Welcome back! You may have previously seen me cover the Ornithomimids and Troodon volumes in the Carolrohda Special Dinosaurs Series. As Don and Donna month enters its second month, it’s time to take a break from all those charmingly dated unfeathered ’90s coelurosaurs (don’t worry, they’ll be back) and take a look at a specialized volume of palaeontology and palaeoart that is charmingly dated in a completely different way! Published, again, in 1996, Seismosaurus – The Longest Dinosaur is the…
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…
It’s time for another entry into Don and Donna month, which will take more than a month but time is meaningless. Today, we look at a volume in the mid-90s Carolrhoda dinosaur series on specific dinosaurs, this one focusing on that big-eyed, big-brained, not at all venomous pint-sized predator that looked very different way back when. Sorry Mrs. Newhard, they didn’t do a thorough enough job censoring out your name. As reconstructed by Donna Braginetz, Troodon looks pretty much what…
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…
It’s Don and Donna month here at LITC! I will be reviewing a few volumes in a series of books written by superstar dinosaur author, robot builder, TV presenter and firebrand “Dino” Don Lessem and illustrated by superstar palaeoartist Donna Braginetz. Published by Carolrhoda Books, each of these books is a small but in-depth entry level look at one species (or in this case family) of dinosaur, well researched and richly illustrated. Lessem worked with a few different palaeoartists in…
Time for another trip to the educational films of the past, and this one is a doozy! 1970’s Dinosaurs: The Age of the Terrible Lizard is an edited English translation of an animated Polish film called Dinozaury, written and directed by Witold Giersz and Ryszard Slapczynski. It was digitized by IU Libraries and made available to the public via Media Collections Online. It was also featured by Rifftrax (available to subscribers). This edit is only 6 minutes long, but is…
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…
This one goes out to Ben Hillier, who both wins the coveted Reader of the Month award* and shall be treated to various non-dinosaurs from 1977’s The World of Dinosaurs (see parts one and two). As befits the book’s title, here are a couple of animals from, er, the Permian. That’s right – it’s everyone’s favourite synapsid menace Dimetrodon, alongside Diadectes, which was certainly a tetrapod. Yes. As is tradition, Dimetrodon is shown inhabiting an arid, upland landscape, quite unlike…
For many of us, an interest in dinosaurs goes hand in hand with a general fascination with all things monstrous. This association of imagined creatures with the real monsters of the past is such a strong one that many books focused on the former can’t help but spend a bit of time on the latter. Creepy Creatures, published in 1982, is one such book. Written and illustrated entirely by Dan Nevins, this book profiles a menagerie of creatures hailing from…
We’re back on the trail of the dinosaurs with Mike Benton and Graham Rosewarne, two giants of the extremely niche genre of Popular British Dino Rennaissance Books (always well-represented on these pages). Last time, we looked mostly at Rosewarne’s panoramic compositions and found ourselves maybe a bit less than extremely impressed. But Rosewarne is at his best when drawing dinosaur profiles, and fortunately, this book allows him to do plenty of that. One of Rosewarne’s most famous and well-remembered creations…
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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.