyright free. new zealand is just barely visible above its label in this particular map). meaning that any dinosaurs on new zealand during this time onward were trapped here with no escape from the winter each year.

(Production Note: Theropod picture courtesy of Peter Bond)

of course as you'll know from reading my blog (hint hint people of the innerweb), new zealand did indeed have dinosaurs during this time! click here to read about the first lot i talked about, and to be honest i've been a naughty little t-rex and still owe you a palaeo FACT about the rest. stay tuned for this FACT soon!

so though we know little about the dinosaurs of new zealand, it hasn't stopped them from being a key part of palaeontological research and knowledge!
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if you'd like a great visual moving picture version of bell's and snively's findings the classic 5th episode of walking with dinosaurs "spirits of the ice forest" is spot on! which is impressive considering it was made almost 10 years before this research!
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i get eee-mail...

there's been some tangents on the blogospheriod recently about the Eee-mails my fellow bloggers get. i got one today that makes for a great post. so here's a fun sample of the Eee-mail i sometimes get!

my good innerweb pal raptor lewis writes to my Eee-mail (traumador@gmail.com) the following:

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Yo Traumador! How ya doing?

It's me Raptor. I'm doing some drawings of dinosaurs and I need a little help. I'm doing Jurassic herbivores. I need your help with coming up with a few. I can only come up with Stegosaurus, and sauropods like Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, Mamenchisaurus, etc.

Can you help me think of more? And can you send pictures of them via email? That would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry to bug you.

Your online buddy,

Raptor

P.S.- If you're thinking I'm a dromeosaur, then you are wrong. I'm not even a dinosaur. I'm a paleo-lovin' American human.

now though i'd never claim to be a huge expert (both due my size... get it? pun INTENDED!.. and also my knowledge) on the jurassic period, as we tyrannosaurs are the last of the last of the cretaceous a good 70 million years after the jurassic ended, i will try to take a stab at it and help you out raptor.

so let's take a quick look at the jurassic period with a...

so the jurassic period.

well to start off with the jurassic is just one of many time periods that geologists and other sciency folks use to better keep track of the huge amount of time this planet has been around. think of it like a month on the calender, only this calender has about 21 months (just for the time life has been around!) and these each have several MILLION YEARS in them compared to the 30ish days each a real month has. scientists label these simply because frankly it makes it easier to get ones head around. i know i can use that help!

the jurassic is the 5th most recent time period (as in going back INTO the past from now, its the 5th you'd go past on your way to the beginning of time... if you started at the beginning and travelled forward to the present the jurassic would be the 18th). the time period before the jurassic was the triassic, and when the jurassic was over it became the cretaceous period.

the jurassic started around 208 million years ago and went on to finish 146 million years ago. meaning it was 62 million years long. nearly the same amount of time dinosaurs have been extinct, but remember this is only one of three time periods the dinosaurs were alive for!

here is what the world looked like towards the END of the jurassic (as in the end closet to our own time, about 150-146 million years ago). the reason this is important is that the way that the earth's land and water were arranged (you'll notice different than it is today, but yet still recognizable) had a HUGE effect on dinosaurs and everything else living back than.

the world's landmasses are always moving around on things called continental plates. through a process called plate tectonics the land (and also ground that makes the bottom of the ocean) are like surf boards cruising the hot liquid ocean of magma inside the earth. as the plates float around they often smash into each other, and than later on split up. this changes the size of not only the land on earth, but the size and shape of the oceans. oceans as it turns out are probably the most important thing effecting living things on earth. whether the living things are right by the water or not!

prior to the time of the dinosaurs in the permian, the time period before the age of dinosaurs (about 60-50 million years before the jurassic) all the continents of the world had smacked into each other and got stuck together for a while. this created the super continent pangaea (it was made "super" by being made up of ALL the worlds possible land masses... sort of the way that super heroes vehicles always become more super when they combine into a mega vehicle!). this was not the first time a super continent has formed on earth, but it was the most important for life on earth.

due to the effects of having less coastline (in other words water touching land) pangea had really mucked up weather systems. having ocean close to you means you get more rain, and rain is key for plants to survive. because pangea had a lot of land WAY away from the ocean, most of it turned to desert. by the end of the permian the worst extinction event in the world's history had occurred, about 95% of life on earth was gone!

the reason i mention this chilling and sad event is that the jurassic marked the final end of pangea and its life killing ways. as of the beginning of the jurassic 208 million years ago pangea started to break apart into what would become the modern continents. of course the continents won't finish properly splitting up till the cretaceous, but their break up started in the jurassic. this drastically changed all sorts of stuff like the climate and environments animals and plants had to deal with. so there was a lot of change in the types of dinosaurs as the time period went on.

despite what many books tell you, parts of the jurassic were actually very similar to the triassic. especially the beginning of the jurassic. the dinosaurs though a bit varied were still of the triassic families. these included prosauropods, coelophysoids, and heterodontosaurids. the only big difference was that many of the large reptiles that had been around in the triassic were no longer present (but not all of them were gone!). at the middle of the jurassic there is growing evidence of a small mass extinction and here we see dinosaur types change as the "triassic" era types disappeared and the first of the more "classic" jurassic families pop up in their places.

the plant scape was a lot different than we're used to today. during this time gymnosperms plants were the main type. gymnosperms is a fancy word for plants that produce their seeds through cones. their still around today, just now they have company in the form of angiosperms, plants that produce their seeds through flowers. the really successful gymnosperms of the jurassic included conifer and ginkgo trees. ferns were also a very common plant during this time (and again are around today, but not in the same numbers as back than).

in the skies the reptilian pterosaurs (which again were NOT dinosaurs!) continued to dominant the sky. they diversified a great deal compared to what they were in the triassic. however midway through the jurassic the pterosaurs would have to start sharing the sky with a newcomer. my relative the birds. though the birds wouldn't start edging the pterosaurs out of the clouds till the next time period...

in the oceans similarly the triassic break outs the ichythosaurs would have their golden age, and despite being forced to become smaller than their huge triassic selves, would diversify as well be one of the most successful of the marine reptiles till their demise in the mid cretaceous.


the most successful of the marine reptiles (other than the sea turtles) the pleiosaur also enjoyed success during the jurassic. like usual they sported their medium to long neck lengths, but towards the end of the jurassic with the evolution of a new short neck version they would spawn some of the earth's most awesome predators ever. the pliosaurs which would enjoy domination of the ocean until the appearance of the mosasaurs halfway through the cretaceous.
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on the land, true mammals appeared for the first time. turtles, lizards, crocodilians, frogs, and salamanders broke out into major success for the first time during the jurassic as well.
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now of course i could go on and on about the jurassic for ever (well not quite, but with 62 million years worth of substance i can't hope to cover it all here!) i'm going to end now and answer raptor's question.

so again remember raptor the jurassic is a very long period of time, and saw a very large share of dinosaurs evolve and go extinct. the problem with a lot of books out there is they only present the very end of the jurassic, and make it seem like that was all that was going on.

in reality those are only some of the highlights, and frankly (much like the cretaceous) a lot of the stuff that came before is skipped. which hardly seems fair to me.

so plant eating dinosaurs of the early jurassic included (none of which made your list):


though closely related to the true sauropods on your list, prosauropods were key early jurassic herbivores.

the very primitive ornithischian heterodontosaurs

the tiny primitive relative of armoured dinsoaurs, scutellosaurus

the primitive armoured (although NOT clearly an ankylosaur or stegosaur) scelidosaurus. these are my personal favourite early jurassic dinosaur... even if he'd possibly given rise to the dreaded ankylosaurs...

other common mid to late jurassic herbivores that missed your list include the ever present small hypsilophodonts. not to worry though raptor. almost everyone forgets about these guys!

though they won't amount to much in the jurassic, the iguanodonts appear during this time in forms such as camptosaurus.


though the last additions to your list are of the stegosaur family... stegosaurus did make your list of course... it is important to remember that most of the rest of this family differ greatly from stegosaurus. it is the freak rather than the norm as can be seen by these samples.

so i hope that helps answer your question raptor, and thank you for the eee-mail. it was fun to answer!

to everyone else out there on the web wide world with palaeo question feel free to send them. cause this was fun to answer, and i love getting eee-mails... well actually i like comments on my blog a little more to be honest (i don't check my eee-mail as often as my blog) eee-mails are cool too... traumador@gmail.com is the address.

hope to be answering some of your questions soon!

two years later... and more has changed!

holy smokes. another year has flown by!

my blog has been running for 2 years now! can you believe it people of the innerweb?

it seems like only yesterday... well okay, a few weeks ago at most... since i was doing a review of everything that had happened to me in that first year of blogging.

things certainly have been different this year compared to the start of my blog. back then i was regrouping from the loss of my life as i'd known it. since that time i've been trying to define a new life for myself. i may not have it totally sorted yet, but at least i'm a lot closer!

i'll take you on a quick stroll down memory lane blog style.

1 YEAR AGO

i of course had just finished posting a similar recap post... immediately after which i received...

AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR

just when i thought i'd left my past back in canada by moving to new zealand a very large part of it showed up on my doorstep (well forest edge as i of course still live in a forest). by large i mean quite literally large in size, as my fully grown cousin larry the tyrannosaur popped in for a visit.

though at first larry seemed to have overcome his typical JERK!ness it was too good to last, and in reality larry's reason for coming half way around the world to see me was somewhat ominous in the end...

RUINING MY LIFE

he managed to cover it up well, but larry was on a mission to wreck everything i'd accomplished since leaving canada. up until he'd showed up my life was settling in just fine. i had friends, a cool job, and best of all i wasn't on people's minds. immediately larry set about scaring all my friends and other key people in an effort to isolate me.

he succeeded on most fronts. in one particular case he accomplished more than i think even a JERK! like larry could aim for...

THE FALLING OUT

when my guardian craig stepped in to try and protect me from larry's influence i played right into my cousin's mind game and turned on the only family i'd ever known... craig promptly disappeared from new zealand altogether, and i have no idea where he is now...

though larry achieved this one key victory in trying to destroy my links to the human world he made one key mistake.

THE BOSS TAKES NOTICE

my boss ms. rhonwyn has always been big on experiencing things from the past. so she decided when my cousin came into town this would be the chance of a lifetime. though she'd met me, how often do you get to meet a "real" tyrannosaurus rex? (which kind of hurts my feelings. just because i'm tiny doesn't make me not real!)

unlike many of my other friends who held me accountable for larry's actions ms. rhonwyn held him solely responsible! rather than get blamed instead i got respect i hadn't been getting before. if i could deal with my unusual and terrifying cousin than there probably wasn't much i couldn't handlein the museum world (after all no matter how bad your family members are... their not living relics from 65 million years ago!) ... or at least that was ms. rhonwyn's theory.

ms. rhonwyn gave me a promotion that wouldn't amount to much till halfway through the year, but man did it have implications!!! i'll get to that in a second.

the reason larry was here trying to ruin my life...

MY "PEOPLE"

larry was trying to recruit me into the pack of the primordial feather. a secret organization made up of all (well okay MOST) of the currently alive coelurosaurs around the world. its goals and purpose are pretty hush hush, and i don't know what their up to.

the only thing i know for sure is that they require all coelurosaurs to join. whether they want to or not... needless to say larry was not at all happy when i declined his invitation. he vowed the pack would make me regret my decision and that it'd force me to join one way or the other...

PROBLEMS ON THE HORIZON

though i haven't seen any evidence of it, i can't help but worry the pack may be planning something against me...

speaking of bird LIKE relatives i've been making some progress to making connections with my descendants the actual birds!

A NEW LANGUAGE

though i haven't mastered it yet i've begun to learn some basics of bird speak. whether its with my feathered neighbors in the dunedin botanic garden or now those i meet aboard (like this ostrich i chatted with, in invercargill) i am starting to get a grasp on how to speak to CERTAIN kinds of birds. sadly their mode of communication has derived a great deal from their saurian roots, but a few commonalities exist that make speaking to each other possible.

again i haven't got it down yet, but i'm making progress. which something no other dinosaur has tried before

as cool as this hobby is, i've got another that has been even more productive...

TREASURE

i've begun looking for artifacts (well i accidentally found the first to be fair), and have had some success at it. though nothing has come of it at work yet, i hope it might lead to something beyond my being stuck a security guard...

sadly not all has been good in my life post larry's visit.

THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

of course as you'll remember people of the innerweb i leave on the edge of a rumoured labyrinth maze in the dunedin botanic garden. it was showing signs of being haunted even a year ago. well as of this year i can say it most definitely is!

what started out as a bet between and the germ-man as to whether i was scarred of the dark or not, turned into a full on paranormal encounter!!!

the long and short of it i was confronted by a ghost in the cemetery not so far from my home. meaning i sleep a mere walk (or is that float for a ghost?) from where the undead still dwell!

THE MOST VALUABLE THINGS I'VE EVER HANDLED

just when i was starting to urn for something exciting to happen, it did. man i've really got to remember to be careful for what i wish for!

ms. rhonwyn activated my long dormant promotion while she was out of the country. a set of very mysterious circumstances occurred at the otago museum leading ms. rhonwyn to believe key artifacts in her care were in danger. she ordered me to take them on a new zealand wide trip in an attempt to get "rid" of them.

i thought they were just three dumb old flax woven maori baskets or kete as they call them. man i couldn't have been wrong!

I REALLY SHOULD LEARN TO READ

so ms. rhonwyn included some very clear cut (apart from being extremely cryptic!) instructions. the most important of which was DO NOT OPEN the baskets... so guess what i did first thing in my whole quest... yeah not my best move ever. if the picture doesn't tell you the story, i opened one of the baskets of course.

it was than i found out the true nature of the baskets. they weren't just some dusty old artifacts. rather they were among the most important mythical items to the maori people! these were the kete te wananga, the vessels of all maori magics and mythical knowledge.

opening the basket had so many effects on me and my job of taking the baskets across the country it hurts my tiny brain thinking about them all!

the first really big thing was it exposed me to all the pure undiluted magic inside (at least i think magic comes in more diluted forms than this?). turns out magic is something people in the know call mystical gradient radiation. ms. rhonwyn says it comes from outside our world (through some sort of stringed theory i think she said?).

point is i completely saturated myself in it. which has turned out to make me a permanent magic magnet and detector. i seriously can tell when something magical or mystic is going on around me now, and it sucks.

as if that weren't bad enough it also made my quest a lot harder for what it attracted to me and the baskets...

MORE POWERFUL THAN I COULD POSSIBLE IMAGINE

not only did opening the basket expose me to an unhealthy dose of magic, but it was like turning on a big come over to me sign for every evil maori mythical critter across the country. in particular this one called whiro, maori god of darkness and suffering, a guy who just based on his job title you can tell you don't want to mess with.

so everywhere i turned and went i had this thing (ref pic about now) behind me. NOT fun, let me assure you. after tons of way too many too close for comfort escapes, i did manage to accomplish my mission of getting rid of the baskets, and making sure that whiro didn't get his claws on them. turns out in maori mythology whiro has always wanted to get them, and would stop at nothing to get them. naturally he was really annoyed when i pulled off the task of denying him them. had it not been for the intervention of another maori god i'd have bought the farm on this my first mission.

at the conclusion of the quest even more crazy things happened. i was flown to australia of all places where i a bunch more weird stuff occurred.

MYSTERIES UNFOLD

here in australia i re-met a mysterious figure from my distant past... professor paradigm. oh and his dinosaur assistant you see in this picture, lance the lambeosaur. i'll get to the duck-bill in a minute.

what little i remember of my first encounter with paradigm (though there may be more. i do have such a terrible memory people of the innerweb) was he did the first check up on me as a hatchling. of course i only remember not caring so much for the procedure, and nothing about him as a person (incidentally i STILL don't care for medical check ups!).

dr. paradigm is the world's leading expert in vivus-fossils, these are us prehistoric critters who are technically extinct overall, but yet still have living representatives that mysteriously have survived the fossilization process. making me one such type of fossil, and thus paradigm an expert on me...

perhaps more interesting, is his possible involvement with the rumoured organization palaeo-central. according to some of my new dinosaur friends (boom and rang specifically) palaeo-central is a secret initiative dedicated to the protection of fossils from the various elements and forces that threaten them. including us vivus-fossils. meaning that this organization might be keeping an eye on all of us still living dinosaurs! if boom and rang were right, than paradigm would be the head of this group... i'm aiming to find out much more about him this year if i can for these reasons!

as for his dinosaur assistant lance, i can't say as much. he is almost as big a JERK! as my cousin larry... though he does appear to have had some rather nasty run ins with theropods over the years, which might explain why he wasn't very nice to me. at the same time i don't like him, and he doesn't like me more!

though these last few weeks have had my first major dinosaur contacts in a long time (besides larry... was almost two years ago back in canada) the most significant JUST happened...

THE GIRL OF MY DREAMS

lillian the albertosaurus, like the heading for this flashback says, the tyrannosaurid of my dreams has reappeared in my life out of the blue! after losing her job at the tyrrell too, just like me, she took to the road as a travelling exhibit. by coincidence we both ended up here in australia at the same time!

coolest all, after all my dreaming and planning about it, i am about to finally go on my first real date with lillian ever!!!

which speaking of which i need to get ready for!

so there that's what's been happening in my life this last year. hopefully the next year's recap will be all about my new happy life with lillian, my mate for life!

[Production Note: So begins Traumador: Year 3... Prehistoric Insanity]