Re: The Lost Dinosaurs Of Egypt (just seen it).

[Josh Smith <smithjb@sas.upenn.edu>]

Quoting Luis Rey <luisrey@ndirect.co.uk>:

> 
> 
> Josh Smith wrote:
> 
> > Quoting Luis Rey <luisrey@ndirect.co.uk>:
> >
> > OK.  Here we go.   I guess no one had anything better to do
> > last night....
> 
> Well, frankly it was much, much better and entertaining than any
> Jubilee broadcast.
> 
GRIN

> > I am not sure what a mangrel environment is.
> 
> Sorry, should say Mangrove... late night writing and you get all
> this sort of strange mispellings in your head.
> 
Yeah, that is what I sort of figured.

> Yes, but when they get animated, there's this sharp tendency to
> widen the heads of dinosaurs and in frontal view they are always too
> box-like. The original Carcharodontosaurus head (for example) has
> this dramatic slender front view when compared with the side view. 
> All theropods have it. Same problem with the narrowness of the
> pelvis: All theropods have very slender hips and the rib cage should
> hide most of it (and the thighs) in frontal view. Every mounted
> dinosaur skeleton shows this.  Instead, in almost all animations you
> have this enormous hips that protude to the sides well beyond the
> ribcage.  I think it must be a 'mammalian vice'.
> 
Ahhh...OK.  Now I understand.

> > Welcome to Battle #367 that Josh lost with the film company. 
> > My position (indeed that of most of the team) was basically
> > that _Carcharodontosaurus_ would have been better here.  However,
> > since we initially went to Egypt looking for _Spinosaurus_ and it
> > was the keynote taxon of Stromer's expeditions, they wanted to make
> > it the central figure in the documentary.
> 
> It might also been the influence of Jurassic Park since Spinosaurus is
> fashionable these days?
> 
Oh yes.  Absolutely.  That too.

> > > On the other hand, the treatment of the expedition as an
> > > extension of Stromer's work was nicely done and there were
> > > some very dramatic moments. There's a true sense of history
> > > throughout all the program. Good also to see paleontologists
> > > losing their temper in their field desperation.
> >
> > In truth, we tried to get all of the arguments edited out, but
> > failed.  We thought it took away from the film.  I am somewhat
> > surprised you liked that aspect of it.
> >
> 
> I thought it was good to show the human aspect of the search and
> the extremely hard work... what's wrong with that?  Neither of you
> were presented as superhumans or Indiana Joneses... in these days
> that's a true advantage. In that sense this documentary was a bit more
> realistic than some others, and even if there was this 'schizoid' 
> feeling of jumping from field quest to Germany, the labs and
> Stromer's history, I thought that the story's was fluent and credible
> enough. I suppose you can take as a very much deserved tribute to
> Stromer's efforts, and yours of course.
> 
Hmmm..those are very good comments, Luis.  Thanks.  We were under a 
tremendous amount of pressure during the 2000 season, most of which 
didn't really come through in the film, but I think some of it did.  I 
am happy to have been part of a project that involved discussing how 
the science actually gets done, rather than just endless speculations 
and arm-waving about physiology and the like.  I mean, do we really 
need more "classic" dinosaur documentaries right now?  

anyway, enough blithering for now.
-j

----
Josh Smith
Department of Anthropology
Harvard University
18 Traymore Street
Cambridge, MA 02140
Office: 617.495.1966
Project Director, Bahariya Dinosaur Project
http://www.egyptdinos.org

After 1 August 2002:
Josh Smith
Assistant Professor of Geology
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Washington University
Campus Box 1169
1 Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO  63130-4899
Office: 321 McDonnell Hall
Phone: 314-935-4258 FAX: 314-935-7361
smithjb@levee.wustl.edu
http://epsc.wustl.edu