Dinosaurs! Well, Okay, Not Really Dinosaurs.
January 10, 2019 9:54 AM   Subscribe

Over the years people have built all sorts of models at all sorts of scales of dinosaurs but these "Terrible Lizards" are often depicted with "questionable accuracy." "For your viewing enjoyment, a collection of photographs from the past century of large-scale mock dinosaurs, constructed to varying degrees of accuracy and based on what was known at the time."

The gallery does leave out a few of my favorites. The dinosaur topiary in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. Rex the old movie prop which is one of the attractions at Cascade Caverns in Boerne, Texas. And some day I will make it to Granger, WA to see Hisey Dinosaur Park.
posted by brookeb (17 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
And some day I will make it to Granger, WA to see Hisey Dinosaur Park.

follow that up with a trip to the east coast to see Dinosaur Kingdom, where you don't just get to see dinosaur models - you get to see dinosaur models eating Union Army soldier models.

I have been wanting to visit this place for yeeeeeeeears
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:59 AM on January 10, 2019 [4 favorites]


Also missing, the Calgary Zoo Dinosaur Park...

...And the ones in Armstrong BC...
posted by jkaczor at 10:06 AM on January 10, 2019


Photo 10 is clearly a model of a dimetrodon, and dimetrodon is not a dinosaur.
posted by timdiggerm at 10:10 AM on January 10, 2019 [5 favorites]


I was just talking about the Cabazon dinosaurs at dinner Tuesday night. Speaking of inaccurate dinosaurs, one of the best stories involves the famous Victorian-era New Year’s Eve dinner inside the Crystal Palace iguanodon.
posted by LeLiLo at 10:17 AM on January 10, 2019


(Oh, well mine are probably not entirely 'questionable'... OTOH, all of them are, because many current theories state they might have been brightly coloured and possibly covered in fuzz/feathers...)
posted by jkaczor at 10:31 AM on January 10, 2019


T-Rex in London.
posted by sammyo at 10:33 AM on January 10, 2019


> dimetrodon is not a dinosaur

That, and it should have been called Cretaceous Park
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 10:39 AM on January 10, 2019 [2 favorites]


dimetrodon is not a dinosaur.

That video was great, thank you! Somehow the knowledge that dimetrodon was both not a dinosaur and pre-dated them had successfully accreted in the dinosaur-ish section of my brain, but I had no idea they weren't even Reptilia and were more closely related to us. Also, pretty much all of that section of my brain is from books I read as a kid, so apparently I've also been incorrectly pronouncing dimetrodon (with a short 'i') all my life.

As for the FPP, wow, #12 may not be terribly accurate but they are beautiful, and while I'm bummed I didn't know about them the last time I went to Thailand, I'm not so bummed to have a reason to go back....
posted by solotoro at 10:46 AM on January 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


There was a 99% Invisible podcast about how paleoartists have changed their approach to depicting dinosaurs. I had never thought about the fact that I have no idea how a T. rex sleeps or how most dinosaurs look if they aren't eating or fighting.
posted by gladly at 12:43 PM on January 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


Dinosaurs: terrible lizards. An animated reconstruction based on the latest paleontological research.
posted by irrelephant at 12:43 PM on January 10, 2019


The Bundaberg Mystery Craters have a lovely, inaccurate model of some sort of carnosaur that's a personal favourite of mine.
posted by Jilder at 2:53 PM on January 10, 2019


follow that up with a trip to the east coast

Follow *that* up with a trip to Dinosaur Valley State Park in/near Glen Rose TX, not *too* far from Fort Worth.

You can stomp around in dino-sour footprints in a riverbed and they have a half-assed concrete(?) t-rex ands sauropod. The t-rex is moderately RAWR.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:11 PM on January 10, 2019 [1 favorite]


Those are all good Dino's Brunt...
posted by Windopaene at 4:31 PM on January 10, 2019


[King] Kong's Fight with Dinosaurs — videos:
1933 ... Willis O'Brien's still-amazing stop motion models [WP]
1976 ... Rick Baker in gorilla suit vs. BIG snake [WP]
2005 ... Andy Serkis motion capture with spectacular CGI [WP]
The bigger the screen the better.
posted by cenoxo at 6:23 PM on January 10, 2019


That “sixty foot tall dinosaur” must be easily twice the height of the ten-foot-tall building it is behind.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 7:29 PM on January 10, 2019


Photo 10 is clearly a model of a dimetrodon, and dimetrodon is not a dinosaur

See also 13, the Icthyosaurus

When I'm rich enough not to have to work I'm going to spend my days standing in the Fossil Marine Reptiles hall in The Natural History Museum in London, loudly correcting everybody that "No, these are not 'Dinosaurs that lived in the sea', stop telling your children that!"
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 6:26 AM on January 11, 2019


Follow *that* up with a trip to Dinosaur Valley State Park in/near Glen Rose TX, not *too* far from Fort Worth.

My grandparents lived near Glen Rose and my grandfather found a large (football-sized) tooth near the park. It was known as the "dinosaur tooth" in our family and it wound up in my possession. Our local natural history museum has an annual Identification Day on which people can bring things in to be identified by experts. So now I know that what I have is a mastodon tooth, a few 10s of thousands of years old, and common as hell. It's still very cool to look at, though.
posted by neuron at 9:16 AM on January 11, 2019


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