October 14, 2015 | Everything Dinosaur Blog

14 10, 2015

Black Friday – How to Beat the Blues

By Mike|2023-04-07T11:51:31+01:00October 14th, 2015|Everything Dinosaur News and Updates, Everything Dinosaur Products, Main Page, Press Releases|0 Comments

Retail Madness – Black Friday 27th November 2015

Christmas orders at Everything Dinosaur are ticking along nicely. To be honest (and our customers know how honest we are), we have been receiving orders for Christmas gifts since the end of August, this is slightly later than the trend we saw in 2014. However, the media is beginning to carry stories about the approach of “Black Friday”, a day when record retail sales are being predicted. The phenomenon of Black Friday comes from the United States.

Everything Dinosaur

Traditionally, the day after the Bank Holiday of Thanksgiving in America is the day that retailers have enticed shoppers to spend with one-day sales. These have been aimed at kick-starting the Christmas shopping rush.

The Approach of Black Friday – Everything Dinosaur Will Be Ready

Everything Dinosaur will be ready.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Black Friday

2014 saw this Black Friday concept have a significant impact on UK retail for the first time. This year, even more Black Friday sales are predicted with something like a £1 billion of retail business being done in the day.

At Everything Dinosaur, we tend to be a bit cynical when it comes to such things. In this country, sales normally start after Christmas, now the retail landscape is changing and much of what would have been offered post Christmas is going to be on sale at the end of November. Sales and retail promotions are all very well, but our philosophy remains as simple and straight forward as ever. At Everything Dinosaur we don’t really do sales, we just offer really competitive prices for dinosaur toys and games all the year round.

Fantastic Customer Service

We are not very good at promoting ourselves, we are too busy responding to enquiries, supporting schools, fossil collecting and of course, packing orders. We don’t buy in Facebook Likes or Twitter Followers, we have never purchased or procured false testimonies, it is not our way of doing things. We just work hard and try the best that we can and our thousands of customers and loyal fans seem to like what we are doing.

Dinosaur Figures and Models

Take for example, one of the latest on line reviews posted up by one of our customers (based in Thailand), here’s what she had to say after purchasing a now retired Carnegie Collection Diplodocus dinosaur model from us:

“Beautiful majestic figure which goes well with the Papo Brachiosaurus. Thank God that Everything Dinosaur wrapped it securely with bubble wrap and sent it in a thick padded envelop, as the idiotic local delivery person stuffed it into the mail box instead of delivering to my office! Luckily, it’s safe and well.”

We can’t comment on the shortcomings of the local postal service, however, the comment that was posted up on our website is typical of the ones we receive, it is the support we provide for our customers, doing things right, that has led to Everything Dinosaur growing into a significant global retailer of dinosaur toys, models and games.

The Carnegie Diplodocus Model – Safely Arrived Thanks to Everything Dinosaur

An impressive model for an impressive dinosaur.

A carefully packed and despatched dinosaur model from Everything Dinosaur.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Preparations for Black Friday/Cyber Monday

Let’s just summarise the support Everything Dinosaur has in place as the Christmas period starts to get busy.

We have informed our IT contractors about implications for Black Friday/Cyber Monday (November 27th and 30th respectively) in terms of server demands etc.
Face to face meetings with suppliers, contractors and support teams will once again be suspended from November 1st onwards. This enables us to dedicate more time to supporting our customers over the Christmas period.
Packing of parcels to become full-time, seven days a week once more to cover the run up to Christmas. The time available for managing emails, dealing with enquiries and so forth has also been increased.
Saturday collections plan to be implemented, making parcel despatch even quicker than usual (our record time from receipt of order to out of the door on a collection is around thirty-five minutes).
We have been in contact with our mail service companies (Royal Mail, couriers), to ensure that they were aware of our needs in plenty of time and that we have enough materials available such as mail bags, labels, postage sacks and such like to cope with the likely higher volumes.
More dedicated office time to help handle the increased number of phone calls that occur, after all, not everybody likes shopping on line and we do appreciate sometimes it’s nice to talk to a person.

Visit Everything Dinosaur’s Award-winning Website

To visit Everything Dinosaur: Dinosaur Models, Toys and Games.

A spokesperson from Everything Dinosaur commented:

“Black Friday and Cyber Monday for that matter will be business as usual for Everything Dinosaur. We always put in plenty of resources to support customers and the Christmas run up is no different. There will be no gimmicks or cynical marketing ploys from us, just honest people working hard to provide excellent value and terrific customer service.”

Everything Dinosaur has built up a very loyal customer base, we are happy to help out where we can, every day is “Black Friday” as far as Everything Dinosaur’s customers are concerned.

As other on line retailers prepare for Black Friday, Everything Dinosaur’s customers can be assured that this UK dinosaur company maximises value and customer service every day.

To view Everything Dinosaur’s information about postage and shipping: Everything Dinosaur Shipping and Postage.

14 10, 2015

Astonishing Dinosaur Eggshells May Hold Key to Warm-blooded Debate

By Mike|2024-05-05T18:09:19+01:00October 14th, 2015|General Teaching, Key Stage 3/4|Comments Off on Astonishing Dinosaur Eggshells May Hold Key to Warm-blooded Debate

Eggshell Study suggests Dinosaurs Not Warm-blooded

Research published in the journal “Nature Communications” may have helped settle a 150-year-old debate amongst palaeontologists. Analysis of the behaviour of two isotopes found in calcium carbonate, the main ingredient in eggshell suggests that dinosaurs were not warm-blooded (endotherms), neither were they cold-blooded (ectotherms) but they were somewhere in between. The scientists conclude that dinosaurs were probably mesothermic, able to raise their internal body temperature above that of their immediate surroundings, but not all dinosaurs were able to maintain a body temperature at the level of today’s birds and mammals.

Dinosaur Eggshell Study

A dinosaur egg (believed to be from a theropod dinosaur).

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

A total of nineteen eggs from two different types of dinosaur were studied. Eggshells from Argentina representing a Late Cretaceous, herbivorous titanosaur along with fossilised eggs from a theropod dinosaur (oviraptorid) from Mongolia were included in this ground-breaking research. If scientists can determine the body temperature of extinct animals this will help them calculate metabolic rates and provide valuable data on how active these animals were.

Cold-blooded reptiles (ectotherms), like crocodiles are only capable of bursts of activity and rely on external sources of heat (the sun) to help them maintain a constant body temperature. More active animals, (endotherms) like mammals and birds can generate internal heat and are generally a lot more active than their reptile counterparts.

An Example of a Typical Titanosaur

Perhaps up to 30 metres in length?

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The picture (above) shows a sauropod model in the CollectA Age of Dinosaurs model range.

To view this range: CollectA Prehistoric Life Figures.

Dinosaur Eggshells

Commenting on the significance of this pioneering research, study co-author Aradhna Tripati (Assistant Professor of the University of California, Los Angeles) stated:

“This technique tells you about the internal body temperature of the female dinosaur when she was ovulating. This presents the first direct measurements of dinosaur body temperatures.”

The research team conclude that clumping studies of two rare isotopes found in the eggshells show that oviraptorids (closely related to birds), were able to raise their body temperatures above that of their environment but not as high as warm-blooded animals (endotherms). The much larger titanosaur had a body temperature slightly higher than our own.

This suggests that variable thermoregulation likely existed in the non-avian dinosaurs but not all dinosaurs had the body temperatures typical of modern birds and mammals which generally tend to be very active.

To read further articles on the dinosaur warm-blooded versus cold-blooded debate:

Clumped isotope analysis could determine endothermy: Isotope Analysis Could Help Shed Light on the Metabolism of the Dinosauria.

Warm-blooded or cold-blooded dinosaurs: Evidence to Support the warm-blooded or cold-blooded Debate in the Dinosauria.

Dinosaurs were endothermic: Endothermic Dinosaurs? The Debate Hots Up.