I was only a year old when BBC’s landmark series Walking with Dinosaurs first aired, but I have to imagine watching it in 1999 must have felt similar to the way I felt watching Prehistoric Planet this week. Not since then has the age of dinosaurs ever been portrayed so believably. For the first time in a big-budget media project we’re getting depictions of Mesozoic life that isn’t plagued by concessions and strange design choices. Feathers are commonplace. Multi-ton behemoths…
There’s a new face on the blog! Sophie has been getting some attention on Twitter with, among other things, her threads on vintage dinosaur books. Of course, it was a matter of time before she found her way here. Please welcome Sophie and come say hi in the comments! – Niels Hi there, everyone! I’m Sophie, you might know me from my Twitter where I’ve made a name for myself with my enormous threads on old dinosaur art, regular commentary…
While old dinosaur books are a finite resource, as this blog grinds inexorably on – as years become decades, as countless sentient beings live, die and are consigned to oblivion by the unfeeling laws of an immeasurably vast universe, as my bones weary and ache and my teeth develop irritating, expensive faults – so we are able to increase the scope of our Vintage Dinosaur Art posts. Our sole criterion has always been that the books we cover should be…
Hello everyone! This is Niels, and I’m here to look back on my first year writing for Love In The Time Of Chasmosaurs. I figured after a year of writing I deserved to toot my own horn a little. My first article, the write-up of TetZooCon 2019, appeared exactly one year ago! A little while before that, Marc Vincent invited me to write for this blog, which I had been a fan of and through which we met. Of course,…
It’s time for one last outing with Peter Zallinger’s tan-and-green creations (see parts 1 and 2), only this time, we’re entering the Cenozoic! Although not right away. There are some heretofore unseen ceratopsians that deserve a look, first. Triceratops, being the ceratopsian rock star that it is, gets an entire page to itself. This is one of my favourite illustrations in the book – not only is it superbly detailed, in every aspect from the animal’s scaly skin folds to…
January 20, 2020 marked the bicentennial of Indiana University, the august institution where I completed my MFA studies and am now employed as a graphic designer. It also was the day that the university unveiled a special reproduction of Jefferson’s ground sloth, Megalonyx jeffersonii, fondly dubbed Megajeff. The reason the new model received a special place during the university’s bicentennial festivities is because of its connection to the history of fossil collections at IU. The original specimens were discovered on…
Dear paleontologists, Please FOR THE LOVE OF THE ELDER GODS provide measurements for the fossils you publish. P.S. How did this not sink in 10 years ago? P.P.S. Post inspired by Gabriel Ugueto’s anguished tweet this morning.…
And so we return to yet another book that I hadn’t heard of until recently, but turned out to be a beloved childhood staple for many people. It also contains very little truly original art, with its illustrations being slightly reworked (and sometimes, de-feathered) versions of other artists’ work, when they aren’t outright copies. I know, I know – that sort of thing was accepted more back then. Still, figuring out which artists have ‘inspired’ the work here is entertaining…
As readers of this blog should know all too well, palaeoart is a field where copying other people’s work is commonplace. This is especially true if a nonexpert artist has been commissioned to cook something up on the cheap. How many books have been reviewed here whose artwork can be traced back to the old greats? How many lesser artists have we seen who’ve copied the work of originals like Charles Knight, Zdeněk Burian, Robert Bakker, Greg Paul or John…
I’m happy to report that the 2019 Survey of Paleoartists is now available in Spanish! Thanks to Pablo Lara and Julián Bayona for their hard work to make the translation. This survey will remain active through July of 2019, and at that point we will begin tabulating the results of both versions of the survey and combining them into a report of the results. While we’ve already surpassed the number of respondents from the 2017 survey, having this year’s survey…
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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.