All about dinosaurs, fossils and prehistoric animals by Everything Dinosaur team members.
2 03, 2011

Attenborough in Search of the Elephant Bird and his Fossil Fascination

By |2023-03-06T11:25:02+00:00March 2nd, 2011|Everything Dinosaur News and Updates, Main Page, Radio Reviews|0 Comments

Highlights on Television and Radio this Week

Tonight the BBC are showing a documentary entitled “Attenborough and the Giant Egg”, this is part of the BBC Natural History Unit’s documentary series on the amazing fauna and flora of Madagascar.  These programmes have been narrated by Sir David Attenborough and the programme being shown tonight recounts Sir David’s quest to find out more about the Elephant Bird that once lived on the island.

Elephant Bird

The hour long programme starts at 8pm on BBC2, it combines archive footage of Sir David’s Zoo Quest television show which documented his visit to Madagascar in 1960, with an update on the story.

Back in 1960 he tried to piece together a egg from the giant Elephant bird, (Aepyornis genus), which lived on the island before being wiped out by hunters in the 17th century.  This flightless bird was one of the most massive birds known to science and certainly the largest seen by modern people.

Pieces of Eggshell

David enquired amongst locals for pieces of eggshell and offered a reward for any pieces that could be found.  He was inundated with fragments and then one native brought him an almost complete egg.  He was astonished at just how many pieces of egg shell that turned up and the documentary tonight, filmed fifty years later, goes in search of the birds that laid these eggs.

Should be a fascinating programme.

Also, don’t forget to tune into Radio 4, Friday 8.50pm GMT (repeated Sunday mornings 08.50am GMT) for the latest instalment of David Attenborough’s Life Stories.  In the next programme, Sir David discusses his fascination with fossils.  So this week we have both compulsive viewing and listening to look forward to.

For models and replicas of extinct animals and prehistoric creatures: Mojo Fun Extinct Animals and Prehistoric Animal Figures.

1 03, 2011

Create Your own Prehistoric Scene

By |2023-01-15T18:45:44+00:00March 1st, 2011|Educational Activities, Everything Dinosaur News and Updates, Main Page|0 Comments

Dinosaurs Come Back to Life

Since Everything Dinosaur began, sometime back in the Holocene (the name of the Epoch that we are living in at the moment), staff have created drawing materials, quizzes, puzzles and games relating to dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures.  We have even helped young dinosaur fans create their own prehistoric scene. These items are part of our ongoing commitment to help young people learn more about Earth Sciences through their fascination with dinosaurs.

Our work with teachers and educators has been recognised and we have supplied lots of help and assistance when it comes to teaching science subjects.

Prehistoric Scene

A natural extension, (we like to think that we are evolving), is to take the vast number of prehistoric animal drawings, fact sheets and other data and utilise them in such a way so as to help schools, and mums and dads create their own prehistoric scenes for young dinosaur fans.

Our idea is very simple, we provide all the drawing materials of dinosaurs, prehistoric animals, vegetation, marine creatures and such like and dinosaur fans can create their very own prehistoric scenes featuring their favourite animals.  With so many illustrations, dinosaur drawings can be supplied by Everything Dinosaur.

A Mesozoic Timeline

We have created four scenes that link together providing a time-line from the Triassic through to the end of the Cretaceous.  We even have a marine environment scene so that prehistoric animal enthusiasts can depict marine reptiles swimming in the sea and create their version of sea monsters.

Life in the Late Jurassic

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The scene shows a view of the Late Jurassic, sometime around 148 million years ago for instance.  A large allosaur (predator) confronts a Stegosaurus waiting for an opportunity to attack.  A sauropod wanders by in the background, whilst in the foreground a small, nimble ornithopod tries to avoid the gaze of the fierce Allosaurus and scampers back into the horsetails.  The vegetation is based on fossil plants from this geological period and the animals depicted are creatures whose fossils date from this time in the Late Jurassic.  The pterosaur flying overhead, surveying the scene is a long-tailed pterosaur, a Rhamphorhynchus, the dominant type of flying reptile that lived during this time.  Dinosaur fans can create their own Jurassic scene using our backdrop, we can supply a range of prehistoric animals so that they can have their own, unique dinosaur poster on their wall, or why not think big and make a wall mural?

To view the extensive range of dinosaur and prehistoric animal models available from Everything Dinosaur’s award-winning website: Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Models.

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