Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with dinosaurs

This book, it vibrates

rokusan — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:21:39 -0800

Another forgotten book from childhood. Time travel/survival. Dinosaurs. And yes, it vibrates. Help? A "young adult" book I read when I was ten or eleven, I think. At least I think it was a YA title. Maybe it was just cheesy. It was handed down from someone else, too, so it could have been published anywhere from the sixties through the mid-eighties, I guess.

Science fiction, pretty cliche setup: A scientist invents a time machine and his children (a boy and a girl, I think) become trapped in the prehistoric past, fighting dinosaurs and learning to find food/shelter and so on.

The main detail I can remember is that the machine itself was large and took up an entire room in the scientist's lab. It was some kind of large ?metal ring that vibrated until it became invisible/intangible, and then the travelers would step through it. Stepping "into the ring(s)" was the moment of no return. It may have turned into a circular rainbow. Or maybe I am imagining that part.

The only parts of the actual plot I remember is that there are multiple "trips", as someone (the father?) makes a second journey back to rescue someone else. The machine also becomes broken (explodes?) at some point, "stranding" people in the past.

It's definitely not "A Wrinkle in Time", but the infuriating thing for me is that whenever I hear the title of L'Engle's book, I think of this story instead. It would help me tell them apart if I could remember the name of this one. No clue on the author.

Are these wisps of half-memory enough for anyone to recognize?

I might recognize a title, and I'd almost certainly recognize a synopsis.

Does anyone remember this book series?

flyingcowofdoom — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:00:41 -0800

Help me remember the name of a series of kids books about anthropomorphic dinosaurs I used to read. OK, these were "chapter" books...not books with drawings, just on the cover.

They were a series. The characters were anthropomorphic dinosaurs who went to school. The books were a first grade to third grade reading level, I'd guess. The characters were basically human beings, as in they did what humans did at school but they looked like dinosaurs. One of the main characters was a green triceratops. Her name may have been Sarah. I think she had a twin brother. In one book, her twin brother was sick and getting lots of attention, so Sarah tried to get sick too, so that she could stay home from school and read comic books all day or something.

Does anyone remember these books?

Dear god not more plaid.

Eothele — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 13:54:19 -0800

Are all adult sized pajamas boring? Where can I find some with dinosaurs, space ships, fairies, that kinda thing?

Did my mother walk into a dinosaur?

minifigs — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:04:20 -0800

Could my mother have hit her head on a dinosaur neck when I was four? I was brought to the National History Museum in London for my fourth birthday twenty years ago. I have a strong memory of my mother not watching where she was going and hitting her head on the neck of the Brachiosaurus. When I went to the museum this year, the brachiosaur was in a position that definitely would not allow this to happen.

My question is: has the Brachiosaurus in the lobby of the national History Museum always been in the position that it's in now or could my memory be true?

Who let the brontosaurus out?

buggzzee23 — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:06:04 -0800

What is going on in this Southern California arroyo and what's with the dinosaurs all over the place? I was taking the backroads through Riverside and as I was on Prospect Ave (just north of Citrus St) at the Riverside/Highgrove border, I spotted some kind of construction project in the arroyo northwest of the intersection. What really caught my eye were the dinosaur sculptures of varying size that were place throughout the arroyo.

Using Google Earth and the address of 614 Prospect Ave, Highgrove, Ca, a brontosaurus is visible to the right of the double utility poles when the pic is scrolled to the west. That address doesn't come up at the right place on Google maps, but the arroyo is visible here in much lower resolution than available in Google Earth.

Help this guy roar

pwally — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:32:04 -0800

I want to make this guy roar and wag its tail in flash. I have a copy of flash, I've got a copy of photoshop, but I really only know how to use photoshop.

So I want to create a loop where dino opens his mouth and roars, then wags his tail, then maybe blinks his eyes, and have it last about 20 seconds long... I know its not rocket science for a flash developer, mind pointing me in the right direction?

Could high air-pressure explained huge dinosaurs?

joe_from_accounting — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:14:17 -0800

SCIENCE! > Has anyone in paleontology explored the possibility that some aspects of dinosaur morphology can be explained by air pressure much higher than Earth's contemporary atmosphere? I ask because it seems like a high pressure environment could explain the ridiculous size of many sauropods & winged dinosaurs. Has anyone ever looked into this? Or am I confusing properties of a high-pressure liquid environment and a high-pressure gaseous environment with this notion?

The Lifecycle of the Imaginary

laughinglikemad — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 13:18:05 -0800

Who has imaginary friends, and why? As far as I'm aware, I never had imaginary friends. Awesome dreams, fantastic family, wonderful friends - but no invisible playmates.

Is it a matter of isolation - do they only show up after nobody comes to your birthday party? Is it a cultural thing? I don't recall many tales of Bobo the Fantasyland Dinosaur from my Turkish, Ethiopian, or Romanian friends. Is it a middle- or upper-class phenomenon, that dwindles the closer you get to food stamps? Is there a neurological basis for best friends that live in your head?

To those who had imaginary friends: how were they born? To those who still have them (and I know you're out there): how did they survive?

Pictures of Dinosaurs

turbanhead — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 07:49:01 -0800

Dinosaurs - old drawings, illustrations, etchings of I'm looking for a good source of illustrations/drawings of dinosaurs, preferably from the 18th/19th century. I've found a few on the British Library site and the NY Public Library's digital archive, but not too many.

example: http://tinyurl.com/ygst77

How long before a skyscraper decays?

ikkyu2 — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 21:56:33 -0800

How long would it take for the Empire State Building to vanish without a trace? So I was wondering about this. Specifically, I was wondering, "What if the inhabitants of the Upper Jurassic had built skyscrapers? Would they still be around?" If it only takes 10,000 years to wipe a skyscraper, how can we be sure there weren't any 100,000,000 years ago?

More specifically, how long would something like the ESB stick around if for some reason maintenance ceased today? How long would it be a visible skyline landmark? How long before a skilled archaeologist could detect no trace that it had ever existed?

The prior thread, If you had to warn people 10,000 years in the future to stay away from a site, how would you do it? did not propose building a skyscraper, but I'm not sure that means it wouldn't work.

Can you remember this arcade game?

Grums — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 02:53:14 -0800

I fondly remember an arcade game from my childhood at the local junk-food kiosk, but I can not remember the name. I have tried to search Google, but I have not found anything. The game, as I remember it, was a side-scrolling shoot ‘em up. You flew planes (1 player or 2 players) and on the ground beneath you dinosaurs where actively trying to kill you with their prehistoric might. So you had to wipe out all the dinosaurs once again, I guess. The game was colorful and cartoony and your weapon got upgraded with power ups. You saw the planes from the side, and not from the top, as e.g. 1942.

Can anyone else remember this game and its name?

How does the Christian Bible explain or account for fossil evidence?

robbie01 — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 19:21:27 -0800

How does the Christian Bible explain or account for fossil evidence of cavemen and dinosaurs? Was Adam a Neanderthal? Were there dinosaurs on Noah's Ark?

Dinosaur, Alien movie from the early 80s

lyam — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 08:20:55 -0800

70/80s sci-fi/horror movie filter: Does anyone remember a movie that was broadcast on network television in the very early 80s that involved claymation dinosaurs attacking a house and aliens that entered the house through a key-hole (?). It really creeped me out as a kid, though in retrospect, it was probably very cheesy. Sorry, I don't have more info.

The dinosaur book juggernaut: how big is it?

bjork24 — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 07:45:24 -0800

Within the world of Children's and Young Adult books, is there a way to guage the popularity of dinosaur-related titles? For instance, "books about dinosaurs sell X number of copies per year" or "dinosaur books hold a X% share in the children's book industry." It seems like a difficult thing to guage, but surely someone knows how popular these books are... or else they wouldn't be making so many of them!

Maybe if it was generalized from "dinosaur-related" to "science-related"... ?

Recommend a kid-friendly hotel in NYC?

ldenneau — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 13:26:10 -0800

NYCFilter: Can anybody recommend a hotel or B&B in Manhattan compatible with two adults and a four-year old paleontologist? We're going to NYC in late October with our four-year old to see the dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History, visit friends, and do other New York City stuff. Can you recommend accomodations that are budget-friendly and near subway? Chain hotels and accomodations not in Manhattan (friends are in Brooklyn) are OK too.

How many raptors of crude oil did I burn on my way to work?

sleslie — Wed, 02 Jun 2004 20:53:56 -0800

This is a weird question that just popped in my head. Crude oil is usually made from the ancient biomass, which may include both plant and animal material. Let's say that in the crude oil that was used to create the gas for my car was made of all dinosaurs -- specifically, a mass grave of thousands of raptors. On my typical daily commute (30km, or 18.64 miles), how many raptors have I burnt? Let's use a conservative 20 miles per gallon, round up, and say I used a gallon of gasoline. I've done some preliminary analysis, so [More Inside]

"Dinosaurs" show

Slimemonster — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 00:05:28 -0800

Does anyone remember the last episode of that old ABC show Dinosaurs (you know, with the puppets?) Something just triggered some strange memory of the last episode and I seem to remember all the characters kicking the bucket (even the baby). Is that what happened? Is there a detailed synopsis of this episode somewhere on the web? Tvtome doesnt have it to much detail. It was called "Changing Nature," i believe.