Aw, thanks. I'm glad I could be of help. As mentioned above, I go all out on the story process. I really, really want to see stuff like that work out, and I try try try to see it fulfilled. I'm glad I didn't come off as overbearing, too XDD
... unless I did... O_o

Of course you didn't! I'm actually glad that you told me that you hoped I would finish the story; otherwise I wouldn't have felt obliged to tell you: "Sorry, but that's never gonna happen; the story I started is way too old now for me to just continue working on it," then: "Well, I guess I could conceivably continue working on it if I remade the whole thing, but it was such a silly idea that that's unlikely to happen. Here, let me tell you more about why it was so bad…", and finally: "Wait a minute, this could be a viable story after all; something I might actually be able to get published!"

Lol like I said, it was coming off too much like Dinotopia but I wonder how it would have turned out using dinosaurs...

Personally, I think the world of fiction could use a lot more stories about humans and dinosaurs that aren't just all about them killing one another.

Gosh, I have no idea when or how I became interested in dinosaurs. It was a long time ago, I know that much. My mom theorizes that she got me a book on dinosaurs when I was very young which sparked my obsession, but if that is indeed the case, we’ve long forgotten what book it was. I think I was into dinosaurs before I watched The Land Before Time, but that movie definitely had an immeasurable influence on my love of them. My favorite species back then were Tyrannosaurus, Struthiomimus, and Pteranodon (not a dinosaur, as I knew even then, but always associated with them). Naturally, Petrie and Sharptooth were my favorite characters in LBT, and you can bet that I was ecstatic years later when I discovered LBT II with its lovable egg stealers.

The first dinosaur documentary I ever remember seeing was a 1992 PBS series called "The Dinosaurs!" (the second episode of which can be found here on Youtube), which contained several animated sequences of various Mesozoic creatures, which remain some of my favorite ever documentary depictions of prehistoric life. (This one, by far one of the most memorable to me, featuresóin order of appearanceóa pair of Herrerasaurus, a small cynodont, a rhynchosaur, and a Saurosuchus. Another clip, which I can't find online at the moment, showed) Sadly I broke the tape on which the series was recorded, after which my parents bought me another documentary on VHS, 1985's "Dinosaur!", which I didn't enjoy as much as its predecessor, but nonetheless satisfied my dinosaur documentary needs for the next few years. It contained stop-motion sequences of Brontosaurus/Apatosaurus browsing on trees, a Monoclonius (now Centrosaurus) being stalked and attacked by a Tyrannosaurus, and a family of Hadrosaurus whose nest is raided by a Struthiomimus, which eats several eggs before being chased off by the parents (who, in possibly the most unintentionally[?] hilarious moment in the whole show, mournfully inspect their now mostly destroyed nest, realize that there's one egg that can't be accounted for, andóI swearóturn and "yell" furiously at the retreating Struthiomimus as it struts off with the missing egg, presumably cackling villainously under its breath). Afterwards the poor Struthiomimus is ambushed and killed by a pair of Deinonychus (which are not only anachronistic to the time period, but get their name pronounced "DINE-o-NICK-us" by the narrator :huh:). Ironically, we lost the video a few years later, and afterwards rediscovered “The Dinosaurs!” at a college library, which promptly returned to being the most regularly watched dinosaur documentary in our household.

Surprisingly enough, I didn't watch Jurassic Park until several years later, though at some point my dad recorded a documentary on the making of the movie, which became yet another of our family’s frequently re-watched videos. The program featured most of Jurassic Park’s major dinosaur sequences, and as a result, the movie itself made less of an impression on me when I finally watched it than it probably would have otherwise, though it nonetheless became one of my obsessions. I was fully aware of most of the well-known errors in the movie even before I saw it, but I loved it so much that I depicted JP-style dinosaursóparticularly my favorite: the frill-necked venom-spitting mini-Dilophosaurusóin many of the drawings and stories I made for the next few years (not that I ever claimed these to be scientifically accurate).

A new chapter in my dinosaur obsession opened in 2000 or 2001 (I can’t remember which), when I received the DVD and companion book of Walking With Dinosaurs for my birthday. Unsurprisingly, I loved it, and it became my new favorite dinosaur show, though ironically the episodes that made the greatest impression on me were the ones that focused on non-dinosaurs: “Cruel Sea” (marine reptiles, especially Liopleurodon) and “Giant of the Skies” (pterosaurs, mainly Ornithocheirus). For a time, I considered WWD to be my premier dinosaur resource: the most accurate and up-to-date documentary around. That turned out to be a huge mistake. It makes me feel even stupider that I was aware that much of the behavior of the creatures in the show was conjectural, but assumed the physical appearance and size statistics of many of them to be scientifically accurate. It was only later that I found out that the sizes of many of the creatures, particularly Liopleurodon and Ornithocheirus, were grossly exaggerated; the result of dubious estimates of fragmentary fossil remains that often had not yet been scientifically described. (Annoyingly, I’m still finding books that state Liopleurodon is stated to have been 80 feet long. I’m not too surprised that I was fooled, but the authors of these books, some of whom are scientists themselves? ). Over time, as I continued to watch dinosaur documentaries, I realized that many of them were doing the same thing as Walking With Dinosaurs (sometimes worse): portraying outdated, poorly researched, or downright inaccurate data (and sometimes pure speculation) as fact, and overdramatizing their creatures at the expense of scientific accuracy and often plain realism. As a result, my interest in dinosaur documentaries began to wane, and sadly I don’t watch them much anymore. (There are a few shows, such as Dinosaur Revolution, that I’ve heard good things about and am curious to see, but so far I haven’t gotten around to it.) On that note, I find it a little disturbing that few, if any, of the dinosaur documentaries of the past decade have had all their facts straight (and these aren’t facts that have been overturned by the onward march of paleontology since the documentaries were produced; I’m talking things that science already knows about that’s still being portrayed incorrectly).

Okay…this was more of a history of my love of dinosaurs (mainly my experiences with dinosaur films) than a story of how I first became interested in them. I guess I’ll stop here.

Now that sounds like something I'd want to read! You got me hooked after Struthiomimus I like the elements, and hope you get around to finishing it!

Er…well…sorry to disappoint you, but there's basically no chance of me "finishing" that story. Like I said, it's at least 13 years old, horribly outdated and inaccurate, and far below my current standards of quality.

Incidentally, a few weeks ago, while cleaning the basement, I found two of the original books (read: small stacks of paper stapled together) I had made depicting the story. The story was called "Tear and Struth" (the former pronounced like "pterosaur", not like the water that comes from your eyes ; the latter pronounced with a long "oo" sound, like "Ruth" ), which should give you an idea of my level of creativity for naming my characters. Each page consisted of a pencil drawing with accompanying text (though I had never gotten around to writing the narrative for the later pages), all rather crappy (Granted, I was a preteen when I made it). The storyline consisted of what I previously described, which followed up with the titular duo meeting a friendly Triceratops (with perfectly straight horns, including a nose horn the same length as the other two :huh:) who carried them on its head to the edge of the sea and tossed them into a hollow log, presumably so that they could ride back to the Pteranodon colony. Along the way they were threatened by an Elasmosaurus, which was scared off by a giant pliosaur, which apparently proceeded to capsize their log as it dove underwater, forcing the pair to hitch a whale shark-style ride on a large ichthyosaur (which technically shouldn't have existed in their time period), culminating in them being unceremoniously flung onto the beach much like the gang in LBT V at the end of the shark chase (I can't remember whether I had seen that movie by the time I wrote the story). That's where it cut off; like most of the projects I have ever embarked on, I never finished the story.

Admittedly, I do still like the concept of "Tear and Struth", and it's something I could potentially revisit someday. Finishing the original story is out of the question, but I suppose I could remake it, changing the characters' names and thoroughly reworking the whole thing to make it up to date with what I (and the current paleontological community) now know about dinosaurs. …Actually, the more I think about it, the more the idea of returning to this concept appeals to me. Maybe I could even get it published as some kind of book series (probably for children or young adults), perhaps even with an appendix to each book containing educational content about the prehistoric animals featured in the story.

You know, it amazes me how sometimes I can start out writing a post thinking one thing, and by the time I get to the end I've come up with an entirely new idea or completely changed my opinion. It's one of my favorite things about talking to people on this forum. Thanks so much for the inspiration, StrutEggStealer. (If I do write these stories, I'll be sure to name you under "Acknowledgements", maybe even give you a little shout-out of some kind in the story itself. )

I tried a sort of Dinotopia approach in one of my stories - humans and dinosaurs living together not-so-peacefully. My main charry was a Dilopho and a cop. One of his friends was a Troodon photographer/geek/blogger, and his love interest was a female Dryosaurus lieutenant. I recently scrapped the idea of dinosaurs and humans and just made it humans, so I definitely see where you're coming from
!!

WHAAAT?! You got rid of the dinosaurs in favor of a human-only story? That's madness!

Just kidding; I'm sure you had your reasons, even if I can't comprehend them. Personally, I just can't write humans. Every human I think I've ever depicted in anything I've written was either an insert of myself or my siblings, or more two-dimensional and characterization-free than the paper they were on. I still have trouble grasping how normal people think and function in real life; creating original human characters that aren't just splinters of my own personality is all but impossible for me.

Wow, that is awesome!! Kinda makes up for that, maybe even for the confusion of Zippo's species (that still irks me, even though Zippo Stenosaurus is my absolute favorite saurian in the films ) Because as I recall - I actually searched this one^^ - Stenosaurus is a slender, crocodilian-like creature, whereas Stenonychosaurus, which may have been more of what they were aiming toward, was a relative of the brainy Troodon.

The croc's name is actually Steneosaurus (a lot of sites just get the spelling wrong ), though I wouldn't be surprised if the name "Stenosaurus" is floating around somewhere out there in the sea of biological nomenclature (most likely in the abyss of invalid names) some critter or other did get the nam "Stenosaurus"). You're right, though: Zippo was based on Stenonychosaurus inequalis, which is currently considered to be synonymous with Troodon (more or less the same story as Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus). However, from what I've heard, Stenonychosaurus may be split from Troodon and become its own genus again sometime in the near future. In any case, my best guess is that the miniseries just screwed up the pronunciation. (This sort of thing, unfortunately, happens more often than you might think: the awful 2009 "documentary" Clash of the Dinosaurs pronounced Parasaurolophus's name as "Parasaur-rofl-us". How ironic.)

Also, that comic was terrible... terribly funny

Pfft…If you liked that comic, here's
here's another one (albeit not Deinocheirus-related) that cracks me up every time I look at it.

They kill the most people in the world ever. One sting and you're pretty much a goner.

What I read was it doesn't matter if you're allergic or not one sting from a Giant Asian Hornet can kill you.

That's a myth. Check the second source I cited. One sting (even three stings) is only likely to be fatal if you're allergic, or possibly if you leave it untreated, have preexisting health problems of some kind, etc.

In fact, I don't think there are really any venomous animals out there in which 1 sting/bite = certain death, especially if you can get proper first aid. Venomous snakes don't always inject a fatal quantity of venom (sometimes they don't inject venom at all); deadly spiders don't always manage to penetrate human skin with their fangs; even the Australian box jellyfish, one of the most venomous animals on Earth, doesn't usually kill a healthy adult unless at least eight feet of tentacle has contacted their skin. As far as I know, there's no animal on Earth whose venom has specifically evolved to kill humans. Some venomous creatures are certainly more dangerous than others, but the giant hornet probably isn't high on the list. Most sources I've seen say that they kill about 40 people a year, but if you think about it, that's not all that much. According to one book I own on dangerous animals, ants, bees, and wasps kill about 50 people per year in the United States (a dozen of those are honeybee stings), one particular species of box jelly (Chiropsalmus quadrigatus) kills 20–50 people a year, and elapid snakes (mostly kraits and cobras) kill tens of thousands. (Mind you, most of these snake deaths occur in countries where human populations are massive, and antivenom is hard to come by.) elephants in India kill 150 people per year. And there are nonvenomous animals that are more dangerous than giant hornets as well. In the U.S., an estimated 100 people are killed each year in car collisions with white-tailed deer (more deaths than are caused by any of the country's venomous or predatory animals); in India, elephants kill 150 people per year; worldwide, saltwater crocodiles have been estimated to kill as many as a thousand people a year. And don't even get me started on deaths from mosquito bites as a result of malaria and other diseases…

Plus, a pet peeve of mine is when people automatically think one species (in this case, killer bees) would win a fight simply because it's more infamous among us humans. <_<

Same here (*cough* T. rex vs. Spinosaurus). For that matteróno offense to anyoneó"X animal vs. Y animal" scenarios in general are rather ridiculous to me. And the way I see it, in this particular case, it's kind of an uneven fight no matter what the circumstances, since one of the combatants can only win if it grossly outnumbers the other and/or has an extreme stroke of luck. (And for all I know, giant hornets may be resistant or immune to bee venom.)

Source:
The Book of Deadly Animals by Gordon Grice

Just a random question relating to something you mentioned in Littlefoot1616's star day thread:

Did you ever find out when, where, and by whom the trampoline was invented? (Seriously, I'm rather curious myself.)

Dunno if this has been asked, but with all your knowledge of dinosaurs, have you considered writing a book about dinosaurs?

The thought has probably crossed my mind a few times, though, like most large goals that people have asked me about, I doubt that I could do it very well. I'm not sure what sort of qualifications one needs to have in order to write a dinosaur book (I have an English major and a Biology minor, but no paleontology degree), but even if I do have them, I'm such a dismally slow and inconsistent writer (in that I often procrastinate and often can't muster the willpower, concentration, or passion to write) that it would probably take me ages to do. I also imagine that I would have to contact some real paleontology experts, to learn what it entails to write a proper educational book on dinosaurs. (No, I don't consider myself an expert; personally, I think I'm kind of like a sentient Wikipedia, with banks of data that I'm constantly updating from various external sources, attempting to weed out the info that is outdated or inaccurate. The trouble is that the floors of my memory banks are comprised of sieves, and so I have to constantly brush up on my knowledge to compensate for the fact that I'm constantly forgetting things…) I guess it's something I could feasibly do, but it would take me ages and would be very difficult, and I don't think the final product would stand up to a lot of the books written by real experts. (Obviously my self-esteem wouldn't help push me toward completing such a goal…)

Have you tried LBT fanfiction, or dinosaur fanfics of any kind?

Well, I've sort of dabbled in writing fragments of a few LBT fanfic ideas I've come up with. I've certainly thought of plenty of concepts for LBT stories, but as with all my ideas, fleshing them out and getting them down on paper (or a computer screen) is much more challenging.

Over the years, I've also come up with several ideas for original stories involving dinosaurs and other animals. Back in the late 90s I had a story set in the late Cretaceous involving a baby Pteranodon that fell from his cliff nest (Pteranodon almost certainly did not nest on cliffs, but that's what I had seen in the books and movies back then) and, after being spooked by a Stygimoloch popping its head out of the bushed, ran into and befriended a Struthiomimus, who helped him find his way back to his home, and afterwards proceeded to have regular adventures with him.

For well over a decade, however, the stories I have focused on the most have been set in a world inhabited by prehistoric and modern animals from throughout Earth’s history. The setting and characters have gone through so many revamps and reimaginings that the current version only faintly resembles the original, and none of the literally dozens of stories I previously completed could be considered canon anymore. Originally the stories took place on an undiscovered island with a vast, Great Valley-esque ring of mountains encircling its interior; modern-day animals lived outside it; prehistoric species inside. The stories were extremely random and cartoonish, with uncountable numbers of extremely simple characters, most of them sharing only a tiny range of personality types. They traveled around in vehicles called “cat-cars” (modeled directly on Sylvester the cat slippers, like these), lived in a giant white building built by a sea lion as a hotel/apartment complex for prehistoric and modern creatures alike, and all of their resources from food to electricity could be spontaneously generated by magician’s hats.

The current incarnation of these stories is (thankfully) much more thought-out and far less ridiculous. The setting is an entire planet rather than an island, I am attempting to limit the number of characters as much as I can, and the animals have no outlandish technology (though one extremely technologically advanced species does feature prominently). The frustrating thing is that I want the world to seem as real as possible, but there are still some fantastical elements that I can’t figure out how to get around. I’m also concerned that there are too many different themes in the stories that readers will have difficulty accepting as compatible. And I’m struggling to figure out how to make the stories relatable to readers, since the world has no humans in it, but I don’t want the significance of encountering living dinosaurs to be lost on the characters. On top of that I want the stories to be as original, interesting, and clichÈ-free as possible. As a result of all these challenges (plus many others), I haven’t been making much progress on these stories, either.

Derp, I didn't get around to posting in this thread yesterday. Sorry about that.

Happy 28th star day, Jason!

By the way, Iris, that Littlefoot clay sculpture is awesome! (I didn't recognize that he was on a trampoline at first; that's hilarious. )

Once thing I can say right here is that the mask's curse is not permanent (except for the first guy to have been cursed by that mask, but that's a different story). When Nocturn threw away the Mask of Life, the curse it had on him wore off after a few seconds, because he was no longer touching it.

Oh. Duh, I forgot about that. It appears that my crappy memory is causing me to lose the plot.

I guess my next question is, how directly do you have to be touching the Mask of Life in order for its curse to affect you? For instance, if you picked the mask up with a pair of tongs, would you be safe from the curse?

An odd-looking pink creature had been foolish enough to try to take the mask, and he was more than happy to follow through with Pridak's orders: “consider them a free meal.”

I’m pretty sure the first letter should be capitalized, though it may be a stylistic choice.

Ruby's eyes widened as a sudden realization occurred to her. “Of course! It all makes sense now! I'm holding the Mask of Life!”

“Yes, I can see that,” said Cera, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

While not quite a laugh-out-loud moment, I found Cera’s context-oblivious response here amusing, and totally in-character for her.

He then stepped back and began shattering the coral with the blades of his lower arms.

Hey, you, that stuff takes hundreds of years to grow! Stop damaging the reef ecosystem!

Nice save by Hahli, too (both the venom immunity trick and playing possum afterwards). I didn’t see that coming.

These eels would occasionally rush out to snatch any fish that were unfortunate * to pass by. The was no way of knowing just how long these eels were, but seeing as some of them reached more than halfway across the trench, it was safe to assume they were quite long indeed.

*Did you mean to include the word “enough” here?
Also, “The” should be “There”.
And while not technically an error, I think you should include the detail that the eels have no eyes. (If they’re like a lot of poorly sighted deep-sea fish, they probably have no pigment either, and would appear ghostly white, if you wanted to use that as well.) It helps to visualize them better.

“Then that's too bad for them,” said Hewkii, “because I sure don't intend on staying here. All we need is * plan...”

*Insert “a”.

Nuparu jumped awake and took a quick glance at his surroundings. Rubbing the back of his head, he irritably said, “What did you hit me for? You know we can get out of here whenever we like.”

“Good. Then tell them,” replied Hewkii, gesturing over his shoulder.

Please forgive my cluelessness, but until I checked the quoted text, I couldn’t tell for certain that Hewkii was gesturing at the eels. I think you should specify that. (Also, maybe you should clarify that he’s gesturing above him, since “over his shoulder” sounds like he’s just pointing behind him at Chomper and Spike.)

He then kicked Spike in frustration, but that only resulted in a hurt foot.

Chomper never really admitted it to anyone ó not even Ruby ó but he always found destruction to be quite fascinating, especially the explosive kind.

Heh. Looks like Chomper would be a MythBusters fan.

The sudden changed cause the eel to loosen its hold on the Toa of Stone and, once Nuparu let go, float up above the group.

Should be “change caused”.

Nice work on the description of the sharks vs. zombified sea creatures battle, especially Littlefoot’s point of view of it. And great choice of line for closing the chapter.

While Ozzy dunked his head in the river (looking amusingly similar to those depictions of ostriches with their heads buried in the sand; something ostriches don’t actually do), Pangaea turned his attention to Strut.

“Okay, Strut, it’s time for that blindfold to come off.”

“Already?” In sharp contrast to Ozzy, Strut actually sounded a little disappointed. “I kinda like having this thing on; I feel like it gives me some privacy, ya know?”

Forced to pause while his brain processed Strut’s words and failingly attempted to analyze the logic in them, Pangaea took a few seconds to respond. “Well, Ozzy’s taking his off, and given the relationship between you two, I think you’d be better off if you could see when you needed to duck, if you know what I mean.”

Strut quickly comprehended Pangaea’s reasoning, flinching as if in remembrance of some particularly painful bruises. “Oh. Okay.”

“Now, if you can just lie down and rest your head to the ground, I can get that thing off for you.”

Evidently more trusting of Pangaea than Ozzy (or maybe just more easily influenced), Strut complied. “This isn’t gonna hurt, is it?”

“Well, it’ll hurt less if you know how to do it right. Now, I’m gonna have you count backwards from five, and when you hit one, I’ll pull the blindfold off. I’m gonna need to put my foot on your beak to brace myself, if that’s okay.”

“Uhh…sure, I guess.”

Pangaea carefully placed one foot on top of Strut’s snout and grasped the top end of the leaf blindfold. “Okay, start counting.”

“Uh…five…four…”

Pangaea ripped the blindfold off in one swift yank.

“YEOW!” Strut’s yelp was muffled slightly due to his lower jaw being pinned to the ground by Pangaea’s foot, but it still made the sound-sensitive glider cringe. “What did you do that for?” Strut whined. “I didn’t count all the way!”

“Hurts less when you aren’t expecting it,” Pangaea explained with an apologetic shrug. “Sorry about that. How’s your head feel now?”

Strut rubbed the nape of his neck where the sap-covered end of the leaf had been stuck. “Hurts less now, actually,” he said with a hint of surprise.

“See? What did I tell you?” Pangaea glanced at Ozzy to check that he still had his head in the river, then held up the blindfold in front of Strut. “Here,” he whispered.

Strut looked perplexed. “What’s this for?”

“To eat!” Pangaea hissed. “You must be hungry, and Ozzy’s not looking. Quick, take it!”

“Oh!” Without delay, Strut grabbed the leaf in his beak and wolfed it down.

“Hmm, very good! Thanks, Pangaggy!”

“That’s ëPangaea’,” Pangaea corrected, sighing lightly but smiling amusedly.