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Marc Vincent

King Tyrant by Mark Witton – review

Book Review

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…

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Podcast Show Notes: Episode 39 – Sibbick and Sivgin

Podcast Show Notes

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…

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Remembering the Carnegie Collection, 10 years on

Toys

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…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs (Home Reference Library)

Vintage Dinosaur Art

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…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs (Ladybird Square books)

Vintage Dinosaur Art

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…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: Oxford First Book of Dinosaurs

Vintage Dinosaur Art

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…

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All aboard for 2025

Attraction Review Personal reflection

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…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaur (DK Revealed)

Vintage Dinosaur Art

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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Vintage Dinosaur Telly: The Magic School Bus

TV review

Seatbelts, everyone! A few weeks ago I reviewed The Magic School Bus in the Time of the Dinosaurs, and mused at the end that I might have to seek out the TV episode on the same theme…which was in no way an appeal for commenters to do the work for me and provide a link, oh no. (As if I’d be so lazy.) Nevertheless, Zain Ahmed obligingly provided a link to a YouTube video. Thanks, Zain! (Admittedly, it’s not exactly…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Magic School Bus in the Time of the Dinosaurs

Vintage Dinosaur Art

The Magic School Bus franchise was a big deal at exactly the right sort of time for it to have impacted my childhood, but it completely passed me by – probably because I’m British, and it wasn’t quite as well known here. I do have vague memories of a fantastical yellow bus (which was a bit of an alien concept – the yellow school bus, that is) that could fly through space and whatnot, but that’s about it. A shame,…

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