A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed a book from 1993’s Dinosaur Dynasty series (written by Dougal Dixon, published by Highlights for Children in the US and Watts in the UK) for the first time since 2013. Well, here’s another one! Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a copy of A Closer Look for sale outside the US, so here’s Death and Discovery, which predictably is rather lighter on the life reconstructions. But there’s still good stuff to be had, although not courtesy…
Part of the same Dinosaur Dynasty series that brought us Giants of the Earth and The Real Monsters, Dinosaurs – All Shapes and Sizes was published in 1993 by Highlights for Children in the US and Watts Books in the UK, and was one of the several popular dinosaur books that Dougal Dixon wrote one evening while engaging in lively conversation and playing a game of darts down at his local. (Which is not to imply that it’s bad, merely that he…
Does the world need yet another book about Tyrannosaurus rex? Mark Witton’s here to make a good case that it does. As one of the best-known and most well-studied of all charismatic Mesozoic dinosaurs (sorry, hadrosaurs), there’s more than enough to say about this infamous species to fill a coffee table book, and such is the ever-changing world of palaeontology these days that there’ll inevitably have been plenty of exciting developments since the last such book came along. Plus, and…
Just in time to make sure it’s not an April Fools joke comes episode 39 of the world-famous Chasmosaurs podcast! It’s time once again to talk about that Grand Signeur of palaeoart, his Lordship John Sibbick, King of the Isle of Wight (maybe). This time, we’re looking at the lesser-known followup to the classic Normanpedia, the grandly-titled WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH!!! After that, Marc has a chat with Swiss author and historian T.K. Sivgin, who has been known to…
An awful lot of dinosaur toys and models have been created and collected since the dawn of the mass-produced plastic tat era (let’s call it the ‘Tatozoic’), but few have had as much impact as the Carnegie Collection (manufactured by Safari Ltd). The models made by Invicta Plastics for the London Natural History Museum are certainly up there (as we’ve discussed on the podcast), as are the Battat and Tyco ranges of the ’80s and ’90s, but the Carnegie Collection…
In my further quest to avoid the DK Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Life from 2001 (which I do now own, at least), here’s another book from around that time – Dinosaurs, published in 2002 by Fog City Press. It’s a rather generic affair all told, but I’m sure there’s someone out there for whom this is an important childhood memory. Besides which, it features illustrations by Steve Kirk and Luis Rey (among others), not to mention an interesting mix of…
Say “Ladybird dinosaur book” to someone, and they’ll very likely think of the book illustrated by Bernard Robinson that was reprinted a number of times and spanned the childhoods of multiple generations. (Well, at least two.) I reviewed it all the way back in 2011, so perhaps my review is now as nostalgic for some people as Ladybird books are for others. (Nah, just kidding. I’m not so deluded.) Robinson’s illustrations, while technically superb and highly memorable, were looking rather…
As the sort of unremarkable kids’ book that you might find buried in a stack at a charity shop, looking a little forlorn (but I found on eBay, of course), you might not expect too much from the Oxford First Book of Dinosaurs (part of a series that included further volumes on animals, art, maths, science, and space). As you’ve no doubt guessed, it uses a lot of art recycled from earlier books. Ah, but in this case, it’s a…
Not wanting the last post of the year to be a vanilla Vintage Dinosaur Art post featuring some filler art from 20 years ago presented a conundrum. What else am I supposed to do these days? A few different ideas came to mind – a bit of personal reflection, a review of a museum or other attraction that I’d failed to post about, or a humorous comparison of ‘expert reacts’ videos regarding dinosaur media. In the end, I decided to…
Regular readers (we have some, right?) will be aware that our sole criterion for a book’s inclusion in Vintage (=Old) Dinosaur Art is that it be 20 years old. Consequently, books from the early 2000s have now entered our purview. It was a time when, in the wake of Walking With Dinosaurs, publishers demanded increasing numbers of CG creations in lieu of more traditional illustrations and model photography. Dorling Kindersley (aka DK) very much followed this trend, inserting very dodgy…
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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.