Zoo Chorzów, or the Silesian Zoological Park, is located a stone’s throw from the centre of Katowice in the Upper Silesia region of southern Poland. The zoo was founded on its current location in 1954, as part of the Socialist-era post-mining development of a big city park also including an amusement park, a planetarium, a sports centre and an art gallery. And there’s dinosaurs. The Dinosaur Valley section of the zoo, or the Kotlina Dinozaurów, was finished in 1974. Originally,…
Due to illness, we missed an episode of the podcast, but we are back on track with the episode recorded in April! This time, Dr. Mark Witton takes us back to what might be the first large-scale expression of palaeoart in 3D: The dinosaurs at the Geological Court at Crystal Palace Park! Tying in with his new book with Ellinor Michel, he tells us all about their history, their surprising influence and their uncertain future. Also, a lot of unashamed…
So, you might imagine we’ve all been spoiled a bit lately, what with Prehistoric Planet and all. It’s easy to develop high expectations, and to expect everything to be subject to the same sublime standards of visual quality and scientific accuracy. Lest we get too comfortable, I think it prudent to take a stroll among some good old fashioned ugly Chinese dinosaur animatronics. It’s good to be reminded that dinosaurs in public spaces can still be rubbish, too. Take it…
Our journey into the distant past (that is, the eighties) continues today! Last time, we looked at specifically the dinosaurs among Chris Forsey’s work for Creatures of the Past. Today, we will dive into the sea of the Devonian and work our way up past all those jolly otherprehistoricanimals. When it comes to Dunkleosteus, there’s really two ways to go about it. You can either make a somewhat naturalistic looking Dunk that doesn’t overplay it, you can give it expressionless,…
Here’s an unoffical followup to this post. As I explained there, my work as a science educator takes me to a large number of primary schools across the country, and whenever I can I sneak around the school library to see if I can find some palaeo-related content that I didn’t know yet. This one time, I found one of Jean M. Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear books, most definitely not for children! I wonder how that got there?…
There’s a new episode of the LITC podcast! In this one, Marc, Niels and Natee tackle one of Britain’s most well-liked childhood heroes of palaeoart, the late Bernard Robinson. From this innocuous children’s book, we then discuss the worst day in the history of the world with Riley Black, writer of the upcoming The Last Days of the Dinosaurs. It turns out to be a surprisingly personal yet universal book. We discuss the metaphoric resonance of the story of how…
In the fifteenth episode of the LITC podcast, Niels, Natee and Marc tackle some controversial subjects. We start with the end of the world, and things go downhill from there. Today’s palaeoart subject is the inimitable and insufferable genius of Konstantin Flyorov, and Natee interviews the wonderful Levi Hastings. Did we really have to choose this month to be talking about Russian palaeoart? Which dinosaur can bite your hand off? Are Natee and Levi kindred spirits? What does Niels mean…
Time for a quick one! Here’s a little oddity I found somewhere online. As far as I understand, this was a free givaway at Sinclair petrol stations all the way back in 1934, making this one of the oldest books I’ll probably ever review for LITC. Popular books with original palaeoart are exceedingly rare from this time. The first dinosaur boom, cranked up by the Victorians and recklessly kicked into high gear during the Bone Wars, was sputtering out of…
Carrying on from last time! The woes of 2021 drove me to the occasional book shopping spree, and as a result I’ve got at least another year’s worth of VDA books on my shelf. If I recall, this book was a fortunate find on Dutch web shopping giant Bol punt com. I was unfamiliar to it but it turns out that a lot of you grew up with this one, so I hope you enjoy part two of this trip…
Slightly late but sure as rain comes the fourteenth episode of the world-famous Chasmosaurs Podcast! Natee, Marc and Niels dive into the Zallinger dynasty, as after covering Rudolph’s famous mural, this time we shine a light on his son Peter Zallinger. Natee interviews Greer Stothers, who has a book coming out called Kaleidoscope of Dinosaurs, a great title for a book. We also have a brief interview with Tom van der Linden, who may just have discovered a new dinosaur!…
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.