Sydney Supanova Pop Culture Expo, 2016

Covering a comic convention might seem like a strange thing to talk about in a blog about natural history, but there are often some surprising things and people to be found at these events.

For example I recently attended the Sydney Supanova convention, held between the 16^th and 18^th of June, 2016 at Sydney’s Olympic Park.

This is a great location for a convention as it is surrounded by hotels, as well as parking and close to public transport lines. One added bonus, the ANZ stadium was just across the road from the convention and my favourite NRL team, the Parramatta Eels were playing Russel Crowes South Sydney Rabbitohs. Living in Canberra, I never really get to see my Sydney based team play, so this was a treat I was not going to miss out on (we smashed them by the way, 30 to 12).

ANZ Stadium, just before the game.

I only point this out as the Olympic complex is huge, with numerous things going on every weekend. If you do decide to visit the Supanova convention in Sydney, its worthwhile checking out what else is on over the entire weekend. There are concerts and sporting events and numerous other things going on that may well add great value to your trip.

Retailer room, there was another
room at the far end, equal in size.

Supanova itself has grown greatly since its beginnings. I used to work in comic shops and ran tables at these early conventions, which at the time were mostly about comics, collectible cards and action figures. Today it is a true media convention, with TV, movies, anime, and of course cosplay becoming a very large part of what’s going on. There was even a wrestling ring in the middle of the convention with wrastlin’ going on throughout the day.

Has anyone seen Francis?

I will admit the line was enormous to get in at the start of the day -but- that line moved incredibly quickly considering the volume of people, and as you are surrounded by hundreds of participants in costume, you will hardly notice the time as you are constantly looking in awe at the effort someone has gone to on their costume. There really were some incredible ones.

All rights remain with the
publisher.  This is only used
for education purposes.

As for all things prehistoric, there were a number of comic dealers carrying the various dinosaur comics that have been released over the year, including a great selection of the older adult comic magazines such as Eerie, Creepy and the like. These often carried great stories, drawn by artists such as Corben and Frazetta, and often contain covers of unlucky women having their clothes torn off by some out of control dinosaur. It’s truly unfortunate how often this seems to happen to time traveling ladies.

All rights remain with the publisher.
This is only used for education purposes.

The reason I was keen for this convention, however, was that one of my favourite comic artists from when I first started collecting comics was going to be doing a signing.

All rights remain with
the publisher. This is only
used for education purposes.

Arthur Adams exploded onto the comic scene with a MARVEL mini-series called ‘Longshot’ in the 1980s, which quickly grew into a fan favourite. He followed this up by a series of iconic images, including one for Wolverine, which soon appeared as a standee in comic shops all over the world.

Adams is a big fan of King Kong and dinosaurs, which explains his own series, ‘Monkeyman and O’Brien’, containing Axwell Tiberius, a 10-foot-tall super-intelligent gorilla-like being from another dimension.

Not only did I get to meet Adams and get him to sign one of my favourite comics he’d drawn, but we had time for a short chat. He mentioned he had seen The Prehistoric Times magazine and was happy to do a future interview for the mag. Me…all I kept thinking was…’Its Arthur Adams, I’m chatting with Arthur Adams’.

Also at the convention was Frank Cho, an artist that has been making a name for himself lately for his work at MARVEL (especially the Avengers), and comic book covers. For us dino fans, Cho is probably more famous for his newspaper comedy comic strip, Liberty Meadows. This strip often contained story lines with dinosaurs and Kong-like apes….and often both.

All rights remain with the publisher.
This is only used for education purposes.

I had got to meet Frank at the Baltimore Comic convention, and as his table was busy every time I passed by, I was happy to try and catch him when he had some free time and a moment to chat. Sadly (though not for him I am sure), he was busy whenever I passed, so missed my chance.

Later in the day things were quieter, and I finally got over to the Weta workshop display, and oh what a display. On either side, enormous carved dwarfs stood towering over everyone, looking as though they had just been ripped right out of the Hobbit set.

Throughout the day various artists from the production company signed the fantastic art books Weta is renowned for releasing from the various films they have been involved with, and I got a chance to chat with Daniel Falconer, a Weta writer and designer.

Daniel Falconer and myself.

I was astonished to find out the Weta crew are aware of the Prehistoric Times mag I write for, and we had a great chat about the dinosaurs and other prehistoric critters that appeared in Peter Jackson’s King Kong. Their interest in palaeontology should not be such a surprising as the name ‘Weta’ comes from a family of large, spiny prehistoric crickets that can still be found in New Zealand.

Sadly, Daniel admitted Weta is not working on the upcoming Kong film, which is a shame as the stuff they had produced for the 2005 movie was great stuff. Still, as I mentioned, many of those who work at Weta are dinosaur fans, and we organised to create a questionnaire survey to find out what prehistoric trigger helped guide so many talented artists into the field they have chosen.

Daniel Falconer's fictional dinosaur
catching a young bird

These days Supernova is more like San Diego Comic Con than the comic shows it came from, it’s now a pop culture event, drawing fans and professionals from a number of fields. As the conventions are now held in Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, as well as Sydney, you may want to visit the next one as you just never know who you are going to get to talk to.

The Dinosaur Museum- Dorchester (On the Road in the UK- Part One)

I want to be kind here, so let me explain. I work at a private museum and know full well the limitations of creating something for the general public without the mechanisms public organisation enjoy. There is no copy or graphics department to have print up your scripting, nor are there the teams of professionals to help filter and create information and content. At a private museum there is usually one person and the best printer they can afford who, between serving at the front counter or talking to visitors, sits at a desk and bangs this stuff out as quickly and accurately as they can.

Next is the problem of the actual displays. As a private organisation very few government institutions take you seriously (or are sometimes outright hostile), thus any display you have found, created or bought. All of this costs money and the only money a private museum has is whatever comes through the door. Public institutions have the bonus of public funding and collections- often created over centuries of exploration and millions of tax dollars spent. There is no back room in a private museum where you can go and grab a few items collected by a scientist in the 19^th century to create a new display- often all you have is already on show, and getting anything new can be a real struggle.

Location, location, location. A private museum does not have the simple support of a building supplied to them by the local or national government. Often these private museums may be in a building built for some other purpose (the National Dinosaur Museum is in what was originally a gemstone museum and is lucky for that reason); but the simple benefit of not having to pay rent- or perhaps only a stipend to the government who is happy to have the building occupied, cannot be discounted. Private museums have to rent whatever is at hand, and the cheaper the better, on a building likely less accessible to the public. 



Richard Owen under the stairs



 If you want your museum in a spot where the tourists are, this is obviously going to cost a lot, and budgets are always tight. You are also rarely going to have permission to adapt this building to your needs, it is a rental after all and the owner doesn’t want you knocking down walls or bricking up windows, so you need to adapt your displays to the building, not the other way round.

There are also limited opportunities for donations. If you are lucky locals fall in love with your organisation and rally to keep it going, but never in the way for public institution, which get the added bonus of being in the public eye. Government funding means government advertising as well, and co-operation between public institutions at a level a private museum only dream of. They also have far more access to grants- and all of this is often on top of an admission charge just like a private museum.

 I really do sympathise…

 …that said. In 2008 we were completing a circumnavigation of the UK and stopping at as many of the locations I had spent my childhood reading about as possible. Just the idea of taking a car and driving much of the coastline of the islands brought gasps of horror from many of the locals I had befriended. For some English traveling is something you do overseas, not within your own country, so driving to the next town, much less the next county or country is something they just don’t do. The idea of driving from London to Scotland (a journey of around 7 hours) is staggering to them, and it was hard to explain that in Australia that’s how far it is to the local shops….ok, not true…but I live in Canberra and the next big cities are Sydney (a 3-ish hour drive away) and Melbourne (8 hours), so long distance driving is just something all Australians do.

A check list for a museum groupie.

Because of the strange L-shape of the mainland, we did this in two trips, with the first heading from London to its most westerly point, Land’s End. This journey would take us past Lyme Regis, a location all fossil fans will know (and a blog for another day) and a lot of great, ancient castles. The drive also took us through Dorchester.

Before any drive I do my homework as there is nothing worse than getting home and realising you missed something cool or important that had been near your path, but you had been unaware of at the time. A number of the smaller, ‘boutique’ museums I have visited only happened because I looked for what was in the area we’d be visiting and working out beforehand how I could fit it into our route.

I know this all sounds obvious, but remote regions often have fewer roads and often you need to carefully plot out your path or else you could find yourself wasting hours of travel retracing your steps to get to these distant locations. This is also especially true if you are visiting places where the roads close due to seasonal weather (I’m looking at you Wyoming). 

Before any trip I sit down and draw out a map and work out the actual time needed to get places, both by distance and time. This map is always with me on the journey. I also have a note book with these details in it so that I can quickly write down notes that will be in sequence- this means at a later date I know exactly what order things occurred in, and perhaps reminds me of some information not in the thousands (and I do mean thousands) of photos I take.

It’s also a good idea to check closing and opening times and add these to your notes. For example sometimes a museum may close at 5, but last admission is at 4, or it closes at midday during the quiet season or is closed on a Monday, so you need to be aware of all these things or else you’re going to travel a long way only to be greeted by a closed sign. It happens. I missed out on the Venice Natural History museum as I visited on the only day it was closed, and worse, I could have gone the day before but had left it until the end of my trip. Italy is a long way to go not to see something, and it’s a lesson I learnt well.

You may have noticed so far I really haven’t talked much about the Dorchester museum…well I was hoping the images would say everything that needed to be said.

Ok, here we go. The museum’s own website claims:

‘Britain's original and award winning attraction, The Dinosaur Museum located in Dorchester, the county town of Dorset, only 7 miles from the Jurassic Coast is a great day out for all the family! Close to Dorset's World Heritage Jurassic Coast. The Dinosaur Museum opened in 1984, in Dorchester, gateway to Dorset's World Heritage Jurassic Coast. From the very beginning visitors loved its novel and innovative approach to dinosaurs, and it quickly became the Town's foremost visitor attraction bringing, over the years, millions of dinosaur hungry families and schools to the county town.’ 



A Dire Wolf's penis bone....you use what you've got!

The museum is small and many of its displays are handmade (read into that what you will), it is also in the UK, where there are very few opportunities to see fossils and dinosaurs. It does have some hands-on stuff and some older, quaint displays. It also has a fine shop with a lot of fossils and dinosaur models for sale.

One true gem the museum displays is a ‘Dinosauroid’. In 1982 the Canadian palaeontologist, Dale A. Russell, speculated that if certain intelligent dinosaurs like Troodon had survived the K-TP extinction, there was a chance they’d have continued to evolve into something vaguely familiar. They had large brains (for a dinosaur) and manipulating hands, suggesting their evolutionary path may have become a little more like an ape than a reptile, perhaps even allowing them to develop an opposable digit at some point.

Though the idea of a humanoid dinosaur has been debunked by many, it is still an interesting moment in palaeontology and creates a great talking point- and that seems to be this museum’s strength. Though they don’t have the enormous skeletons or cutting edge technologies of some of the world’s great museums, they tell the story of their local region, the Jurassic coast, and for that the museum should be applauded.   


Mary Anning,
who made the region famous.




If you don’t go in expecting the world, but a sweet experience of a museum with limited resources doing its best, well then it’s ok. Also if you are spending time in the region there is a 5 museum pass you can purchase for a number of institutions in the region (including a Tutankhamun and Terracotta Warrior display) , so this should alleviate any disappointment.

NOTE: My visit was several years ago and things may have changed since this time.

What is a UK museum without a Doctor Who prop?

The one photo that failed....sigh....

 

The National Opal Collection

Opal- there is no precious stone in the world that catches the eye the way these stones that Shakespeare called the ‘Queen of Gems’ do.

 On a continent known for its mineral wealth, Australia’s national gemstone it seems is not a mineral at all as it has few of the characteristics true minerals possess (such as a uniform crystalline structure). Instead Opal is considered a mineraloid, and for dinosaur fans it could be argued it’s the gemstone that could represent the Mesozoic.

Opal requires very specific geological conditions to form and Australia produces over 95% of the world's opal because in the Late Cretaceous the middle of the continent sat under a warm, shallow ocean.

The Eromanga Sea lasted for around 80 million years and produced fine sand rich with silica- a strange substance that can be considered a mineral, but also is produced synthetically and biologically. This silica rich water seeped deep underground (helping form the Great Artesian Basin) and filled any void and coated any fossil it encountered. This silica then took several million years to harden and form opal.

This isn’t the only way opal forms, only the most common. Sometimes bacteria slowly dissolved away biological material such as leaves and shells and left behind silica in the exact shape as the original material.

Because the Eromanga Sea covered such a large distance, the opal it would eventually produce is as diverse as the locations where it can be found. In the flat, hot South Australian town of Coober Pedy (where the vast majority of opal is mined) most of these stones are considered ‘light’ opal and the fossils found here are almost all marine. Lightning Ridge in NSW is not only the birthplace of Mr. Crocodile Dundee himself, Paul Hogan, but the most fantastic ‘Black’ opal. Its fossils seem to suggest the region was a forest with large rivers running down to the inland sea. Queensland has not only the most productive dinosaur fossil fields in Australia, but also produces ‘boulder’ opal. Both marine and terrestrial fossils are found in this location, indicating this part of Queensland might have once been a series of islands

In Australia it’s possible to see great examples of all three types, along with a number of fantastic opalised fossils at the National Opal Collection. This has two localities, one in Melbourne (which I visited years ago) and the second in Sydney. Both have free entry and are attached to a large opal showroom where visitors can purchase their own gemstone to take home.

Though not the largest museums in the world, they are well presented with both life-like models of dinosaurs, pterosaurs and the world’s most famous opalised fossil, Steropodon. These are great to see, but in this museum it’s all about the opals, and Sydney’s National Opal Museum has plenty to see.

 There are the usual opal shells, a few starfish and the long, tooth-like inner guards from the extinct cephalopods called belemnites. The museum also has a large number of turtle fossils, along with crocodile scales and the teeth of large lungfish, all opalised.

The most famous fossil on display is ‘Nessie’, a near complete juvenile plesiosaur (possibly a pliosaur) found at Andamooka, South Australia, in 1968 and has been placed under Australia’s National Heritage Laws. 50% of Nessie’s fossils have opalised, and in the marine reptiles stomach were discovered gastroliths, belemnite guards and fish bones- many of which had opalised too.

Though far from complete, the museum hosts a large number of opalised dinosaur fossils as well. Amongst the ribs, vertebra and a possible dinosaur claw are a number of large theropod teeth. These were from a medium size carnivore, though due to the nature of the opalisation these fossils do not contain many details to let us work out exactly what sort of theropod they came from.

Though far from the only museum hosting opalised fossils (Bathurst, the National Dinosaur Museum and the South Australian Museum has opals on display), Australia’s National Opal Collection contains a number of great specimens and well worth a look.