Why movie dinosaurs are nothing like the real thing (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

Quentin Cooper

The documentary Dinosaur 13 may be the most accurate film about dinosaurs ever made. It’s also among the most moving, telling how fossil hunters in South Dakota unearthed the largest and most complete T-rex skeleton ever found. Instead of it becoming the centrepiece of their nearby museum – as they planned – what followed was a bitter custody battle over the fossil, an FBI raid, a trial and a long prison term for one of the palaeontologists.

The remains were sold off at auction for close to $8m, none of which went to the discoverers, and now reside in a private museum in Chicago almost a thousand miles away.

The power of the documentary comes from the story itself and the way we come to know and care about most of the key individuals involved – including the T-rex. Just as important is what’s not there. It has none of the visuals that have become so familiar from movies and TV shows about dinosaurs: no computer generated tyrannosaurs, no animatronics, not even any stop-motion creatures or men in monster suits stomping about on screen.

Lumbering reality?

As well as going back to the dawn of time, dinosaurs go back almost to the dawn of cinema itself. For a century, film and television-makers have been using every bit of evolving technology at their disposal to raise the dead and make dinosaurs walk the Earth again. They’ve turned these extinct prehistoric beasts into living icons of contemporary culture and shaped our thinking about every aspect of their appearance and behaviour.

The problem is, much of what they’ve taught us is wrong.
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more: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140819-how-movie-dinosaurs-lied-to-us

http://www.amazon.com/Tyrannosaurus-Sue-Extraordinary-Largest-Fought/dp/B008SLE68A/ref=pd_cp_b_3
http://www.amazon.com/Rex-Appeal-Amazing-Dinosaur-Changed/dp/1931229384/ref=pd_cp_b_1
http://www.amazon.com/Life-Explorer-Hunt-For-Past/dp/0439271916/ref=pd_sim_b_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=0JY78YCWN85KYKYQD1PW

[longship]

1. Plus, not only how they moved, but they likely all were feathered.

At least partially.

After all, some of the theropods (T. Rex, Velociraptor and their ilk) eventually gave rise to modern birds. And in China, where there are lots of fantastic dinosaur fossil beds, they are finding lots of evidence for feathers in dinosaurs which nobody considered were feathered.