today whilst wandering the convention floor i came across ryan north creator and writer of dinosaur comics. he is a super funny guy, and he keeps good company as you can see in the form of his small saurian friend there (well okay sort of see, sadly my camera didn't like the lighting conditions in the convention area. sorry about the fuzzy pic).
a still unstudied titanoideid from alberta, part of the royal tyrrell museum's 25th anniversary display "alberta unearthed".
palaeontologist phil currie! who i MIGHT have sort of gotten a little over excited to see again, and might have freaked out by running up to him out of the blue.
not that it lasted too long. he is used to being rushed by crowds, whether they be human or saurian, and i hardly constituted the biggest rush he'd ever seen. my being a tyrannosaur was more the problem. while we are one of dr. currie's main research topics, the other vivus tyrannosaurs of the world aren't, shall we say, as nice as me (i'm looking at you in particular larry!).
in good news dr. currie was only momentarily startled, and eventually recognized me from our tyrrell days. we had a nice little quick catch up (okay most of it was me asking dr. currie stuff, but he did nicely ask me what i'd been up to...).
sadly as we were both here to talk to the public it was a brief run in, and we had to head off to talk to our adoring fans (okay dr. currie did, i just kind or wandered around trying to find anyone who wanted to talk to a real live tyrannosaur... sadly with so many other large dinosaurs around it didn't happen so often)
however in good news i did manage to make arrangements with dr. currie for a pretty huge appearance here on the tyrannosaur chronicles in the new year, so stay tuned!!!
next a very "funny" encounter
so we all wandering around the museum meeting people, and doing our best to be interesting. how this was any different from living or working at a museum was beyond us. again we modern dinosaurs pretty much spend most of our time in museums...
plus the beautiful reconstruction the museum made based on this material. very nice (also huge, which this photo doesn't really show off)!
it's time for a change. huge changes...
specifically i'm looking at some big changes here on the tyrannosaur chronicles. okay, i guess that is not specifically, but rather everything...
working in conjunction with my friends at prehistoric insanity productions we are looking at a huge change in format here. we're still in the early stages of setting this up, but expect big things in the new year!
as a preview of things to come, and because we've meant to put this up for ages, so here is a special treat from my days back at the tyrrell.
we shot this in 2006, and it was cutting edge at its time (we even had dr. currie on as an advisor!)... however there is more info on the subject these days, like anything else. i just say it as i'm posting it now 4 years later. please go easy on the info lag (imagine you are 4 years in the past).
oh and for some reason the camcorder picked up my name all funny...
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
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.
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!
norman with mouth half full replied. "a pink tyrannosaurus rex," and with that he dumped the last of my pink paint all over me!!!
a skeleton of the cretaceous ichythosaur Platypterygius americanus, from the royal tyrrell museum's 25th anniversary display "alberta unearthed".
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.
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.
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...
