Dinosaur Playsets

[Mike Scott]

Welcome to the UMA, ikessauro! 

Thanks for the paleontological research! 

[Hepcat]

And hopefully he has something else to add to this forum other than his "paleontological research" about which I'll say more later.

[Hepcat]

Sorry to revive this....

No need to apologize. I revive threads all the time. 

Insinsting that all large reptiles must be dinosaurs because the name means "Terrible Lizards" is just silly, you are taking it too literally.

Of course I'm taking the word literally. There's nothing silly about that. We are after all arguing about the meaning of the word "dinosaur" within language use. Words do have a meaning you know.

Moreover science is ostensibly an attempt to describe nature as it is. Science is therefore not one of those things to be taken allegorically. Neither is set theory.

Saying Owen defined all these non-dinosaurs as a "set" is just plain wrong and also disrespectful to his work, as if he was an ignorant person incabable of noticing the huge differences between these groups of animals.

Excuse me but I'm not the one being disrespectful of Richard Owen's work. You're the one implying that his categorization of dinosaurs as "terrible lizards" was flawed and thus made in ignorance.

So the "flying reptiles" were already known before dinosaurs and were better studied and defined as a set before dinosaurs.

So? Sets need not be mutually exclusive. Some can be subsets of others.

Owen states clearly that Dinosaurs were land-dwelling.

He 'Lacertian' division had key defining characteristics. They were reptiles, and had scaly skin and laid eggs, but they possessed mammal-like characteristics in the shape and alignment of the limb bones and the sacrum. They did not sprawl like a crocodile, but moved on upright, pillar-like legs: these were reptiles designed for walking on land. They could be defined as a distinctive group of land-dwelling reptiles that walked with straight legs tucked under their bodies.

You might also note that he says very clearly that dinosaurs were reptiles. And that gets to the core of one of my two main points. To now argue that lizard-hipped saurischians, e.g. pterodactyls and plesiosaurs, should be excluded from the set of dinosaurs and keep only bird-hipped ornithischians in the set is very much contrary to what Owens intended. In fact if you want to exclude a category of these beasties from the terrible lizards set, then logically it should be the ornithischians.

So why do people consider plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, ichtyosaurs end dimetrodon dinosaurs, if they WERE NEVER considered like that by the scientists and naturalists that created their names and "sets".

May I remind you that "never" is a long time? Harry Seeley would have had no reason to denounce Owen's definition of dinosaurs if Owen did not regard at least some of plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, ichtyosaurs and other reptile-hipped prehistoric beasties as dinosaurs:

In 1888, palaeontologist Harry Seeley published a paper on these two new groups and denounced Owen's Dinosauria, stating that it 'has no existence as a natural group of animals'.

Clearly the term dinosaur was being used more broadly by Owen and others than Seeley liked. This constitutes further evidence that Owen included more fauna, e.g. reptilians, within his broad set of dinosaurs.

ARtists that didn't know better depicted dinosaurs with wrong appearance and mixed with non dinosaur creatures....

You know very well that paleontologists' reconstructions of dinosaur skeletons served as the model for artists' depictions of dinosaurs such as these splendid ones by Rudolph F. Zeilinger:





It was not therefore the fault of the artists if they got it wrong but that of the paleontologists. But since you know this I'm not going to accuse you of ignorance. I'm going to accuse you of something worse - dishonesty. 

...that led the public to group them all together in their ignorant common knowledge.... Believe me, that are people that ignorant out there.

Yes, people can indeed be ignorant. But languages cannot. They can only "be". In fact languages don't even need to be rational/logical. Being inclined toward math and logic, I'm always troubled by the existence of double negatives in many languages. But rather than railing against the usage of these double negatives, I simply accept them. Why? Because that's the way the language "is". Case closed.

Which is my second point. Since the word "dinosaur" has been used to refer to the subset of prehistoric animals including pterosaurs, plesiosaurs and dimetrodons for about 150 years, that's what the word "dinosaur" means. To argue otherwise is to tilt at windmills.

...but as an enthusiastic dino nerd....

So then why have you not demonstrated this enthusiasm of yours elsewhere on this forum? You've been here for nearly three weeks and you've posted nothing else. Show us some of your dino stuff! Or was this just some sort of a drive-by posting on your part?

[highlander3000]

Hello everyone.  I'm new here.  I've been scouring the internet looking for some old dinosaur toys I had.  They were from the old Marx molds and originally came in a pack of 8 called Prehistoric Monsters.  The set included T-Rex, Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Trachodon, Dimetrodon, Ankylosaurus, and Allosaurus.  However, the ones I had as a kid (ca. 1980-1983) were not all one color but were painted.  (For example, the brown brontosaurus had green detailing on its back.) Was this a different company that had these molds at this time? 

Any help would be appreciated!

[Mike Scott]

Welcome to the UMA, highlander3000! 

Hope someone can help you with your query.

[Hepcat]

They were from the old Marx molds and originally came in a pack of 8 called Prehistoric Monsters.  The set included T-Rex, Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Trachodon, Dimetrodon, Ankylosaurus, and Allosaurus.  However, the ones I had as a kid (ca. 1980-1983) were not all one color but were painted.... Was this a different company that had these molds at this time?

Since Louis Marx and Company has been defunct since 1980, the Prehistoric Monsters set you had was almost certainly released by a different company. Here's a good source on Marx's dinosaur production:

Marx Playset Monograph

[highlander3000]

Thanks!  I found a set just like the one I had on eBay after I posted it but no manufacturer information was listed.  Hopefully, the seller can get back to me.

[Hepcat]

I found a set just like the one I had on eBay....

This one with an asking price of U.S.$55.24?

[Mike Scott]

This one with an asking price of U.S.$55.24?

I hope whoever wins/won it leaves it undisturbed!

[highlander3000]

Yeah, that's the one!  I wouldn't drop that much on it because I actually WOULD open it (but I would cut away the blisters and keep the backing).

[Mike Scott]

(but I would cut away the blisters and keep the backing).

I would just make a slit and pull the toys out. 

[KelG1]

I had a good assortment of dinosaurs--some rubber, others were model kits.
Around 1983 I got this humongous snap-together tyrannosaurus.
It was 25 inches tall or something.

Triceratops was my favorite dinosaur though.

[horrorhunter]

Here's a link to a You Tube Dinosaur Playset Playlist featuring some videos I did.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLiu62vTzk8IR5yLKYvBu7YlcuFQnnzeE

I'll eventually do more. Been on YT hiatus for awhile.

[horrorhunter]

A couple of videos I did on good old MPC dinos.

[Mike Scott]

A couple of videos I did on good old MPC dinos.

Fun collections!