So who and what was the steppe mammoth?
First impressions can be entirely wrong .
When I first saw a picture of the 2017 Safari Ltd. Parasaurolophus, I didn’t think very highly of it. In the stock photo from Safari’s website, I thought it looked rather plain and uninteresting.
During the night, an old hulking Smilodon had spotted a baby mammoth that had wondered away from its mother. It attacked the calf before mama saw what was happening. The mother charged at the cat making it scatter, but the damage was done, the calf collapsed to the icy ground succumbing to its injuries.
During this seasonal, festive, frenzy of reviews, lets take a small time warp back in time and bring forth a toy that has been left behind by the relentless march of time. In 2009, Bullyland, the purveyor of goofy eyed yet expressive figures, released a interesting looking Pachycephalosaurus.
Excalibosaurus lived during the early Jurassic about 190 million years ago and at 22 feet (7 meters) long, it was a decent sized fellow. Looking much like a modern sword fish, it was named after the sword Excalibur of Autherian legend. This marine reptile is characterized by the extreme elongation of the rostrum, in which the lower jaw is a quarter shorter in length then the upper jaw.
By day the squid lurk in the deep waters were only the brave dive into the unknown. It is in these murky depths were they hide from the predators above. When the sun goes down and the moon arrives they come up from down below to the surface to feed.
As you may know, Allosaurus was a common predator 150 million years ago. It hunted everywhere on the flood plains of the Morrison formation from the conifer forest, to the fern plains in between. This charming little fellow is Black the little Allosaurus from PNSO.
About the toy: The figure comes with a poster that has a small Allosaurus skeleton picture and information on one side.
Ever since Tyrannosaurus rex was described back in 1905, this amazing animal has captured our imaginations. Its not hard to see why. It was one of the largest land carnivores of all time and it had a huge skull with bone crushing jaws. It is so recognizable that toy makers just can’t help themselves on trying to capitalize on their popularity by making as many as they can.
To help set the mood, lets take a moment and imagine ourselves walking among the fern covered floodplains in the late Jurassic. A muddy stream meanders and snakes across the landscape. There are green spreading fronds of tree ferns, along with cycads and gingkoes. There are numerous tall conifers.
as it hailed from the Jurassic.
It had large plates and spikes on its tail,
though it trudged as fast as a snail.
Meet the Smithsonian Stegosaurus toy from TYCO,
this is one toy you don’t want to let go.
The Dino Riders Stegosaurus had armor and could walk,
the Smithsonian version had none, just plates like a mohawk.
Here is an interesting rendition of the popular, plate covered, thagomizer wielding stegosaurus. HG toys made some interesting looking dinosaurs during the 80’s. For inspiration on this stegosaur they must have looked at turn of the century paleoart. They certainly didn’t reference any dinosaur renaissance ideas into this stegosaurus, as this toy looks squat and sluggish.