All articles tagged with #dinosaurs
Riley Black, a professional paleontologist, weighs in on Anne Hathaway’s The End of Oak Street, arguing the film’s dinosaurs are a chaotic mishmash of periods with little scientific grounding, featuring oversized and implausible beasts despite scattered nods to real science; while not a documentary, the critique laments the neglect of paleo-accuracy and makes a case for more faithful dinosaur depictions in future films.
David Robert Mitchell’s The End Of Oak Street rejects wonder in favor of brutal, feathered dinosaurs and a mean-spirited tone, reworking Amblin nostalgia with a suburban-family crisis and a time-travel twist to deliver a bold, flawed reimagining of dinosaur cinema.
New research argues that the scarcity of tiny non‑avian dinosaurs results from ecological competition with small mammals rather than physiology; energy-based models fail to predict the dinosaur size distribution, implying an ecological size floor. The study also notes that birds—dinosaurs that evolved flight—could become much smaller by exploiting new niches, suggesting a symmetrical dynamic: mammals kept dinosaurs from shrinking while flight unlocked tiny bird sizes.
Warner Bros/Bad Robot's The End of Oak Street opens with previews around $2M in the U.S. from 3,200 sites, aiming for a global debut of $38M–$48M (domestic $18M–$23M; international $20M–$25M in 74 territories) on a wide 24,000-screen rollout. The PG-13 family adventure stars Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor as a neighborhood facing a prehistoric jungle and dinosaurs; production costs are cited at $80M–$92M, and Rotten Tomatoes shows 85% fresh.
A nostalgia-soaked, over-the-top dinosaur thriller set in a 1982 suburb, The End of Oak Street delivers goofy blockbuster fun with Spielberg-like touches and tense moments, anchored by strong performances from Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor as a couple grappling with beasts invading their neighborhood and a plot that nods to Jurassic-era adventures while embracing its own cheeky B-movie charm.
David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street drops dinosaurs into a 1982 suburban family tale, anchored by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, with striking cinematography that blends intimate drama and big-action chaos. While the tonal shifts and pacing aren’t perfect, the movie delivers a grounded, retro-dino ride that captures the era’s vibe and excitement, opening August 14, 2026.
David Robert Mitchell’s 'The End of Oak Street' is a lean, crowd-pleasing Amblin homage in which a suburban family is blasted back 250 million years by dinosaurs; with brisk 99-minute pacing, witty performances by Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway, and a playful score by Michael Giacchino, the film combines heart, humor, and thrilling setpieces to deliver the summer’s biggest surprise.
Boing Boing previews an 'iceberg' of fringe paleontology, arguing that many sensational claims mix plausible ideas with hoaxes and pseudoscience. The piece spotlights Chickenosaurus as an example of speculative science spun into spectacle and notes a recurring bias toward imagining lost civilizations; it introduces Tier 1 and promises more, emphasizing that fringe theories often rest on appealing narratives rather than solid fossil evidence.
Warner Bros.' The End of Oak Street has sparked strong early buzz from press screenings, with social critics calling it a brisk, Amblin-style sci‑fi survival thriller led by Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor. David Robert Mitchell’s film, produced by J.J. Abrams, blends suburban nostalgia with dinosaur peril and family drama, drawing comparisons to Spielberg-era adventures. Abrams downplays Cloverfield ties beyond a cast connection via Winstead; full reviews are embargoed until Aug. 12 ahead of the Aug. 14 wide release as Warner Bros. bets on a return to form.
Early reactions to Warner Bros.’ The End of Oak Street are broadly positive, praising its Amblin-inspired dinosaur thrills and Anne Hathaway’s performance, with critics noting strong suspense and memorable dinosaur set pieces even as some call out occasional logic gaps; the film is positioned as a nostalgic throwback that could be a notable summer box-office contender alongside other dinosaur films.
Patagotitan mayorum, a titanosaur from Patagonia, weighed about 57 tonnes and stretched 37 meters, making it the largest known land animal. Found in 2010 from remains of six individuals, with over 200 bones recovered, it reveals rapid growth from hatchling to giant and a plant-based diet supported by a long neck; adults faced few threats from predators and likely shaped their ecosystem as ecological engineers.
A 2021 study led by Charles Marshall estimated about 2.5 billion Tyrannosaurus rex lived over roughly 2.4 million years, with around 20,000 adults coexisting at any time. Yet by 2021 fewer than 100 individuals had been found, and only about 32 were relatively well-preserved post-juveniles in public museums, equating to roughly one recovered specimen for every 80 million animals that lived. The fossil record thus captures an infinitesimal sliver of the past, meaning much of what we know about T. rex rests on a tiny sample, even as paleontology extracts reliable insights from scant evidence.
Across New Mexico, Connecticut, Texas, Colorado, and Utah, five state parks protect dinosaur trackways—hundreds of footprints dating from the Early Cretaceous to the Jurassic—offering visitors direct access to fossil impressions managed by state agencies. Clayton Lake NM preserves 500+ tracks (including trail drags); Dinosaur State Park CT houses 750+ footprints under a climate-controlled dome with plaster-cast programs; Dinosaur Valley TX displays sauropod and theropod tracks side-by-side in the Glen Rose Limestone, visible when river levels fall; Red Fleet UT features hundreds of theropod prints along a marked 1.5-mile trail; John Martin Reservoir CO protects 350+ tracks including a pterosaur, exposed along the Arkansas River during drought. Access depends on water levels and weather; sites vary in facilities and fees but collectively offer an accessible, educational glimpse into the dinosaur past without the crowds of federal monuments.
Researchers announced the discovery of Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis, a 27-meter, ~27-ton sauropod unearthed in northeastern Thailand and dating to about 100–120 million years ago. Described in Scientific Reports, it reportedly surpasses Diplodocus in size and stands as Southeast Asia's largest dinosaur fossil find to date; a life-size reconstruction is on display at Bangkok's Thainosaur Museum, with a Thai doctoral student nicknamed it 'the last titan' during the research.
A juvenile iguanodontian Haolong dongi from China's Jehol Biota preserves hollow spike–like skin structures that house epidermal cells at cellular resolution, showing a thick outer cornified layer and layered epidermis around a porous dermal core. The spikes are a skin organ rather than mere scales or bone, illustrating mosaic skin in dinosaurs and suggesting defensive or other functions, while noting that conclusions come from a single specimen and may not generalize.