Karen Carr is one of those artists whose lack of presence on this blog seems to defy explanation; originally from Texas (but now living in New Mexico), she has a huge palaeoart back catalogue, with work featured in a wide range of institutions and publications. Go and check out her website for just a taste. She’s chiefly a natural history artist, although that’s definitely underselling the diversity of her art, which ranges from murals to sculptures to maps. Of course,…
Remember a time before The Franchise had a near-monopoly on movie dinosaurs? Me neither. To avoid any references to the Crichton and Spielberg-spawned behemoth, you’d have to travel in time all the way back to the 1980s. And that seems like as good a reason as any to set the ‘modern day’ portions of any new dinosaur films during that decade – it’s the most recent era during which the characters can quite plausibly encounter Mesozoic beasties and not start…
Having examined the changing image of Tyrannosaurus in 2023’s The Tyrannosaur’s Feathers, Adam Smith, Jonathan Emmett and Stieven van der Poorten have returned with a similarly-themed follow-up book – only this time, featuring a whole range of prehistoric animals. That’s right – in spite of the title, this book isn’t confined to our favourite Mesozoic reptile pals (it’s just that Great Dinosaur andotherprehistoricanimal Mistakes wasn’t quite as snappy). Can it maintain the difficult balance between nuanced scientific accuracy, child-friendly brevity, and pun-laden dialogue between two…
In this slightly-delayed-by-the-heatwave episode, Gemma, Marc and Natee finally get around to discussing some of the best-known and most widely reproduced and copied palaeoart of all time – Neave Parker’s monochrome saurians as published in the Natural History Museum (or rather, British Museum (Natural History))’s 1960s book entitled Dinosaurs. Then, Marc interviews American artist and author Timothy J Bradley on a career that encompasses Dinamation (see episode 49), toy design for Hasbro and literally hundreds of illustrations for the Jurassic Park Institute…
Following my first post on Usborne’s Children’s Encyclopedia of Prehistoric Life (aka Prehistoric Life, part of the In School and At Home series in Russia in the ’90s), at least four people wanted me to carry on and review some of the non-Mesozoic, non-dinosaurian illustrations. So here we go! Rather than start with the smelly mammals of the Cenozoic, I’d prefer it if we could first go back to a simpler, better time…the Permian, or possibly the early Triassic. (Who can tell?)…
“Seaton Tramway operates narrow gauge heritage trams between Seaton, Colyford and Colyton in East Devon’s glorious Axe Valley,” according to their website, providing superb views across the wetland habitats of curlews, lapwings, egrets, shelducks, swans, and many more. But just in case you’d rather see Mesozoic dinosaurs, Seaton Tramway (Enterprises) Ltd. also operates Jurassic Discovery, a venue filled with robotic saurians located directly next to their Seaton station. (And an indoor soft play area, but that doesn’t concern us.) What’s…
In the decade before the Normanpedia appeared and all and sundry decided to slavishly copy John Sibbick’s work, Giovanni Caselli’s illustrations for Halstead’s The evolution and ecology of the Dinosaurs were often held up as the gold standard. Or so it would seem, based on the number of imitators. (Incidentally, did you know that there is a greater timespan between my review of the Halstead book and now than between Tyrannosaurus and humans?) This week’s example is Usborne’s Children’s Encyclopedia of…
Gregory Wenzel’s gorgeous Giant Dinosaurs of the Jurassic is well deserving of a second entry, especially as I showed my terrible theropod bias last time. Given the predominance of carnivores in the previous post, why not kick off with the completely harmless, very innocent and almost certainly meek and impeccably well-behaved Dryosaurus this time? While certainly not a Giant Dinosaur, Dryosaurus helps flesh out the wider ecosystem surrounding Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus and the rest. While it maintains the same rather sleek, Paulian aesthetic as the…
Last time, we took a look at some of the many theropods illustrated by Tim Bradley for the now-defunct Jurassic Park Institute Dinopedia. Let’s check out a few more of those before moving on to the sauropods. Thanks again to Tim for providing these illustrations, it’s a real pleasure to be able to see them again after all these years! I foolishly neglected to include a tyrannosaur last time, so here’s Daspletosaurus to make up for it. The intensity of the blue,…
In this no-doubt pivotal 50th episode of the somewhat irregular LITC podcast, Gemma and Marc interview Tim Haines about his latest televisual venture featuring CG recreations of prehistoric animals in photogenic settings – Surviving Earth! But before that, a short preamble packs in Isle of Wight shoutouts, Thai-ropods (or something like that), and Gemma’s boundless flair for the dramatic. In the News Marc’s been back to the Dinosaur Expeditions Centre on the Isle of Wight, the home base and showcase…
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Chasmosaurus belli silhouette in custom bulleted list by Scott D. Sampson, Mark A. Loewen, Andrew A. Farke, Eric M. Roberts, Catherine A. Forster, Joshua A. Smith, and Alan L. Titus, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sourced from PhyloPic.