dinosaurs

We’ve all seen balloon animals. You’ve got your poodles, giraffes, and swords that make a child’s birthday fun for about five seconds. But for World Balloon Modeling champion Mark Verge, that’s just kid’s stuff.

Mark has built one of the world’s largest balloon sculptures, a life-size Tyrannosaurus Rex. This humongous balloon animal had to be made in haste before the balloons went extinct, all 1,400 of them. It’s 12-feet tall and 43-feet long and was constructed in about 40 hours in two days.

via Lee Pacey

Verge makes big sculptures, including costumes, dump trucks, and motorcycles, winning six world competitions. He can also do the clown stuff, but with a little thing we call “artistry.” He can make a monkey on a tree and a fish on a rod, which, honestly, are almost as cool as the dinosaur.

Check out this latest episode of the “Coolest Thing I’ve Ever Made” for more.

If there’s one thing we know about reviving dinosaurs for a theme park, it’s that it all starts with something encased in amber.

Dr. John Hammond in the film Jurassic Park resurrects the dinosaurs with a sample of blood from a mosquito. Who knows what he could do with this: A 99-year-old feathered dinosaur tail, which was recently discovered in a Myanmar market.

via National Geographic

The amber is “roughly the size of an apricot” and “captures one of the Earliest moments of differentiation between the feathers of birds of flight and the feathers of dinosaurs.” Though, because of these feathers, the dinosaur was probably unable to fly. This means scientists could actually see the color of the tail, which was “described as chestnut brown with a pale or white underside.”

Of course, up until now, we had thought that discovering something in amber was the first step toward opening a theme park of dinosaurs and getting your grandchildren attacked by a velociraptor or something. But we do we know, we just saw Jurassic Park. It’s not like that makes you an expert in dino attacks and how to prevent them.

via National Geographic

Like many of these types of amber, this one was actually meant to be sold as jewelry. This was just one of two dozen purchased from a Myanmar market. Lisa Xing of the China University of Geoscience, who led the research, told National Geographic that because conflicts between the Myanmar government and the Kachin Independence Army are “nearing end,” the Hukawng Valley, where these ambers are found, will open up and more discoveries can be made.

"Maybe we can find a complete dinosaur.” he said.

And all we can do is watch in horror as this paleontologist casually begins a Jurassic Park scenario that we’re all destined to become wrapped up in.

via Jurassic Park Films

While walking on Broome, Australia's, Cable Beach, a woman stepped into a giant bird-like footprint of a Tyrannosaurus-like dinosaur that had been revealed by receding sands on the highly-popular tourist beach area.



The area has had dinosaurs discovered there before, but never in such a high-trafficked area, around so many tourists. Current theories are that the dinosaurs are actually still living amongst us, dressed in mumus, and getting their hair braided while on beach vacations, or training for Australian Navy exercises.



Read more about the discovery here.


Actual photo of Labor Day on Cable Beach:



Watch out, Olivia.

Google is investing "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in virtual-reality (VR) films and programs they want to put exclusively on their new hybrid store/software service called Daydream, which will debut in a few weeks.



They have quietly recruited web and YouTube stars like the Donal twins, Justine Ezarik, and more, and partnered with video game producers and sports leagues for the biggest VR initiative they've ever invested in.



Your Android will get a push rolled out on Monday to support Daydream, so we will soon get a chance to evaluate it for ourselves. I know i'm pretty psyched to try out being a first-person VR dino-killer in Island 359.

For more information, go here.

This is one of the largest new dinosaurs ever discovered. It's so new, it hasn't even been formally named by paleontologists.  It probably weighed about 70 tons.  Now a cast of the bones is on display at the American Museum of Natural History. 

Here's a video of how they put it all together: 

Then back the Kickstarter project.

Discovery of the feathered dinosaur, dubbed Changyuraptor yangi ("great feather" in Chinese), adds to the roster of feathered raptor dinosaurs with hind wings found in northeastern China in the past two decades. It is the biggest one found so far, and the fifth such species.

It's not uncommon for a poacher or hunter to receive harsh criticism and public shaming, but does it count when the animal in question goes WAY beyond the endangered species list?

Click here for a larger view of the top image and here for a larger view of the bottom image.

Paleontologists from the Museum of Paleontology Egidio Feruglio have unearthed around 150 fossilized dinosaur bones, representing seven of what's believed to be the largest known dinosaur to have ever walked the Earth, in the desert about 135 miles west of the city of Trelew in Argentina. The seven are currently thought to be a new species of titanosaur, a group of particularly tall and heavy dinosaur herbivores.

Refe Tuma and his wife have a very special set of pranks that they pull on their daughters every November - DINOSAUR PRANKS. In a move they call "Dinovember," their daughters' plastic toys "come to life" every night and wreak havoc on the Tume household. As Refe puts it, " In a time when the answers to all the world's questions are a web-search away, we want our kids to experience a little mystery. All it takes is some time and energy, creativity, and a few plastic dinosaurs."

Makes you feel good, doesn't it?