Saturday, October 13, 2007

Nano-Manga-Tyrannus


Tetsuto Miyashita recently gave me copies of this new manga series that he had picked up in Japan.

Yuta of the Lands of Dragons - Story of Another World of Dinosaurs” by author and artist Juzo Tokoro is set in the Late Cretaceous of western North America.

The young hero, Yuta, is eager to become a dragon (dinosaur) master. After a series of adventures with both people and dinosaurs he discoveres he has a special sense – to read dinosaurs' minds!



According to Tetsuto, “the author is a keen Japanese amateur palaeontologist, and his insightful ideas about dinosaurs are everywhere in the books. Note that Dromaeosaurus is hopping, ceratopsids have holes in their frills, juvenile tyrannosaurids are feathered... etc. He had to compromise the setting a little bit so that he can put dinosaurs from Campanian and some Asian dinosaurs. He keeps it updated as he already made Albertaceratops and Dracorex pay their debuts in vol. 3. Gregarious Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus are based on the bonebed of Albertosaurus in Dry Island, Alberta. Volume 5 is out now in Japan.”

What I like about the series are the dino fact sheets interspersed amongst the stories. Here are a couple of examples:




Click image to enlarge