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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91072919047946256322014-11-27T22:56:29.087-05:00Love in the Time of ChasmosaursA dinosaur blog.David Orrhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-87184351906754203542014-11-27T16:00:00.000-05:002014-11-27T16:00:14.981-05:00Vintage Dinosaur Art: WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTHWith 1980s-style dinosaurs once again grabbing everyone's attention, thanks to the recent trailer for the long-delayed instalment of a certain cinematic franchise, it's only fitting that my latest book is a seminal specimen from the era. Hailing from around the same time as the Normanpedia,WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH (which absolutely must be written in all-caps) sees Norman and Sibbick team up again, but this time the results are a little more fun (while avoiding anachronistic humans and dinosaurs made up by Ray Harryhausen). The cover says it all.

While Sibbick's artwork for the Normanpedia was very beautiful and hugely influential (to say the least), it was also a little retrograde in depicting rather static, shapeless flesh mountains, and fudging a lot of the finer anatomical details. This may well have been due to the constraints inherent in the need to produce 'spotter's guide'-type diagnostic illustrations, because the broadly similar-looking dinosaurs in WDTRE show a lot more dynamism. Just take a look at the cover - as if the brutal scene of predation (and tyrannosaur leering out at the viewer) weren't enough, everything's ON FREAKIN' FIRE thanks to a spot of obligatory Mesozoic volcanic activity. Note the tottering Corythosaurus in the background; the illustrations here continue to depict bipedal dinosaurs (or, those walking bipedally) in a largely upright posture. Still, at least Rexy is looking a lot more Sexy than in the Normanpedia, if a little sinister. As well he might.

Rexy's predatory exploits continue inside, where he's pictured standing like a big game hunter atop an unfortunate baby chasmosaur. One noteworthy aspect of the art in this book is the use of sloping and uneven ground, which isn't as common in palaeoart as you might think; in fact, Mark Witton specifically critiqued how illustrations often make the Mesozoic appear fit for Dalek conquest. While rocky mesas quickly become a bit of a trope, the scenes show a lot more variety than those in the Normanpedia, and the action quotient is ramped up considerably. Rexy is quite resplendent here, especially when compared with the weirdo, croc-headed Normanpedia version

Of course, the world's favourite theropod movie star can't have everything in his own way, and upon demanding a jacked-up salary and 30% of the proceeds from Jurassic World, he is promptly felled by an inaccurately rendered Euoplocephalus. Illustrations like this were quite common back in the day, but this is definitely one of my favourites - Sibbick's hyper-realistic style combines with the unfortunate perspective to make the puny-armed one look quite hilarious. One can almost picture the legs flailing around in the air while the creature screams like Wario.

Ankylosaurs spend a lot of time squatting around on the ground in WDRTE, as demonstrated by Scelidosaurus here. This piece is a particular favourite of mine for the depiction of Megalosaurus which, while a little on the chubby side, nevertheless has a convincingly mad, stupid look in its eyes. It's the piercing gaze of a slightly dim reptilian animal, and it's amazing how little palaeoart manages to nail that. The relatively 'modern' posture of the individual in the centre contrasts with the more upright posture of those in the foreground (which I've had to crop off, unfortunately) and background. Palaeoart was still going through that awkward transition, with the tail-dragging behemoths still persisting even as leaner, meaner tiresome clichés were emerging...

...Like this one! Anyone's who's visited the Natural History Museum in London will probably remember how dark, cramped and scientifically outdated its dinosaur gallery was. They'll probably also remember the giant reproductions of spectacular John Sibbick artworks, one of which depicts a gang of Deinonychus athletically leaping onto an unfortunate Tenontosaurus. This similar piece can perhaps be considered a 'prototype'. While both works feature scaly Deinonychus (as was still considered acceptable at the time), the animals in the NHM piece appear more birdlike and sleek. Even so, the Deinonychus in the above painting are still a progression from the Normanpedia's disturbing, aye-aye fingered lizardy fellow, astonishingly convincing though it was at the time.

WDRTE clearly freed Sibbick to explore more unusual perspectives in his work, as demonstrated in the above piece, where the viewer takes on the perspective of an encroaching allosaur (note the shadow) and hence gains an idea of what it would be like to take on the spiky-tailed one. There are certainly problems here (not least the stegosaurs' drastically shortened tails), but this different approach is commendable, as is the unusual depiction of a rearing, tripod Stegosaurus. Note also the curling fingers of the Allosaurus - there is a tendency for artists to depict theropods with permanently extended digits, in spite of the fact that they often retained a lot of flexion in them.

Not every scene features a fight to the saurian death - herbivores are allowed to just do their own thing now and then. The pretty panorama above features a herd of Camptosaurus, without a hungry predator or scene-stealing sauropod in sight. The curling black tongue of the foreground individual might be a nod to old illustrations of Iguanodon, which often depicted it with a giraffe-like prehensile tongue for no good reason. There's a fair amount of awkwardly limp tail-dragging, but by and large it's aged better than...

...the book's depiction of Apatosaurus, a blunt-headed, Burianesque, proper brontosaur of a beast, decked out in drab Elephantine Grey and hanging around a generic Jurassic oasis. It might be 'cos I grew up in the 1990s (and was thus duly brainwashed with images of relatively spritely sauropods), but I really can't stand these things. At least Baby Bronto is quite the cutie. D'awwww.

I couldn't end on such a note, however, so here's another of my favourites - Plateosaurus in a thunderstorm. With Sibbick, it's all about the superfine details, and the way the rain palpably lashes against the plateosaur's skin in this illustration is simply marvellous. This illustration was one of many by Sibbick that really brought the Mesozoic alive for me as a kid, and fired my fascination with prehistory (that went away, and then came back again). I should mention that I know these illustrations from another source - namely, a promotional tie-in for PG Tips teabags. Sections of the illustrations were printed onto collectible cards, which could then be pasted onto the full illustration in an album, thus completing the picture. One could also buy a plush T. rex, and my mum's boss acquired one for me - I named him T. Tips (geddit?). Ah, thems were the days.

But enough shameless dino-nostalgia - there's enough of that being peddled by Hollywood these days. I'm off to eBay to try and find a new old dinosaur book. See you when!Marc Vincenthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-62361323156544682182014-11-24T10:49:00.000-05:002014-11-25T15:25:22.187-05:00Mesozoic Miscellany 69Newsie Bits

ThinkGeek, the popular on-line retailer specializing in, appropriately enough, geeky gifts, recently began selling fossils. This resulted in criticism from paleontologists, and eventually ThinkGeek's decision to halt the sales, at least for a time. Lee Hall posted about the controversy at Extinct Los Angeles, following his original post with a ThinkGeek reply, and his subsequent response. At Jersey Boys Hunt Dinosaurs - as well as her blog Shaman of the Atheistic Sciences, Lisa Buckley has shared her opinions on how to best approach the collecting of fossils. At i09, Artiofab wrote a series of posts on the issue - here, here, and here. Emily Graslie weighed in at the Brain Scoop blog. The American Association of Applied Paleontological Sciences issued a press release supporting ThinkGeek for selling fossils [PDF].

Around the Dinoblogosphere

At Dinosaur Postcards, Denver Fowler writes about some intruguing early 20th century photo postcards which seem to show paleontological work in the Morrison Formation.

It looks like Kansas has its very own bona fide Mosasaurus, after a history of taxonomic reassignments found putative specimens placed in other genera. Anthony Maltese gives you the low down.

Over at Art Evolved, Herman is back with more dinosaur book reviews, offering a positive look at Sloan's Feathered Dinosaurs and a less glowing review of the infamous How to Keep Dinosaurs.

Mark Witton is selling prints!

Learn about the less-publicized dangers of paleontology at Mary Anning's Revenge.

On the lastest episode of the TetZoo podcast, John and Darren offer a great tribute to Eleanor Kish, who recently passed away - in addition to discussions on the Shanklin croc, bird behavior, and the proud tradition of paleontologists giving lousy advice to artists. Thanks for the shout-out to Marc's 2013 post on Kish, guys!

James Gurney is on Soundcloud, and has been posting Dinotopia audio-books. episodes one and two are currently available. Expect a new chapter every Tuesday for the next three months or so. Gurney writes about the project at the Gurney Journey blog.

On the Dinologue Youtube channel, Brian Switek discusses the Carnegie Dinosaur Quarry at Dinosaur National Monument.

Paul Barrett writes about the Natural History Museum in London's unveiled a new Stegosaurus at New Views on Old Bones. It's the most complete specimen ever found and once it goes on public display on December 4, should be quite a centerpiece for their collection.

At Antediluvian Salad, Duane Nash writes about a visit to Big Sur, musing on redwoods living at the extreme edge of their range, the history of the taxon, and their use in environments in paleoart.

Jurassic World's teaser trailer is set to debut on Thursday, but since this is the way the world works now, there is a teaser trailer for the teaser trailer.

Edited: Well, that was quick. Here's the whole trailer, two days early. In-depth analysis to come!

Extant Theropod Appreciation

At 10,000 Birds, Larry Jordan writes about the Peregrine Falcon's use of tree cavities for nesting sites and shares a video of a peregrine taking on a brown pelican.

Paleoart(ish) Pick

I'm not going to pretend to get the whole Pokemon thing, but DeviantArt recently profiled RJ Palmer, who illustrated the realistic Pokemon series, about his dinosaur obsession and the way it informs his work. They're pretty great, and in the interview RJ gives props to some other great illustrators, including official friend of LITC Paul Heaston. Check it out (er, catch 'em all)!David Orrhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-99953726533524522014-11-17T16:18:00.000-05:002014-11-17T16:18:40.695-05:00The Cretaceous Tortoise and HareOnce upon a time, in the autumn of 2011, I submitted an artwork requested by one Scott Persons of the University of Alberta via Art Evolved...

Three years later, the resulting set of three illustrations -- a race between an Olorotitan and a Tarbosaurus -- was finally published in the press release for a study of hadrosaur locomotion by Dr. Phil Currie and Scott Persons, which I expect a number of our readers are already familiar with, either independently or via the Chasmosaurs Facebook page. There is also a podcast about the research. Here, for your delectation and privilege (or indeed indifference and ennui, so please you) are the illustrations at a much larger size, which can be opened out in a new tab/window for full-view if you wish. Much of the comic expression in the dinosaurs' eyes are missed in reduction -- something which I hadn't accounted for when I drew them.

The Aesop analogy subsequently repeated in the article was one which had actually occurred to Scott as a result of my original submission, as quoted in my linked Himmapaanensis post above: '...this is a charming twist (and one I had not anticipated). I like it very much!' I readily confess that my simple little ego was considerably flattered by this.

There is also a story behind the flag-waving Protoceratops, who was originally accompanied by a much more incongruous figure (again, for the sake of this post's conciseness, please see the first link for this). I don't know, you'd think I had a penchant for such a thing...

Prints of the illustrations were donated to the silent auction at the Alberta Dinosaur Research Institute fundraising dinner this past weekend. Sean Willett of the Dragon Tongues podcast (whom Marc and I had the great pleasure of meeting and speaking to at the first TetZooCon, and for whom David recently completed a new logo) had very kindly placed a bid on them. He informs me that the prints finally sold for over $100.

Photograph by Sean Willett

Of course, given that it has been three years since their creation, there are several things I would do differently now. So consider this the appropriate disclaimer/apology for any obvious shortcomings. I do know, however, that I would relish more such opportunities for playful pictures accompanying serious research in formal publications. Can we make this A Thing, please?

Niroothttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-23651100023663286812014-11-13T14:32:00.000-05:002014-11-13T14:32:38.188-05:00Vintage Dinosaur Art: A New Look at Dinosaurs, National Geographic, August 1978Anyone who knows the slightest thing about the history of dinosaur science will tell you that the '60s and '70s constituted a pivotal period - the 'Dinosaur Renaissance', during which the old ideas about dinosaurs being 'great fossil lizards' (as John McLoughlin memorably put it) were overturned, and a new, more exciting picture emerged. In August 1978, National Geographic published an article by none other than John Ostrom, the man who named Deinonychus and helped lead this new wave in palaeontology. Accompanying the article were a series of paintings by Roy Andersen, and they provide a wonderful insight into how the palaeoart of the time still owed a great deal to the past, even as artists strove to capture something of the Renaissance.

The cover is quite resolutely old-school, and wouldn't have looked out of place back in the Zallinger days. Here is the great primordial struggle, rendered in moody, smoky hues, as one massive reptile looms out of the darkness and snatches another in its cruel, flesh-tearing jaws (as they no doubt would have put it back then). To modern eyes, the lumpen, saggy tyrannosaur looks completely bizarre; over on Facebook, Blake Ó Murchú dubbed this beast a "Mastiffasaurus", which seems fitting. On closer inspection, the hadrosaur is pretty weird, too - for one thing, it appears that its arms are growing out of its neck. Of course, all this means that this cover has instant vintage palaeoart appeal. It's really very evocative.

Inside, the article proper starts with a 'dinosaur parade', which is a bit like one of the ones used to promote PT Barnum's circuses, only the giant quadrupeds aren't decked out in glittering finery. My rubbish scanner wouldn't fit it all in, and I'm far too lazy to scan it in chunks, so here's a choice section. Again, the animals here look rather retro - there are tail-dragging sauropods, tail-dragging stegosaurs, and even our old friend, Dainty Limbed Hunchback Megalosaurus (straight out of a depressing-looking Neave Parker piece). However, there are hints of palaeontological progress here. The theropods, as a whole, are much more sprightly than the various herbivores; Allosaurus looks particularly lean 'n' mean in a fashion quite alien to the pot-bellied waddling fellows of earlier decades, while all the little fellows are breaking out into a jog. Which brings us neatly to the star of the show...

Deinonychus! In an adventure with scientists! This is a striking vision of the creature, in a highly Bakkerian sprinting posture, dapper dewlap in place, against a fierce red backdrop. Modern artists take note - this is how you do 'badass dinosaurs'. Even ignoring the poor sap getting mauled at stage left, this illustration is highly effective at conveying the perceived ferocity of this creature - and it's just a plain ol' lateral view, without any gaping maws, blood, or copious salivating. It helps, of course, that we are also provided with a skeletal reference, and a diagram depicting the movement arc of that famous claw. Great stuff.

When compared with Deinonychus, Sexy Rexy's portrayal initially comes across as disappointingly staid and conservative. On the other hand, while the posture certainly tends more towards the vertical, there's a definite sense of energy and movement here, most evident in the tail and legs. It reminds me very much of Burian's Tyrannosaurus, which while distinctly old-fashioned at first glance nevertheless boasted a long stride and an obviously burning desire to clamp its jaws around a juicy edmontosaur thigh. The head also shows an admirable attention to detail, unknown in a lot of 'classic' palaeoart. Again, the inclusion of the skull (seemingly belonging to AMNH 5027) is a nice touch. Oh, and there's a suitably Knightian encounter between Rexy and his eternal sparring partner Triceratops going on at the bottom there.

One of the finest illustrations of a fossil is this one of a Heterodontosaurus slab, featured alongside a life restoration of the animal. For all that it looks weird now (creepy needle fingers and cold, unduly tiny eyes!), this illustration of a horizontal-backed, fleet-footed ornithischian dinosaur with a straight, muscular tail serves as the perfect accompaniment to Ostrom's text, in which he points out that the animal's anatomy "[seems] to point toward endothermy" and an active lifestyle. Noteworthy for those tired of certain clichés in modern palaeoart is that both individuals have their mouths closed, with 'lips' covering their famous pointy teeth, which is quite unlike almost every single depiction of this animal since. I think Jaime Headden would approve (but I'll probably regret second-guessing him).

While there's naturally been a lot of fuss made about the spectacularly strange Deinocheirus recently (which, incidentally, is briefly mentioned in this article), let's not forget that even 'normal' ornithomimosaurs were pretty odd, too. Of course, retro palaeoart only serves to exaggerate their weirdness by giving them scaly hides and weedy limbs, as is the case with Andersen's egg-plundering stilt-walker. If you were wondering about the giant pelvis 'n' femur, it's related to the caption, which explains that birds "paradoxically" evolved from the 'lizard hipped', rather than the 'bird hipped' dinosaurs (while pointing out that birds were already well established by Struthiomimus' time).

Corythosaurus is next on the bill, and is used to illustrate the point pertaining to hadrosaurs being land browsers, rather than paddle-handed jokers partial to the odd swimming party. This illustration is a particularly good example of the 'transition' taking place in palaeoart at the time, and how much of it still recalled the vintage 'great fossil lizard' depictions. While the carriage of this Corythosaurus would be alien to an artist working in, say, the 1930s, the exceptionally dainty forelimbs and grumpy lizard lips are reminiscent of art from the bad old days. In fact, one could comment that the overall style of these pieces, that is to say the technique behind them, is rather retro - while some of the animals sport splashes of colour (see Heterodontosaurus above), the overall impression remains fairly murky and gloopy. And brown.

Which isn't to say that this piece is a throwback - far from it. But the next one is.

Alas, poor Bronto. For all that the other animals are given important updates (no matter how tentative they may seem), Apatosaurus still suffers the indignity of being lumped with a mismatched (and cross-looking) camarasaur head at one end, while its tail ploughs the ground behind it. While the animal's resolutely free from swampbound misery and being a defenceless flesh heap, it's still weird to see Marsh's error perpetuated in an article all about a new, more enlightened approach to dinosaur science. Not being horrifically fat is a significant enough change on its own, I guess.

At least Poor Bronto isn't pretty much a straight-up Burian rip-off, like this Stegosaurus. Come on Andersen, give us the Shiny Renaissance Future! Tail-dragging sluggard stegosaurs are so early twentieth century.

And finally...Triceratops. It's another blandly brown depiction that wouldn't have looked out of place in properly retro palaeoart, and is a far cry from the more radical depiction we might have expected. The skull, of course, is taken from the mounted specimen in the AMNH, on which the frill has largely been reconstructed. Curiously, the Triceratops at the foot of the page appear to have had their heads based on this mount, and subsequently look very Torosaurus-like, while the individual above has a more 'scalloped' and shorter frill. It's enough to make me wonder if the main illustration wasn't also 'inspired' by an earlier work, although I can't for the life of me think which one it might be. (Comments please guv!)

That's it...for now. I've avoided discussing Ostrom's article itself very much, famous and seminal though it is. Perhaps another time (especially if there's any demand for it. That's right, feed my monstrous ego). Coming up next (from me) - a book named after a cheesetastic Hammer film. Hurrah!Marc Vincenthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-25410551961633138042014-11-10T12:17:00.001-05:002014-11-10T12:17:08.410-05:00Mesozoic Miscellany 68The Big News

Vintana sertichi is a new Gondwanatherian mammal from Madagascar, and in expanding our knowledge of the clade beyond assorted jaw-y and tooth-y bits, it's a pretty significant discovery. It's one of the largest mesozoic mammals discovered, coming in second to the mighty Repenomamus. More on V. sertichi from the New York Times, NSF, National Geographic, Palaeoblog, and the Guardian.

Kulindadromeus on Twitter claims that the reconstructions we've seen are way off, however. Supposedly, this was what the critter looked like:

Last time around, I'd intended to include another new ankylosaur with a generic name starting with "Z" (the previous being Ziapelta). But that other splashy new research distracted me. So, I'm making up for it now. Zaraapelta is a new ankylosaurid from the Nemegt formation in Mongolia. Danielle Dufault created a gorgeous illustration for the press release, so be sure to gaze on its splendor. And be sure to read the post on it at Everything Dinosaur.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

John Hutchinson, who has given us so much insight by showing the contents of his freezer, has had a dreadful health scare. He wrote an affecting post about his adversity, which I can't recommend highly enough.

At DinoGoss, more cathartic ranting against crappy practices in paleo-toys. This time, Matt is  training the crosshairs on the toy industry'penchant for rip-offs.

Fans of the spaghetti-necked Tanystropheus, hie thee to Nobu Tamura's Paleoexhibit blog.

Necks lie! And SV-POW tells all.

Pete Von Sholly had a bit of fun at the expense of people who allow their canine companions to defecate willy-nilly.

At TetZoo, Darren has begun writing a series on phytosaurs.

Rebecca Groom wrote about a plush Elginerpeton at the Dino Toy blog.

Extant Theropod Appreciation

I used to do occasional posts on those living theropods we like to call "birds," and I've decided it would be a great idea to bring it back as part of the Mesozoic Miscellany Series. For the first one, I'll strongly urge you to visit Tony Martin's Life Traces of the Georgia Coast blog for a ghoulish story of a decapitated gull.

Paleoart Pick

I mentioned the new "Z" ankylosaurs up above, so this led me to decide on Sydney Mohr, creator of the first reconstruction of Ziapelta, for this round-up's paleoart feature. Here is a terrific piece called "Campanian Scene." Check out more of Sydney's work at DeviantArt.

Illustration © Sydney Mohr, used with permission.David Orrhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-80495339788552299282014-10-30T15:32:00.002-04:002014-10-31T11:57:04.332-04:00Mesozoic Miscellany 67The Big News: Mega-Freaky Deinocheirus edition

The publication of new Deinocheirus mirificus material, finally fleshing out the body that was attached to those enormous arms, made a huge splash last week. Or, I should say, finally officially fleshing it out. We've known about the new Deinocheirus in broad strokes in a back-channel, unofficial sense, since last year, after paleontologists and other attendees of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's 2013 meeting had a peek at it. It only took an additional year for the thing to actually be published. Our new Deinocheirus builds on what Brian Switek described last November: a weird, hump-backed, giant ornithomimosaur. Since then, the head has turned up. How the head was procured from the black market has not been explained in detail, and that's a story I'm really interested in hearing.

More about our new superstar dinosaur: Ed Yong wrote about it at not Exactly Rocket Science. Ian Sample covered it for The Guardian. PRI interviewed Steven Brussatte about it. BoingBoing's Rob Beshizza called it adorable. The Associated Press put the image of a Barney/ Jar Jar Binks hybrid in our minds, threatening our collective sanity. Andrea Cau's multi-part series on the beast begins here.

Finally, see John Conway's wonderful illustration of a Deinocheirus pair, and buy a print for someone you love.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

You've probably seen the "tiny Brontosauruses" illusion meme pop up on Facebook or Twitter; if not, check it out at SV-POW. At this point, the original source of it is irretrievably lost, as it's reshared over and over. Search "tiny brontosauruses" on Twitter and marvel at all the spammy accounts claiming it as their own. And all the people who don't really care where it came from, because who really worries about something silly as who creates images? That's so last century.

A cool bit of Triassica: Thousands of burrows ranging from 14 to 40 cm (~5 to ~15 inches) in diameter have been found in the ~210 million year old Petrified Forest Member of the Chinle Formation in the vicinity of Canyonlands National Park in Utah. They had been provisionally assigned to lungfish, though more research was needed. At the Geological Society of America's annual meeting in Vancouver, Stephen Hasiotis presented a poster offering a new interpretation of the burrows: tetrapods, perhaps small therapsids, due to similarities to Permian burrows.

If you like your dinosaurs on the campy side, see Kevin Dart's "Queen of Dinosaur Island" poster art Michael Ryan shared at Palaeoblog.

Check out the amazing winners of the Dinosaur Toy Forum's Diorama Contest. Really creative use of photography across the board.

Jaime Headden posted a wonderfully illustrated big-picture piece about toothed birds at the Bite Stuff.

Albertonykus was able to visit the National Geographic Museum's Spinosaurus exhibit, and has a report. I'm hoping to have the chance to see the exhibit in February, fingers crossed!

Meet the Underwhelming Fossil Fish of the Month! At the University College London's Museums and Collections Blog, Mark Carnall writes about the unloved Devonian ray-finned fish Cheirolepis.

Paleoart Pick

Robert Bakker presented a poster at the GSA meeting: Stegosaurian Martial Arts: A Jurassic Carnivore Stabbed by a Tail Spike, Evidence for Dynamic Interactions between a Live Herbivore and a Live Predator. And he illustrated it, too! Here's the newest Bakker original, seemingly a single screencapped moment from an animated battle.

Illustration © Robert Bakker.David Orrhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-16246025602258877952014-10-29T18:04:00.000-04:002014-10-30T14:17:16.596-04:00Vintage Dinosaur Art: The BBC Book of DinosaursIn terms of saurian-related output, the BBC is best known these days for Walking With Dinosaurs, the super-expensive CG-laden Brannagh-narrated behemoth, sire of numerous tie-in books (and a movie that we won't mention). Nine years earlier, however, Auntie Beeb saw fit to give its endorsement to this little lost nugget of dinosauriana - The BBC Book of Dinosaurs. Authored by Paul Appleby and illustrated by Gill Tomblin, this rather obscure book is sweetly nostalgic for those of us raised on slightly shonky early '90s dinosaur books...even if we'd never actually seen it until now.

As is so often the case with late '80s/early '90s books, regardless of whether or not one has come across this specific publication before, everything seems ever so comfortingly/tiresomely familiar. The cover features an ensemble of dinosaurs being measured up, by way of grid and dotted lines, against that scientific size comparison staple, the Striding Streaker. Why the grid was deemed necessary is a bit of a mystery, but it's probably down to the need to stress that this is an Educational Book (which might also be why Triceratops has been reduced to a skeletal diagram). Rexy and Diplodocus are plainly cheating, mind.

The Beeb Book hails from a time when theropods were still going through an awkward transitional period in many popular books - a lot of artists simply didn't know what to do with them, resulting in some weirdly contradictory reptilian monstrosities that look rather laughable today. This is particularly true of maniraptors, which have long had a particularly rough ride in poorly researched art, bless 'em. When drawn more accurately - such as by Luis Rey - naked dromaeosaurs inevitably looked 'plucked'. However, most of the time early '90s audiences were subjected to the likes of the above, in which pin-headed weirdos straight out of the Super Mario Bros. movie gather round to gnaw ineffectually on an unfortunate green fellow. It wasn't pretty.

When Tomblin does turn in a half-decent maniraptor - in the form of the above Troodon - the Sibbickisms are quite evident. Pieces 'inspired' by Sibbick's Normanpedia take on Troodon are very easy to spot - just look at the feet, where the second toe will inevitably be flicked backwards. In the late '80s and throughout the 1990s, this very particular take on troodontid feet became a mini-meme all of its own.

Speaking of Sibbick...his Normanpedia work might have been very beautiful, and quite unnervingly hyper-realistic, but that didn't mean that copying it was always a good idea. Many of the Normanpedia dinos were scientifcally outdated even when they were created, and some a lot more so than others. Bring on Oviraptor!

Oh boy. Admittedly, dumpy-bodied, lizardy-looking Oviraptor were two-a-penny back in the early '90s, with Dinosaurs! magazine featuring a particularly memorable series of them. All the same, the inclusion of the mistaken 'nose horn' interpretation is telling, as is the extremely Sibbickian skin texture and musculature (or rather, lack of it). This is also another one of those theropods without much in the way of shoulders to speak of. At least it can boast a pretty colour scheme, as can...

...this adorably humanoid Compsognathus! One can easily picture it donning a dapper outfit (top hat and tails, naturally), then taking to the stage and performing kicks while singing a jaunty music hall number. That Iguanodon foot could be appropriated as a Monty Python-esque prop, although it might be worth painting the creepy human fingernails on its toes first.

As with many popular dinosaur books, panoramic scenes of prehistoric life in a certain place and time period accompany the 'profile' illustrations, and are inevitably crazy-packed full of interesting fauna. In this scene, the (until recently) butt of many puerile jokes, Tsintaosaurus, joins forces with Corythosaurus, birds, butterflies and flowers in order to make the place look vibrant and colourful (while Triceratops just squats around looking boring and a little grumpy). Hogging the foreground - as usual - is Rexy, here looking a little too friendly and welcoming for a terrifying flesh-tearing dino-tank. It's almost as if he's inviting the reader into the party. "Hey guys, welcome to the Late Cretaceous! Enjoy a refreshing dip in the river, feed the oddly toothy birdlife...just watch your back, 'cos you look like you've been treating yourself a little too much recently, and I do enjoy a plump one."

Corythosaurus and Tsintaosaurus (shown impersonating a sea monster from a medieval map) also appear alongside Parasaurolophus and plain ol' Saurolophus in an illustration depicting hadrosaur diversity. The inconsistent approach to hadrosaur 'cheeks' here is a little odd, although it's good to see both possibilities explored, I guess. I also really like the red patch on Parasaurolophus' face. We don't see enough brightly coloured hadrosaur heads these days.

Triceratops appears again too, looking, er, completely different; here, it sports plate-like scales and osteoderms that will look very familiar to anyone who has seen the scale model next to the Triceratops mount in London's Natural History Museum, or indeed has ever owned the similar-looking Invicta toy. The white sclera on the adult makes the eye really 'pop', and gives the creature appear amusingly as if it's nervously giving us the eye.

And finally...it's THE END! Copious volcanoes erupt noisily in the distance, snow blankets the ground, immaculately bleached hadrosaur skeletons lie about the place, and tottering tyrannosaurs throw up their tiny arms in fright. It's a horrifying scene of death, destruction and gloriously bright head crests. It's a little nonsensical (when is this scene set, exactly?), but great stuff all the same. It's also worth mentioning that the book goes on to point out that perhaps dinosaurs aren't extinct after all. To wit:

"So the survivors of the dinosaur line were the birds, and they are the dinosaurs that are still alive today!"
Not bad for a popular book from 1990!Marc Vincenthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-66115615577209393302014-10-27T18:25:00.000-04:002014-10-27T18:25:09.564-04:00DinosaurChannel.tv Needs You!Bob Walters and Tess Kissinger, known for their terrific paleoart studio, have launched a multimedia educational website called DinosaurChannel.tv. In order to pack it full of cool content, they need a bit of help, and have launched a Kickstarter campaign. Here's their video.

The site is up, though not updated with a lot of content, but the Kickstarter project video here gives a good taste of what they'd like to do. I especially liked the illustrated title cards for the different series, which strike a great balance between "accurate" and cartoony, and the hand drawn lettering is terrific. There's a lot of potential, so hop over and throw some money their way - or at least spread the word so fellow paleo-geeks can help out. As an admirer of their work, I'd love to see what they can do with full funding.David Orrhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-25909818367540367032014-10-20T06:00:00.000-04:002014-10-20T06:00:05.621-04:00Dragon TonguesI recently had the pleasure of being commissioned to create a new logo for the Dragon Tongues podcast, and since I'll take any opportunity to share relevant work from my livelihood at LITC, here it is.

Dragon Tongues is the creation of Sean Willett, and it's highly recommended if you haven't had the chance to hear it. As luck would have it, Sean and I were both fans of each other's work, and the process was a lot of fun from start to finish. We met via a video chat (the future is truly here, isn't it?) and hashed out some basic ideas. Besides the need for the work to stand out on the iTunes podcast browser, I knew that it needed to have an aaspect of intimacy to it. Sean does an incredible job recording and producing his podcast, with the result feeling like you're an audience of one, listening to an expert storyteller.

That sense of intimacy and a respect for scientific and natural history were guiding lights as I developed a few different ideas. All involved Megalosaurus in some way, to honor its important role in early dinosaur paleontology. Of theses ideas, Sean was smitten with the design you see here, featuring a juvenile and parent megalosaur in front of a mountain range that bears a strong resemblance to a certain iconic fossil.

Anyhow, go listen to the show! Visit the official website, find it on iTunes, follow Sean and the show on Twitter, and pick up a tee shirt at Redbubble.

Oddly enough, I have another commission for a soon-to-be-announced paleontology podcast I'm really excited to hear, and to share here. Stay tuned!David Orrhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-5693426656874986852014-10-16T06:00:00.000-04:002014-10-16T07:41:14.082-04:00Mesozoic Miscellany 66In the News

Venezuela has gained another non-avian dinosaur taxon, making 2014 something of a boom year for the early Jurassic La Quinta Formation. Following the publication of Laquintasaura venezuelae in August, we now welcome Tachiraptor admirabilis to the fold. Mike at Everything Dinosaur has terrific pieces on both taxa: read his takes on L. venezuelae and T. admirabilis. Because of my recent post on dreadful stock image dinosaurs, please note that each of these publications were accompanied by commissioned illustrations for their press releases (by Mark Witton and Maurílio Oliviera, respectively), resulting in the public reading stories illustrated in thoroughly non-embarrassing ways. Which is always nice.

A late Cretaceous ankylosaur from New Mexico was described in PLoS One in September, dubbed Ziapelta sanjuanensis. Lead author Victoria Arbour wrote at Pseudoplocephalus that this new armor-bearer "doesn't seem to be particularly closely related to the other ankylosaurid from the Kirtland Formation, Nodocephalosaurus. Instead, it's a close relative of Euoplocephalus and friends from Alberta." Read more on Ziapelta and its implications for ankylosaur evolution from Brian Switek.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

Mary Anning's name is well-known, but what about other early female pioneers in paleontology? Fernanda Castano fills in the blanks at Letters from Gondwana with a post about Mignon Talbot and Tilly Edinger.

At Hawkmoth, Amy McDermott wrote about communing with Sue.

Zach Miller has returned to paleontology blogging, with his new posts at Waxing Paleontological. Hop over to welcome him back, and to read why he is greatly annoyed by the practice of naming new taxa after place names. So, our first news item up top is perfectly suited to peeve him.

Over the summer and fall, Mark Wildman has written a fossil hunting diary at Saurian. Read about his amble for ammonites in From the Toarcian to the Callovian: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and the addendum, which is essential to you intrepid explorers looking to replicate his journey.

Herman Diaz continues his book review posts at ART Evolved, and recently gave the thumbs up to Prehistoric Monsters and a big thumbs down to Brussatte and Benson's Dinosaurs. If you find yourself nodding along, be sure to click through to Amazon to upvote the reviews.

Robert Alicea still occasionally draws dinosaurs at Doodle of Boredom, such as a recent, adorable Allosaurus hug.

At the Dino Toy Blog, Gwangi writes about a 90's Velociraptor figure that *wasn't* influenced by the omnipresent JP design.

Matt Martyniuk also offered a critical look at a feathered theropod toy at Dinogoss with a look at a museum-endorsed dromaeosaur figure that nonetheless gets the feathers wrong.

Paleoart Pick

Why not continue the theme of feathered Mesozoic dinosaurs and how to restore them? Here's a terrific graphic by artist Mette Aumala, AKA Osmatar at DeviantArt. It's been shared around social media recently, as well as being tipped to us by reader Lew Lashmit. I love the subtlety of the humor.

David Orrhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-56264640951818541862014-10-14T07:30:00.000-04:002014-10-14T07:30:00.930-04:00Vintage Dinosaur Art: 100 Questions and Answers - DinosaursPicture yourself back in the early '90s - specifically, 1993. Double denim is still acceptable, Jurassic Park is proving to be a boon for the manufacturers of hollow, gawping dinosaur toys, and endless, near-identical children's books on prehistoric animals line the still plentiful bookshops. What a wonderful time to be alive. 100 Questions and Answers: Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals is a very typical book of the age, which is to say that it's filled with shameless John Sibbick rip-offs. But hey, there's still some entertainment to be had along the way. Unless you're John Sibbick.

The cover was painted by a different illustrator to the rest of the illustrations - namely, John Butler. The scaly textures are actually rather nice, and reminiscent of our old favourite Bernard Robinson's work. The creature itself leaves a little to be desired - it's one of those peculiar, late '80s style 'diddy allosaur' dromaeosaurs, illustrated for whatever mad reason in a squatting position, like it's about to...lay an egg. Although there's no nest. Judging by the expression on its face, that's a particular large and painful...egg that it's trying to pass. Poor thing. Note the once obligatory 'Deinonychus dewlap', invented by Bakker and perpetuated by many others, including, yes, Sibbick in the Normanpedia. As I've said countless times, I'd still rather have carefully painted, but thoroughly inaccurate stuff like this than the CG eyesores that clog cheapo dinosaur books these days (see David's recent post).

All of the inside illustrations are supplied by Peter Bull. If he lived in the East Grinstead area at the time, he was presumably the sole reason why I could never find the Normanpedia in my local library. The title page, admittedly, appears to be quite Sibbick-free; here, we have an allosaur threatening a small sauropod, while in the distance another (quite Bakker Barosaurus-esque) beast is distracted by passing pterosaurs. Delve a little further, however, and things start to become a whole lot more tiresomely predictable.

Oh boy. Every single one of these creatures is a Normanpedia copy - even the oddball upright poses of the Tyrannosaurus and Pachycephalosaurus are reproduced faithfully, and it's pretty clear that Bull didn't really know how large these animals were relative to one another. Furthermore, there are some seriously iffy perspective fudges going on. A number of the animals, including Rexy, have legs that seem to be cut off at the knee, while Stegosaurus' head pokes out in front of Pachycephalosaurus in spite of the fact that it's clearly standing behind it. The Diplodocus, meanwhile, is just...horrible. And probably a mislabelled Apatosaurus.

Thankfully, there's a full-length illustration of the adorably goofy-looking, googly-eyed Rexy later on in the book, chowing down on some unfortunate green thingamabob. Rexy's malformed feet are a Sibbick feature, but his fantastically gormless expression and popping orange eyes are new. But where do the legs end and the feet begin?

Perhaps the most revealing spread in the book is on dinosaur intelligence. Naturally, troodonts are showcased as being especially brainy dinosaurs, perhaps capable of later evolving into shiny, dome-headed, tool-using green fellows. The individual on the left is obviously a direct copy of Sibbick's Troodon, and appears fairly respectable for the time. Meanwhile, the one on the right shows all the evidence of the artist having only the one reference to go on, what with its stumpy tail (foreshortened in the original) and spindly, atrophied calf muscles (hidden in the original). As if to accentuate its sheer derpiness, it even has the more vacant-looking face of the two. Still, if it's lucky, maybe Sibbick-Troodon will give it a smooch.

Equally brazen are these Tuojuiangosaurus. Again, the individual on the left (foreground) is simply a direct copy, while the one on the right is a deformed mirror-image. It's as if Sibbick's creations stumbled upon the land of their ugly, evil doppelgangers - the Lost Valley of the Shambles-o-saurs (which I'm quite sure is actually the title of the 23rd straight-to-video Land Before Time sequel).

Care to guess what the title of this spread is?

Of course they weren't - among animals, 'stupid' is rather relative. On the other hand, the Dinosauroid was pretty bloody stupid, and this one has a face like an adorable little octopus (or perhaps an Octorok). Say, has anyone drawn a feathered Dinosauroid yet? With cockerel-like tail feathers protruding from its pygostyle/coccyx. A Dinosauroid-rooster! Make it happen, as an amusing commentary on advances in palaeontology!

Thankfully, it's not just Sibbick who gets ripped off in this book - there's room for a little Greg Paul plagiarism, too. Note that the Paul copies immediately look more 'modern'; this Brachiosaurus, based on Paul's oft-updated Giraffatitan piece, appears incongruously lithe and muscular when compared with other sauropods in the book. By virtue of the magnificence of the original, this is one of the better illustrations in this book.

Other Paul copies are, shall we say, less successful. One has to feel a little sorry for these Allosaurus, apparently ignorant of the fact that their quarry sports the same very toothy head as they do. It'll be a bit of a shock when they get down to the good ol' fashioned neck bitin' later. (And yes, that's Nessie. And yes, it's mentioned that if it were ever found, it would probably be a marine reptile, and not a dinosaur. What's wrong with it being a freakishly gigantic temnospondyl? Or the twisted result of genetic experimentation by a hitherto unseen relict race of chrome-domed scaly green men living in a bubble base deep beneath the loch? Come on, use your imagination.)

And finally...Archaeopteryx, here painted as the Rainbow Chicken of Doom. Because birds are colourful, right? 'Cos they have feathers, yeah, and feathers are for showing off and that, right? Don't you remember that outbreak of mass hysteria in London in the 1960s, when a bunch of tripping hippies attempted to follow a flock of day-glo acid sparrows into the sky? Crazy times, man. Anyway, this Archaeopteryx at least doesn't have a scaly face or wing-hands (at least, the main illustration doesn't), but it's also lost its tail along the way. I blame the hungry, hungry hippies.Marc Vincenthttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-90485735456445883222014-10-13T09:00:00.000-04:002014-10-13T09:28:13.624-04:00Book Review: Tales of Prehistoric Life by Daniel LoxtonThis spring, Daniel Loxton published his third and final children's book in the Tales of Prehistoric Life series: Plesiosaur Peril, the story of the dangerous life of a young Cryptoclidus in the Jurassic. It was proceeded by Ankylosaur Attack (2011) and Pterosaur Trouble (2013). Today I'll cover all three. The TL;DR version: they're great.

Daniel Loxton's name is probably recognizable to the portion of our readers who also follow skeptical media. He cowrote Abominable Science with Donald Prothero as well as writing and illustrating the children's book Evolution: How We And All Living Things Came to Be. Loxton is also well-known for his work editing the Junior Skeptic section of Skeptic Magazine. Illustrator Jim WW Smith, who has also worked for Junior Skeptic, provides work on the models for the Tales of Prehistoric Life series. Loxton provides the finishing textures and colors, as well as photographing environments.

I especially appreciate Loxton's series for taking up the mantle of the Rourke titles we've covered so many times during the Vintage Dinosaur Art series. Like the Rourke collection, each Tales of Prehistoric Life book is a narrative story, detailing interactions between temporally and geographically appropriate animals. I love this approach. When grounded in modern paleontological understanding of the life and times of the animals involved, it's both engaging and educational. Like the Rourke titles of yesteryear, each book in this series also wraps up with a brief explanation of the scientific grounding of the story.

The Cryptoclidus family swims through a teeming Jurassic sea. © Daniel Loxton.

The animal interactions are firmly in the realm of plausibility. There are moments that seem a bit of a stretch, such as a veritable army of Saurornitholestes laying seige to the Quetzalcoatlus hero of Pterosaur Trouble. However, there's nothing more outlandish than Dinosaur Revolution's more slapstick moments. Since I'm on the record of admiring much of what that series did, you can predict my reaction here. When the Quetzalcoatus quad-launches to escape his attackers, one of them inadvertently hitches a ride before being flung onto the head shield of a Triceratops, and I couldn't help but crack a smile.

3D dinosaur art is too often only mentioned when picking out the worst offenders, so it's easy to forget that it is often done very well, and Loxton's work here is a prime example. For the most part, the animals are integrated into their photographic environments very smoothly, and interact with them believably - there is a sense of weight and heft to the animals as they walk on sand, browse vegetation, or fall into water. The experience is an immersive one, with illustrations filling entire spreads. The point of view is often right in the middle of the action. Loxton's attention to detail rewards free exploration of the environments and their inhabitants. Feathers float on the air in the midst of combat. Age and experience are obvious, as in an old ankylosaur with battle-damaged armor or a pycnofibre-covered pterosaur.

Quetzalcoatlus soars over the late Cretaceous world. © Daniel Loxton.

An Ankylosaurus couple browses in the forest. © Daniel Loxton.

Coloration is handled conservatively. There are no Rey-style color schemes. Proto-birds and dromaeosaurs are given the most colorful integument. I particularly liked the ruddy tones of Saurornitholestes, reminiscent of the Brown Thrashers who inhabit a similar woodland habitat in my neck of the... er, woods. I also enjoyed touches like subtle sexually dimorphic coloring on the Triceratops, and a seaweedy-green on the Cryptoclidus family at the heart of the most recent book. The tyrannosaurs who appear in Ankylosaur Attack and Pterosaur Trouble could do with some plumage and a splash of color (as well as some more neck musculature, which to my eye looked a little skinny). On the other hand, it's refreshing for the tyrant king to step out of the spotlight.

A Saurornitholestes pack smells something big and tasty on the wind. © Daniel Loxton.

Loxton's choices in depicting behavior are the strongest aspect of the stories, as pains are taken to focus on details of Mesozoic life lent us by recent paleontological research. Quetzalcoatlus falls prey to small dromaeosaurs because of tooth marks found on actual fossils of the great azhdarchid. It bears repeating that the pterosaur is depicted performing a quad-launch, too (a touch which pleased Mark Witton greatly). The family unit in Plesiosaur Peril is based on evidence that these marine reptiles were viviparous. It's a stretch to lump Loxton's book series in with the All Yesterdays Movement. But it is certainly complimentary in its dedication to anatomical fidelity and reasonable inference, while offering views of prehistoric life which reflects the way extant animals act rather than what Hollywood dinosaurs are asked to perform for the masses. There's no need to layer on excessive personification or spectacle after spectacle. Loxton's adherence to this is the main reason the books succeed.

The Cryptoclidus family feeds on belemnites. © Daniel Loxton.

My only major critique is that a more readable typeface for the body copy of the books could have been chosen, but that's a small quibble in the big scheme of things. This is as good as prehistoric fiction gets. The life restorations are exactly the kind that the new generation of paleontology fans should have access to: contemporary, not stuck in decades-old knowledge. All books in the series are available at major booksellers or via Skeptic.

Around the web: Check out Loxton's post about Plesiosaur Peril at SkepticBlog. Darren Naish wrote a detailed post about the book at TetZoo - fitting since he served as technical consultant for the whole series. Adam Stuart Smith reviewed Plesiosaur Peril at Plesiosauria.com. Dispersal of Darwin's Michael Barton reviewed Plesiosaur Peril in March (and reviewed the other titles in the series previously). Ankylosaur Attack recieved positive reviews from Quill and Quire, Kirkus, and SkepticDad.David Orrhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-72778924374924366542014-10-07T12:00:00.000-04:002014-10-08T21:22:19.244-04:00The Damned Dromaeosaurs of Stock Image IslandIf you have not read Witton, Naish, and Conway's State of the Palaeoart, make a point of doing so. The article is the culmination of a discussion that seems to have begun in earnest back in the spring of 2011, when the Dinosaur Mailing List played host to complaints from Gregory S. Paul about other artists copying his famous mid-stride skeletal pose. Though GSP kicked off a righteous ruckus with his assertion that he owned that pose, the argument was also a chance for people to air their opinions about why it's so difficult for artists to rely on paleoart to sustain, or even significantly contribute to, their career. I wrote about the brouhaha in two posts here, The Great Debate in Paleoart and Essential Links in the Paleoart-pocalypse. My post today is a deliberate follow-up to Witton et al's recent publication, in which the authors propose actions that invested parties can take to ensure that the paleoart the public sees in the news is original, creative, and accurate.

From Witton et al. (2014).

Earlier this month, Discovery News covered new research published in PLOS Biology which takes an embryological approach to resolving the relationship between modern birds and their ancestors, focusing on the development of the bones of the wrist. Certainly, a topic worthy of coverage. Unfortunately, they chose to illustrate the story with one of the most laughable restorations of Velociraptor I've ever seen. Here it is, reproduced with watermark from ThinkStock.

Image from ThinkStock. Image number 481455933.

Just soak in that for a few minutes.

Without paleoart, there is no paleontology outreach. It must be held to a higher standard than illustration done for entertainment. Bad images are being marketed on stock image services, then used by journalistic publications to illustrate stories like the one linked above. Using a sloppy, lazy, otherwise ill-conceived restoration to illustrate a science article diminishes the whole enterprise. Readers will remember that bizarre Velociraptor with its hastily slapped-on plumage more than the details of the research.

There is another, equally important effect of the use of these images: it takes money out of the wallets of conscientious artists whose work is passed over for garbage. A publication or website needs an image with an article (which says it all, really) but for some reason, decides the selection of the art doesn't require the amount of consideration as the article itself. The public loses. Responsible artists lose.

After sharing the above artwork on Twitter, I decided it was imperative that I delve into stock image services to see what other abominations I might find. As I trawled the services, the undisputed champion and holder of the Crown of Derpitude was Velociraptor. Sure, other taxa were victims of shoddy renders, boring compositions, and unintentionally comic poses. But Velociraptor was so badly botched, so often, that it demanded to be featured here overwhelmingly. My best guess is that the offending illustrators had a hard time accepting the idea of feathers covering the Jurassic Park raptors in their heads, so they just tacked 'em on as whimsy dictated. Whatever the reason, these illustrators have knocked out an army of pitiable creatures ugly enough to make Chickensaurus look exquisitely bred by comparison. I hereby dub these misbegotten beasts "Velocicraptors." Since the Mesozoic roots of birds is one of dinosaur paleontology's great stories to tell right now, these wretches are capable of doing real damage to public understanding of just how that evolution occurred. So I'm not pulling any punches.

On to the bloodbath!

The first two are fairly typical: botched feather attachment, bunny-hands, and in the second one, I'm not sure if the illustrator ever looked at the skull of the animal. You know, the way one might. If they wanted to make it look like the animal.

Image from ThinkStock. Image number 183993135.

Image from ShutterStock. Image number 172091483.

Speaking of skulls: that's not an eye socket.

Image from ShutterStock. Image number 1142484.

Here, naked and bunny-handed Velocicraptor is being chased by Tyrannosaurus. The pursuer actually outshines the quarry here, with bizarrely elongated fingers.

Image from ThinkStock. Image number 507796691.

This scene is stunning: It's as if we've been transported to the Cretaceous and have happened upon a family of curiously glossy Velocicraptors. As the mewling craplings beg for sustaining milk (why not?), mother cries out in agony, cursed as she is with woefully disjointed arms.

Image fromShutterStock. Image number 172091483.

My best guess: the Pilsbury Doughboy's defective clone is super-proud of his pet Velocicraptor, with its oddly undersized head, hands, and feet.

Image from ShutterStock. Image number 56398084.

Also in the "keep 'em scaly" camp is this super-reptilian fellow.

Image from Dreamstime. Image number 8751082.

Though Velocicraptors muscle out most of the competition, there are notable disasters for other taxa, too. Here's a Styracosaurus, seeming to channel the spirit of the Crystal Palace saurians.

Image from Dreamstime. Image number 783455.

According to the image's page, this low-slung Ankylosaurus is a "Photorealistic 3 D rendering, scientifically correct... with full bone skeleton superimposed." No indication of what bones actually constitute real finds and which are speculative, no scale bar, but you know. Scientifically correct.

Image from Dreamstime. Image number 31682514.

Remember ol' mohawked "Syntarsus?" Although the image's tags lead me to suspect this is a photo taken at this dinosaur sculpture park, I'm including it because it could plausibly be chosen to illustrate a story, and it's real derpy.

Image from Dreamstime. Image number 15948656.

Something about this noodle-necked Edmontosaurus is really unsettling to me.

Image from Dreamstime. Image number 22729752.

This poor, shrink-wrapped Compsognathus. Can someone toss it a few Slim Jims? It may not help: I'm guessing it ate one of those mushrooms and is afflicted with some awful wasting disease.

Image from Dreamstime. Image number 44911286.

We'll close out here with one last Velocicraptor image, which is particularly heart-warming to me, as it reminds me of one of my favorite images in the Vintage Dinosaur Art series, the Iguanodon Conga Line. Needs a few more 'craptors, but it's almost there.

Image from Shutterstock. Image number 55365946.

If you think this is mean-spirited, that's fine. We've been accused of such things over the course of the Vintage Dinosaur Art series, occasionally warranted, usually not. But my target today is people selling scientifically inaccurate scientific illustrations, which is plain wrong. I'm not dashing over to DeviantArt and insulting artists' work for kicks. My advice to publications turning to stock image sites as sources for illustrations? Emily Willoughby, Alvaro Rozalen, and Chris Masnaghetti are on StockTrek.

I have to admit that searching for stock images is by far my least favorite task in my work. So this was rough. I need a bubble bath and some pumpkin pie - maybe at the same time. So while I go do that, for crying out loud, support original paleoart.

Use of images in this post constitutes Fair Use for purpose of critique.David Orrhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-49823119534836647512014-10-03T11:11:00.001-04:002014-10-03T11:13:01.179-04:00Mesozoic Miscellany 65After a really super-long break, we're back with the 65th post in the Mesozoic Miscellany series. I really haven't meant to do these posts so sporadically, but I had some freelance jobs come up that took up a lot of time over the last few months. Sorry about that! I hope to get back on a more regular schedule with them.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

At Life Traces of the Georgia Coast, Tony Martin wrote a touching post in the wake of his mother's passing, reflecting on how he came from a childhood in poverty to pursue his passion for learning about nature. It's a must-read.

A new site dedicated to Mesozoic paleontology has launched, called Dinologue, and is also active on Twitter. Dinologue also features the writing of Brian Switek, who also hosts short video features such as this one, in which Brian fields a question about whether Mesozoic dinosaurs lived in the mountains.

Surely you've heard of the minor kerfuffle kicked off by the new Spinosaurus material revealed by Nizar Ibrahim and team? Ben Miller at Dinosours! gives us a look at the exhibition tied to the publication at the National Geographic Museum.

Darren Naish, Mark Witton, and John Conway collaborated on an article for Palaeontologia Electronica, State of the Palaeoart, looking at the continuing difficulties of paleoartists wishing to be paid fairly in an atmosphere that rewards original, creative work.

Beasts of Antiquity: Stem-Birds in the Solnhofen Limestone, the new book by Matt Martyniuk, has been released in Kindle, iBook, and print formats. As he wrote at DinoGoss, there are "other books written on Solnhofen, but this is intended to be more of a synthesis of current research and understanding of it and its stem-bird fauna accessible to a general audience." Best of all, it's the first in a Beasts of Antiquity series.

The pneumaticity of bird skeletons and their evolution was covered by Liz Martin at Musings of a Clumsy Paleontologist.

Over at Jersey Boys Hunt dinosaurs, Chris DiPiazza treats us to a peek inside Jamie Oliver's American-themed diner in London. Why? Because it's packed with dinosaur stuff. There's a nice assortment of derpy, clever, and just plain neato art and sculpture, so check it out.

Maija Karala is back, and has been writing a series called Botany for Paleoartists at the Humming Dinosaurs blog (Parts 1 on ferns, 2 on fruits, and 3 on grasses). And if you didn't see it then, check out my interview with Maija published in July.

LITC contributor Asher Elbein was published at Bitter Southerner, writing about the phenomenon of snake-handling churches in the southern US. It's a terrific piece. Congrats, Asher!

Paleoart Picks

Hard to pick just one, so here's a brief round-up within the round-up of cool stuff that's crossed my path recently.

Shields and Spears is the title of the new art show from Raven Amos, Scott Elyard, and Zach Miller, opening at the Yak and Yeti Café in Anchorage today, October 3. I've been enjoying the works-in-progress shared on social media, including this great time-laps of Raven's great Leptoceratops piece.

Read more at Coherent Lighthouse.

Speaking of ceratopsians, Julius Csotonyi's "Ceratopsian Cornucopia" is available as a poster, a beautiful piece demonstrating the diversity of headgear among the ceratopsians.

Angela Connor, known as Amaruuk at DeviantArt, Newgrounds, and Twitter, also has a great Redbubble shop. Paleo Portraits is a charming series of various extinct taxa, available in a variety of formats.David Orrhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-9314190816290782472014-10-01T15:13:00.000-04:002014-10-01T15:13:19.070-04:00Atlas of Dinosaurs, The ReturnOur sole criterion for a book to qualify for the blog's Vintage Dinosaur Art series is that it is 20 years old. (And yes, because of that, I am very guilty of stretching the definition of 'vintage' to breaking point.) Atlas of Dinosaurs is rather newer than that, but as was plainly seen last week, it might as well be straight out of the 1980s. Following the panoramic illustrations in the previous post, I'd like to dedicate this one to depictions of individual animals. Warning: levels of plagiarism and the positions of eye sockets may vary.

For all the blatant copycatting, there are a few neat ideas here. Behold, tree-climbing Deinonychus! Well, why not? Although I'd be interested to know what the text says, taken in isolation, this is an intriguingly different take on the beast, laudibly free of blood, guts, roaring, and Bakker imitating. (You ever seen a Deinonychus with a huge beard and cowboy hat? They look ridiculous.) All the same, there are some serious problems. For one, it's completely unfeathered (far less acceptable in the late '90s-early '00s than in the early '90s). For another, its eyes have migrated forwards and now sit in the wrong holes. Oops.

It couldn't have been that long ago when I noted that Mononykus, along with Avimimus, was one of the very few non-avian theropods to be almost ubiquitously depicted with feathers since the 1980s, if not even earlier. (Proper feathers, that is - not just a few half-hearted quills on the head and a sandwich board reading 'MISSING LINK!!!!!') Unhappily, there are always exceptions. Behold, the full horror of lizardy, figure-skating Mononkyus! Are those feathers on its arms, or weird flaps of flabby excess skin? Why does it just have that single line of bristly things on its head? Why does its neck articulate with its jaw? Why? Why? WHY? Wah!

Mononykus might appear rather undignified, but at least it doesn't have testicles hanging from its chin - like the fellow above-left. This creature is Shuvosaurus, and is likely based on the original interpretation of the animal as a Triassic ornithomimosaur (it's now recognised as a non-dinosaur archosaur closely related to Effigia). At the bottom we have an even more problematic animal - Protoavis, here depicted, very unusually, without feathers. Beloved of BANDits, it's been described as a bird more 'advanced' than Archaeopteryx, but living in the Late Triassic. In reality, it's a handful of badly damaged bits and pieces that have proven very difficult to conclusively identify. Whatever the case, this version looks more like a 1980s troodontid, but given those animals' close relationship with birds, that's probably not so surprising.

Strangely, better-known animals often take on a more retro appearance than those only recently discovered, or known from scrappy material. This probably has something to do with the fact that a lot of decades-old artwork depicting these creatures was more readily to hand. Take the Sexy Rexy duo - while the foreground animal has a comparatively 'modern' stance (weirdly directed left foot aside), the background one appears to be based on Burian's famous Tarbosaurus. Both are made to look more 'reptilian' by having the upper tooth row extend under the eye socket, contrary to the animal's actual skull.

At the bottom, we have a mosasaur with that good ol' Knightian crest. Sometimes, I almost start to miss 'em. On the other hand, modern mosasaur restorations are much cooler-looking.

Furthering the retro-'80s theme, here we have a copy of Sibbick's unduly chunky Dilophosaurus from the Normanpedia. Sibbick's isn't the only historic example of Dilophosaurus drawn as a Big Generic Theropod, Now With Crests!, but like so many of his creations, it's the one that tends to get around. Sichkarya's version faithfully reproduces the Normanpedia pose, but manages to make it look even more, er, 'robust', like it's just swallowed a comedic money-grubbing computer programmer whole. Meanwhile, Dimorphodon actually looks less silly than the real thing. Go home Dimorphodon, etc.

In the end though, while the Dilophosaurus might harken back to the days of leg warmers and big hair, this Polacanthus is so retrograde that it's lost its favourite pipe and slippers and is very suspicious of those well-dressed men who've moved in together across the street. Having said that, it's not dragging its tail along, so that's something.

The brachiosaur on the above page is also quite retro, and the Compsognathus is quite Sibbickian. But of course, you aren't looking at those. Your eyes have been drawn to the white and pink Pteranodon, head retracted back to its body, pelican-stylee. It does look a bit barmy, and has its share of anatomical problems. Still, it somehow seems preferable to yet another boring, brown, Burian-style Pteranodon. At the very least, it's an inventive take. Which brings me to...

...The exact opposite. A Sibbick copy so unashamed, even the colour scheme is the same. Same red head. Same backward-facing skull nubbin. Same everything. If only some people were making a stand for originality in palaeoart - for quality, for accuracy, and against plagiarism. Why, it just so happens (TOPICAL!) that they are! I realise that I've linked to Mark, Darren and John's article on Facebook already, but if you haven't checked it out already then I must insist that you do; it's an indictment of all the ill-practice in palaeoart that I've spent the last few years whinging about.

But I digress. Thanks again to Vladimir Nikolov for all his trouble, and I hope this sojourn into the world of Russian books has proven to be entertaining. (If it hasn't, may I suggest sending crates of the finest Belgian beers to my address in order to improve future post quality.) Coming up next: the return of regular Vintage Dinosaur Art! Will it feature Sibbick rip-offs? Probably. Poor John Sibbick.Marc Vincenthttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-28956724410126110992014-09-26T16:17:00.000-04:002014-09-27T12:59:15.916-04:00Further adventures in Russian: Atlas of Dinosaurs, part 1Following last week's 'Russian interlude', palaeoartist and (I'm very happy to say) LITC reader Vladimir Nikolov has offered up another slice of Russian-language non-quite-vintage dinosaur art. Behold, one and all, the glorious Atlas of Dinosaurs and other Fossil Animals. It's a far more recent book than you might think...or hope.

This second edition dates from 2001, but you might be surprised to learn that the first edition was published as recently as 1998. While the cover is dominated by a dirty great mammoth (boo!), that hadrosaur in the top left is conspicuously Burianesque for a book from the '90s. Based on the cover, one could reasonably expect illustrator A N Sichkarya's work inside the book to be similarly old-fashioned, but the truth is far more wonderfully complicated than that.

Given that the book slogs through the entirety of the history of animal life on Earth, I asked Vladimir to just scan the Mesozoic bits - it's them what we's interested in. Sichkarya illustrates a series of panoramas, each depicting a packed assembly of fauna typical of a given time period. Predictably, the Early-Middle Triassic scene (above) is one of the emptiest, and actually looks a lot more natural as a result. The animals could be worse; the Lystrosaurus look rather familiar, but I do like the birdlike sit-standing posture of the Staurikosaurus (number 6). It's also nice to see Mastodonsaurus, with its freaky jaw-piercing tusks, make an appearance...although the tusks aren't really shown here.

Early-Middle Triassic scenes are always a bit dull, though, and thankfully there's a bit more action afoot in the Late Triassic. Two plateosaurs (4) are threatened by an Herrerasaurus that seems to be running like Scooby Doo, Coelophysis pops in to make its contractually obliged appearance at bottom left, and a phytosaur is threatened by two...what are those, exactly? As it happens, they're supposed to be rauisuchians. Now, while rauisuchians did resemble large theropod dinosaurs in some respects, this illustration may be taking things a bit too far. I mean...they've got legs up to here. While not labelled as such, one can't help but wonder if they're based on outdated depictions of the rauisuchian Teratosaurus, which was once thought to be a primitive 'carnosaur'.

On to the Early-Middle Jurassic now, and a herd of Barapasaurus ambling away from a lush forest and into a featureless wasteland for some reason. These tail-dragging beasts definitely owe a debt to much earlier palaeoart, as does the nondescript 'carnosaur' directly below them. Interestingly, a group of 'protosuchians' here fill in for the more usual heterodontosaurs or Lesothosaurus in the 'small to medium reptile' category. [EDIT: Oops - they're actually Scutellosaurus, the basal thyreophoran dinosaur. Thanks to Mark Robinson for pointing this out, and apologies to Vladimir, who did label them correctly for me! Point still stands about the unusual choice, though...ish.]

Now this is more like it. So many 'big name' dinosaurs lived together in the Late Jurassic - Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, etc. - that artists often have trouble cramming them all into 'panorama'-type scenes. In this case, Sichkarya has seemingly thrown perspective out of the window, his Burianesque plesiosaurs apparently able to scramble their way up sheer cliff faces. The horribly confusing jumble isn't helped by the fact that a lot of the animals are copied from an assortment of other artists' work. At the back, there's a weirdly ribbon-necked Hallett-style Diplodocus (marked "Seismosaurus"), its body contorting like it's trying to get into the back seat of a small three-door hatchback. At the front, we have a rather Sibbick (circa Normanpedia)-like Diplodocus, contrastingly retro, tail-dragging and hunch-backed. To the left, we have a Gurney Giganotosaurus repurposed as an Allosaurus, its skull and jaw going in different directions as it chases hoppity-hopping Ornitholestes and a very blue Archaeopteryx-like bird. And smack in the middle, there's a bipedal Stegosaurus saying "huh?" and a sauropod chilling in the ocean with Jaws and a show-off ichthyosaur. It's baffling.

By comparison, the Early-Middle Cretaceous scene seems quite peaceful and uncomplicated. With the exception of Iguanodon (top right), which is seemingly here because, hey, you've got to have Iguanodon, these are all Asian beasties; the big animal is Probactrosaurus, with Psittacosaurus at bottom left and the pterosaur Noripterus overhead. While the Probactrosaurus definitely looks familiar, I can't quite place the original artist - any help would, as always, be much appreciated (it has a rather Jim Robins air about it, I think). Noripterus, aka "Phobetor", was a dsungaripterid pterosaur, so it's a little odd that it's here been restored as a chubby, dumpy version of Sibbick's Quetzalcoatlus. Cute, though. Oh, and non-specific champsosaurs to add some colour. Hooray.

And finally...it's the Late Cretaceous! As easily deduced by the appearance of Sexy Rexy's not quite so sexy relative, Tarbosaurus. Having said that, this Tarbosaurus is definitely based on Mark Hallett's '70s and '80s depictions of The King™, complete with angry triangular horns and dashing dorsal spines. As with the previous scene, this piece predominantly depicts Asian (in fact, Mongolian) animals, with Saurolophus filling in the back (in a very 1960s tripodal guise) and Velociraptor and Oviraptor also making an appearance. While the ill-proportioned Oviraptor is a little harder to place, the 'I'm hard, me' arm-dangling Velociraptor is directly based on Sibbick's highly reptilian Normanpedia take on the beast. With the ankylosaur being (of course) Saichania, and the crocodile being Shamosuchus, this just leaves the mystery birds in the middle. As it happens, they're intended to represent Presbyornis, which lived in the, er, Eocene. Although they could just as well be a Presbyornis-like bird, I guess.

And finally...in addition to the 'panorama' spreads, the book also contains a large number of freaky-deaky 'profile' images of dinosaurs, many of which make them look suspiciously lizard-like by sticking the eye in the wrong hole in the skull. Easy mistake, I suppose. Somehow, this is all the more troubling in the case of typically cute-as-buttons Hypsilophodon than with magical floaty Megalosaurus. But more on them next time!Marc Vincenthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-22394454053771994332014-09-17T16:21:00.000-04:002014-09-18T08:13:17.946-04:00A Russian interludeWhat's all this then? Well, I was recently contacted by Dave Hone, well-known palaeontologist, blogger, and exuberant fellow. Dave and I have met a few times, and he even lent me a pile of his old books on one such occasion. This time, Dr Dave had another treat for me. In a letter sealed with wax and carefully delivered by a dashing man in a hat, he had written:

"Dearest Marc,

I do hope this letter finds you well. On a recent field trip to the badlands of somewhere-or-other, one of my students mentioned a glorious 1990s dinosaur book filled with brightly coloured, haphazardly proportioned and occasionally obviously plagiarised dinosaurs, and I had to think of you. Please find a series of photographs enclosed.

Cordially yours,

Dr David Hone."
 Or he might have just sent me an e-mail. But check it out - Russian vintageish dinosaur art! Hurrah.

Dating from 1999, B MNP ANHO3ABPOB is partly a straightforward, factual book about dinosaurs, and partly a puzzle/activity book with wordsearches, colouring pages, and amusing/disturbing chimeric animals (but more on that later). The illustrations draw obvious inspiration from the classics (Burian, mostly), but also from other sources. That jolly Triceratops, for example, is somewhere in between a Mark Hallett painting and a Dinamation robot. Like many dinosaur books from the '90s, it has a curious mix of the old and the new...but errs towards the old.

The fun begins on the title page, as a lo-o-ong Stegosaurus (how many plates?) faces off against a Generic Theropod (we may presume Allosaurus), while Pteranodon circle overhead because, well, you've got to have Pteranodon.

The book features the typical tour back in time, with a charming chart illustrating the changing fauna through the ages - complete with what appears to be a phytosaur, Paraceratherium, and a suitably sparkleraptor-style Archaeopteryx. On the right of the spread we have that Triceratops again, this time accompanied by a baby. D'awww.

The sauropods in this book have some seriously strange stuff going on, mostly pertaining to stumpy, sprawling limbs and snake-like bodies. In particular, the apatosaur on the right appears to be slithering about the place in an especially serpentine fashion. I do quite like the rather lairy orange on that Diplodocus, mind you, even if it doesn't really suit the conventionally Burianesque plain, wrinkly body. Stick some spines, dewlaps and all-round disc brakes on there, and we'd be onto a winner.

Further Burian-derivatives appear in the form of Sexy Rexy (above), reminiscent of the great man's Tarbosaurus. There's a definite perspective fudge going on here - as if the artist drew in Rexy and the top half of the hadrosaur, then realised they'd made the hadrosaur a little too diminutive. Either that, or Rexy's picking up the poor ornithopod with just one of his supposedly puny arms (although that shadow suggests otherwise). Either way, things aren't looking good for the blue guy - there are ribs on show and the Dino Damage piece has been lost down the back of the sofa. Rexy, on the other hand, is thoroughly enjoying himself.

And on the right...there's an Ankylosaurus. Love those backward-sweeping head horns.

While the book does feature those Mesozoic 'others' (token ichthyosaur, token plesiosaur, and bloody Pteranodon), they share a spread with an ornithomimosaur for reasons that elude me. Mostly because I don't speak Russian, in spite of the fact that I drank an awful lot of a stereotypically Russian beverage while at university. Noteworthy: the Pteranodon is again rather Burianesque, but with stunted wings, while a charming ammonite is illustrated alongside the ichthyosaur. You know, there's a giant concrete ammonite stuck on a roundabout in a town not too far from me. I should take a photo sometime.

As I've previously mentioned, the book features fun games and things to do, in addition to the educational bits. The above spread appears to be a board game of some sort, and is rather reminiscent of a game that I had as a child. Based on the positioning of the arrows, it appears that friendly dinosaurs (such as the amused-looking hadrosaur, the sauropod, and the Dachshund-stegosaur) help you on your way, while pointy-faced carnivores send you scurrying back towards the CTAPT.

You know, that plesiosaur's clearly outgrown his pond. Should've moved to Scotland, waited for a certain glacial lake to form millions of years later, and then jumped on in there.

All this, and I haven't yet mentioned the name of Dave's student, the one who actually owns the book! For shame. Thank you, Anastasia Doronina. Your dot-to-dot and colouring skills (as seen above) are without par.

There's something quite wonderful about the way children inevitably give carnivorous dinosaurs (and sabre-toothed stinky mammals!) blood-stained teeth. I mean, it's a bit of a shame that Anastasia didn't manage to complete this page, but I do appreciate the pretty flower, speculative ceratopsian frill patterning and allusions to horrible, bloody violence.

And finally...while these creatures wouldn't look too out of place in some of the more bargain basement dinosaur books out there, I'm quite certain this is a puzzle exercise with the aim being to identify which animals have been combined to produce these...things. So yes, they're deliberately wrong, which always takes away some of the fun. Nevertheless, I think they're brilliant, especially the Godzilla-like stegotheropod, the plesiosaur with sauropod legs, and the Pteranodon/bird. A lot of them resemble some of the more hideous cheapy dinosaur toys out there, especially the Pteranodon, which I'm pretty sure I owned as a child. Wonderful.

Many thanks again to Anastasia and Dave for sharing this one!

LATE UPDATE: Meanwhile, somewhere in Dinosaur Provincial Park...

While the 'letter' from Dave was an obvious joke, it is true that the matter of this book came up while Dave and his students (including Anastasia) were out in the field. Dave's sent me a photo from the trip, depicting a lovely stretch of Dinosaur Provincial Park.

Marc Vincenthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-37837480965746704402014-09-10T15:10:00.001-04:002014-09-10T15:10:30.969-04:00Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Doctor Who Dinosaur Book - Part 2So it turns out that Doctor Who is quite popular - who'da thought? As such, there was much demand for a second instalment of The Doctor Who Dinosaur Book (1976), featuring everyone's favourite Doctor* - the Fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker - wandering around and posing like a prat among dinosaur art faithfully traced from the pages of earlier books. I do hope you enjoy.

I didn't mention any thyreophorans last time - but they do feature in the book, so please allow me to rectify the situation forthwith. Spiny-flanked Blackgang Chine fibreglass dinosaur massacre survivor Polacanthus puts in an appearance here, in full-on, 1950s-style retro guise. This restoration is nothing at all like the one we'd see today - it resembles an alarmingly armed lizard of some sort, and doesn't have the stocky, flat-topped appearance that ankylosaurs are noted for. No wonder the Doctor looks so unimpressed. If only some properly wide-gauge ankylosaurs could pop along to cheer him up...

...Ah, excellent! As you can see, the Doc is tickled pink at the sight of these stout fellows, who represent the other end of the retro ankylosaur restoration spectrum (yes) - wide, yes, but also short-tailed, no-necked, and with legs shorter than their heads. Vintage restorations tended to conflate true Ankylosaurus, Edmontonia, and Scolosaurus, often under the guise of 'Palaeoscincus'. TDWDB does refer to this animal as 'Ankylosaurus', but the meld of characteristics is quite obvious here.

Ankylosaurus' contemporary Triceratops, meanwhile, suffers from a bizarrely huge and fat tail and perspective-related head issues (horns go where?). In fairness, that's only because the original - from Album of Dinosaurs, illustrated by Rod Ruth - also had these problems, and this is a pretty faithful copy. Mind you, Ruth also managed to insert his creatures into a superbly painted, lush, atmospheric backdrop, whereas these two Triceratops appear to be fighting in the Late Cretaceous equivalent of the Final Destination stage from Super Smash Bros. At least we can admire the tartan detailing on the Doctor's waistcoat. Mmm, tartan.

Following my last post, a few people (not least Gary Campbell in the comments) mentioned the 1974 Doctor Who serial Invasion of the Dinosaurs as something that might be worth a look in the near future. Incidentally (PLUG ALERT), I have already written about it over on Dave Hone's Guardian blog, so do check that out if you love adorable puppets, Madame Vastra, and an unsubtle disdain for London. For its part, TDWDB does feature an illustration that looks very much like a puppet, complete with a flexible join where the head's attached - namely, the above ichthyosaur. The source for this one isn't too obvious, although it is rather generic; any suggestions are welcome.

Before we leave the Mesozoic behind, it's definitely worth mentioning that TDWDB isn't free from that contemporary dinosaur book staple of allosaurs gnawing on the necks of completely helpless gigantic sauropods, who could quite easily roll over and crush the bastards. Alas, the poor dears suffered a terrible inferiority complex - since they lacked sharp claws and teeth, or spines protruding from their sides, they thought themselves completely hopeless in a fight. Tiny brains, you see. For whatever reason, sauropods are portrayed with oddly pointed teeth in this book...

...Including when they're dead. In spite of being a time traveller with a lifespan extending into millennia, the Doctor has never quite got around to finding out exactly what killed off all the (non-avian) dinosaurs. Therefore this book, alas, offers us only speculation - mentioning insatiable egg-eating mammals (imagine the farts!) and Bakker's Dinoflu Pandemic Hypothesis. Still, the Doctor does manage to rock up a little late and perch on a boulder, looking thoroughly depressed at the sight of giant skeletons and a landscape more featureless than the Lincolnshire district of South Holland.

Having delivered on its title and shown the Doctor and dinosaurs side-by-side, TDWDB decides to expand its remit and move beyond the K/Pg extinction. A number of important prehistoric representatives of the Age of Hairies show up, including the loveable giant sloth Megatherium (above). Given the animal's considerable size, it seems that the Doctor can add 'lifting impressively weighty timber' to his list of superhuman attributes. Cute though this is, I'd rather have seen the Doctor giving Megatherium a hug...or maybe even riding it. Someone make this happen, please.

And finally...the Doctor documents the evolution of the most terrible killer of them all. That's right...MAN. For, in suitably chauvinistic 1970s style, it is most definitely MAN. With a capital M (and A, and N). On a spread entitled 'AN ANIMAL CALLED MAN', he outlines why MAN is so dangerous:

"He can think better than any of his rivals. He lives in a group, and co-operates with his fellows. And he's a tool user...those clever paws of his can hold and shape things. Weapons, in particular. He began with clubs and spears - and in time developed weapons capable of destroying his own planet."
Now, you might scoff at the idea that any modern day weaponry - even every nuclear warhead in the world - could 'destroy the planet'. Irradiate it for millions of years and kill off most lifeforms, sure, but not destroy it completely. Of course, you forget that the Doctor has seen mankind in the future. In the future, blowing up a planet with a bomb the size of a briefcase will be quite trivial - although it'll only be done to stop marauding armies of Cybermen. Mark my words.

But I digress. Three whole spreads are devoted to stinking MAN, but at least we are treated to the sight of a nude primitive stabbing a Smilodon straight through the face (above). All that's missing is a dramatic geyser of blood, and we'd be in proper horrorshow territory. Great stuff.

Coming up next time: definitely something different!

*What do you mean, you like David Tennant best? Call yourself a geek? Pish.Marc Vincenthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-63846526125441760512014-09-01T15:07:00.001-04:002014-09-01T15:13:49.217-04:00Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Doctor Who Dinosaur Book
It's a very good day for those interested in palaeoart - its history, trends over time, the current consensus on restoring certain animals, and where it might be going. Firstly, there's Mark Witton's article in Palaeontology Online, in addition to one on the 'new' Spinosaurus on his own blog. Secondly, Darren Naish's latest blog post is also a look at the changing appearance of dinosaurs in art (what, again?).

Here at LITC, we like to think we do our bit in aiding public understanding of the history of palaeoart; in particular, how certain trends are adopted by illustrators perhaps less accustomed to drawing dinosaurs, frequently resulting in grievous errors being repeated ad nauseam. The best palaeoartists will often find that their very particular take on an animal will take on a life of its own, appearing all over the bleedin' shop until it becomes the de facto 'genuine' restoration. This week's book is an exemplar of these tendencies in palaeoart. It also has Tom Baker in it. "You have a woman's bottom, my lady!"

The Doctor Who Dinosaur Book (or at least, this incarnation of it) appeared in 1976, and was illustrated in rather accomplished fashion by George Underwood. Accomplished in terms of technique, that is; most of the animals are brazen copies of restorations from other books. If anything, the copies are a bit too good - as Niroot remarked when he had a look, there's a glaring disparity between the highly detailed, hyper-realistic look of the Bernard Robinson copies, and the more stylised appearance of the Rod Ruth copies.

It's all a little bit shameful. On the other hand, it's hard not to smile at a book that features the Doctor grinning while feeding an Apatosaurus.

The book's text (by Terrance Dicks) is written as if by the Time Lord himself, and Tom Baker's Fourth Doc (scarf and all) pops up in almost every scene - and not only as a handy scale bar. Minor perspective issues aside (is the Doctor standing in the swamp, there?), seeing the behatted extraterrestrial interacting with a highly Burianesque, wrinkletastic sauropod is superbly surreal. The whole book has a faintly unreal air about it, like Tom Baker's invaded a gallery of vintage palaeoart. Which is actually rather close to being a literal description.

Occasionally, the Doctor is content to just pose moodily while retro saurians mill about in the background, as if he took a holiday in Neave Parker's sketchbooks. All of the sauropods in TDWDB adhere rigidly to the 'great fossil lizard' stereotypes of old, dragging their tails about, looking grumpy and sporting heads that indicate a lack of decent reference material. I'm enjoying the pastry dish crust on that Diplodocus, though.

Speaking of nondescript heads, this Brachiosaurus begins reasonably well (lengthy forelimbs, upward-sloping back; check and check), but for some reason is topped off with a rubbish, nondescript nubbin. To illustrate the animal's size, the Doctor is reduced to miniature size...not for the last time.

Those hankering for close-ups of Tom Baker's curly mop and rictus grins shouldn't fret, though - there are plenty of glorious close-ups to be had, as the Doctor gets a bit more hands-on with various angry reptiles. Here, the nefarious alien has snatched a Protoceratops egg from the nest, attracting the attention of a very squat, angry parent.

In perhaps the best of all the plates in this book, the Doctor actually grabs a dinosaur by the throat and tail in order to, I'm sure, inspect it more closely (and definitely not to wring its neck, pulp its remains and sell it to a Gallifreyan kebab outlet). It's scarce wonder that the Doctor looks so baffled here - while this creature is ostensibly Compsognathus, it seems to have morphed into some sort of lithe, bipedal lizard with four (count 'em) fingers and splayed limbs. This basically contradicts everything known about Compsognathus anatomy (noted as being highly birdlike even in the 19th century), but hey. There's no arguing with a centuries-old interloper in dashing costume.

Bigger and badder theropods pop up, too - they'd definitely be salivating over a bite-size intergalactic hero, if only their poses weren't strictly limited by the dinosaur books the artist found in the local library. Sexy Rexy (above) is a dead ringer for Rod Ruth's cover illustration for Album of Dinosaurs. You'll have to forgive me for missing the head off - but on the other hand, if you've seen Ruth's work, you already know what it looks like.

Everyone's favourite brontosaur botherer, Allosaurus, makes an appearance too - but this time, the animal's a Bernard Robinson knock-off. As already noted, Robinson's highly detailed style, meticulously detailed down to the last tiny scale, contrasts markedly with Ruth's, which gives this book a disjointed feel.

The Doctor, meanwhile, is meant to be fleeing in terror. However (and as pointed out by Brian Engh on our Facebook page), the eyelines don't match up at all. All the same, I love the pop-eyed Tom Baker look going on here. Classic stuff.

And finally (for now)...not all of the plates in this book feature the Doctor. Occasionally, TDWDB becomes just another 1970s dinosaur book - which is to say, filled with animals of highly questionable anatomy. While the basic shape of the above beast makes it clear that it's supposed to be an ornithomimosaur, the indie kid stick-thin legs, bizarre plantigrade-but-not feet, and tiny, creepy doll hands are strange indeed. It's Struthiomimus as constructed from bargain bin spare parts, and it's too baffling to even begin to point out where it's going wrong. It's just a perfect whole of wrongness that defies your nerdy pedantry. And that's a tyrannosaur clambering down a sandbank on the right, by the way.

Next week: more from this (if there's call for it), otherwise - something else!Marc Vincenthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-17057797769362842612014-08-19T15:34:00.001-04:002014-08-19T15:35:00.419-04:00Vintage Dinosaur Art: The AMNH's Book of Dinosaurs, Part 2 - James RobinsOver the years of writing these blog posts, I'd like to think that I've matured somewhat - that the vodka-fuelled gratuity of my late university years has mellowed into something more thoughtful and, dare I say it, nuanced. (Oh yes. I went there.) Sure, I'll still point out shonky dinosaur art, but with less savagery, and an acknowledgement that, by contemporary standards, it's often not so bad. Plus, illustrators gotta eat.

On the other hand, one is occasionally reminded that a few - a very few - palaeoartists over the years managed to make their jobbing contemporaries' work look more than a little embarrassing - maybe, even, deserving of the occasional pouring of scorn. One of those artists is James Robins.

While we've looked at Robins' work here before, I think it's always worth revisiting him. As an illustrator of dinosaur books, Robins often gets overlooked historically in favour of palaeoart's Big Names. This is a pity, because Robins' work was often well ahead of the curve, especially in the early '90s. The worst palaeoart tropes of the previous decades were on the way out, but still lingered in every tail-dragging, rotund sauropod, freakish, dainty-handed dromaeosaur, and nonspecific tyrannosaur with zipper teeth. Robins' work stands out because, damn it, he actually paid attention to anatomical references. His highly precise approach contrasts sharply with Rothman's rather more, er, old-fashioned style - it might not quite be Ankylosaurus by modern standards, but that's still a pretty stylish-looking beast (above).

His Tenontosaurus, too, is far sleeker and more sprightly-looking than early '90s audiences were probably used to, especially since Sibbick's '80s version (from his endlessly copied illustrations for the Normanpedia) was far weightier and stodgier-looking, dragged tail and all. It also appears devoid of dromaeosaur hitchhikers...which is nice. The goat-like pupils are another neat touch, and harken back to the work of John McLoughlin.

If there's one unfortunate aspect of Robins' work for the AMNH book, it's that it's - typically for him - confined to 'spotter's guide'-type illustrations of animals against plain white backgrounds. Robins is perfectly capable of painting landscapes, but it seems that he was more often commissioned to produce this more diagrammatical work. But I'm grateful for what I can get. Robins' Protoceratops (above) is remarkable for the early '90s, an age when the animal tended to be stuck in a semi-sprawling 1970s timewarp.

Sadly, there aren't too many Robins theropods in the AMNH book; in addition to the excellent Oviraptor featured in the last post, we're also given this Coelophysis pair. Again, it's commendable for its fine details (down to the vestigial fingers) and overall modern look. Coelophysis often didn't fare too well in the early '90s - I'm still haunted by the freakish illustrations that appeared in Dinosaurs! The Jurassic Park toys were cool, though. Pipe-cleaner-o-saurus!

To compensate for the lack of theropods, we are granted an unusually diverse selection of Robins non-dinosaurs. For starters, here's the gharial-like phytosaur Rutiodon decked out in a very fetching stripy brick red colour scheme...

...Followed by the ichthyosaur Stenopterygius, famous for carelessly allowing its very new-not-quite-born babies to become hopelessly killed and fossilised. While not terribly exciting, it's a pleasing enough piece; Robins' penchant for fine line work is put to good effect. I like the red eye, too. It falls on the right side of the 'striking and reptilian/Halloween monster' divide.

His Eurhinodelphis is more monstrous-looking, but it's not Robins' fault - the creature really did have a nose like that. Ridiculous. That dappled light is quite lovely, though. Noteworthy here is the speculative incipient dorsal fin, which Robins illustrates with a rather unusual 'plateau' shape.

But never mind all that - how many readers had no idea that Robins did prehistoric mammals? Me too! It's always a pleasant surprise to learn that an artist's prehistoric animal repertoire is wider than you imagined. Quite few people seem to realise that, for example, Luis Rey does prehistoric mammals, too - and rather well. (And no, they're not brightly coloured).

And with that...ancient alpacas! Now there's a series for you, History Channel. Alien camelids descending on the earliest human civilisations, helping them construct the pyramids, the great Aztec cities, Atlantis, etc. etc., before getting grumpy, spitting at the poxy monkeys and zipping back off into space? Fantastic. It would also explain how camelids had such a significant role in the development of advanced civilisations in both Africa and the Americas (because they did, you know) THINK ABOUT IT.

What I meant to say was: here's Robins' illustration of the early camelid Stenomylus. It's an animal that seldom appears in popular dinosaur andotherprehistoricanimal books, perhaps due to its lack of large teeth, claws, size, or other sexy attributes. It was a wee camelid that lived in North America, lacked some features of modern camelids, and that's about it. But hey, Robins does a nice job - love those stripy pelts and (at the risk of flogging a dead camelid) superb small details. Stenomylus - and Robins - take a bow.

Next week - Doctor Who! No, not Peter Capaldi (well, maybe Peter Capaldi), but a 1976 book featuring dinosaurs and occasionally uncanny depictions of Tom Baker. I can't wait to share it.Marc Vincenthttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-60989703511548266922014-08-11T17:31:00.001-04:002014-08-11T17:31:01.782-04:00Brontësaurus

Brontësaurus. Sepia ink and gouache on Strathmore grey toned paper, 151 x 147mm.

'My literary and palaeo friends and audiences so rarely converge (which is a great pity), but I'm jolly well going to try.'

So I said when I first shared this drawing on my own illustration blog, Twitter, and Facebook page a few weeks ago. It has since gained what was for me quite unprecedented attention for a single piece of work on any of those media platforms.* Why, it's even been spread about on Tumblr without any attribution, which I daresay is about as 'viral' as it gets for me. As usual, I hesitated sharing it here from the first because it offers very little next to the nutritional goodness posted by my Chasmosaurs brethren, but I've been persuaded otherwise. Stay tuned, therefore, for more in this series.

 *Except perhaps for Ol' Salty, which was shared by the Stan Winston School of Character Arts' Facebook page, though as they uploaded the drawing afresh instead of sharing it directly from mine, the figures were not reflected in the latter. *Chagrined mutterings*

Niroothttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-72505654888474188432014-08-06T15:29:00.001-04:002014-08-06T15:40:52.346-04:00Vintage Dinosaur Art: The American Museum of Natural History's Book of DinosaursMeeting our Vintage Dinosaur Art criterion by the slimmest of margins, The American Museum of Natural History's Book of Dinosaurs and Other Ancient Creatures (snappier titles are there none) is a mere twenty years old. However - and as I've said numerous times before - it's amazing how much has changed since the early '90s, even when it comes to restorations of dinosaurs that aren't (yet) known to have been feathered. The AMNH book (as I'm sure you won't mind me calling it) is also notable for featuring artists with differing approaches and styles, which only adds further historical interest. Some of our old friends are in there, but there's at least one highly notable contributor who hasn't been featured in a VDA post before...which always makes me So Very Happy.

Perhaps most prominent among the illustrators for this book - if for no other reason than his work appears on the cover (at least, of the edition I have) - is Michael Rothman. Rothman's work is quite vibrant, with an emphasis on lush greenery that lends his best pieces a quite naturalistic feel. In fact, his plants and landscapes are frequently better than his dinosaurs, which are afflicted by a few contemporaneous palaeoart tropes. But more on that shortly.

With apologies for the dreadful scan.

Rothman's style also occasionally gives his paintings the air of much earlier, Burian-era palaeoart, which I certainly don't object to. There's something rather stately and solid about them, and this particularly applies to the above sepia-tinged scene, in which a brachiosaur adult and juvenile are harassed by a gang of allosaurs, while other Late Jurassic denizens look on. Such are the changing trends even in the artistic styles of palaeoart - never mind the depiction of the animals themselves - that this piece looks much older than it really is at first glance, and it takes the relatively svelte animals to remind us that we're looking at a post-Dino Renaissance work. Of course, there's much that's still just Plain Retro from our standpoint. Perhaps most notably, there's that manifestation of the peculiar notion that sauropod necks were like squishy octopus tentacles with a perma-grinning mug glued to one end. Bones? Where we're going, we won't need bones!

In addition to a certain painterly (shot!) loveliness, Rothman's work also quite clearly exhibits influences from the most prominent palaeoartists of the period, including John Gurche and Mark Hallett. This is nowhere more evident than in the skin textures of the animals he paints; they have a certain leatheriness that seems evocative of Gurche in particular. While the above illustration appears to be an attempt to cram absolutely every early '90s palaeoart trope into one image (naked dromaeosaurs being badasseses! Motherly ornithopods! Noodle-necked elephantine-skinned brachiosaurs! Big armed ol' T. rex with Hallett-o-horns!), it's likely to be a deliberate 'montage' of different animals. In the book, it precedes a chapter that takes a look at the diversity of dinosaurs (andotherancientcreatures). All the same, it's a fun encapsulation of early '90s attitudes - the rather Gurche-esque dromaeosaur in particular. Spot what appears to be a sauropod looking back over its shoulder in the top left - like a less barmy version of the Invicta Mamenchisaurus.

Rothman's cover illustrations are also featured inside the book at a larger size, all the better for a more thorough appreciation. His rather sad and melty-looking brown Apatosaurus reminds me a great deal of Sibbick's work, although that's probably because that's what I grew up with - Sibbick himself borrowed from Hallett back in the '80s. The rather emaciated - dessicated, even - head contrasts with the more rotund (although not overly so) body, while the neck lacks that characteristic apatosaurian extreme width. In fact, it almost seems to become a ribbon at one point. While serviceable as an illustration of a brown sauropod for a museum dinosaur book, this is perhaps the best example of where Rothman's skill at depicting flora comes to the fore. There's a pleasing realism to the splintered pines, and he puts them to good use in the composition. One should never underestimate how much decent scenery adds to the believability of palaeoart.

The power of a well-painted backdrop is nowhere more evident that in both the theatre, and in depictions of Triceratops totally bloodily goring Tyrannosaurus just below the knee. This gently sloping forestscape is just wonderful, although the positioning of the animals here is a little peculiar - like Rexy was just minding his own business, taking a stroll through the forest, when a mad Triceratops barged its way through and slashed his knee. The restoration of the animals isn't too shabby for the time, although Rexy's (again) rather oversized arms are curious, and the splayed hand pointing directly at the viewer reminds me of nothing so much as a certain famous First World War propaganda sheet (American readers might be more familiar with an Uncle Sam-featuring copycat).

A few of Rothman's dinosaurs appear shorn of backgrounds, and they don't hold up nearly as well today. This slightly Stoutian Rexy isn't the worst ever, but is inferior to the one featured in the scene with Triceratops; it suffers from a slightly disproportionate and bony fizzog with enormous, plate-like scales. (Is it just me, or is that a rather coy expression? You alarming devil, Sexy Rexy, you.)

Rothman provides further 'profile' or 'diagnostic' illustrations for the book's 'Gallery of Dinosaurs' (andotherancientcreatures). Contrary to his crocodilian-faced Rexy, they often appear to be largely devoid of dinosaurian scales, instead sporting highly wrinkled, leathery skin. By and large, they are very reminiscent of Sibbick's work for the Normanpedia, although the animals are a little less shapeless in appearance. When compared with Sibbick's lumbering giant theropods, Rothman's Albertosaurus (above) appears very sprightly and agile.

Perhaps most Sibbickesque in appearance is Rothman's Edmontosaurus (in style only; it's not a copy of Sibbick's). Or at least, its back end is - the vintage Sibbick-style Michelin Man skin texture blends into finer scales towards the frond of the animal. Although dated now, there is a pleasing chunky solidity to it - even devoid of context, the creature appears physically massive and heavy, without being overly bloated.

But what of the other artists? Well, I'm happy to report that James Robins has a decent amount of work featured in this book, which I might just have to feature in a post all on its own. His clean, unfussy, and highly modern style contrasts markedly with Rothman's more traditional approach while, as ever, his Paulian maniraptors look as startlingly 'plucked' as they should. His Oviraptor (above) is superb for its time, but Robins' depictions of this dinosaur would become still more prescient in the immediately following years...even if they remained featherless.

And speaking of feathers...unusually, Archaeopteryx is not alone in sporting full-on birdy plumage in the AMNH book - Mononykus does too! Ah, but that's only because it was believed by some authorities at the time to have definitively been a bird (as in, an avialan bird) - not least co-describer Mark Norrell, who in the AMNH book describes how he and his colleagues initially believed the animal to be a non-avian dinosaur, before realising that they'd 'dug up a bird'. As a result, Mononykus is one of the few non-avian theropods discovered prior to 1996 that it's difficult to find an unfeathered illustration of (alongside Avimimus).* The book's illustration (above) - by, you guessed it, Rothman - is quite a treat, and in many respects ahead of its time in depicting a non-avian theropod with such advanced, complex feathers...even if they did think it was a 'proper' bird back then. (Whatever that even means anymore.) It's a lovely piece, with the lighting on the animal's fluffy feather coat being particularly noteworthy. Arguably, it also avoids making the animal look like some sort of monstrous 'lizard-bird', instead presenting a creature that seems of a piece - more than a lot of artists can manage today. A lesson in painting feathered dinosaurs from 1993 - not what I was expecting when I first opened this book!

*Oh, but I did find one. Thank you, Google image search.Marc Vincenthttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-42215942336105268912014-07-25T12:46:00.002-04:002014-07-25T12:46:23.453-04:00Interview: Ross CampbellWe here at LITC were pleasantly surprised by Ross Campbell's art in the recent Turtles in Time #1, which depicted all of its prehistoric creatures with various feathery coverings (including, presciently enough, the ornithischians.) When it turned out that Ross Campbell is active on Deviantart, well, that was too tempting an opportunity to resist. I reached out with a few questions, and he was kind of enough to reply.

So how did you end up on the Turtles in Time creative team? Did you have much input on the setting and on which dinosaurs were featured?

My editor Bobby asked if I wanted to draw Turtles in Time #1, I said "of course I do," and that was that! The writer, Paul Allor, and I talked a bit beforehand about the setting and which dinosaurs we were going to use. Paul picked the ones neccessary for his script, though, such as the Tyrannosaurus and the Triceratops, although for some of them it was more of a general type, like something that could fly. The specific species was left to me.

Since my mom saves everything, I pulled out a bunch of old dinosaur books I had as a kid and picked out the ones I liked and which fit the time period and setting. I picked all of the background dinosaurs myself, such as the Therizinosaurus and Pepperoni [the baby Protoceratops Raphael takes as a pet]. When I came on board, I was determined to give the Turtles an adorable dinosaur sidekick, and I wouldn't rest until I'd gotten her into the story! For the flying reptile we needed Mikey to ride, I decided on the Quetzalcoatlus, not just because of the time period but because it seemed the most rid-
able.

Pepperoni is a great little side character. Do you have much of an interest in paleontology? Do you see yourself drawing them again in the future?

I don't have a big, active interest in it, other then that I like dinosaurs. I don't read up on the science or the new discoveries that often, but I still enjoy it. I especially love reading about the weird discoveries that shatter the popular image of what people think dinosaurs are. I used to draw dinosaurs a lot as a kid, and I'd love to draw them again in the future. I'm doing a Ninja-Turtles fan-comic right now that I post online, and some dinosaurs might show up in that.

What was the process you used to do the dinosaur character design? Was it something you had a lot of freedom with?

Paul and I were on the same page before we ever discussed it. I've always loved dinosaurs with feathers since I was a kid, so I knew that was what I was going to do. I wasn't sure how Paul or Nickelodeon would like it, although I was prepared to fight for it. I can get pretty stubborn. But luckily, Paul asked for feathered dinosaurs before I even said anything, so it worked out. Early on I had been planning on coloring the issue myself, so when I did dinosaur sketches I did color schemes for them too. Some of which eventual colorist Bill Crabtree used, like the colors for the Tyrannosaurus and Pepperoni. Nickelodeon didn't like my Triceratops colors, so we had to change that. It was a little too weird, I guess.

I love bright and weird colored dinosaurs, though. I get bored of everything always being shown in grey and brown and single solid colors. I wanted the dinosaurs in the background to be more colorful than they ended up being, but there was a bit of concern over my Valentine's Day/Easter-colored dinosaurs, so it was scaled back.

Another thing was that even though I wanted there to be some accuracy, like the feathers, I also wanted it to be cartoony and cute. I love Jurassic Park and all that, but I get a little tired of dinosaurs always being expected to be "badass" and fearsome and ugly all of the time. So I wanted to do something in the middle, which, to me anyway, makes them seem more believable within the world of the comic. And it just fit the tone better.

Was there any kind of dinosaur that you wanted to add but couldn't?

I would have liked to have drawn some swimming dinosaurs, and it would have been fun to draw the Turtles dealing with something really big, like a Mamenchiasaurus. It would be fun to draw something at that scale.

Finally, Ross, what's your favorite prehistoric animal?

I love Glyptodon! And Deinonychus.

Thanks for the interview! OK, Pepperoni, play us out.

Asher Elbeinhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-23194941132494844112014-07-22T17:31:00.000-04:002014-07-22T17:31:13.029-04:00Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Mysterious World of Dinosaurs - Part 2In the first part of our examination of The Mysterious World of Dinosaurs, we came upon chubby, oily-looking tyrannosaurs, alarmingly carnivorous-looking stegosaurs, and Godzilla. However - and as the title implies - this book goes beyond the eponymous archosaur clade, taking a look at various other Mesozoic monstrosities. Bring on the zombie-pterosaurs!

Now let's be fair - depicting pterosaurs in dessicated, mummy-like fashion was commonplace at the time this book was produced. Contemporary mass estimates had giants like Pteranodon weigh about the same as the shrivelled walnut that sits between Ken Ham's ears. In order to make sense of this, life restorations had to be stripped of all but the most essential bodily tissues, and occasionally even of those. Phillipps' Pterodactylus (above) is not an aberration, but the norm - right down to the erroneous dangling bat-posture. As it happens, I believe this is a rather effective plate - it's striking, nicely composed, and shows the animal's key attributes and overall form rather nicely, without being all dull and diagrammatical about it. So there.

...Having said all that, some of these illustrations are still pretty gruesome. Phillips' Rhamphorhynchus (above) is arguably not as extreme as William Stout's Quetzalcoatlus, but still resembles a nightmarish phantasm, a pitch-black, skeletal wraith ready to descend from the skies with an unearthly screech and peck Daniel Radcliffe's eye out. Rhamphorhynchus (is that really how you spell it?) was rather scary-looking anyway, what with its jagged array of grotesque, jutting teeth. Nevertheless, in the world of palaeoart at least, it has tended to come a distant second in the freakiness stakes to a certain big-bonced basal pterosaur found by Mary Anning...

...Except in this case, where Dimorphodon actually has rather a sad air about it. It's those cow-like chops, but more than that, it's that gaze - a wet-eyed look of wearisome resignation. Life just ain't fair if you're a sunken-headed pterosaur in an out-of-print children's book. Although clearly upset about its general appearance, the bat-like black colour scheme actually looks rather slick; as Christian Bale would tell you in between screaming at film crew, everything looks better in black. (Of course, my own tendency towards sombre attire might, er, colour my views, somewhat.) The fur is noteworthy - in spite of their rather emaciated appearance in the illustrations, pterosaurs are not described as panda-like evolutionary failures in this book. Rather, they are declared to be likely warm-blooded, active, and relatively intelligent.

But brains or no, pterosaurs do have an alarming tendency to end up as somebody's lunch in TMWoD. This particularly applies to Pteranodon, which not only seems to fly directly into a tyrannosaur's mouth on the cover, but is later caught unawares by a very Knightian mosasaur. Phillipps' skill with a brush comes to the fore here, as the swirling, tumultuous seascapes are quite beautifully painted. Given the artists' obvious talents in this area (and, er, rather similar works by Burian and Knight), the following piece seems, quite happily, inevitable...

LET THEM FIGHT! It's the classical scene of crest-backed mosasaur versus impossibly snake-necked, rearing elasmosaur; a retrospectively silly palaeoart trope that nevertheless produced some brilliantly exciting artwork. Like this. Phillipps can't top Burian's more realistic and well-informed approach, but this is still a wonderfully lively and engaging piece - from the furious vortex of the waves, to the creatures' bloody wounds reflecting the crimson sky. This painting, we now know, is fantastical...but you've got to love it anyway.

The illustration that's aged perhaps the most gracefully also features a marine reptile, namely Nothosaurus. No doubt it's not entirely correct (those eyes don't look to be in quite the right place, for one), but the body plan is there, as are the snaggly teeth, correctly showing variation in form. Most importantly*, it's very beautifully painted, with a naturalistic approach that seems to be missing from many of the dinosaurs in this book - maybe because they were thought of more as 'monsters'. I particularly like the eye. Reminds me of pigeons.

Similarly well-painted is this Ornithosuchus. The book follows the once-popular idea that this animal was ancestral to theropods, and the illustration makes the animal appear more theropod-like than it likely was (even if certain Triassic pseudosuchians really did end up looking quite theropodesque). In spite of any inaccuracies, this plate is highly evocative in placing the animal in a very naturalistic-looking environment. It just goes to show that, even when they don't really know the animals they're portraying, decent artists can still pull through in the end. (Whereas Pixelshack never will. Give it up, DK.)

And finally...over on our Facebook page, Fabian Wiggers asked if this post would feature "that duckbill leaning against a tree in an awkward way and trying to chew a droopy branch". Well, here it is. After being all effusive about those other pieces (or at least, I probably was from the point of view of marine reptile bods), I'll have to shrug my shoulders and admit that this one's pretty bad. It's retro in the worst, 'let's copy other artists and insert generic backgrounds and vague trees!' kind of way. It's brown and dull and wrinkly and blah.

Of course, it could be worse.

*What can I say? When I drink, I betray myself.
Marc Vincenthttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-9107291904794625632.post-84217160026884697092014-07-15T17:06:00.002-04:002014-07-15T17:11:42.631-04:00The TetZooCon was onSo, TetZooCon 2014 happened, and you won't hear a bad word said of it among those of us who attended. The event was a spin-off of the incredi-popular Tetrapod Zoology blog, authored by fish-hating mega-brain Darren Naish, and also the similarly named podcast, hosted by Darren and partner in tapir in-joke crime, John Conway. I'm sure neither will need an introduction around these parts; suffice it to say, the event reflected the incredibly diverse range of topics discussed on the blog and podcast, ranging from Dougal Dixon future-bats to false azhdarchid head nubbins, and from mermaids made from papier maché and string to having a seabird land on one's head. And there was a quiz. And it was bonkers. But more on that shortly. (All photos by Niroot.)

Darren Naish

I'm afraid to say that I didn't have my onetime-coulda-been-a-journalist hat on for this one; quite apart from the fact that it doesn't fit very well any more, I'd paids my money and the choice I tooks was to sit back and enjoy the show. Therefore, I'll be taking the lazy option and basing my (brief) report on the schedule we were all given. I'm sorry. Sorta.

The Con was held at the London Wetland Centre, and opened with a talk from Darren himself on speculative zoology - its history and why we should give a flying flish about it. In doing so, he drew upon distinct strands of speculative zoology, including horrifying visions of the future, making (scientifically informed) shit up about the past, and inventing alternative timelines in which sapient iguanas won World War II. A personal highlight was a look at the work of Dougal Dixon, whose speculative zoological works included dinosaurs that (more-or-less) have since been discovered, silly dinosaurs, the aforementioned flightless bats, and Man After Man, which is not discussed in polite society. Darren also pointed out how, in spite of its apparently 'nitch' appeal, speculative zoology has proven to be incredibly popular; this prompted perhaps the most in-jokey slide of the show, which got a hearty chuckle from the audience. Here's looking at you, Raven Amos.

Mark Witton

 Darren's talk was followed by Mark Witton's, and the pair gave each other high-fives as their giant medallions swung about their necks (no, not really). Mark was there to discuss the history of research on azdarchid pterosaurs, they of the huge heads, wing spans and, of late, media presence. In doing so, he illuminated the thinking behind a number of palaeoart memes related to these animals, and Quetzalcoatlus in particular (a topic that has been covered on the Tet Zoo blog). Perhaps most notable for readers of this blog, we saw how a very brief paper on bits-and-pieces of pterosaur resulted in illustrator Giovanni Caselli tasked with drawing an animal that was 'really honkin' big', and otherwise left to his own devices. And so, the pin-headed nightmare monster was born. Later came Sibbick's Quetzalcoatlus, itself (like everything else by Sibbick, ever) copied endlessly in spite of mistakes borne of misinterpreted material.

Paolo Viscardi

The following two talks both concerned cryptozoology - a recurring subject on the blog, and also tying in neatly, of course, with the Cryptozoologicon Volume 1, which Darren and John worked on alongside Memo Kosemen. Paolo Viscardi's hugely entertaining history of 'Feejee' mermaids revealed how meticulous scientific analysis can yield surprising results from even obviously fake specimens. Long thought of as 'monkeys sewn to fish', it only took a cursory examination of the teeth to show that this most certainly wasn't the case - they had fish jaws! In fact, while the lower half (or at least the outside) was indeed a fish, the top half of each 'mermaid' - as revealed by CAT scanning - was composed of whatever odds and ends the manufacturers had to hand, including paper, wood and even balls of string. As revealed by Paolo, gullible Europeans parted with unimaginably huge sums of money for these forgeries, and - thanks to PT Barnum famously getting his hands on one - there are now forgeries of forgeries. Of course, there was also a look at the history of mermaids in folklore throughout the world, which gave the talk an intriguing anthropological bent.

Carole Jahme

 Similarly, Carole Jahme's talk - 'Was Caliban an Orang Pendek?' - was a concise, but thorough, look at the history of legendary 'wild men', supposedly happened upon by European explorers in Southeast Asia. So authoritative were such accounts, Linnaeus saw fit to include the likes of 'Homo sylvestri' in his Systema Naturae, albeit under the 'Paradoxa'. The title alluded to the notion that, given that Shakespeare moved among the circles of explorers, sailors and scientists, and often incorporated the latest scientific ideas into his plays, perhaps it wouldn't be too fanciful to suppose that Caliban was inspired by accounts of 'ape men' cryptids from exotic lands.

Then there was lunch, with fine company and a nice, cool beer. My first of many that day (I'm like that when I get chatty).

Helen Meredith

The beer was a tough act to follow, but Helen Meredith did an admirable job. Her talk posed the question: "What have amphibians ever done for us?" (Yes, there were Monty Python references.) Determined to convince us of the worthiness of the squishy-skinned ones, Helen made the case on several very important grounds. They're an important part of countless ecosystems throughout the globe, of course, and they're far more diverse and crazy than many people realise - ranging from terrifyingly gigantic Japanese giant salamanders to minuscule, limbless caecilians, which excite the herpy types no end (as Helen demonstrated with photos of herself and colleagues in the field). But there's more - we can still learn so much from amphibians that can be applied, in particular, to the field of medicine. Of course, there was also a highly entertaining sojourn into the world of frogs secreting psychotropic substances from their skin. You know, licking toad, man. All in all, brilliant stuff.

Mike Taylor

 You'd be forgiven for thinking that Mike Taylor (of SV-POW!) was tripping on frogs when he was reeling off facts and figures pertaining to the awesomeness of sauropod necks, but then such is the ridiculous massiveness - and neckiness - of those most preposterous of dinosaurs. Mike was there to reveal the secrets of sauropods' success; a combination of a big, sturdy gut-platform, a small head, an efficient, avian-like respiratory system, and highly specialised (and numerous) neck vertebrae. It's something that mammals, limited as they are by their evolutionary inheritance, will never manage - even if Mike conceded that giraffes do a pretty good job given their unfortunate circumstances. Oh, and he apologised again for the whole Giraffatitan thing. He hates the name, you know, but what can ya do...

The workshop - the audience could view the artists' progress on-screen. L-R: MC John Conway, Mark Witton, Bob Nicholls.

Dinosaurs continued to dominate in the palaeoart workshop, during which the audience - along with artists Mark Witton, Bob Nicholls, and John Conway - were asked to fashion a life restoration from a jumbled set of bones. With scientists in the audience chipping in with additional anatomical info, the three palaeoartists were able to conclude that the creature was an archosaur with long, sturdy hind limbs and a fat behind, but nevertheless came up with three very different imagined creatures.

Niroot's creation. ROTTEN CHEATER!

And no wonder - the illustration they were working from was of the Mantell-piece. Of course, quite a number of people in the audience realised this (including me), and consequently handed in any number of variations on an 'old-school Iguanodon'. And yeah, I contributed one of them. I'm a git.

Neil Phillips

 Photographer Neil Phillips was next, and what a treat he had in store - a series of stunning photos and videos of British wildlife, with all the entertaining anecdotes to match. Neil's been climbing around rocky islands, scrambling about in the darkness, freezing his arse off in a hide in the depths of winter, had birds run at him, attack him and land on his head, and smugly beat fellow photographers with expensive kit to the best shot. What a guy.

Then there was the quiz. The first question was easy - Tyrannosaurus rex, duh. Then it got difficult. Then it got stonkingly difficult. Niroot and I bashed our heads together and managed to walk away with third prize. First prize - a domestic pig skull - went to Kelvin Britton, who managed a frankly absurd 23 out of 30, the swine (djageddit?), while Richard Hing took second. The quiz ranged from the generic names of plesiosaurs, to shrews, to crocs, to bats, to whatever the hell the 10,000th comment on the blog was. (I still can't remember.)

Oh boy. (This photo courtesy of Darren.)

And finally - we went on a tour of the wetland centre. Then went to the pub, where I probably had one too many. You can't blame me - they had Fuller's ESB on cask. Fantastic beer.

NOT THE DUCKLINGS!

To conclude; a wonderful time was had by all, and I'd sincerely like to thank Darren, John and everyone involved in organising the day, not to mention everyone who put up with my inebriated ramblings at the pub. It was a rewarding day, I met wonderful people, and I hope to see even more there next year. (Oh yes, there'd better be a next year!)Marc Vincenthttp://firstname.lastname@example.com