While perusing the e-shelves on the Libby app I stumbled upon this little gem called Geo Lino Extra. It’s a German Language magazine for kids 8-14, or at least the main GeoLino is, I am not sure about the Extra one. Always interested in how dinosaurs and paleontology are portrayed for kids I took a dive into Die welt für junge Entdeckerinnen und Entdecker (“The World for Young Explorers”) to see what it had to say about Die erste Saurier-Expertin de Welt (“the World’s first dinosaur expert.”) Even though none of Mary Anning’s finds–marine reptiles, pterosaurs, and invertebrates–were technically dinosaurs.
Continue reading Mary Anning Die erste Sauier-Expertin der Welt.Category Archives: Paleontology
Darwinning or Dar-Winning
Another installment of my son’s exhibits outside my office. Timely as ever we just finished this one up before the building closes for Christmas break. And as the HMS Beagle set sail with Darwin aboard on December 27, (1831), it’s worth sharing now.
Continue reading Darwinning or Dar-Winning
My Mentor; My Friend
I’ve been sitting on this for over a month. Well, not sitting, more cobbling together thoughts and experiences from over 15 years of knowing, learning from, and working with Dr. Jim Westgate.
Continue reading My Mentor; My Friend
Red (Long) Dead Redemption 2
This was one of the lost posts that still had text crawled on wayback. I tracked down the images and the video to recreate it on April 23, 2025. It was originally published November 23, 2018, and I’m backdating it to keep it in order.
Dinosaurs, or at least paleontology, makes an appearance in the newest and hottest video game out by RockStar games. There are a gazillion things to do and move through in it but I want to uncover a tiny piece of the fun. SPOILER warning for anyone who wants to play blind, there are video walkthroughs and maps ahead.
Zoobooks
I was talking to a friend about paleoart a couple weeks ago. We were talking about how the first thing you absorb about something is generally what establishes your head canon and makes it hard to change. I realized that a good portion of mine came from two-page spreads in Zoobooks like this one:
Summer at the Museum
I was originally just going to throw some fun screen grabs from these early time machine Phineas and Ferb episodes up on the Paleo Porch facebook page and be done. While going through the episodes for the shots though I noticed there was more to say and show about the museum than just the “back-in-time-with-dinosaurs” trope.
ZDENĚK BURIAN: PALEOARTIST AND ILLUSTRATOR
There will not be any more information here than you can learn on Zdeněk Burian’s wikipedia page, but what I have done is compile as many of the loose plate copies from his works that they are selling on ebay and dropping them into a giant album of varying resolution. I have also ordered a couple of his books that haven’t been translated and was going to wait until the arrived to post, but they haven’t even shipped yet.
Gone to Texas
The conclusion of this painting’s 700 mile 20 year round trip is a fitting end to this series of my work and I feel like my summer projects have been finally completed.
A quick backstory on the painting’s subject in case you are catching up on this at the end: The cotylorhynchus is an early Permian synapsid that was first described by OU’s own J. Willis Stovall in 1937. The species name for the specimen found just north of Norman is Romeri for Alfred Romer (1894-1973), the founder and first president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology which now grants the Romer Prize to predoctoral students for work excellence of scientific value and oral presentation at SVP’s annual meeting.
R.B. Shead: Pre-Museum Years
Several days after visiting with Ralph’s great nephew, Bill, he called me to say he had found a small watercolor study for one of the old museum dioramas and a few charcoal studies that Ralph had done as a student and others that were originals submitted as accompanying illustrations for short stories.
I was finally able to go back with my camera and take better photos of the paintings as well as look at these new finds. Those “few” sketched turned out to be an enormous century-old portfolio filled with over 100 pieces of art that Ralph had done either for story illustrations, studies, or magazine cover layouts. I was in awe.
The 12+ labors of Ralph B. Shead
For me, History is filled with people and things. I have never really indulged in the movements and theories and isms that seem to infect the past presently. For a historian this is a professional character defect, for me it is what brings history alive and allows us to find our connections to it. It is likely why I spent so much time learning archaeology and paleontology. I believe it is ultimately what lead me to the history of science so I could talk about all of that at once.
When I first came to OU and was getting settled across campus with the few people I had some connection with I was shown around the Sam Noble Natural History Museum. On the second floor back in the hallway to the VP lab and collections there are these two enormous paintings (13.5 feet long by 3.5 feet high). After taking in the scale and content of these behemoths I immediately looked for the signature. “Ralph B. Shead ’42” and “Ralph B. Shead ’34 (or 39 it is obscured by the frame I believe it is 34).
