Dinosaur Balloon Art – Not as Easy as it Looks

Weekend took us to my niece’s birthday party (she is four today).  During the fun, festivities and games, the entertainer did some balloon art.  He made swords, teddy bears, giraffes and all sorts of animals for the children.  Not wishing to be left out, one of the Everything Dinosaur team members who attended requested a dinosaur.  Mr Dazzle (the name of the entertainer), explained that he could do dinosaur balloon art, but his repertoire would be slightly limited as he had thirty enthusiastic and very excited four-year olds to manage.

Dinosaur Balloon Art

True to his word, he produced a grey, long-necked dinosaur a few minutes later (see pic).  It certainly had a long neck and legs and it was a very credible effort, not withstanding the fact that it had no tail.

Our Balloon Dinosaur

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Interesting that he choose to depict a sauropod as a grey animal.  As the largest land living animal today (African elephant) is regarded as being grey by many observers, this may have “coloured” our perception as to the colour of the largest type of extinct terrestrial animal – Sauropoda.  The colour of these herbivorous dinosaurs is very much open to speculation, but most illustrators do depict these large animals as coloured grey.  Hatchlings, may have been very differently coloured from adults, perhaps camouflaged to enable them to hide in the undergrowth to avoid predation.  Nice balloon dinosaur though, although a colleague said it reminded them of some of the bizarre Cambrian life forms preserved in the Burgess Shale deposits of British Columbia.

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