Book Review: The Dinosaur Four

This is actually from the author's page. Cute!!

I'm an extremely niche reader, and I hate myself for it. I try not to put myself in such a small bubble, but I rarely get into book series unless it really hooks me, and 9/10 times it's a fantasy book of some kind. I mean like with elves and dragons and stuff.
There are some exceptions, like I'm a massive fan of the Parasol Protectorate by Gail Carriger, of course the Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin (but who isn't, right? -_- ), and a total dork about The King Killer Trilogy (Name of the Wind) by Patrick Rothfuss.
I dabble in other things, picking up suggestions here and there, but none of them are ever dinosaur related...much to my dismay. So you can imagine the joy I felt when The Dinosaur Four by Geoff Jones was on sale for $0.99, a book I had never even heard about until that moment.
And it turned out to be good!!

It's not a long read at all, only about 291 pages. It's an action/adventure book with some killer death scenes and amazing detail about the dinosaurs. He really makes these creatures seem gross and brutal, which is exactly how they would be. The t-rex has feathers, the hardosaurs are territorial, and the humans characters are pretty alright too. Haha! No, really, they're awesome. You love some, hate others, people get stomped to death and you have a good time.

The basic synopsis of the story is a bunch of random strangers get transported to the Cretaceous while sitting in a coffee diner one afternoon. They have to figure out what the hell happened and how to get back to their time while surviving in that time period.
The pacing is great, the action doesn't really lull at all, and again...the book is kinda brutal. No one is safe and it's awesome.
I will admit that the ending kinda made my brain hurt, because it delve into time travel paradoxes that will make you have to stop and think for a second. Maybe it was just me, but I kinda got lost for a bit.
Very possible I just don't grasp the concept well.

TL;DR
It's good. Buy it, support the author, have a good time. Cool dinos, people die, it's fun.

Book Review: dino smut

I'm not even sure where to start with this. Do I start with the reason I snagged the $0.99 Kindle download with terrible box art? Or how hysterical the reviews were on Amazon?
Or just go right to the scene of a t-rex uh...mating...with a cave woman?

I originally heard about this book from a friend a while ago via Vaginal Fantasy, but I didn't end up snagging it until I fucking love science brought it up again recently.
This is not the first time I've got myself into something a little ridiculous when it comes to romance and dinosaurs. A couple of years ago, I read Eternal Pleasures, another Vaginal Fantasy pick. In this book, unlike this current uh..."story"...the dinosaurs were shape-shifters, not *actual* dinosaurs.
Meaning the sexy times were between two humans.
Not the case in this one.

Taken is only about 17 pages long, and is about essentially cave people trying to live with dinosaurs. Of course, since they're humans and not equipped at all to deal with giant pre-historic beasts, the t-rex kills everyone in the village, causing the heroine to want to kill it.
Thus causing her to set up traps to kill it, this gets her super turned on for some odd reason. When the rex uh...notices she's having a grand time with trying to kill him, he allows himself to mistake her for a suitable mate and captures her.
I won't go into detail, but let's just say at one point I was wincing noticably, wondering what "death by dino dick" would possibly feel like.

Also, fun fact, I think that's the first actual piece of Beastiality I've ever read! Woo-hoo! (?)

I have read one awesome work of dinosar fiction recently that I really liked, so I'll do a seperate review post for it. It's not erotica, don't worry. It's action/adventure and I loved it.

So, should you read Taken by the T-Rex?
For a good story? No. For a laugh and to support someone writing weird erotica for fun? Absolutely.

Now excuse me while I go scrub my eyeballs.

Don't call him a turkey.

Dakotaraptor is the "Ferrari of competitors" 

-Robert DePalma

I adore this concept art. Most things Saurian does is pretty amazing.

I wouldn't say Ferrari, I'd equate it more to psycho on a motorcycle wielding a big ass knife. 

There's a lot of things that make D-Rap (I can call him that, because we're cool) one of my new favorite dinosaurs to obsess about. 

For one thing, the paper about him was just published by Robert DePalma back in October of this year, so Dakotaraptor is a new rock star of the paleontology fan base. This was yet another fantastic find from the Hell Creek Formation of the US of A.

New dino discoveries happen all the time, several hundred are discovered every year, which not a lot of people know about. New papers are being published, new ideas coming to the table, new findings shaking the world of geology and paleontology happen almost daily. Each day, each new finding, paints a more accurate and amazing picture of what the world was like millions of years ago, and the animals that lived in it.

Along with dinos, anthropology, and other nerdy things I adore, one of my main hobbies is video games. So when the creators of Saurian was the first to announce Dakotaraptor's paper being published, I was a giggly mess of excitement. These guys actually hinted at this very hush-hush, advanced knowledge on I Know Dino's podcast a little while ago.
I cannot wait for that game to come out, but that's very far in the future. They have a ways to go before we can take on the Cretaceous as one of the natives.

Moving along~

Raptors have to be one of the coolest types of dinosaurs out there. They're fast, vicious, scary smart and look incredibly badass. They weaseled their way into my heart when I saw Jurassic Park as a kid. I never even knew about them before that point, and from there it was hard to shake this fascination. There are several amazing species of raptors that I'll write about in the future, including Trodons, which are very interesting little brainiacs.
D-Rap is a therapod, which means he is a saurician hipped, bi-pedal dinosaur. Most therapods are carnivores and this guy is very much a meat only killing machine. The "sickle claw" on each foot is the most iconic characteristic of these guys, making them deadly, stabbing, slicey psychos. Each claw could rip through their prey's skin and muscle, essentially gutting them or hooking on to their thick hides to bite and chomp at them.
Dakotaraptor's claw is a little bigger than his cousin's, and what's really unique about this particular fossil is the great preservation of said giant claw. Intact muscle indentations on the claw helped researchers determine that his "slice force" was stronger than most raptors researched so far.
So this asshole meant business.

Size chart for super cool dudes.

Another cool thing about this dude is that he's a giant raptor of the late Cretaceous, which means this badass stomped around with t-rex. That's pretty legit. 

Most of the raptors that people visualize are the cool hybrid creatures from Jurassic Park, which were more modeled off of Deinoychus than Velociratpor, two very different species, with some cool claw feet. Deinoychus was around in the early Cretaceous, and the turkey sized Velociraptor was around during D-Rap's time. Look how wittle he is! I remember how disappointed Alex was when he saw a skeleton of a Velociraptor for the first time. He was quite underwhelmed. Hehe!

The biggest, baddest raptor that I've seen is Utharaptor, which was around during the early Cretaceous, a couple million years before D-Rap, and was monstrously huge. 

I also plan on making a whole post about mircoraptor because LOOK HOW CUTE AND TINY. ;3;

What really makes D-Rap special, is the amazing preservation of his arm bones, which still had strong "quill knobs" visible, reinforcing the theory that dinosaurs, especially raptors, were feathery ninjas.

What the hell is a quill knob? 

Well, let me tell you! Those are little ridges on the outside of the radius (arm bone) that strong feathers are attached to. Now, it's not really known why these guys had big, long feathers on their arms, but there have been some good theories brought to the table. Some experts think they were used for display, like in mating or showing off like how birds tend to do. They most certainly were not meant for flight, as this big ass guy would not have been able to get himself off the ground. They're thinking it's more like how ostriches use their feathers to look fabulous and appear big to predators. 

Don't even lie. If a fucking goose runs up to you with wings out, screaming with it's honky death cry from hell, I know you run from the demon in tears.

We all do.

Another kinda weird idea is that the feathers were used to pin down it's prey, which is just...metal as hell. I guess it make sense, since the knobs are really pronounced, so these feathers were strong and thick. 

Kind of gives me the creeps though. 

I figured talking about raptors was appropriate for the holiday, considering that in Jurassic Park that dumb fat kid called them turkeys. I mean...he's not wrong...but if turkeys had butcher knives on their feet and sharp teeth, I think Thanksgiving would have a totally different meaning. We'd be giving thanks that the roles weren't reversed. 

Happy roasted dinosaur day! 

Om nom nom~

Paling around with Therizinosaur and Dimetrodon today, this eve of the day of stuffing one's face.
We had coffee and cake pops, and all was just swell.

T drinking coffee, D chomping on cake.

That thar be a dinosawr.

"What is your favorite dinosaur?"

What a loaded question, right? For some of us it's really hard to really nail that answer down to one, or five or a hundred. Most kids have a favorite and so do most adults. Unlike the kids though, most adults favorite "dinosaur" is way off the mark.
When you ask someone that particular question and they are over the age of say...10...they'll usually ponder it a moment and reply with "pterodactyl" or "dimetrodon" or something equally awesome. Well, the major dorks and the kids in the room will make a face that equates to someone making an off-color, non-PC joke in a mixed crowd.
So. Awkward.
Actually, that's not true. The kid will just inform you that you're wrong. I'll make a face like I bit into a lemon and are trying to smile through it.

Don't be a part of the problem! EDUCATE YO SELF.

Yeah, that means dragons too. :(

Now, I'm not saying non-dinosaur creatures of the past aren't freaking badass. OF COURSE THEY ARE. One of my favorite creatures is the dimetrodon, who is in fact a pelycosaur (pie-lek-o-saur). He's not a dinosaur, but in fact a type of early mammal, which means he's like a cousin to us. Neat, right? So if you are a fan of this cool dude, which I hope you are, when someone asks your favorite dino, you can be a smartass and say, "Well actually my favorite isn't a dinosaur but a pelycosaur." But you have to say it with a British accent and be snooty. Otherwise you're doing it wrong.

Anyway.

So what is a dinosaur? There's a cool little video from The Dinosaur Show that explains what a dinosaur is in a very basic way. Awesome way to learn the bare bones, dino 101 of classifying dinosaurs. Basically, if it has legs directly under its body, has either scales or feathers, it's a dinosaur. Easy-peasy.

So, sorry to say, pterosaurs and the cool sea monster looking bastards, are not dinosaurs.
But they are super cool.

These hips don't lie! Haha!
I'm so sorry.

Dinosaurs are broken down into two main groups within the many, many, many different species. The two main groups are based on the type of hips that they have, which is either ornithischian ("bird hips") or saurischian ("lizard hips").
Ready for me to blow your damn mind?
If you don't know by now, or have some type of weird delusional denial that birds are related to dinosaurs, well...they are. Birds are the descendants of those awesome beasts that mastered the earth millions of years ago when we (our mousy ancestors) were hiding in tiny little burrows.
Get this.
The "bird-hipped" dinosaurs....are not the father  direct ancestors of the birds! Whaaaat? *que head popping*

That allosaur is having a great time.

If you take a look at the two groups side-by-side, it makes sense when you see the complete skeleton, and even more so when they're all fleshed out. The "bird-hipped" dinosaurs are the ceratopsians, the hardrosaurs and stegasaurs and such. The "lizard-hipped" flavor are the typically big meat eaters like t-rex and his buddies and some of the big sauropods or "long neck" dudes.






So, why the hell did they call them "bird-hipped" if they don't have a damn thing to do with bird ancestry!?
Good question. These classifications were made before it was known that dinosaurs were linked to birds, and also has a big thing to do with the structure of the hip bones themselves. The basic hip structure for each classification is based on how lizard hip bones and bird hip bones are shaped. This falls into some taxonomy/anatomy stuff that is a fun rabbit hole to climb down, but definitely cartwheels past the basic stuff.

So now you know some basic dinosaur 101!

Pretty rad, right?

TL;DR: you got two main categories of dinosaurs, now that you know what classifies as a dinosaur, and a whole bunch of species within those hip classifications.

So...what's your favorite dinosaur?