Tango

Critter of the Month: Yi Qi

| Patricia Bujard

The dragon of the Jurassic! A mysterious creature that many portray as a monstrous frankenstein of bat and bird features…may actually not look so strange afterall.

This handsome little fellow was only about the size of a pigeon or perhaps a crow. The one and only fossil preserves beautiful details about its feathers, the skin membrane between a few fingers, and even the structures that hint at color. But fossils like these can often lead to even more questions than one started with! Let’s take a moment to unpack what I mean…

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Critter of the Month: Archaeopteryx

| Patricia Bujard

Meet Tango. This bird likes to party, and loves being the center of attention even more!

Last year I wrote a little story about Tango and Twig, but it was posted in two halves. Tango and Twig would be much happier if I posted the whole story in one place, so enjoy this silly little tale about Tango the Archaeopteryx and Twig the Compsognathus.

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Critter of the Month: Archaeopteryx

| Patricia Bujard

Meet Tango. This bird likes to party, and loves being the center of attention even more!

We’ve been working on my big boy’s reading skills, and he’s been struggling to focus on some of the stories in his workbook. To be perfectly frank, they’re not really stories so much as exposition on a particular topic. What’s exposition, you ask? In a word…boring! So I thought I’d write a few silly stories of my own for him to read!

Here’s the first little section. I’ll have it finished and post the complete story with the next critter of the month. Keep in mind this is for a beginning reader, so some sight words and words that he can sound out lol 😀

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Critter of the Month: Dilophosaurus

| Patricia Bujard

Meet Picasso.  This quiet softie loves spending time with his special person.  Snuggling under the tree to hear a good story?  That sounds like a lovely way to spend a warm afternoon. 🙂

dilophosaurus_updatecolorprofile

Picasso continued his routine patrol of the fence with all the decorum of a peacock. Each step deliberate so that not a single scrubby twig shifted, his fur-like feathers barely brushing against the wire grid too high to jump. Dry ferns and prickly scrub grew through the mesh at the foot of the fence, but ahead there was an emptiness in the dense line of browning vegetation. And the fence…the fence was gone!

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Critter of the Month?

| Patricia Bujard

Oops! Looks like our featured critter has flown the coop! I’m terribly sorry for the delay, but Pete’s on it and will bring him back as soon as possible. 🙂

While you wait, I found a few lovely old drawings and paintings of our feathered friend. And by old, I mean a part of history. In 1941 Manfred Reichel, a Swiss paleontologist, published an article on Archaeopteryx. I love how natural and lifelike his drawings are, unlike the chimeric feathered-lizard monstrosities most people have drawn for ages.

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Manfred Reichel took some inspiration from reading The Origin of Birds, written by Gerhard Hellmann and published in 1926. Below is one of Hellmann’s beautiful paintings.

1924 Archaeopteryx courting

 

Come back soon! Hopefully it won’t take more than a day or two to catch our feisty dancer. 😀

Critter of the Week: Pliosaurus

| Patricia Bujard

Meet Tigger. This big guy is always ready to flash a big, toothy smile, especially at mealtime.

 

Tigger plio

Look at that giant, toothy grin.  He’s sure happy to see you!  He’s looking for a treat or two (or ten), so that’s what this stinky bucket of slimy deliciousness is for.  Tigger has a huge appetite, and he’ll eat anything that fits in that giant mouth of his.  Even dinosaurs if one of them decides to go for a swim.  (you heard right, dinos can swim, we have tracks to prove it) Continue reading →