T Rex relative Lythronax argestes is the Gore King!

Lythronax argestes

Lythronax argestes is A, and Teratophoneus curriei is B


[adrotate banner=”1″]The Tyrannosaurus rex family continues to expand with this new species, Lythronax argestes. The new tyrannosaurid shares a common ancestor with T-rex, and while much older, also shares much of the same skull construction. Later tyrannosaurids like T-Rex had larger jaw muscles and binocular vision, a trait Lynthronax also possesses.

Lythronax lived on Laramidia, along the western shores of the great seaway that separated North America; this landmass hosted a vast array of unique dinosaur species and served as the crucible of evolution for iconic dinosaur groups such as the horned and duck billed dinosaurs.

As noted by American palaeontologist Tom Holtz of the University of Maryland, “This new discovery also supports the idea that the giant thick-toothed Asian tyrants Zhuchengtyrannus and Tarbosaurus were immigrants from North America rather than their own Asian line, because they share a common origin with Lythronax and Tyrannosaurus.”

The evolutionary path of the tyrannosaurids has been a subject of debate, but there has been a batch of new species in the past decade or so that have helped paint a fuller picture of ancient life. And I suspect there are much more discoveries just waiting to be found and written up.

And more tyrannosaurids mean more dinosaurs to be brought back to life in films to eat people!

Source:
Loewen, M., Irmis, R., Sertich, J., Currie, P., Sampson, S. 2013. Tyrant dinosaur evolution tracks the rise and fall of Late Cretaceous oceans. PLoS ONE 8, 11: e79420. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0079420

Art via Guardian
More art by Andrey Atuchin can be found on his site
via ScienceDaily

Lythronax argestes by Andrey Atuchin

Godzilla is back in platypus form!

[adrotate banner=”1″]Back as in fossils of a new platypus species, that is! Obdurodon tharalkooschild is being nicknamed Godzilla Platypus due to the large size of the extinct platypus, 1 meter long. This makes it twice as long as living platypi, and longer than any known extinct platypus species.

Even more remarkable, all this information about Obdurodon tharalkooschild comes from just one molar. Now, modern platypus do not have teeth, but other extinct species do, including Obdurdon dicksoni, and from examining the size of the molars and extrapolating, the paleontologists were able to come up with Obdurodon tharalkooschild‘s size estimate. It is believed that O. tharalkooschild lived between 5 million and 15 million years ago, but a more exact time period cannot be determined at this time.

The structure of the tooth suggests the animal was capable of eating not only the small insects and crayfish on which modern platypuses dine, but also small vertebrates such as certain fish and amphibians, and even small turtles, the team reports.

That expanded diet is also interesting news, and puts a new perspective in what ecological niche older platypus species served.

The full paper will be published in the November 12th issue of Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology

via Livescience

Godzilla platypus obdurodon tharalkooschild

Time to dine on ancient Gamera!

The Wolf of Links Street

Karen Mok Man of Tai Chi
[adrotate banner=”1″]Once again TarsTarkas.NET swims into the ocean of the internet and brings back a bounty of wonderful links, thanks to our illegal fishing methods that are banned by international treaties. So don’t tell anyone! Time to get this party started…

**Ex-ninja tackles The problem with Movie Geeks and Homophobia!

**Movies Silently celebrates the women of silent movies!

**Pre-Code falls for the spectacle of The Miracle Woman!

**Beth Watkins from Beth Loves Bollywood interviews Samit Basu on his new book Turbulence at The Cultural Gutter!

**TwoDudeReview covers the Box Office Surprises of 2013!

**Direct to Video Connoisseur makes the connection. The Miami Connection!

**Trash Film Guru wishes This Is The End meant the film never started!

Can’t Stop the Movies cries “Ball!” on 42!

**FourDK meets Dus Numbri!

**Turban Decay dishes on The Sheik!

**Knights of Mars Roundtable takes a Long Dream off a short pier!

**shadowsandsatin educates us on Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake!

**Teleport-City gives a hand to Arahan!

**Here is an awesome essay on The Act of Killing!

**This is a sad article about abortion before Roe vs Wade

**There is going to be a live-action 009-1 film called 009-1: The End Of The Beginning. Mayuko Iwasa will star. Trailer at the link!

**Singing the lesbian blues in 1920s Harlem

**Online Pulps!!!!

**“The Lottery” Letters

**There are giant concrete arrows across America because of an old airplane mail delivery system!

**Have you ever wanted to play a Santa Claus Conquers the Martians tabletop RPG? Well, now you can, with the Santa Claus Conquers the Martians: The Official Series Bible! Yes, you can become a Martian elf and make toys. Seriously!

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians: The Official Series Bible is a setting based on a (fictional) television series based on the original film. Players take the role of human, elf, and Martian toymakers, working together to bring peace and understanding while foiling the schemes of naughty people from both planets. It is system-independent, meaning you can use the roleplaying game mechanics of your choice to play it. It’s good for a silly one-shot or a short campaign.

The Official Series Bible™ is a format for roleplaying game campaigns. Each setting is called a Pilot, like the first episode of a television series, providing enough information to get started and offering hooks for future adventures, be leaving things open enough for gamemasters to take things in their own direction. All information is presented without rules system information, so you can adapt it to the system of your choice.

**The Koch brothers take on enviro groups over mine

**This Is What a Multimillionaire Calling In His Chits Looks Like

**Ancient Roman Concrete Is About to Revolutionize Modern Architecture

**Captain Planet is being threatened to be made into a movie…again! Will it die in preproduction like the other two times? Probably.

**25 Incredible Photos From History

**This cool creature is Helicocystis moroccoensis, and it lived 520 million years ago during the Cambrian explosion, a time when all sorts of new types of life emerged. Helicocystis featured “characteristics that place it as the most primitive echinoderm that has fivefold symmetry”.
Helicocystis moroccoensis


**The Wolf of Wall Street is based on the memoir by Jordan Belfort, and details his life of excess at a brokerage firm, including corruption, the mob, goldfish eating, dwarf tossing, partying down, and securities fraud. And it looks fan-freaking-tastic from the trailer!
the wolf of wall street

That’s all for this round of lots of random crap. Tune in next time for 2 crap 2 random!

Links From the Crypt!

Cryptkeeper Hitchcock
[adrotate banner=”1″]Hello, boils and ghouls! It’s time for another cut of scare-tastic links that have nothing to do with the picture at the top of this post! That’s how we roll at TarsTarkas.NET, so let’s get on with the show!

If you are like me, you got piles and piles of stone cold cash that you don’t know what to do with. Don’t spend that money paying your phone bill, instead donate it some friends in need!

**SA CineD buddy and sometimes TarsTarkas.NET contributor Donald Hallene III has an indiegogo up to fund his school project film Slumber City:

Slumber City is a film. A short film. A Student Film. It is the senior thesis project of Donald Hallene III (aka Me!) and will be the last big chance to show off my creativity and flair before I graduate from film school.

Slumber City follows Nathaniel McKay, a struggling writer who also struggles with bad dreams. As a child, he had terrible dreams, most featuring a dreaded figure he calls Mr. Night. As he grew older, he found ways to supress the dreams, but now they are fighting their way back, and his daughter Molly has started to have them as well.

While spending a weekend with Molly, the two of them are whisked away to a strange place called Slumber City, where all of Nathaniel’s repressed dreams live. Mr. Night has taken Molly, and Nathaniel has until sunrise to get her back. With help from a strange new friend, he must find the clues to free Molly.

Slumber City is a fun fantasy adventure set in a world of nightmares and monsters. The film will be shot in the Summer of 2013, with a public release currently scheduled for October 2013

**And fellow MOSS agent Carol at the Cultural Gutter is going on another round of funding with Gutter-a-go-go Raids Again!

The Cultural Gutter was created in the early years of the new millennium to fulfill a dream–provide quality, clear-eyed writing about disreputable art. Since 2004, we have written about videogames, comics, science fiction, fantasy, genre film, romance and television. And throughout that time, we have maintained a commitment to paying writers for their work.

In summer 2012, like many other arts organizations, we lost our Canada Arts Council operations grant. The legions of mazer tanks surrounded the vulnerable Cultural Gutter. But that fall, friends of the Cultural Gutter rallied to our Gutter-A-Go-Go campaign to help us keep our commitment to paying writers for their work. While we fell short of our goal, we raised enough money to make and send out all our contributor perks and keep The Gutter going until this June.

Now we hope to rise from the ashes as Gutter-A-Go-Go Raids Again!

**What horrors happen when someone edits in a bunch of softcore spots to a Santo film? FourDK takes the plunge with El Vampiro y El Sexo!

**3 Guys step on El Ultimo Elvis‘s blue suede shoes!

**Blueprint: Review deals with a Warrioress!

**Monster Island Resort Podcast #102: Horror, Sexuality, Body Fluids, and Rotting Flesh with Thanatomorphose director Éric Falardeau

**Cinematic Catharsis does battle with The Road Warrior

**Pre-Code wonders if The Constant Woman is really so constant!

**TrashFilmGuru beams into Trekkies!

**The Film Fiend goes for 12 Rounds 2 – Reloaded

**What do you do when you run out of names to call new beetle species? Grab names from the phone book!

**Check out some 3D Latte Art!

**American International Pictures will produce a whole bunch of remakes. This is like the third time they’ve tried something like this. Maybe they’ll actually have a good film this time. Maybe.

**Indian actress Jiah Khan committed suicide recently, her mother has since posted a letter by her that shows some of the abuses of the entertainment industry.

**Jim Patterson: Black Soviet Icon’s Lonely American Sojourn

**Why Do So Many Father-Daughter Movies = Feisty Kid + Bumbling Dad?

**Christina Ricci will play Lizzie Borden in a new Lifetime movie that seems tailor made to enforce the stereotype of what Lifetime movies are about.

**Movies on YouTube

**BBC is getting a Muppet game show!

**Far-Right Extremists Chased Through London by Women Dressed as Badgers

**Japanese science fiction of the 1930s.

**The Gee’s Bend series of dime novel occult detective stories

**“‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative” by Kameron Hurley

**Find out about rare diseases meeting efforts to cure them with The Girl Who Turned to Bone

**Weird Wheels cards!!! And let’s not forget the Odd Rods!

**A cool article about Chinese military fantasy novels!

ZombOObies and LinkbOObies!

I dream of genie microwave
[adrotate banner=”1″]It’s that time again! No, not time to bury the hatchet! I’m still bitter after all these years, Tina Yothers… It’s time to link a bunch of cool posts on cool blogs and then some news stories and stuff and ramble on a bit.

**Don’t forget to check out our very own March of Godzilla 2013, still marching on!

**Trash Film Guru adopts Celia: Child Of Terror!

**Blueprint: Review takes on the White Tiger!

**Pre-Code re-elects the Mayor of Hell!

**Green People Soup is on to Dr. Drew!

**Can’t Stop The Movies enters Room 237!

**Turban Decay catches The Thief of Bagdad, and hangs him high!

**FourDK is unable to convince Madam X to give up her maiden name!

**Xsmarkthespot tips their hats to Jonathan Winters!

**3Guys1Movie rock out to Music in Film!

**ExploderButton is deluged with Deluge!

**A reminder that TarsTarkas.NET is still actively looking for interested contributors

**The Jewish Stars of Bollywood

**Cool article that starts out trying to find the name of Radar from M*A*S*H’s teddy bear and ends with a discussion on tv culture in general

**Did you know there was an Alien stage show, performed by bus drivers? Now you know.
Alien Bus Drivers

**Coelacanth DNA makes mice sprout limbs! The genes are probably related to how ancient fish switched from fins to legs as walking on land became a bigger and bigger lure.

**Screw you, Pelusios seychellensis, you were never real to begin with!

**

ZombOObies exploded onto the social web last year, but there hasn’t been much news since then about the film being completed. What looks like a cool take on the Sushi Typhoon ultra gore flicks will hopefully see the light of day in 2013. The awesome Cathy Shim stars with Diana Toshiko and Marisa Tayui. Francois Fujimoto directs. Official site here.

While conducting experiments to create “the perfect boobs” a group of doctors are transformed into Evil Mutant Creatures with an unstoppable hunger for boobs! See our hot action women fight to keep their perfect breasts out of the evil doctors’ mutant hands!!!

Cathy Shim Zomboobies

Zomboobies

**Also keep an eye out for DJ Girl, the movie about a girl, who decides to be a DJ, so she can date a DJ. The trailer is something you have to see. It’s a shame this has been sitting in a box for three years. Official DJ Girl site

I hope you enjoyed this journey together through the realm of links and crap. Any suggestions for next time, fell free to drop them below or via email!

Vote for Links!

Vote For Rowlf
[adrotate banner=”1″]it’s that time again to give you the good stuff, in handy clickable link format!

**FourDk hunts for The Stolen Airship!

**Pre-Code gets Illicit!

**TurbanDecay discusses Popeye and Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp!

**SoftFilm drops some facts about Daisy Joe and Chinese in Hollywood!

**3 Guys 1 Movie plays some games in the Carnival of Souls!

**The Cultural Gutter discusses dreams and Adventure Time!

**BluePrint Review meets The Girl From Rio!

**the motion pictures races against Hot Rods to Hell!

**Xsmarkthespot discuss retronerds and geek culture!

**Stephen Chow is rumored to star in a sequel to the latest Journey to the West film. Of course, he was rumored to start in the last one that he directed, and he doesn’t show up in it. There will also be more horror elements, and as the first one is sort of 50-50 horror-comedy, the new one might be scare-inducing. I’ll still watch…

**There will be a GI Joe 3. No word on how long this will get randomly delayed mere weeks before it’s set to open.

**The Biker Warrior Babe vs. The Zombie Babies From Hell made enough off IndieGoGo to get distribution online.

**If you like weird movie titles like that, remember there is also a Steampunk Samurai Biker Chick that filmed last year!

**The world needs more programs where a heroic white guy saves Asia, and we’re getting that again thanks to a remake of the Shogun tv miniseries (based on the novel by James Clavell). If heroic white guys saving the day aren’t your thing, you can also watch a heroic black football player get away with murder with an OJ Simpson miniseries. What company is giving us these gems? Fox, of course!

**Christina Applegate is rumored to be up for the role of Rusty Griswold’s wife in the new generation of National Lampoon’s Vacation films. Ed Helms is already cast as the new Rusty, who will be the one taking his family on vacation. And if you are wondering if Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo will appear, they are in talks now!

**Sex.Violence.FamilyValues is a 47 minute Singaporean flick banned in Singapore (until some scenes were deleted), but it just scored a US distribution. I’m not keen on paying to see such a short movie, though the fact it was banned/censored makes it more appealing. Though I’ll still wait for it on video.

**The Pete’s Dragon remake that has been rumored for ages has hit the point where they hired someone to make a script. David Lowery is the lucky ducky, and this Pete’s Dragon will ignore most of the story except the “core” and not be a musical. Will Disney drop the abused kid creating an “imaginary” dragon guardian angle and make this just a randomly dumb film? Or will they keep all that and make it all gritty? Considering Pete’s Dragon is the first film I remember seeing at a drive-in theater, it holds a special place in my heart. Which means I’ll burn down Disneyland if they fuck it up!!!

**Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs character from the Fast and Furious films will be getting his own spinoff movie. No further details at this time.

**We mentioned a movie called Orc Wars long ago, now it’s on Kickstarter with a few days left to hit its goal. So if you are into that sort of thing….

**But if you would rather give money to a film about a musical puppet fairy tale, that is also a choice thanks to The Princess Knight:

**Norigae is a movie about the scandal of Korean actresses being pimped out by their managers that lead to the suicide of actress Jang Ja-Yeon. AsianWiki has the trailer

**Here is a kick butt article about things in the Peruvian rain forest, including spiders that make huge decoy spiders, macaws licking clay, very hairy caterpillars, and a moth that uses a basket as a cocoon.
Caterpillar Peru

Until next time, remember to vote early and vote often!