Dr Matt Dempsey
🦕 Musculoskeletal biologist & vertebrate palaeontologist
🏛️ PhD'd with the University of Liverpool and the Natural History Museum, London
🎓 University of Manchester graduate
🖊️ Sci-illustrator
🎥 Likes movies
https://www.mattdempseydinosaurs.com
- They cooked this figure HARD.
- The Nanmu T. rex pair arrived today. And holy peak, these are probably the best articulated dinosaur figures ever. I'll take better photographs once I have nicer lighting. But yeah, wow.
- To the fools in the row in front of me who simply could not stop checking their phones during the screening of Return of the King I was in tonight: Your minds are weak, and I hope you regurgitate your popcorn later in a manner most foul.
- Many cinema chains don't even make the effort to make clear "please turn off your phone" statements anymore. I think they should lean on preemptive shame. Start every movie with a clear "if you use your phone, everyone behind you will think you're a goldfish-brained asshole".
- This is probably one of my most "old man yells at cloud" takes, but the purity of the cinema experience is special to me, and if I catch the light of anyone's phone screen in even my peripheral vision, they become my least favourite person in the world for at least a month.
- I was finally able to catch The Lord of the Rings in theatres during the Fellowship 25th anniversary screenings of the extended editions. I am overwhelmed (in a good way), and have many thoughts to share: Part 1: letterboxd.com/sketchyrapto...
- Part 2: letterboxd.com/sketchyrapto...
- Part 3: letterboxd.com/sketchyrapto...
- some doodlin
- The promise I made myself to finally finish this guy over the holidays was, evidently, not fulfilled.
- Funkyceratops.mp4
- (I need you to all understand that I have been sitting on this exact video with this exact music for over a year)
- New material of Ajkaceratops cements its identity as a ceratopsian, but adds a new wrinkle. It turns out that many european ornithischians previously classified as iguanodontians may actually be ceratopsians! New paper by @tweetisaurus.bsky.social et al., that I provided art for (link in reply).
- Wishing a dangerous night to all crews who celebrate
- 🦶🦶
- Can't wait to get a proper roughness and dirt pass on these
- Due to a briefly mentioned but highly important plot point, and due to the Giganotosaurus and Argentinosaurus skeleton mounts at the Fernbank Museum making an appearance, I hereby declare Bugonia to be by far the best dinosaur movie of 2025.
- Feelin' normal
- It's the holidays, so I'm finally getting a chance to revisit some personal pieces.
- I saw me some Avatar. Good, but uneven. More thoughts here: boxd.it/c7wOZr
- Also, The Odyssey teaser showing before Avatar in IMAX is cool as hell, and kind of makes the follow up Avengers teaser look like such an embarrassing "oh my god, who even cares any more" wet blanket of nothing by comparison.
- While I do have genuine criticisms, I still want to be positive overall about the new Tomb Raider reveals, just to offset some of the completely insane takes of permanently internet-brained and terminally miserable sectors of the fandom. It's really one of the worst there is.
- I'm accepting that my harshest criticisms are very much reflective of "me" things more than they are giant sweeping things (e.g. my desire to see more carefully designed dinosaurs + a strong personal attachment to the 2013/Rise/Shadow presentation and characterisation).
- Either way, I'm there day one for both Legacy of Atlantis and Catalyst. After an 8 year wait, it is pretty awesome to be getting two big Tomb Raider games back to back. I hope they are solid experiences.
- The Game Awards are weasely slop, but it does actually feel pretty neat to know that are several video games in the pipeline that I'm actually really looking forward to playing. Haven't felt that for a while.
- What mainstream AAA media seems to think modern dinosaurs look like is in many ways kind of further from modern dinosaurs than 1990s era dinosaurs looked.
- Cancelled Core Design Anniversary Edition T. rex, you were but a candle in the wind...
- Why do none of the new Resi games have Claire Redfield or Jill Valentine in them. We don't need Leon agaaaaaiiinnnnn
- !!!!!!!!! youtu.be/lAmkl1jL0fo?...
- I strongly encourage my palaeoart peers who work in the museum display sector to write explicit "no AI modification" clauses into their contracts. Even if your employee contacts at a given museum are trustworthy, you can't rely on outsourced 3rd parties to not butcher your work without said clause.
- The majority of scientists with whom you work with directly for palaeoart projects can be trusted to not modify your work like this. But use of GenAI is becoming increasingly common in companies that produce display content, and we need to be aware of this to protect our assets.
