This is a transcript of Episode 42.
Travis Holland (00:24)
Today on Fossils and Fiction, we’re going to get a little mad and we’re going to get a little nostalgic. I hope you’ll join us for it. But first, hi, Alyssa.
Alyssa Fjeld (00:33)
your week going.
Travis Holland (00:34)
Yeah, not too bad. A bit of a heat wave in southeastern Australia following the cyclone up north. So the weather is going great for everybody here at the moment.
Alyssa Fjeld (00:46)
I’m not loving it because it is hot and sweaty in Melbourne, but my cat is thriving as is this succulent that I picked up, which is located inside a little sauropod planter.
Travis Holland (00:56)
That’s awesome. So cute. Bradward?
Alyssa Fjeld (00:58)
Named him Bradward. He’s a friend. Bradward,
yes.
Travis Holland (01:03)
Great name, great name.
Look, instead of the news this week, which covers a kind of piece of paleo news or research, I thought that it’s probably not a good idea to let this episode pass without mentioning what’s happening in the US with the dismantling of science funding, with attacks on universities. And unfortunately, it’s not actually unique to the US. There are lots of European countries undergoing university defunding at the moment.
And it’s also something we’ve seen in Australia in recent years. So let’s be really clear about, think where we stand as a podcast on this. is important. We need to defend and support the creation of knowledge, especially about the natural world and the impact that humans are having on it.
Alyssa Fjeld (01:48)
It’s incredibly important even now to focus on making sure that both the people that live on the lands that we’re trying to protect and the young people coming up in our society understand the world around them. Science is part of that program and thankfully there have been a couple of pushbacks against legislative changes in the US. One of the most important recently was the Stand Up for Science campaign which held marches across the US on the 7th of March.
Hopefully Stand Up for Science will continue to promote different pushback efforts. And we’ve also seen quite a few people calling for petitions and things like that, especially through major organizations like the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology. I would also like to say that in spite of some of the issues that, for example, South Australia Museum had in recent years right now,
Things are going pretty well in Australia and thankfully most of the defunding has not reached us yet. In fact, Museums Victoria recently hired someone for a research assistant position in the paleontological collection. So I would say that if you’re out there and you’re feeling a little bit despondent about what’s going on, we’re with you. And there are some things that are working to change this and places you can still go if paleontology is for you. Come join me in Australia. You won’t be the only American here.
Travis Holland (03:03)
And of course, if people have advice about surviving and thriving in science, despite some of the challenges facing the field, all fields really of endeavor at the moment, we’re really happy to hear it.
Alyssa Fjeld (03:17)
Yeah, if you know of someone that’s working to make change in our environment, let us know.
Travis Holland (03:22)
Absolutely. We’d love to, love to profile them and their work.
Now I said we were going to get mad and we were going to get nostalgic. So our feature segment this week is going to be about Dinotopia This is a book series that I grew up absolutely loving. Something I don’t think I told you previously, Alyssa, but I have attempted to build Dinotopia in Lego a couple of times. so…
Alyssa Fjeld (03:51)
my
god.
Travis Holland (03:52)
What I kind of ended up resulting with was a build called serpentine city instead, which kind of had two cliffs on either side with kind of dragons and stuff. did kind of didn’t go with the Dinotopia theme just cause I didn’t feel like I was getting it right. But there, there are a couple of settings in Dinotopia which we’ll come to that have just stuck with me my entire life, which is Waterfall City. and the Canyon, which the name escapes you now, of course, but the Canyon where they, where they train the skybax and the skybax riders.
It’s just such a cool book series.
Alyssa Fjeld (04:23)
I don’t think there’s anything that I’ve encountered in the modern day that is quite like it. It is a very unique illustrated series of children’s books that came out in the 2000s, but it spawned an awful lot of other media. It’s a take on this setting that most people today would not otherwise be familiar with. And it’s this lovingly illustrated, so the primary driver of it was an illustrator and…
I got this book when I was a kid as well and I remember being obsessed with it, trying to always convince my parents to let me go out and buy jewelry and components of outfits that would fit in right at home in Dinotopia. So I got this bracelet. And yeah, just the amount of detail in the books is so stunning that you can just stare at them for hours. They’re incredibly engaging.
Travis Holland (05:12)
Hmm. I think you’re right. It kind of, there was this kind of style of producing, particularly children’s books, which was just beautifully animated in the kind of 90s/ 2000s where they were large format prints. And another one was an Amalia, which I really loved as well. I don’t know if you’ve ever had that one, but they were large format prints that just had beautiful drawings, beautifully illustrated, animals in particular in landscapes. And so.
that’s what Dinotopia really was all about. It was kind of driven by these visuals as much as anything. So James Gurney is the writer and author and he’s still very active on Instagram. I follow James on Instagram worth, worth a follow. He first wrote or released the first Dinotopia, a land apart from time in 1992. And for anyone who hasn’t encountered it, what happened in Dinotopia is this, kind of hybrid fantasy adventure, um, story where
These characters, Arthur Denison and his son, who are kind of Victorian era explorers, get shipwrecked on this uncharted island. And what they find is a human dinosaur peaceful coexistence. So it’s a kind of lost world, you know, it follows on from Arthur Conan Doyle’s lost world and similar in themes to Gulliver’s Travels, where you kind of, these boys own adventures in some ways, you get out into the world and find a part of the world that is unknown or unexplored.
It’s, as you say, it’s driven by these illustrations. Also driven, think, by illustrations from real adventures. Like it kind of draws, it draws inspiration from those as well. So, and it became a bestseller. There was a whole series of sequels. I think there’s like 20 plus books. There’s a TV adaptations. There’s even made for made for television films, a huge fan base. And obviously it fits right in our
Alyssa Fjeld (06:49)
Right.
Travis Holland (07:03)
Millennial wheelhouse. So when did you first encounter Dinotopia? Tell me about your memories.
Alyssa Fjeld (07:06)
It’s funny, isn’t it?
I think I was given it by a favorite aunt who gave me a lot of books like this growing up. As a kid, all of my family are big nerds, so I would get things like The Neverending Story, the VHS copy, tells you how old I am. I would get those things for Christmas. And I remember getting this.
My dad is a huge reader of old science fiction and we’re talking very old. So towards the start of the genre, and this is all something that kind of begins in the 1880s and a little bit later. These different genres as the world is expanding and you’re getting global news, people are finding new ways of writing about that and being creative. And sword and fantasy was a major genre at the time that my dad was really interested in. So I’d read all of these like Conan the Barbarian, Lovecraft,
stories and Dinotopia is, you could say like a sister taxa to that and reading that was my first exposure to the Lost World genre, which is something that we seem to have a lot of nostalgia for in the 90s and 2000s. I mean we had Dinotopia but we also had things like the Uncharted video game franchise, we had the resurgence in Indiana Jones and we had this like my favorite, Atlantis the Lost Empire and as a kid for me it was like
Travis Holland (08:17)
Not to mention Jurassic Park.
Alyssa Fjeld (08:20)
and Jurassic
Park, all of these things where we’re stumbling across a lost piece of the world that we didn’t know was there, an idea that becomes increasingly important as the anxiety of globalization takes hold. I didn’t have that sort of knowledge. I was just a small child, and for me it was like, this thing I like, but it also has dinosaurs, and they’re wearing cute outfits. What? This is great. Where is the set where I can put them in the little outfits?
And that never happened. There’s no merchandise for this show or for this book. And I think that’s actually kind of powerful, right? It forced me as a kid to kind of become imaginative in how I engaged with it. And there’s so much to engage with.
Travis Holland (08:54)
Mmm.
One of the most standout images is the kind of sauropod caravan, right? Where you get the people riding on the backs of the sauropods. And it’s kind of reminiscent of the Lord of the Rings and the way they use the Oliphaunts as well, but they kind of use them in war there. Whereas I think in in Dinotopia, it’s more about, you know, only protection, right? Protection from carnivores. But
Yeah, the integration, I guess, of these beasts, which we don’t often see used in this way with human technologies and human needs. as a kind of, as I say, integrated society, right? A lot of the dinosaurs, maybe all of them could talk or translate as well. there was, am I right? Am I misremembering that? Is that right?
Alyssa Fjeld (09:38)
No,
no, had their own language. I’m fairly certain that the dinosaurs could do things like count. My understanding is that when the humans encounter the dinosaurs, there are already some humans living among them. Because it’s like this idea that you found like this cavern that’s full of all these creatures. I’m pretty sure the dinosaurs were at least parrot level intelligent, which maybe is not what we think today,
Travis Holland (09:45)
Mm-hmm.
Alyssa Fjeld (10:04)
You found Dinotopia as a kid as well or did you find it like this? Yeah.
Travis Holland (10:06)
Yeah,
Yeah, I remember, I distinctly remember sitting in, so I grew up in this very small country town, only about a thousand people, probably under a thousand at the time. And I distinctly remember sitting at my primary school, reading the Dinotopia books in the library. And as I say, those images have just kind of stuck with me my whole life until I sort of recently went.
James James Gurney’s on Instagram. Let’s follow him. And I went to buy, I went to buy the books recently and unfortunately he only ships to the US for the signed copies. So I need to get, I need to get that sorted out, get someone to forward shipping for me. But yeah, that, you know, he has these beautiful signed copies as well. So it’s, it’s just this imagery that, that has, has stuck with me my whole life. I think.
Another one that’s kind of, it’s totally, I mean, it’s totally different. was going to say it’s kind of the same, but it’s totally different actually. It’s just that humans and dinosaurs working together kind of is the same theme, but also dressed in outfits. Was a show called Dino Riders. And I don’t know if you ever encountered that one, but it was a cartoon in the nineties that had a series of
kind of, there was often battles and things. So the dinosaurs here were armed up, they had guns, they had weaponry. So it was like a very kind of macho war facing kind of use of dinosaurs there compared to the much more relatively peaceful, peaceful environment of Dinotopia and the settlements that were displayed, displayed there. But even aside from the dinosaurs, you know, I mentioned Waterfall City. So this is this kind of beautiful.
Alyssa Fjeld (11:25)
I see these toys, yes.
Travis Holland (11:44)
Roman style city sitting atop a huge waterfall where the canals flow through the streets and then kind of all pumps out, pumps out and goes over the waterfall at the end. so you get these magnificent imagery of just, just that, right? Just the city is, it inspires this whole kind of fantasy world. So Gurney’s approach to world building is so detailed, but at the same time, okay, not many cities are built at the top of waterfall, but it’s
feels kind of could be real, like it feels realistic. It doesn’t feel like a totally, it’s not a floating island kind of thing.
Alyssa Fjeld (12:16)
Thanks.
Right. mean, I think one of the things that you get a lot of the time with lost world fiction that is harder to come by in modern media is that it’s like this paradise lost situation. So you have this untouched, relatively peaceful civilization and the violence and conflict that is brought into the setting and the narrative is usually brought in by outsiders. But in this case with Dinotopia, it’s this
One, this really rare peaceful focus on this sort of world building, which I think is really engaging. There just weren’t a lot of things like that when I was a kid. Like you’re saying, most of the stuff that had dinosaurs in it was like, whoa, look at this cool monster. And this was like, look at this little gentle fellow that you can pack bagels onto. Look how his horn holds the bagels. Isn’t this cute? And it’s just so rare to see something like that.
And it’s so nice. It’s just nice to have peaceful storytelling with dinosaurs.
Travis Holland (13:12)
Yeah, I, I even love that nowadays. And again, you know, people, people put Jurassic Park down, but one of the best moments in that film for me was the moment they first see the Brachiosaur and they’re just overtaken by awe and wonder. And yeah, I don’t know. Right. but the, one of the things about that, that
Alyssa Fjeld (13:27)
There’s… It makes me cry every time.
Travis Holland (13:34)
I really enjoy is there’s a couple of games that have come out of that, which are park builder simulation games. And I just love building the parks in kind of as naturalistic setting as I could, and then watching the dinosaurs. And so actually on this, on the fossils and fiction channel, I’ve got what I made, which was a kind of trail cam. So I just released as many dinosaurs as I could in a kind of Isla Sorna environment, and then set up a trail cam to watch them for.
Alyssa Fjeld (13:47)
Yeah.
Travis Holland (14:01)
a couple of hours at a time. And so I’ve got some of these videos just following the creatures in the park or in the game kind of around. you know, walking around with the camera, taking photos is just so fun compared to fighting or running or screaming or dying or whatever happens quite often.
Alyssa Fjeld (14:18)
Yeah,
I think that Dinotopia fed into this thing that I was really obsessed with as a kid, which was putting my beanie babies in little outfits. I collect stuffed animals of dinosaurs. Every time I go to a museum, I get one. And I used to, as a kid, after reading Dinotopia, I’d try to dress them up. I’d try to find outfits that they could wear and have them interact. It was…
It was a form of play with dinosaurs that was, I would say, exclusively nurtured by Dinotopia. But it was always more fun to me than when kids would come up and just try and make them fight. To me, that was always just like, that’s a senator. He wouldn’t do that.
Travis Holland (14:57)
You’re like, come on, he has some dignity. Although…
Alyssa Fjeld (14:59)
It’s like you don’t even know the roles. There’s a society
here. They have a hierarchy. But yeah, was just the way that it did the world building. I can’t think of any other children’s books that really did anything equivalent until we started getting like those ology pop-up books. Do you remember those?
Travis Holland (15:17)
No.
Alyssa Fjeld (15:18)
I didn’t know they were a thing until I moved here and people showed them to me, but there was this series of ologies written by Dugald Steer and they were like these hyper elaborate lost media style pop-up books for kids that were a little bit too young for Dinotopia and they had like trinkets and things that you could take out and people like things and stuff so they did quite well, but it wasn’t
Travis Holland (15:31)
Mm-hmm.
Alyssa Fjeld (15:44)
It wasn’t trying to tell as cohesive a story as Dinotopia. had a lot of detail, but the level of detail in individual paintings was just not the same. Yeah, there’s just nothing like it. It’s so great.
Travis Holland (15:57)
Yeah.
So I mean, all the paintings had this really kind of lush 19th century, almost naturalist quality to them, right? They were kind of drawn in softer tones, I guess is one way to look at it.
really textured cities and dramatic lighting, then kind of drawing some of what it gave that this kind of lived in feel is that he really drew on real world architecture. So, you know, I mentioned waterfall city and that had the kind of Roman aqueducts, but there was also these.
Central American temples style things and sort of Asian pagodas and cathedrals and each of the cities or settlements within Dinotopia had their own kind of feel to them as well. you know, the basic setting was this kind of one island, but it had different regions and environments, which felt very similar. And some of the kind of world heritage items of the Middle East were kind of reflected in the settlements that were in the canyons in Canyon city and all of that kind of stuff as well. So.
And then you get the story sold through the perspective of Denison, right? So his sketches and observations and things as well. so his journey through this world and the world is lived in, it’s realistic. There are other characters and things there, but it feels really dynamic because you’re seeing it first person through the eyes of the main character, is really cool.
Alyssa Fjeld (17:25)
Yeah, and wasn’t there a dinosaur that you also kind of see the world through? I forget his name, it’s like Dixit or something like that. It’s like one of the dinosaurs is like not necessarily a perspective character, but you kind of follow him for portions of the story and that’s interesting because you get these like behind the scenes looks at portions of dinosaur society that you otherwise might not get from the human characters. Like I think there’s a scene… Bix! Bix!
Travis Holland (17:50)
Yeah, I think you’re referring to Bix. He’s a ceratopsian, a
protoceratops.
Alyssa Fjeld (17:55)
Yes, Bix! He’s so cute!
Travis Holland (17:58)
Yeah, so he becomes the traveling partner, the traveling companion of Denison.
Alyssa Fjeld (18:05)
That’s it, yes. Because they do, like the location, the setting is actually quite large for the amount of work you put in. And like you say, the locations are so different. The settings that they go through are so varied. And you can, yeah, absolutely see the architecture. I’m looking at pictures of it. And the painting style, I want to say, is borrowed from this 1930s. I’m thinking about Maxfield Parish.
these like highly detailed but very romanticized colors, very rich textural details, somewhere that’s not quite like that. I’m not thinking Norman Rockwell because that’s almost too idealistic. There’s still, you can see the clasps on people’s robes, you can see the texture of the fabrics they’re wearing.
but it still feels like a lived-in world. a romanticized, idealized, but lived-in space. It feels very cozy.
Travis Holland (18:58)
It also feels to me a little bit steampunk. So could you kind of get both ancient technologies merged with kind of futuristic stuff as well? you it had, he had to figure out power systems, that kind of stuff. And so all of that’s in place, but by the same token, it’s still kind of older than,
Alyssa Fjeld (19:11)
Yeah.
Travis Holland (19:18)
you know, this era. So yeah, that is certainly part of it as well. And it’s maybe a little bit like agrarian or kind of, I don’t want to say communist, but kind of it has that kind of flavor to the society where everybody has this role in society and performs their role really well, you know. Yeah.
Alyssa Fjeld (19:32)
Thank
Yeah, comrade Bix.
Travis Holland (19:42)
I’m gonna get cancelled over there, see if not the rent and the staff.
But the point there is that it’s a sustainable environment. It’s a sustainable set up of society that’s not necessarily hierarchical, but everybody finds a place that they can be their best true selves. So it’s not that you’re forced into this place, but you find where you fit the best and then contribute.
Alyssa Fjeld (19:46)
agrarian society.
Travis Holland (20:10)
So yeah, I think that’s, um, I think that’s nice as well.
Alyssa Fjeld (20:16)
It’s also,
it’s something that seems to be missing from a lot of like modern lost world takes. Like I’m thinking about like, I mean, it just seems like today in a lot of the media, like Crystal Skull, for example, or maybe things that are, I’m thinking about Isekai’s especially, but I don’t want to talk about anime on the podcast because they don’t, listeners, you don’t need to know that I’m a big weeb. You could have guessed that.
Travis Holland (20:39)
You
Alyssa Fjeld (20:40)
But there’s like this, now it seems like when we encounter lost worlds, they are already lost and all of this utopian ideology, regardless of what political backing it has is kind of missing. And I think that’s really sad because it’s almost as if we’ve lost this ability to imagine something that functions as well as like Dinotopia might function.
Travis Holland (21:01)
Yeah.
Like things are decaying, right? You, you, you discover these environments where things are decaying or there’s an ancient civilization that has disappeared for whatever reason. That’s going to be the case in the next, the next Jurassic world film, right? Coming out, coming out mid year, there’s a kind of ruined temples environment, which is a bit strange, but it’s also
Alyssa Fjeld (21:12)
Yeah, and it’s like…
Mmm.
Travis Holland (21:22)
In the latest Kong series, the Monsterverse has this kind of Skull Island, has these ancient civilizations that kind of aren’t still around anymore. So yeah, that’s right. And whereas Dinotopia really offers the, well, it’s clearly it’s in the name, but the utopian aspects of that as well.
Alyssa Fjeld (21:32)
Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah. like, I think what’s really interesting as well is that none of this is just told to you. There’s very little exposition as exposition. is all of the storytelling kind of happens through like journal entries and through sketches and scientific observations. So it’s like, you feel like you’re discovering this world in all of its beautiful detail alongside these adventures. And to me, it always felt a little bit like
Travis Holland (21:51)
Mm-hmm.
Alyssa Fjeld (22:10)
The way that we are seeing dyna-topias through these illustrations is how these Victorian gentlemen would have seen it, like, very rosy and Greco-Roman in the dressing styles and… I liked that. I liked that element of framing. I thought that was really cool way to do it.
Travis Holland (22:27)
I also liked that they use the dinosaurs in kind of very specific roles, So you get the, you get the hadrosaurs working in agriculture and irrigation. You get the sauropods like as the transport, cause that seems kind of naturalistic. Who else are you going to load up as a kind of living barge other than other than a Brachiosaurus?
Alyssa Fjeld (22:48)
Yeah.
Travis Holland (22:49)
And at the same time, you get the carnivores there, but they’re kind of like, they’re not villains, They’re just there as part of the ecosystem. So even they have their roles.
Alyssa Fjeld (22:55)
Yeah. Like…
And I think that, I mean, if dinosaurs were still alive, yes, we would put them in a theme park. Yes, they totally would eat people and we would think that that is NASCAR levels of engaging. But come on. People would 100 % have them as pets. They would definitely use them as a novelty for like pulling carts or riding around town instead of a horse.
But I like one of the really cool elements that I liked was the the way that pterosaurs get utilized because that reminded me so much of like I guess one of the spiritual predecessors to this would have been like Dragon Riders of Pern. Does anyone remember Dragon Riders of Pern? Yes. And that was a series that kind of had similar leanings like, okay, well there are dragons, but they’re also animals and we do interact with them like they’re animals some of the time.
Travis Holland (23:30)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, I do.
Alyssa Fjeld (23:45)
How to Train Your Dragon fans, that’s another inspiration for your series. But that felt to me very inspired by that choice because you have these giant pterosaurs that they ride around like they’re big mounts and it’s just so iconic. Who wouldn’t do that? I would do that right now if you gave me the option.
Travis Holland (24:03)
To ride a pterosaur to work, yeah.
Alyssa Fjeld (24:06)
Yeah, I mean, think Adele would be the one training them. In my head, she’s like captain of the pterosaurs.
Travis Holland (24:12)
Adele Pendland, Captain of the Pterosaurs I think we need that as a piece of fan art now.
Alyssa Fjeld (24:17)
Absolutely,
I think she should be given like a t-shirt that says that. Just in case it ever comes true, then people will be able to identify her immediately.
Travis Holland (24:25)
Anybody need some dinosaurs trained? Pterosaurs trained? Go and see Adele. This is fantastic. I feel like we just come up with so many good ideas here that we just need other people to take some of them up. We can’t do everything ourselves.
Alyssa Fjeld (24:30)
how to train your pterosaur.
We need like a rich
benefactor that can sponsor an artist for our podcast like a renaissance painter.
Travis Holland (24:47)
Yeah, yeah, we need an artist in residence who’s just paid just to come up with the with the good ideas that we that we talk about.
Alyssa Fjeld (24:56)
Step one, get money. Step two, hire Zev for everything.
Travis Holland (24:59)
Yeah,
Zev, exactly. Of course. I mean, speaking of Zev’s art, I know we’re in the middle of this discussion as opposed to, but today I’m wearing the shirt that features Zev’s art with our little mascots on it. So they are available on our shop now.
Alyssa Fjeld (25:13)
It’s so good!
You should
all immediately go buy the Skitter’s Beanie. He looks so good. It is the most appropriate piece of clothing for all your occasions. At any point, you may need to tell someone you love trilobites. And there you go. That’s a perfect accoutrement.
Travis Holland (25:30)
With the Australian winter coming up pretty rapidly, I think it’s worth getting the order in for the beanies.
Alyssa Fjeld (25:38)
Like I can’t even
write a grant application to ask for money for myself but here I am just being like please give us money for this t-shirt because it’s the t-shirts that’s cool that to me feels okay.
Travis Holland (25:49)
Yeah, exactly.
Alyssa Fjeld (25:52)
So speaking of
other franchises and things like that, I think there are a couple that the Dinotopia kind of gets compared to. And none of them scratch the same itch, but it’s kind of worth going over a couple of different ones that through time have been adjacent to it.
Travis Holland (26:09)
Go for it. What do you got?
Alyssa Fjeld (26:10)
For example,
like Land Before Time, wow, I was very obsessed with that as a kid. Everyone says Jurassic Park, but I think Land Before Time sits in a slightly older brain cell just behind it. It’s harder, I think, now to say that that’s what got you into it, because it’s not an exciting movie about paleontologists. It’s kind of a sad story about a kid that lost his mom, but it’s so beautiful.
Travis Holland (26:32)
Yeah.
Alyssa Fjeld (26:34)
good it’s so pretty and the work that was put into it like this is an early James Bluth, David Bluth I’m gonna I think one of them is the right name
Travis Holland (26:44)
Bluth, yeah. Don Bluth. Don. No.
Alyssa Fjeld (26:46)
A Bluth, Not George Michael. There’s always
money in the land before time stands.
Travis Holland (26:54)
I had an episode about The Land Before Time, I want to say 18 months ago now. And that was a really great conversation where we got into some of those comparisons with The Land Before Time and other later films like Jurassic Park. But Spielberg actually was attached to The Land Before Time as well. And there’s some instances, I think there’s some instances where it’s almost a one for one, right? Where he kind of realized, or Bluth realized a shot in The Land Before Time that
Alyssa Fjeld (27:10)
Huh.
Travis Holland (27:22)
Spielberg drew on or had a motif to in Jurassic Park. one that I can think of is when the sharp tooth, there’s a moment where the sharp tooth is coming after the kids, after Littlefoot and Cera I think, and pushing down on this branch from above. So they’re hiding behind this, below this branch and he’s pushing down and you can put that next to the shot of Lex and Tim in the car.
with the Rex coming through the ceiling of the car and it’s exactly the same. Like it looks exactly the same.
Alyssa Fjeld (27:55)
But this is why it’s so important to have people who are interested in art encouraged to kind of interact with these media because it, and I think it’s a natural urge for a lot of them as well. Artists are just like us. They also want to see a big cool animal. like, I think it’s just this recursion where you get these artistic and loving and very cool depictions of dinosaurs by people with a more artistic sense that get picked up on and reiterated on by people whose sensibilities might be more how to make a really fun movie.
how to make a very emotionally moving scene. It’s just very cool to see it carry on. That’s really, I’m picturing it and I can see it now, but if you’d never told me, I don’t think I would have put it together.
Travis Holland (28:36)
Yeah, it was only, it was only when I was rewatching the land before time for that conversation that I kind of made the connection and I went, wow, I hadn’t, I hadn’t noticed it before that either, but you know, it, was just stark. And there’s a couple of other moments which I, which I talk about in that conversation too. So yeah, I mean, the land before time was, Jurassic park before Jurassic park,
I mean, so was the Lost World and so was King Kong. Like they all kind of had their moment and fed forward into what became Jurassic Park, but also, and similarly, guess, know, Dinotopia draws on a lot of references and then has fed forward into maybe some of these other, I mean, who knows, maybe the people doing the of lost…
lost civilization stuff in the new Jurassic World are getting that from from Dinotopia
Alyssa Fjeld (29:26)
Yeah,
I mean, and it’s interesting, isn’t it? Like during the Great Westward push in America, for instance, there was this strongly held belief by, I think it was Thomas Jefferson, that as they pushed west, Lewis and Clark would find all of these animals, like the North American lion that they were finding fossils of in caves in Kentucky. Like this idea was really strongly held for a very long time that there were undiscovered pockets of the world and those pockets would be full of
dangerous and amusing creatures of great size and I think that’s just It’s a very noble human belief in a lot of ways like I do think there’s something innately curious about us and I think That’s something that has been at the heart of all these lost world media that is good like the bad lost world lost civilization media Immediately follows that thought with and we’re so much better than them and it’s like nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Dinotopia not like that
But it’s just, I think, if you draw a line from that kind of like, maybe there are undiscovered pockets to Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and a lot of these fiction stories that are hypothesizing what are in these pockets to Dinotopia, there’s a lot of optimism in that. A lot of really beautiful optimism.
Travis Holland (30:42)
Beautiful optimism, I think is really nice. was, there’s a line that stands out for Dinotopia for me, which is talking about the need to eat to live, don’t live to eat, and that goes back to that kind of living in harmony, a kind of utopian ideal of everybody finding their place and not taking more than they need.
Alyssa Fjeld (31:07)
Yeah,
and it’s something that I feel, I mean, again, if we think about these earlier iterations, these are people whose understanding of our natural world was so fundamentally different. And revisiting these kinds of stories in the 90s when our understanding of dinosaurs as animals was finally coming to, I mean, I think Dinosaur Heresies would have been published, Dinosaur Heresies was the book that,
really inspired parts of Jurassic Park. was this reimagining of dinosaurs as animals that were warm-blooded, among other things. So in 1986, this book comes out. It imagines dinosaurs as fast, able to participate in herd behavior. These are animals with complex behaviors. And this is something that’s missing from those old black and white interpretations of the lost world. These are just slow, plotting,
Travis Holland (31:38)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Alyssa Fjeld (31:57)
dumb lizards. And then you get something like dyna-tovia that has that more scientific understanding and it brings them to life in this totally unique way.
Travis Holland (32:06)
Yeah, you’re exactly right. I think, and so this is where we see the feeding of, we often talk about the connections between science and literature. And sometimes it’s hard to shake, know, unless they’re referring to a specific species that only one person’s described and they’re giving it certain characteristics that only one person’s described. If you…
have these general ideas filtering out from the science, from the research, then people who are trying to write about these creatures in whatever form they’re trying to do that, whether they’re trying to put them on film or they’re trying to put them into kids books, will hopefully find that information and use it accurately, right? And if they don’t, it doesn’t necessarily mean they failed either because sometimes things have to fit story.
You know, I think we can even talk about our own little our own little trilobite here in this regard because his eyes are on the wrong side of the head,
Alyssa Fjeld (32:57)
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah, and it’s like, you can be a pedant to some extent with the kind of shapes of the midsection and the way that the plural spines work. mean, but if we had made a completely accurate Skitters he would not be nearly as cute. So it was a case of me and Zev having several conversations, kind of deciding what looked good to an audience and also still looked distinctly like that animal.
And that’s something Zev emphasizes a lot in his workshop that we ran as part of a student conference last year with this idea that when you are making something that is for a general audience, you have to balance both the accuracy of the thing you’re making so that it’s still recognizable as that thing and presenting it in a way that’s going to make your audience have an emotional connection to it. And I think that is very difficult with animals that are not inherently like us. And I think that…
Travis Holland (33:46)
Mm.
Alyssa Fjeld (33:54)
A lot of people with dinosaurs choose to just kind of lean into, this is a big scary dumb monster, grrrr, isn’t it cool? But that’s not always, you don’t have to do that. I think this offers a really cool view of dinosaurs as like maybe more intelligent than they even actually are. mean, they’re what, librarians and teachers and they have a writing system.
That’s obviously not something we see evidence for in the fossil record. And my friends have shown me pictures of how big their brains would be. And it’s like, no.
Travis Holland (34:28)
But it’s exactly right that you get these opportunities to kind of blend realism with storytelling. And so you get science and stories partnering together. I think that’s beautiful. mean, that’s kind of what we’re trying to do here in Fossils and Fiction really. So thanks.
Alyssa Fjeld (34:46)
Yeah, and it’s also
the case that as science is progressing, we’re understanding more and more that brain size has very little to do with, for example, behavior, pain, perceptions. We think that like insects now, the go for most insect studyers is that they are capable of having fear responses. They’re capable of having pain responses. They will avoid stimuli and things like that. Bees can play soccer.
Who knows what dinosaurs could do with their itty bitty brains? Maybe it’s more than we think right now. It’s nice to inhabit a universe where that’s least possible. Just for a bit.
Travis Holland (35:21)
And I guess the other thing to emphasize is that regardless of kind of perceived intelligence, which is always going to revolve around human conceptions of intelligence.
Alyssa Fjeld (35:29)
Indeed.
Travis Holland (35:30)
These
are always still animals that have their own kind of right to exist. Obviously dinosaurs, you know, weren’t removed by our hand, but in general, animals have a right to exist that’s inherent to them, regardless of a perceived human likeness or not.
Alyssa Fjeld (35:47)
That’s exactly it. Like there are components to this society and Dinotopia that are just for dinosaurs. I think that’s, I mean, parts of the city that aren’t even accessible to human beings because they’re meant for dinosaurs that are incredibly long-necked or can fly. And that’s really cool. I think that’s a really interesting component. And it feeds into this like coexistence, peaceful, mindful, open-minded approach that seems to be kind of one of the core philosophies when we…
Think about Dinotopia.
Travis Holland (36:18)
But also, yeah, adapting right to and being adaptive to the people around you and making sure that they’re also supported and looked after in whatever ways they need to be.
Alyssa Fjeld (36:28)
I mean, it’s in the name, right? Dino-topia is a utopia that’s kind of fun. And one of the cool things is that we can then compare it to these other settings that take on similar ideas of like, well, in an ideal world, what would things be like? And I can’t think of too many that are also set in…
in Lost World settings. think Lapita is one, but Lapita is actually based on an older story called Gulliver’s Travels. I forget who buy.
some very old dead man. But it’s this person kind of tumbling through these different worlds and exploring them. People of unusual size. They’re either very large or very small. And just kind of seeing what those societies would look like. then most of the other examples that you would kind of think about would be things more like Star Trek, I suppose.
Travis Holland (37:17)
Yeah, which is a kind of aspirational utopia rather than,
Yeah. So it’s like, we might be able to achieve this at some point in the future rather than a kind of purely, fantastical one. So obviously it’s fantasy, but it’s a, yeah, as I say, aspirational, cause it’s kind of grounded in a, in a more real history. I think as well, utopias are important sometimes because particularly when things are pretty dark,
you know, dystopia can sometimes, and don’t get me wrong, I love dystopia. I’m a huge cyberpunk fan and sci-fi fan, and that’s kind of full of dystopias. But I think sometimes it can be too bleak as well. And it’s nice to just have these fictional worlds where things are just nice, actually, where things are in harmony.
Alyssa Fjeld (37:58)
Yeah.
especially now, think it’s incredibly important to maintain an idea in our own hearts and heads of what we would like society to look like because there is so much conflict and there are a lot of dystopian theories that are popular. It reflects a real feeling that many people are having, right? I mean, we are worried, we’re scared, but having something to look forward to is also so important.
Just challenging yourself to imagine what that society would look like and how you would act within it can be a great piece of moral guidance in how you approach, for example, how you educate people or how you interact with the people in your community. Make dinosaurs part of your community is what I’m saying.
Travis Holland (38:39)
Absolutely. And if not non-avian dinosaurs, then at least the avian ones, we can look after them to start. So a little bit of a fantasy thinking for you now. If Dinotopia were written today, how might it change some 30 years on?
Alyssa Fjeld (38:44)
That’s it. That’s it. See the local magpie.
Well, I’m interested to hear what our listeners think about that as well, because there’ll be a lot more verse than the dinosaur science, I think. But for me, I think one of the big changes would be how much our own understanding of dinosaurs has changed. The feathers, the new kinds of dinosaurs. I would love to see how, for example, a modern spinosaurus would fit into this narrative. Mostly because people would get in a lot of fights about its reconstruction.
Travis Holland (39:24)
Mm-hmm.
You
Alyssa Fjeld (39:31)
But yeah, I think we know so much more about the world and about the dinosaurs that we had that I think there would be so many new opportunities to bring that information in and make the environment even more rich and detailed.
Travis Holland (39:46)
That sounds great. Well, see, I would tend to go for the, for the other side of things and say that I think, I think if someone was to write Dinotopia today, they would have to, I guess in the nineties, there was still a bit of plausible, maybe there’s an island out there that we don’t know, right? Even, even to that point.
Alyssa Fjeld (39:47)
What about you? What do you think would be different?
Hmm.
Travis Holland (40:07)
But nowadays with kind of global satellite mapping of the entire planet, we can’t really say that. I think there would have to be a kind of plausible reason for why the island would have remained hidden. That would have to be explained. And so that would be something that would be kind of more detailed. If it was written today, it would be my take.
Alyssa Fjeld (40:31)
Yeah, maybe something like alternate worlds, like you’ve slipped into an alternate reality where this is possible. Or I think you either would need to do that or you would need to do something like the underworld franchise where it’s like, it’s real and it’s here but it’s been hidden from normal people in society by this conspiratorial group for yonks and yonks.
Travis Holland (40:56)
Mm-hmm.
Alyssa Fjeld (40:56)
I feel like that’s not very Dinotopia. I feel like that’s a little bit too dark.
Travis Holland (41:00)
Well, I mean, there’s, you know, Jules Verne’s is 20,000 leagues under the sea is kind of that, right. And not to mention Hollow Earth in the kind of Monsterverse series, which, you know, that’s, that’s gone, that’s gone right there. So that Earth kind of is doubled inside itself, which is, yeah, not logical, but I guess it’s an option.
Alyssa Fjeld (41:04)
Hmm. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And like, I guess there are things like Dinotopia today. I’m just, can you think of any particularly good examples for people that might want to read some, like, I’m assuming that our listeners out there, if you haven’t already, please grab a copy of Dinotopia. It doesn’t have to be signed, but if you live in the US, now’s a great time to get one.
I have a read. I’m assuming a lot of you are also long time fans. There’s a lot of Dinotopia to be consumed. There are quite a few illustrated books and there are some video games. There’s a TV series.
Travis Holland (41:57)
I would kind of love a documentary style approach to it. Like you go prehistoric planet style, but we found Dinotopia and here’s a documentary about it rather than like a kind of adventure.
Alyssa Fjeld (42:12)
Gosh, and could you imagine David Attenborough narrating that as well? my gosh. I would just throw money at it.
Travis Holland (42:16)
Right.
That would be…
Alyssa Fjeld (42:21)
I guess Prehistoric Planet
is like a good… if you liked Dinotopia, that’s a good thing to go watch. It’s inspired by it, I would say. In some ways.
Travis Holland (42:32)
Yeah, Prehistoric Planet is so fantastic. It’s such fun. Alyssa, thank you for revisiting Dinotopia with me. And reliving some millennial nostalgia.
Alyssa Fjeld (42:43)
Absolutely,
thank you for not letting me up for absolute centuries about it. This is so much fun.
Travis Holland (42:51)
support the podcasts you spend time with, like this one, go to Lenny F.M. That’s Lenny, L-E-N-N-Y dot F.M.
Alyssa Fjeld (43:03)
now that we’re done revisiting one of our favorite pieces of nostalgia, it’s time to look forward to some things that are exciting in our world today. Last episode we asked listeners to shout out some of their favorite small museums and local national parks.
Scaled size national parks, places you can go visit right now that might be small but in your community that are worth a visit and a stopover. I’ll start with some of the Instagram comments that we got from people with recommendations and then we will slide on over to the TikTok comments. So one of the first comments we got was from the Dinosaur Podcast which recommended the Whiteside Museum in Seymour, Texas as well as the Bishop Science
Collective in Florida, which has a Manatee Rehabilitation Program. How cute is that? And the Yorkshire Natural History Museum, which is in the old UK, that has a really ambitious program. So shout out to all three of those locations, the Whiteside Museum, Bishop Science Center, and Yorkshire Natural History Museum.
Travis Holland (43:48)
How beautiful.
That’s Jimmy Waldron again recommending those. Thanks, Jimmy.
Alyssa Fjeld (44:08)
Jimmy Waldron,
excellent, yes. Go check out his podcast if you haven’t. And we also have James Pascoe recommending, of course, the Lyme Regis Museum, which is also in the UK. I believe that’s in Dorset. If you’ve listened to the episode with Saskia, you already know why this is a fabulous place that you should go check out. We also have Dinosaur Fossil Fashion, that is Mason, who is recommending Kronosaurus Corner. That’s an Aussie favorite. That is in, I want to say Queensland, or…
Travis Holland (44:35)
It’s in
Richmond, Queensland.
Alyssa Fjeld (44:39)
I believe so, Kronosaurus It’s a lovely way to check out some of the inland sea fauna that would have existed in Australia during the time of the dinosaurs. It is located in Richmond, Australia. Very good. You would do well at trivia. Yeah, so if you’re ever going on a little road trip through Queensland, that’s a great stopover to make. The mascot is absolutely precious, and I have word that some new art and displays might be coming.
Travis Holland (44:54)
You
Alyssa Fjeld (45:08)
to Kronosaurus Corner in the next couple of years.
Travis Holland (45:11)
There’s a little hint. The reason I know it’s in Richmond is from my multiple conversations with Adele and about her work associated with Kronosaurus Corner, as well as of course the Australian Age of dinosaurs in Winton, which is just down the road by Queensland standards. So if you’re doing a road trip, you’ll need to visit both of those.
Alyssa Fjeld (45:29)
So just there’s two more just really, really quick from Patrick Townsend. it’s the Kirk Latham Museum in the Yorkshire Coast in the Wild West Bino Discovery Small Touring Exhibition, which is in the UK.
Travis Holland (45:40)
Over on TikTok, we had McAlisaurus recommends to us Burpee Museum in Rockford, Illinois.
Alyssa Fjeld (45:40)
Absolutely.
Travis Holland (45:49)
which sounds like a cool one. The Poozeum in Williams, Arizona. So this is a coprolite museum in Williams, Arizona. And why not? That was recommended by the Poozeum. So thanks for jumping on, guys, and self-recommending. That’s totally fine. We had another user by the name, the username of 13, recommend Sir John Soanes Museum in London. And the comment says,
Alyssa Fjeld (45:53)
Thank
Travis Holland (46:12)
absolutely fantastic and he paid for what’s in there. He didn’t steal it, which is a nice little jab at some of the other natural history and history museums and various other museums that are out there. We had another user by the name of Dream Mum recommend the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre in Morden, Manitoba in Canada. And another Canadian recommendation came from Kayla C. Falconer.
which was the Go for Whole Museum in Torrington, Canada, in Alberta. So nice little spread around the world there. We’ve got some American, some Australian, some UK, and some Canadian recommendations. I’d love to hear any others out there if people have recommendations for their favorite small museums. But yeah, thanks to everyone who recommended some.
Alyssa Fjeld (46:44)
And last but
I did forget two in my list.
Yeah, if you have any more small museums that you’d like to recommend to us, or this is just my personal ask, if you have any media that gives you the same feeling as Dinotopia, something that you’d recommend for those of us who were desperate and hungry for more of that, please feel free to leave a comment, and so I can go to my local bookstore.
Travis Holland (47:17)
And not only that, of course if anyone wants to make some artwork of Adele as the pterosaur captain, we would love to see that as well.
Alyssa Fjeld (47:25)
I personally would
just love to see that in real life as well. Like she would be amazing at that job.
Travis Holland (47:29)
Yeah, of course. She’s worked her whole life for it, just like Alan Grant in Jurassic Park.
Alyssa Fjeld (47:34)
my gosh,
on a Faro Draco, like the Iron Dragon lady? my god.
Travis Holland (47:40)
We’re getting into Game of Thrones territory there.
Alyssa Fjeld (47:43)
I hope she’d be a fair and just ruler and let me live because we know each other and hopefully that means that I will be spared. Fingers crossed.
Travis Holland (47:52)
Fingers crossed. Alyssa this has
been a great episode. Thanks so much for all the fun. We’ve got more interviews lined up and coming soon. Lots more episodes. We’ll try and get them out roughly on a fortnightly basis. Sometimes there’ll be a little bit of a slip, but thanks for the chat and thanks for listening.
Alyssa Fjeld (48:11)
Yes, tune in next time and we’ll see you then. Bye.
