Paleo in Pop Culture - Hollywood Studios' Galaxy's Edge

 

Although not dinosaur related, there is another strong paleontological connection in Hollywood Studios and that involves the entire backdrop of the Star Wars Galaxy's Edge land within the park. 

The entire park of Galaxy's Edge takes place within the canon of Star Wars on a planet named Batuu. This settlement on Batuu is known as Black Spire Outpost, named after the spires located throughout the backdrop and within the park itself, specifically one spire in particular that is blacker than the other spires. Here is the blurb from starwars.com:

"Widely known for the petrified remains of its once towering ancient trees, the spires now stand guard across the river valleys and plains and have long captured the imagination of travelers to this planet."

In canon, these spires are petrified trees that were petrified in place, where the tops of the trees were not preserved (either they eroded away over time or only the bottoms were petrified and the tops decayed before preservation). Petrification is a specific type of fossilization that refers to trees. This process involves the replacement of each living/biological molecule with mineral molecules. 

The replacement process, or permineralization, occurs when minerals dissolved in water, frequently silica in the instance of petrification, flow through the water and do a (typically) 1-to-1 replacement of the molecules leaving behind a nearly perfect replica of the tree. These petrified trees no longer contain living (or dead) tissue but are essentially tree shaped rocks. For this process to occur though, the trees need to be buried, or at least submerged, in silica rich waters. It is also helpful if there is a lack of oxygen, because without oxygen the trees can't decay. For this to have occurred with all of these trees still standing upright, the entire region would need to have been buried or flooded with anoxic (lack of oxygen) waters or sediment (mud). 

The inspiration for these petrified trees came from a National Park within northeast Arizona, Petrified Forest National Park, where one can actually go see real life petrified trees. The difference here is that although the trees in Petrified Forest are huge, they are nowhere near as big as the ones in Black Spire Outpost, and also most, if not all, of the trees in Petrified Forest are preserved after they had fallen over.

Here are some of the lovely petrified trees from Petrified Forest National Park. I had done a post about the geology of Petrified Forest a little while ago and contains some more pictures and information after the fossilization process.

A close up of an actual petrified log from Petrified Forest National Park.

Back to Black Spire Outpost.

Here is a close up shot of one of the petrified stumps that really looks a lot like a petrified log. The artisans at the park spent a lot of time crafting each spire individually so that they not only looked like trees, but petrified trees, and each unique so they don't look cookie cutter. 

Here are some more spires off in the distance. These petrified tree spires also share a relative in Disney's California Adventure with the petrified Millennium Tree on the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail.

You can find all of my Dinos of Disney compiled on my website at Dinojim.com.

Dinos in Pop Culture - Hollywood Studios' Dinosaur Gertie's Ice Cream of Extinction

 

Perhaps what is the most notable dinosaur in Hollywood Studios is the large Brontosaurus sitting in Echo Lake near the main open area after walking through the entrance shops. This dinosaur has been here since the park opened as MGM Studios back in 1989. The dinosaur houses a soft-serve ice cream shop called Dinosaur Gertie's Ice Cream of Extinction. 

Here is a shot of the dinosaur during January's Marathon Weekend with the dinos Christmas decor still on. Despite seeing this dinosaur every time I entered the park though, it wasn't until an episode of Drawn: The Story of Animation by Holly Frey that I realized the origins of the dinosaur. 

MGM Studios was essentially built as a working backlot studio as well as an homage to the movie industry with Grauman's Chinese Theater a central landmark within the park and The Great Movie Ride and the Studio Backlot Tour playing prominent opening ride roles. So, it is not surprising that the dinosaur in the lake has a theatrical history. 

On top of that, the designs around the Echo Lake region of the park were set to mimic the "Hollywood Crazy" form of architecture from Hollywood's Golden Age including weird structures such as the roadside dinosaur attractions that can still be seen in various locations across the US. When it came up, the dinosaur they built was actually modeled off of one of the earliest forms of animation that ever premiered. 

Created in 1914 by Winsor McCay, the cartoon is one of a dinosaur named Gertie. The dinosaur, a Brontosaurus, was created as a vaudeville act where McCay interacts with the dinosaur telling it what to do like a trained elephant. This animation of Gertie is one of the earliest forms of animation ever created and the earliest to feature a dinosaur. The cartoon is also one of the most influential animations ever having influenced the likes of people like Walt Disney, who started creating animation shortly after in the early 1920's. 

Here is the full version of the Gertie cartoon on YouTube:

Apparently, this ice cream shop also lived up to its name of "Ice Cream of Extinction" where it served rare types of ice cream from around the world. However, now a days it is only a soft-serve shop. 

You can find all of my Dinos of Disney compiled on my website at Dinojim.com.

Dinos in Pop Culture - Hollywood Studios' Rex the T. rex

 

Moving on to Hollywood Studios, where there are a couple instances of Dinosaurs of Disney. The first one I will cover was introduced to us way back in 1995. That is of course Toy Story's Rex the T. rex. 

With the opening of Toy Story Land, specifically the Slinky Dog Dash, in 2018, we had the wealth of opportunities to highlight one of the most prominent dinosaurs in the Disney lexicon outside of Aladar from the DINOSAUR movie. We visited Hollywood Studios during early January of 2020 and Rex still had his holiday reindeer antlers on at the time. 

When you start off the Slinky Dog Dash, you pass by the box from which Rex came from. This box proves that despite the three fingers (of which T. rex only has two), that Rex is definitively considered a Tyrannosaurus rex, at least in Toy Story canon. 

The stats on the side of the box for Rex are:

• Tyrannosaurus means "Tyrant Lizard" in Ancient Greek, and Rex means "King" in Latin
• The most feared dinosaur of the Cretaceous Period
• One of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs with an enormous jaw and extremely small forearms

Also Available from Borealis:

Triceratops • Parasaurolophus

These stats are amazingly all correct (ignoring the hyperbolic comment about "most feared" and the capitalization of "Rex") and completely not out of place as the writing on the side of a toy box.  

The box also indicates that there are other dinosaur toys from the made up Borealis company including a Triceratops, whom, although I didn't see any indication of her in the park itself, we have seen in the Toy Story movies by the name of Trixie.

Looking up the origin of Rex. It turns out that he was modeled after the T. rex toy from the Dino-Riders cartoon series from back in the late 1980's.

Here is the T. rex from the first episode of Dino-Riders, which you can actually watch on YouTube. 

And the toy that got made for the T. rex, (courtesy of @toysthatmadeus on Twitter)

Interestingly enough, as I mentioned Rex has 3 fingers (created in 1995), which are quite clearly seen on the side of the box. However, looking at the source dinosaur from 1988's Dino-Riders, both the cartoon and the toy T. rex have only the correct number of fingers, two. 

There are a lot of features on a toy T. rex that can be fudged for play factor and still it would give the impression that it is a T. rex, even if it doesn't 100% look like one (hence the more archaic upright stance of the figure versus the Jurassic Park version of the T. rex with it's more laid out stance) but the number of fingers is a simple one people frequently make wrong that is an obvious mistake when made. 

You can find all of my Dinos of Disney compiled on my website at Dinojim.com.