With six years of phd work on theropod dinosaurs behind him, Darren Naish mostly spends long hours in the library, hunched over his laptop. But he gets out sometimes, and picks up litter and pursues exotic lizards across the British countryside, aiming all the while to publish his technical work on obscure Cretaceous dinosaurs. He also messes around with pterosaurs, swimming giraffes, British big cats and stuff like that. He has given up on the stupid idea of being a dedicated academic and ekes out a living as a technical consultant, editor and author. He can be contacted intermittently at eotyrannus (at) gmail dot com. For more biographical info go 
Tone and I recently threw out* tons of old clothes, and among the many t-shirts I'd been hoarding was the one shown here: I had it made in 1993 for the Jurassic Park premiere, how sad is that. Consider it a protest directed at Spielberg's hideous feather-less dromaeosaurs (recall that, even in 1993, many of us were confident that dromaeosaurs should be depicted with feathers). The wording says 'Scaly protobirds no thanks! Feathering the theropods: a matter of principle' (kudos if you know the derivation, though it's horribly obvious). I never got beaten up for wearing the t-shirt in public, but that was just luck.
* By 'threw out' I mean 'packed into charity bins'.
Life Science
Comments
Hey, dude, what a nice t-shirt. You�re a real prophet. But why the hell do you give such a great shirt away? Seems you have a big collection and can afford it ;-)
Posted by: Stefan Schr�der | May 21, 2008 8:41 AM
You're a celebrity now, Darren, you should autograph it and auction it off. You can probably make five bucks for some charity.
Posted by: fritz | May 21, 2008 8:54 AM
There's no doubt that's a sweet shirt.
Posted by: Tim Cigelske | May 21, 2008 9:57 AM
Lovely shirt, good inspiration.
Posted by: Vlad | May 21, 2008 1:21 PM
Much as I'd like to call you sad for wearing such a shirt, I went to see Jurassic Park clad in the official Jurassic Park T-shirt and baseball cap. Both were black: I was colour coordinated and everything.
Still, I escaped being beaten up by being only nine years old. Darren, you were simply lucky.
Posted by: Mark Witton | May 21, 2008 2:10 PM
I want that shirt!
Posted by: Zach Miller | May 21, 2008 2:57 PM
Hey Darren, why not auction the T-shirt off at the SVPCA? We could get someone to spill beer on it to increase its value even further.
We had an official UCL Vertebrate Palaeontology trip to go and see Jurassic Park. There were three of us, one student (me) and two staff. I'm sorry and/or sad to say that none of us wore any relevant T-shirts.
Posted by: Mark Evans | May 21, 2008 4:22 PM
Check eBay next week. You'll see it for $200.
Posted by: jck | May 21, 2008 5:35 PM
"* By 'threw out' I mean 'packed into charity bins'."
Sometime in the near future there will be a homeless person who will be getting the crap pounded out of them because of this shirt.
Posted by: Art | May 21, 2008 6:03 PM
If ever there were a tetzoo gift shop, this would be the shirt I'd get. Feathered theropods? Yes please.
Posted by: Kacy Nielsen | May 21, 2008 8:55 PM
The first part is from Red Dwarf, the first episode with the polymorph, right? I still want a shirt from Rimmer's great acronym.
Posted by: Mokele | May 21, 2008 10:49 PM
When did the two volumes of "Dinosaurs Past and Present" come out? One of them had a painting of two hungry feathered velociraptors (plumage color based, I think, on that of some extant hawk)-- it wasn't too far off from the time of the first "Jurassic Park" movie, and was the first fully feathered reconstruction I'd seen.
...
Mind you, the dinosaur reconstruction in the first "JP" wasn't ALL bad: in the scene in the laboratory, with the Velociraptors chasing the two obnoxious children (and the audience thinking "Get the little horrors!"), one of them jumps on a table and cocks its head in (what a student in the group I saw the movie with pointed out was) a very bird-like gesture.
Posted by: Allen Hazen | May 22, 2008 1:53 AM
You know, I am regretting chucking it out - maybe I should make another one. But I'd been wearing it since 1993, I assure you that it would not make an ideal second-hand gift (or auction item) :)
Mokele wrote...
Yes, well done. And the 'matter of principle' line comes from Greg Paul's 1988 Predatory Dinosaurs of the World. Allen, Dinosaurs Past and Present was published in 1987, and this is probably the first place I saw fully feathered dromaeosaurs (I didn't see Bakker's The Dinosaur Heresies until later [it includes feathered Deinonychus]). I saw the exhibition when it was hosted by the NHM, but you weren't allowed to take photos dammit. Interesting how much correction fluid (tippex) Greg uses on his drawings.
Posted by: Darren Naish | May 22, 2008 6:14 AM
(blockquote)the two volumes of "Dinosaurs Past and Present"(/blockquote)
I have those! And signed by Jack Horner, at a lecture he gave in Edinburgh. That was a great exhibition.
My favourite memories of it are the Stephen Czerkas Allosaurus sculpture and an old Stegosaurus restoration, showing it rearing to browse, pangolin-like - clad in far too many plates, laid flat and overlapping.
Posted by: Graham King | May 22, 2008 7:26 AM
oops
I have those! (And signed by Jack Horner, at a lecture he gave in Edinburgh referring to the Maiasaura nest finds.) That was a great exhibition.
My favourite memories of it are the Stephen Czerkas Allosaurus sculpture and an old Stegosaurus restoration, showing it rearing to browse, clad in far too many plates (we now know), laid flat and overlapping - like an oversized pangolin.
Posted by: Graham king | May 22, 2008 7:32 AM
I used to have an interesting paleontology/artificial history t-shirt. It was a parody of the "Hello Kitty!" phenomenon and had a kitty with large canines and read, "Hello Smilodon!"
Posted by: Diego | May 22, 2008 8:18 AM
Oops, that's alternative history not artificial history. My brain isn't fully connected to my fingers this morning!
Posted by: Diego | May 22, 2008 8:19 AM
We could get someone to spill beer on it to increase its value even further.
What, again?
Posted by: Matt Wedel | May 22, 2008 5:46 PM
That 'pangolin' stegosaur I mentioned features in the Wikipedia entry for Stegosaurus, I've just noticed. I had forgotten that that early speculative reconstruction also gave it far too many tail spikes - redistributed, in the absence of certainty (as per Iguanadon), as porcupine-like quills protruding from between the pangolin-like plates.
Posted by: Graham King | May 25, 2008 3:26 PM
I suspect the Jurassic park animators didn't want to get into animating feathers - even with CGI feathers would be a total bugger to get right. Things have moved on since then though, so any new film ought to be be fully fledged.
And sigh - why did you have to get rid of that t shirt? Which charity shop did it go to, in what town?
Posted by: Pat | June 4, 2008 11:46 AM