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ebongawk · 11 months

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"Baby, baby, baby," Eddie practically shouted as he kicked his way into the apartment. Chrissy jumped from her curled up position on the couch, the book in her hands nearly launched across the room.

"Oh, my God," she laughed breathlessly, laying a hand over her heart. "Eddie, Jesus."

"Sorry," he said, not sounding particularly apologetic at all. "But you will never guess what I found at the store!"

He was holding up a paper grocery sack like it was a trophy, having dropped three other sacks when he barged in, and Chrissy's eyes darted between it and him incredulously.

"Groceries."

"Har, har." The grin still stretched over his cheeks made his sarcastic laughter almost genuine. "No. Well. Yes, but." With a flourish, he tore the paper bag away, revealing another plastic bag beneath. Chrissy blinked at it.

"Chicken nuggets?"

"Dinosaur chicken nuggets!" he shouted, evidently very pleased with his discovery. "The most epically childish thing in existence! One hit of these is guaranteed nostalgia!"

Pursing her lips around a grin, Chrissy shrugged. "I've never had them before."

Eddie looked at her for a long moment. The expression he wore when he wanted to wrap her up in a blanket and coddle her, which slipped into his eyes every time she admitted something sordid about her own childhood.

Instead, he just grinned, his eyes twinkling.

"Oh, sweetheart. You're in for a treat."

...

Two hours later, the oven was just finished baking their costumed chicken.

Eddie and Chrissy were also just finished baking.

She was sitting on the couch again, relaxed and riding the buzz of their shared joint as Eddie set a plate piled high with nuggets on the coffee table. Adorned on either side by ranch dressing, buffalo sauce, and barbecue sauce, he traipsed across the living room to load Predator into the VCR and plop down beside her.

"Dig in, sweetness," Eddie said, easy smile and red-rimmed eyes half-focused as he fast-forwarded through the movie previews. Chrissy leaned forward, plucking the nugget off the top as Eddie grabbed a couple and dipped them into various sauces.

Chrissy stared at the little nugget in her hand.

It was clearly a stegosaurus. The ridges on its back like fish scales and the curve of its spine made it easy to identify. It was ridiculous, how some tiny fried piece of chicken could take on the form of another animal, wasn't it? Even if that animal had been extinct for millions and millions of years. And the stegosaurus would never know that humans created a little snack to emulate its visage. They would never know that humans existed at all.

"Chrissy?" Eddie asked, his mouth half-full of her little stegosaurus's friends. "Baby, what's wrong?"

Her eyes suddenly blurred, and Chrissy let out a hitched breath.

"Oh. Shit. Sweetness." She could feel Eddie's hands on her shoulders, trying to turn her body toward him as she held that tiny little chicken nugget in her palm. Staring at his grainy little body even if she couldn't see him. "Baby, are you okay? Are you having trouble with this kind of food right now? I could make–– Well. Uh. I don't know if I can make anything, but––"

"He's just––" She broke off with another sob, thrusting her hands toward where she assumed Eddie's face was to show him the stegosaurus. "He's just so cute, Eddie! Look at him!"

She couldn't see Eddie through her tears, but she felt his hands squeeze her shoulders once, then twice, as she ran her fingertip over the tiny breadcrumb ridges of the stegosaurus's spine.

"Chrissy––"

"He doesn't even know that he's edible!" she cried. "He's just trying to live his little dinosaur life and be adorable!"

Eddie laughed, bodily pulling her into his arms until she was tucked up against his chest.

"Oh, baby girl," he cooed, rocking her back and forth. "He is pretty cute, isn't he?"

"Yes," she pouted. "He's just–– He's just a baby, Eddie! I can't eat him!"

"He's an herbivore, y'know? He was gonna get eaten in the Jurassic period too. You're just playing your part in the circle of life."

"I'm not a t-rex!" Chrissy retorted, unable to keep from crying harder. "And h-he doesn't deserve that! He's too cute!"

Eddie's laughter rumbled against her, bubbling up from his chest and tucked into her hair. Affronted, Chrissy looked up at him.

"Are you laughing at me?"

"No, princess, no," he said quickly, his nose scrunched up in humor. "No, it's just–– Baby, he's just a nugget. He's not even a real stegosaurus."

"I don't care," she huffed around her own laugh, looking down at the little nugget in her hand. The tears had begun to dry on her cheeks, and she nuzzled into Eddie's chest as she continued holding the stegosaurus close.

"You're literally too adorable for words, Cunningham." She felt the tell-tale sign of lips pressed against her crown as Eddie slowly stroked his fingers up and down her spine. After a moment, he let out a long sigh. "Should I put our reptilian friends away and order a pizza instead?"

"Yes," Chrissy replied, still pouting a little. "We can't eat them, Eddie, they're just babies."

A finger came up beneath her chin, gently tilting her head back until she had to look up at him. Those chocolate eyes she loved so much danced with mirth, lips twisted like he wanted desperately to conceal his smile. Which he was doing a poor job of.

"We'll see how you feel about it when you're sober," he acquiesced. "For now, how does pepperoni and hamburger sound?"

Chrissy grinned, leaning up to kiss him in lieu of an answer.

#hellcheer #eddissy #eddie x chrissy #eddie munson #hellcheer drabble #chrissy x eddie #chrissy cunningham #cw weed #cw marijuana #tw weed #tw marijuana #stranger things #chrissy is just a high crier ok #also the dinosaur chicken nugget wasn't actually invented until 1993 #by the museum of natural history to celebrate the release of jurassic park #but since i didn't explicitly state the time period i guess it doesn't matter #tw eating issues #tw disordered eating #but just a little bit

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iknowdino · 6 years

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Koreaceratops - Episode 191

In the news: The ankylosaur Akainacephalus johnsoni was found in Utah with a gryposaur, a turtle, and a crocodile; Dinosaur National Monument has a new paleontologist; A geology instructor donated a large collection of fossils and specimens to the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut; A 30 foot inflatable dinosaur named Dino-Mite was briefly stolen from a fireworks store; The Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville, Virginia is having a two-day Dino Festival; York Maze in the UK has opened a 15 acre maze of a T. rex and Triceratops to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Jurassic Park; BBC4 aired the three part series titled Jurassic Coast Revealed; and a 1/2 oz pure silver colored Canadian dinosaur coin featuring Edmontonia was released

Dinosaur of the day Koreaceratops the first ceratopsian found in Korea

This episode is brought to you in part by TRX Dinosaurs, which makes beautiful and realistic dinosaur sculptures, puppets, and animatronics. You can see some amazing examples and works in progress on Instagram @trxdinosaurs

To get access to lots of patron only content check out https://www.patreon.com/iknowdino

For links to every news story, all of the details we shared about Koreaceratops, and our fun fact check out https://iknowdino.com/Koreaceratops-Episode-191/

Check out this episode!

#i know dino #podcast #dinosaurs

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caveartfair · 5 years

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What’s behind the Roaring Market for Dinosaur Fossils

Unidentified dinosaur specimen from Wyoming. Courtesy of Aguttes, Paris.

On Friday, the prized paleontological specimen of Chicago’s Field Museum, a 40.5-foot-long Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton affectionately named Sue, will be reintroduced to the public in a new installation and with a few more of its bones in place. But 21 years ago, Sue was having a very different debut—at Sotheby’s auction house in New York.

The auction was enabled by a set of exceptional circumstances set in motion in August 1990 in South Dakota. Sue’s fossilized bones were excavated from a cliff in the town of Faith, brought to a commercial fossil dealer’s facility in Hill City, and, following a raid by government agents, stowed away in a furnace room at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City. A judge had ruled that the commercial fossil dealer, Peter L. Larson, failed to secure the proper permissions to excavate Sue, whose remains had been found within the boundaries of a Native American reservation.

Following the the skeleton’s seizure and a series of legal challenges, ownership of Sue was awarded to the Sioux man whose land the fossil had been found on; with the government’s approval, he consigned the fossil to Sotheby’s. This all occurred in parallel with the release of Michael Crichton’s best-selling science fiction novel Jurassic Park (1990), its blockbuster cinematic adaptation by Steven Spielberg in 1993, and a sequel in May 1997—all featuring a swaggering T. rex as their reptilian lead. By the time Sue stomped onto the auction block, the global dinosaur craze had reached fever pitch.

Sue is widely considered the world’s largest and best preserved T. rex skeleton, and when the specimen went under the hammer in Sotheby’s single-lot sale on Saturday, October 4, 1997, it quickly eclipsed the presale estimate of at least $1 million. After nine minutes of bidding, Sue sold for a whopping $8.3 million—still the auction record for a dinosaur fossil. The Field Museum was only able to afford to bid at that level because it had struck deals with a set of public and private supporters, including Disney and McDonald’s, who got to make life-size casts of the fossil as part of their agreements with the museum (Disney put theirs on display at Disney World, while McDonald’s sent their two casts on a world tour). But the Sue sale also marked the beginning of a resurgence for the dinosaur fossil market.

“What happened after the Jurassic Park movies was that every wealthy person in the world apparently decided that they had to have a dinosaur in their living room,” said Hans Sues, the curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. But, he added, “fossil trading has always been a very widespread and fairly intense activity.”

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, fossils of prehistoric creatures were essential features of any serious collector’s Wunderkammer. “If you rewind the clock 100 years, dinosaur bones were almost at the top of the pile” for collectors, said James Hyslop, the head of Christie’s department of scientific instruments, globes, and natural history in London. “They were fetching hundreds of pounds, and when museums were acquiring them, they were costing the same as Old Masters.”

Though collectors’ appetites for art have outpaced their interest in fossils for much of the past century, dinosaur bones have recently clawed their way back.

“The Sue sale was the driving force,” said Eric Mickeler, a French fossil specialist. In June, he helped organize the sale of a nearly 30-foot-long skeleton of an unidentified theropod dinosaur from the late Jurassic period for French auction house Aguttes. Staged in a temporary pavilion erected beneath the Eiffel Tower, the sale was something of a throwback to the Sue auction, with a single spectacular lot up for grabs. The mysterious carnivore’s nearly complete skeleton surpassed its high estimate of €1.8 million ($2 million) to sell for €2 million ($2.3 million), an impressive result to be sure, though a far cry from Sue’s $8.3 million. Hyslop said this may simply be due in part to the T. rex’s popularity among dinosaurs.

“As with an artist, there is certainly a branding factor,” Hyslop said. “There’s an enormous difference in price and in interest between a T. rex tooth and an Allosaurus tooth, and it’s essentially because of the brand name of the T. rex.”

While the Aguttes sale seemed to confirm a persistent appetite for dinosaur fossils among collectors, another French auction house didn’t fare so well recently. On November 21st, Artcurial offered two large dinosaur skeletons—a 55-percent complete Allosaurus estimated at €600,000–800,000 ($682,000–909,000) and a 90-percent complete Camptosaurus estimated at €500,000–700,000 ($568,000–795,000)—in its natural history auction, its first test of the dinosaur fossil market. Both failed to sell.

Unidentified dinosaur specimen from Wyoming. Courtesy of Aguttes, Paris.

Still, with dinosaur fever showing no signs of relenting, and celebrity collectors like Leonardo DiCaprio expressing interest in acquiring fossils, the market seems destined to keep gaining momentum. And while Sotheby’s last offered dinosaur fossils in 2014, Christie’s now routinely offers them in its science and natural history sales; last month’s online sale “Sculpted by Nature” included T. rex teeth and a Thescelosaurus foot, while a sale in London in July included a Triceratops vertebra, a Triceratops humerus, and two Triceratops horns, the larger of which sold for £35,000 ($46,300).

“Among art collectors, there’s a sense that the dinosaur fossil market is undervalued, especially when you look at the relative value of art and fossils 100 years ago and today,” said Hyslop, noting the rapid increase in auction prices for art over the past century, while fossil prices have mostly lagged behind. “It’s a masterpiece market not so different from the market for art: A good Picasso makes significantly more than a bad Picasso, and the same is true of fossils.”

Mickeler painted a more specific portrait of the typical dinosaur fossil collector. “They are businessmen between 40 and 60 years old,” he said, “and quite often lovers of modern art.”

And, as with modern art, an expanding market means that provenance is increasingly important, as illustrated by the government seizure of Sue and Nicolas Cage’s misadventures with a stolen Mongolian Tyrannosaurus skull. Cage bought it at auction (DiCaprio was reportedly the underbidder), but then had to hand it over to the Department of Homeland Security; dinosaur fossils coming to market are subject to many national and international laws.

“Provenance is hugely important, and it’s alas something that wasn’t of huge concern 40 or 50 years ago,” said Hyslop.

The major auction houses now closely scrutinize fossils’ excavation documentation, export and import licenses, and more.

The foot of a dinosaur, Montana. Courtesy of © Christie's Images Limited 2018.

The tooth of a tyrannosaurus rex, South Dakota. Courtesy of © Christie's Images Limited 2018.

“We avoid [provenance problems] by systematically asking for the legal file of the dinosaur,” said Mickeler. “In this file must be the title deeds of the land, the excavation authorizations, the paid mineral right, the quarry map, the bones map, the export papers showing the customs taxes paid. You thereby verify that all its constituent bones come from the same excavation site, so it is not a ‘fake.’”

Airtight paperwork is all the more important because of how international the fossil market has become, and how inconsistent laws and their enforcement can be from one country to the next.

“A lot of the fossils that come on the market are from countries like China, Argentina, and Brazil that have very desirable types of fossils, including dinosaurs, and even though these countries have regulations on paper, somehow stuff always gets out,” Sues said. “You go to any major mineral show and there are dinosaur skeletons, or woolly mammoths, or woolly rhinoceroses—beautiful skeletons that get out of these countries. So obviously, the law and the enforcement of the law are quite different.”

The market’s appetite for dinosaur fossils can make enforcement difficult, though Sues noted that Germany, France, and increasingly the U.S. are very rigorous in tracking and policing specimens’ movements. The recent uptick in the dinosaur market has also made it harder for natural history museums and other scientific institutions to acquire important specimens, both at dig sites—where commercial fossil dealers can offer property owners much larger sums in order to dig up their land—and at auction.

“Natural history museums, unlike art museums, generally don’t have acquisitions funds,” said Sues. “So unless they find some person who’s willing to buy [a fossil] on behalf of the museum and then donate it to the museum—and there are very few people who’ll do that—you really are priced out of that market.”

So what are the odds of another fossil like Sue coming to market, and will museums be able to compete for it?

“It will depend entirely on the condition of it, Sue really is a spectacular specimen,” said Hyslop. But, he added, “there’s really good material that’s still available to collect.”

For Sues, it will depend on how creative natural history museums are willing to get. “Crowd-funding probably wouldn’t generate enough money for that purpose, but I think a partnership with a potent commercial sponsor is definitely something that one can look at,” he said. “Commercial collecting will always be here, and we just have to figure out ways that paleontologists and commercial collectors can collaborate to make sure that particularly exceptional specimens end up ultimately in a publicly accessible repository.”

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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gosatsuvns · 6 years

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Weekly Update #198 - Welcome To Jurassic June!

It's finally time! Jurassic June has arrived, meaning that it has actually been an entire year now ever since we publicly unveiled our next murder mystery GENBA no Kizuna! Because of that, I thought I'll use the first blog post of this year's Jurassic June to not only give you an overview of what we have planned for this month, but also to take a look back at what has happened over the past 12 months, what kind of things have changed and how the development of our new visual novel project is progressing in general. So without further ado, let's get right into it!

First of all, for those of you who might have stumbled upon GENBA only recently and might therefore be wondering... What exactly is Jurassic June and why did we pick this month to make the initial reveal?

Jurassic June is mainly a month for fans to celebrate the Jurassic Park/Jurassic World franchise, but I guess in a broader sense, dinosaurs in general. So now you might be asking, okay, and what does that have to do with GENBA? Well, the direction and theme of GENBA have been heavily influenced by my love and passion for all things Jurassic.

I've been a dinosaur nerd ever since kindergarten and one day, after having already come up with the basic idea for GENBA, while thinking about its setting... I decided to have it themed around dinosaurs. Similar to how our previous project, SHINRAI - Broken Beyond Despair, is themed all around Halloween (another thing I'm very passionate about).

But even in SHINRAI, I couldn't help but hide a Jurassic Park reference here or there...

My first idea for GENBA was to actually have the murder occur in the dinosaur section of a natural history museum. But over time, the idea evolved and the setting eventually turned into the Kaseki Residence. Once home to the late paleontologist Prof. Dr. Genshi Kaseki, it is now owned by his grandson, Ryuunosuke Hazama, who lives there together with his three friends, all of whom are enormous dinosaur nerds. So, just like with SHINRAI's Halloween theme, the dinosaur theme in GENBA is well reflected in the design of its characters and location:

(And as you can probably imagine, there are Jurassic Park references to be found here as well, because how could I resist? w)

Still, as much fun as I'm having with this theme and setting, this isn't just about me indulging in my passion for dinosaurs. Just like with SHINRAI, the two most important factors for me in regards to this project are providing a compelling mystery as well as compelling characters. As a matter of fact, it's the characters who always take the top spot for me when it comes to working on such a project, so I put a lot of effort into creating GENBA's cast.

We have already introduced the four playable protagonists last year. You can check out their profile cards in the GENBA section of our website. However, these four just make up one part of the full picture. We have four investigators/detectives and, of course, a victim. However, you still need a little more than that in a murder mystery. While witness characters, for example, could be a nice addition, they rather fall into the "optional" category, though. You don't necessarily need any to write a murder mystery. But there is something else you need rather desperately. One other category of characters outside of "victim(s)" that is absolutely essential: "suspects".

GENBA no Kizuna will provide a total of four suspects. And this Jurassic June, we want to focus on them a little more.

You might have already seen a bit of them here or there if you've been following us for a while and, of course, patrons have been able to check out the initial design sketches ever since last year. But I thought it's about time to finally reveal them publicly, so please look forward to that later this month (or check out our Patreon if you want to learn more right now)!

Of course, there are a few other things I want to show and talk about this Jurassic June as well, but for now, I'd like to get back to GENBA in general and, as promised in the beginning, talk a bit about the past 12 months and the state of our progress.

If you take a look at the initial character introduction cards I posted last year and compare them with the ones currently found on our website, you will undoubtedly notice that they have changed a bit. Some changes might be more obvious, others a little more subtle. A lot of tiny details have changed over the course of this past year, like the story now taking place in September rather than June, or Rei's age having been adjusted. Everything has been a constant work-in-progress right down to such seemingly insignificant details. That's actually one of the main things I've been working on ever since last Jurassic June: ironing out the details and direction of the story. I wish I could talk about this in more detail, but due to spoilers, I guess that will have to wait until after the game has been released. Maybe in the extras section or something, haha.

Either way, I'm more certain and even more confident about many story-related things now compared to one year ago. And to me, that is a big step. Writing an engaging murder mystery really is no easy task. With a story so heavily relying on logic and realism there is a lot of research required. The devil truly lies in the detail.

It's very difficult to give a percentage of how much progress has been made or an estimate of how long it might take until the game will be finished. I've tried that in the past with SHINRAI, only to realize that I've always been way off, so I'd rather not make promises I cannot keep again. You always have to keep in mind that, in the end, we're just a team of basically two people, so... it sadly takes a while. Especially in the beginning because, when starting a new project, the workload is extraordinarily high. You literally have nothing and need everything: sprites, backgrounds, CGs, music, a written script, sound effects, a fully designed and coded GUI and so on and so forth. That's what we've mainly been dealing with over the past 12 months: asset creation.

On the flipside, this also means that, the more assets are created, the faster we will be able to make coding progress. After all, it's not like each and every chapter needs the exact amount of new assets. Eventually, you will have all the expressions you need for a character, for example. When we got to the final chapter of SHINRAI, all of Raiko's sprites were already there. Same with most of the other characters. So rather than having to spend a lot of time creating more assets again, we could mostly use those we had already created for the previous chapters. GENBA will be very much the same. The closer we will get to the end, the more drastically the workload will subside. But of course, right now, there is still a lot to do.

That's the downside of being a tiny indie dev. So, if you'd like to support us, please consider checking out our Patreon. We would appreciate it a lot. And to those of you who have been supporting us there or even still are: thank you so much! It really makes a difference and helps us out a lot. Without this additional help, it would be very difficult to commission Solo Acapello for GENBA's soundtrack or to compensate our proofreader Ariette for her work.

Still, I do have to admit that, even if things once again took way longer than expected, overall I'm very happy and proud regarding the progress we have made so far. I mean, hey, at the very least, we have finally managed to release a first demo for GENBA! And we're hard at work to follow up with that extended demo as soon as possible.

Anyway, this is starting to get a little too long I guess, so I should probably wrap this up. I will tell you more throughout the rest of Jurassic June and I hope you're as excited to learn about our suspects as I am to finally reveal them in public!

Patrons can actually get an early look at a bunch of things I have planned to show publicly later this month and check out various WIP-postings, including the first one for this month's Jurassic-themed artwork! And speaking of monthly artworks, don't forget to check out the one Natsu drew for May, which was themed all around tsuyu, the rainy season:

As always, patrons can download a higher resolution version over here.

The image features one of GENBA's four main characters, Himatsu Mizu. She does not appear in our current demo yet, but patrons can learn a little more about her by checking out not only her introduction scene in GENBA, but even her original introduction scene from... 2008!??

So yeah, I guess that's about it. Please enjoy the rest of your weekend! Until next Saturday, take care, and... Happy Jurassic June! :3

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