You may have noticed a recent stall (more so then usual) in posts on the Chronicles. We apologize for this delay but a graduation, a recent moving of country, and the build up to the holidays have gotten in the way of the creative team.
prehistoric insanity has teamed up with eTrilobite to present a fully 3D fill-in strip of the ever awesome burgess shale themed comic Walcott's Quarry. be sure to check it out!
the guy's over at Prehistoric Insanity were recently interviewed about everything to do with ART Evolved by the geology themed EARTH magazine. in the course of the article i (among many other coll bloggers) get a mention. this is monumental, as it is the first time the tyrannosaur chronicles has ever been mentioned in print!!!
1. time is running out to get in your horned dinosaur entry for the first ART Evolved gallery. details are here. they would like all entries by march. 1st... which is only a few days away!
2. they wanted me to elude to the fact there is a HUGE mega top-secret surprise that they will be coinciding the launch of the gallery with... oops, i guess i didn't elude to it so much as told you. still i wonder what it is?!?
i gotta run and get my submission ready. can't wait to see yours up there!
on march 1st, they are launching a new internet art show called ART Evolved: Life's Time Capsule, which will focus on pieces of "art" that feature extinct animals.
the first "gallery" will be on my favourite food the ceratopsians. so you've got just over a month to get cracking on some art based on the horned dinosaurs.
submissions can either be made at the prehistoric insanity site, or to my email which they have borrowed for this traumador@gmail.com.
even if you don't enter a piece of art, be SURE to check out the gallery on march. 1st! that and the guys at prehistoric insanity tell me there is a big surprise in store to coincide with the kickoff of this new virtual art gallery... wonder what it is?
also be sure to check out the REAL walcott's quarry today!
Production Note: Through the creation of new visuals related to the finale of the museum quest coming in the next few days, Prehistoric Insanity has been able to go and replace a borrowed image in one the quest's key posts with one of our own.
This new image of Tane Maori god of the forest is now attached to the retelling of the kete o te wananga legend at this old Traumador post.
for the longest time lillian was the star attraction at the royal tyrrell museum. to give you an idea how big a star, she was among the only 4 living dinosaurs allowed in the museum's main dinosaur hall while tourists were in the building! (i can't even count how many of the rest of us drumheller based dinosaurs wished we were in that boat!). 
which leads us to the hardship and tragedy of this particular tale. you see i fancied her so much that well i... well kinda sorta... oh this is embarrassing to say people of the web wide world... i kinda asked her out...
i know! i KNOW! what was i thinking?!? what could a bomb-shell from the cretaceous like her possibly ever see in a pathetic little runt of a king lizard like me???
anyways when i asked her out i might have accidentally mentioned some rumours going around at the time about the museum thinking about letting her go. she really didn't like that, and got unbelievably angry with me (well okay unbelievably angry for a human... as far as female tyrannosaurids go this was believable i guess), and obviously didn't go out with me...
after i left the tyrrell (i was fired a day after that!) lillian ended up being let go as well. so it wasn't just a rumour i'd heard. so it proved my good intentions in telling her were justified, and she'd tried to kill the messenger... not the message!
across the lobby i'd spot lillian in all her glorious beauty... oh man especially those legs. er sorry... _
i'd have to play it cool when i finally approached her. couldn't make it seemed like too forced a run in. casual. definitely needs to seem casual...
in the main lobby would be the perfect spot... i could just stand there 'minding my own business', and suddenly turned around surprised. "why lillian albertosaur! what are you doing here in new zealand?" i could ask pleasantly astonished.
"oh me, i moved here 2 years ago after leaving the tyrrell," i'd reply matter of factly when she asked what i was doing in new zealand. it'd be key i didn't show my annoyance or pain of getting rejected by the tyrrell... i can't seem like i'm still hung up over the place. cause though i still miss it on occasion, i sometimes feel i'm better off down here than i was up there. sometimes...
now would come the tricky part. the getting through the ackwardness that was our last interaction in drumheller. i couldn't let that linger or go unsaid. i needed to start on a fresh page, and to make sure of that i'd want to confront it right away...
here she'd find out we have a lot in common. we're both tyrannosaurids trying to make it in the harsh, and often misunderstanding human world. neither of us likes my cousin larry! both of us refused to join the pack of the primordial feather. uh... i'm sure loads of other stuff would come to the surface...
anyways after this pleasant conversation and smooth reentry into her sphere of existence (come to think of it did she even know my name back in the day?) we'd both have things to do that day, places to go. so i'd cleverly ask in passing as we prepared to go our separate ways "would you care to meet sometime tomorrow for a bite to eat?"
she'd think about it and suggest after her shift tomorrow... no better she'd insist i pick her up after work!
i'd say i'd meet her back in the lobby at closing time sharp (with the devious plan of being just a touch late to not come off as too desperate!).
so than how would i prepare for this dinner "date"... i use the quotations because though we didn't formally call it a date she'd know... right?
hmmmm i'd have to bring something. i've watched enough human movies to know that the boy has to bring the girl something nice at the beginning... only what do you get a female albertosaur?!?
i still haven't made a final choice (maybe the only good reason i'm a month late. be kinda hard to pull this off, and still not know what i'm bringing!!!), but here's what i've thought of so far:
the point of flowers is to keep them around your home and make the place prettier. only most tyrannosaurids, especially now road show lillian wouldn't have anywhere to keep them...
so to fix that problem...
B. Flowers in a vasecome to think of it flowers were still kind of primitive in the cretaceous, and i'm not sure they were as pretty as today. all i know is that i have no tyrannosaur instincts telling me i like flowers. i think i picked that up growing up among humans!
okay so rethinking flowers for the gift i came at it from a different angle!
C. Pizza
now my logic here is what do human boys bring girls if not flowers? why chocolates of course!
E. Rock Hammer
a field of sheep...
which would be so easy. i couldn't get lost finding 'the place' even if i tried. just pick a direction and head out of town. no matter which way you headed you'd be at a sheep station in no time...
when you think about it a farm pen is just like a resturant for a theropod. it would combine the thrill of the hunt, with the ease of an controlled eating environment. you'd have to catch and kill your prey, but there's no risk of it escaping during the chase!
i can just picture our anticipation as we stalked into a paddock.
the herd of sheep shifting uneasily as it detected our presence. unlike our standard saurian prey of ceratopsians or even way less hardcore hadrosaurs, sheep can't pull any dangerous defenses. none of that mass stampeding towards us (your average horned or duckbilled dinosaur weighing 2 tons, with really big duck billed dinos being 4 tons would mean a whole highway worth of traffic rushing at you!!!), or organized defence patterns, and or run the other way from you.
okay so first thing in the hunt is to size up the herd, and try to spook it into disunity. that'd be fun. with lillian's beautiful massive size (tyrannosaurid females are the hotter the bigger they are) of just under 2 tonnes, the puny pathetic sheep would be a nice fun easy spooking.
then the really fun part! the rush!!!
finish off the fun. there would be no point in being quick about it mind you. again its not like our dinner is getting away or anything. so we could prolong the hunt, and chase the herd from one end of the paddock to the other to our hearts content!
with us eventually making the kill... though the best part is unlike 65 million years ago (or 75 million i guess if we were going for lillian's era) if we wanted seconds we won't have to goto great lengths to track them down!
in the end i just know lillian would be extremely statisfied with our performance. not only would we have a tasty supper, but she definitely would get to be the dominiant one when it came to moving and presenting dinner.tyrannosaurid females as the matriarchs of the pack are thus the boss, and they like to be in charge of everything food related. due to my small size i couldn't move a dead sheep even if i wanted to (so much blood... won't want to risk staining my shirt!), so lillian would have to do the moving, which would make her in charge of the kill, and i'm pretty sure she'd be more than happy with that!
having eaten our fill, timed perfectly with the sunset we'd sit watching it and talking about sweet nothings. i could impress her with all my thinking on various topics like modern dinosaurs' place in the modern world, or why squid is such underrated theropod meal, and how much my cousin larry sucks and his stupid pack of the primordial feather!
there's only one problem people of the innerweb... i have NO idea what mating is or what it means!!!
i've seen, heard, and read the word mating tons of times in nature shows, documentaries, and books. it's what boy and girl animals do to finalize their courtships, but they never say anything beyond that...
back when i was a hatchling still living with my discoverer and legal guardian craig i asked him what mating meant. he said he'd tell me when i was older. when i asked how old was old enough, craig replied that my instincts would kick in and i'd know what to do anyway, but that i could ask then... problem is that i moved out shortly after that, and to boot forgot to ask about it everytime i saw him after that!
when i tried to look it up on the innerweb just now hit either a bunch of sites that needed me to be older than 18 (that's a tyrannosaur senior citizen we only live into our 20's!!! i'm ALMOST 5 for crying out loud! if i was growing normally i'd look like a near fully grown coelurosaur... stupid dinosaurist human rules!) and one site that said something about birds and bees...
what does birds and bees have to do with two tyrannosaurs courting? i guess we're the birds? so than i guess i'll have to research a sheep farm beside a bee keepers!... wait what did dinosaurs and other animals do before the cretaceous when bees hadn't evolved yet?!?
anyways it won't matter. i know that after this perfect night, and perfect date that my second courtship of lillian would go off without a hitch...that people of the innerweb is what i would do if i ever bumped into lillian the albertosaur again... with a plan this tight what could go wrong?
Production Note: The answer to poor Traumador's question will be coming to the Tyrannosaur Chronicles in June 2008... After the completion of the, sadly rather drawn out, museum quest the Chronicles will be making a more permanant shift towards Dinosaur and prehistoric themes so be sure to check back in with us, and in the meantime follow Traum on his visits of the various museums throughout New Zealand.
Also be sure to check out the rest of the Prehistoric Insanity Production's affliate blogs' entries into the Boneyard #20 contest.
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* Peter Bond takes us on a tour of Canada's largest fossil collection
the sauropod gallery
