allosaur

Backyard mating battles between male ruby-throated, emerald-skinned chameleons evoke, with a bit of imagination, the earth-shaking set-tos of the 20-foot long, 10-ton allosaurs.

Based on Arthur Conan Doyle's novel, this oft-told story of a hidden plateau in the Amazon jungle where allosaurs are free to devour, well, whatever they want, this ``Lost World'' manages to find its way past the silly boy's tale and offer a fairly diverting entertainment.

But most likely allosaurs and other big meat-eaters would have enjoyed a nice juicy human for lunch.

Among his and his volunteers' finds: megalosaurs, allosaurs, and, this summer, what may be one of the earliest Cretaceous ostrich dinosaurs.

Allosaurs, sometimes confused with the Tyrannosaurus rex, were large theropod dinosaurs.