Back in July (25 & 26), Marc and Natee attended DinoCon 2026 in Birmingham, the successor to DinoCon 2025 in Exeter, which was the spiritual successor to all those TetZooCons. It was huuuge. In Episode 52 of our questionably punctual podcast, they discuss the pros and cons of the venue, favourite talks, how Steve White is surely now richer than astronauts, and the Great Tim Haines AI Controversy. Then, all three hosts review NBC’s Surviving Earth, the latest CG prehistory-fest on which Tim Haines himself served as creative director. Have Gemma and Marc’s opinions changed since interviewing Tim, now that they’ve seen all the episodes? What if the dinosaur episodes…aren’t the best episodes!?! Will Gemma excise all of Marc’s tedious complaints about the poor beer selection at the bar of the Hilton Birmingham Metropole? Find out for yourself in this scintillating episode.
In the News
- Marc went and saw The End of Oak Street a little while back, and even wrote a review of it for the blog. (Someone’s still reading the blog, right? And not just for the mistakes.)
- Natee went with friend-of-the-show Andrew Stück (of Dino Dad Reviews) to the Lapworth Museum of Geology in Birmingham (after Dinocon, which Andrew has reviewed himself). Then, they went to the Prehistoric Planet Lightroom experience in London (which Andrew has also already reviewed, because he’s on the ball, unlike us).
- Gemma went and saw a popular Spielberg film from 1993 in the cinemas for the first time, as it was being shown in tribute to the late Sam Neill. Incredible! No, it wasn’t Schindler’s List. Sam Neill isn’t in that one.
Natee and Edmontosaurus
DinoCon 2026
Sadly, Gemma couldn’t make it to DinoCon this year, but Marc and Natee still managed to attend. It took place on July 25 & 26 at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole. Thrill to tales of Matt Dempsey’s enviable prowess at absolutely everything! Gasp at stories of the packed vendor hall, exciting schedule of events, and long queues to have a book signed by Darren Naish! Groan upon hearing that a guy in a cheesy raptor suit interrupted a talk on how women in palaeontology have been historically overlooked! Will we be back next year? Of course we will (hopefully Gemma included).
- Pterosaurs: The Field Guide might have met its funding goal now, but it’s still worth checking out the page for more information.
- The Dinosauria movie that David Armsby premiered at DinoCon, Great Maia, will be getting a teaser trailer on September 26 (as announced on Facebook).
- All photos below by Natee.
Matt Dempsey
Chelsey Knyff
Emma Nicholls
A slide from David Armsby’s talk on creating ‘Great Maia’
Fabrizio De Rossi
Wayne the Nanotyrannus head on Jed and Ru (Scaled Beast)’s table
Surviving Earth
Surviving Earth is the recent palaeo-docu-fiction-thingy series from NBC, produced by Universal Television Alternative Studio and Loud Minds. Tim Haines, of Walking With Dinosaurs and Primeval fame, is the creative director of the latter. We interviewed Tim about the series back in Episode 50, but here we discuss the whole thing among ourselves.
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3 Comments
Beaniesaur
September 27, 2026 at 2:06 amDinoCon was incredibly fun! Sure, it became very intense at times, but I enjoyed it immensely nonetheless. I was a bit disappointed that I never managed to meet any of you, but it’s no big deal. I certainly wouldn’t mind attending future cons if possible. 🙂
I did cringe at the raptor-puppet during Chelsea’s lecture. You’re absolutely right: the irony of having the woman presenter being interrupted, by some random nonsense of all things, during that particular talk was a bit too much… :/ On the other hand, though, seeing all those silly early 20th century dinosaurs on the silver screen was very fun.
One last thing I’ll note is that when it comes to certain creative executives, producers, etc. (not just Haines) and them being vaguely-pronounced-yet-undeniably intrigued by genAI is: I simply can’t be arsed any longer. I’m well and truly done extending grace to those people. Unless they go out of their way to explicitly and uncequivocally condemn the damn thing, I’m just going to assume that they’ll fall down the AI slop slippery slope sooner rather than later. I’ve grown too pessimistic at this point…
Stefan Gobert
September 29, 2026 at 6:26 amTim Haines was on the Terrible Lizards podcast as well a while back and I already had some concerns regarding his attitude towards AI then. I’m afraid I really can’t give him the benefit of the doubt anymore, sadly. What bugs me about this in particular is that much of the promotion of ‘Surviving earth’ centered around them using puppetry and miniature sets etc., rather than full CG, so he does seem to understand that the public appreciates craft. And genAI is just the antithesis of that.
Regarding Surviving Earth, much as I loved seeing the reconstructions of various rarely depicted animals brought to life, the pacing, with the narrator repeating everything that happened so far every few minutes, really got on my nerves, to the point I stopped watching a couple of episodes in. I also agree with Gemma about the show’s overly optimistic take on present day environmental issues.
Grant Harding
October 7, 2026 at 12:37 pmHow many times have we seen the K/Pg extinction in CG dinosaur shows? Someone should edit together the best bits of all of them.