It’s been almost four years since I had the bright idea to review the Eyewitness Dinosaur video, a factual short film that was a treasured childhood possession (and something I’ve actually managed to hold onto, which I’m happy about even if it’s on a totally obsolete format and the film is now readily available online. So there). In the interim, I’ve been made aware of another kid-friendly dino-factual VHS that emerged from the UK over a decade prior – in…
How about a little more from the world of palaeontological philatelelely? Last time, we took a look at stamps from various countries including the UK, Poland, Cuba, and China, with the promise of more to come, because “we haven’t even talked about Tanzania yet.” Best get right to that, then. Although they date from 1988 and 1991, the artwork on these stamps borrows from(/outright copies) much earlier palaeoart, most obviously Burian. Most stamps simply name the animal, but the lovely…
Given that the sorts of people who are enthusiastic about dinosaurs and prehistory also tend to possess carefully curated collections of curious objects, it’s only natural that there’s a strong overlap with philately, that is to say, stamp collecting. (After all, isn’t all science other than physics merely stamp collecting?) I’ve never much been into it myself – I have just a couple of dinosaur-related sets, purely because of the dinosaurs – but it’s easy to see the appeal. Happily,…
Published by The Trumpet Club (great name) in 1990, New Questions and Answers about Dinosaurs is exactly the right age to be the sort of book that I might have encountered in my very first years learning about dinosaurs. Except, I didn’t – perhaps it was more widely available in the US than over here, for that is where this copy came from, sent over once again by Herman Diaz. (Thank you Herman!) In terms of the artwork, it’s a…
Falling very much into that particular sub-category of kiddy fodder dinosaur book in which the animals almost all inhabit parched desertscapes, Now You Can Read About…Dinosaurs was published by Brimax Books in 1984 (with this edition arriving in 1985). For the mid 1980s, it’s pretty much par for the course – a little backward when compared with the full-throttle Dino Renaissance art that was already out there, but hardly much more retrograde than even the Normanpedia. It was books like this…
Merry holidays! Here’s a fairly unremarkable book with a perfunctory title but, admittedly, a rather striking cover. Prehistoric Animals, by Sam and Beryl Epstein with illustrations by W R Lohse, was first published by George C. Harrap & Co in the UK in 1958, with this edition arriving in 1959. For its time, it’s not half bad, even if the monochrome illustrations aren’t necessarily all that exciting for our purposes. That jacket, though… There’s one thing I must address first…
Over a decade go, on the blog’s previous incarnation, I wrote a slightly unusual Vintage Dinosaur Art article about a single poster. Said artwork was produced to accompany the officially endorsed Natural History Museum (or, as it properly was at the time, British Museum (Natural History)) dinosaur toy line, made by Invicta Plastics of England. At the time, I mentioned that I knew of two posters, both with the same theme (an Age of Reptiles-esque seamless transition through time), but…
Who doesn’t want another coffee table book filled with very pretty palaeoart printed on good quality paper? Mesozoic Art is the spiritual successor to Dinosaur Art and Dinosaur Art II, both published by Titan Books in 2012 and 2017, respectively. As Bloomsbury has published this one, it can’t be a sequel in the literal sense, even if the front cover is very, very strongly suggestive of it being so. It also (in spite of the cover design) departs from its…
Described as “a collection of widely differing essays around a central theme,” Before the Ark was published in 1975 by the BBC and “based upon the BBC Television series” of the same name. Said series has seemingly disappeared into complete obscurity, although it does get a mention on Alan Charig’s Wikipedia page, and I also found this listing in the BBC Programme Index. (It’s not on YouTube, though, and if you do try searching for it, you’ll come across an…
Mesozoic marine reptiles have been popular subjects in illustration since the Dawn of Palaeoart, with artists keen to emphasise their monstrous strangeness and savagery, and the primordial nature of the world they lived in. Such is most definitely the case here, in 1977’s Sea Monsters of Long Ago (clue’s in the title), published by Scholastic Book Services, written by Millicent E Selsam, and illustrated by John Hamberger. (Mmm…Hamberger.) Although this is a book clearly aimed at young children, Hamberger doesn’t…
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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.