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Vintage Dinosaur Art

Vintage Dinosaur Art: The World of Dinosaurs – Part 1

Vintage Dinosaur Art August 1, 2022

This must be one of those ‘how in the Jack Horner haven’t we covered it yet?’ books – The World of Dinosaurs, published in 1977 by Book Club Associates (“by arrangement with Weidenfeld and Nicholson”) and written by Michael Tweedie. Just when you think you’ve exhausted every post-1970, chunky, full-colour illustrated dinosaur encyclopedia, up pops another one. And it’s quite something, boasting artwork featuring a wide range of prehistoric animals – although predominantly dinosaurs, of course – mostly provided by…

Vintage Dinosaur Art – Stories from Fantasia

Vintage Dinosaur Art July 4, 2022

Over the years, we (OK, I) have been taken to task on several occasions for sticking the Vintage label on books that aren’t that old and, more to the point, often quite mediocre (or even bad). And as I say every time, it’s because the name of the series stuck. However, here we have one of the oldest things that I’ve covered in quite some time – Stories from Walt Disney’s Fantasia, published in 1940 by Random House. Yes, it’s…

The Dinosaurs of Silesia

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,…

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Amazing World of Dinosaurs

Vintage Dinosaur Art June 10, 2022

Now here’s something I haven’t covered in a while – a so-so 1980s kids’ book about dinosaurs! And one that rather fails to live up to its title! Amazing World of Dinosaurs, written by Judith Granger and illustrated by Pamela Baldwin Ford, was published back in 1982 (by Troll Associates) but, even for its time, it’s very retrograde. The dinosaurs featured within are very much of the pea-brained, swamp-dwelling variety, and there’s a peculiar emphasis on their low cranial capacity…

A spread of dinosaur artwork featuring representatives of each major clade.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Zoobooks Dinosaurs – Part 1

Vintage Dinosaur Art May 6, 2022

Who remembers Zoobooks? Beginning in 1980, the richly illustrated and highly authoritative Zoobooks series made a name for itself as some of the very best educational books in the world of children’s publishing. Zoobooks were primarily distributed as mail-in magazines and hardback library copies, though I’ve also seen hardbacks sold at zoo gift shops. Most issues, as you’d expect, covered modern animals in great detail and the one devoted to dinosaurs is no different. Originally published in 1985, it was…

Vintage Dinosaur Art: George Solonevich

Golden Oldie Vintage Dinosaur Art May 2, 2022

George Solonevich is one my favorite artists covered at LITC. His work stands out during an era of paleoart that saw so many artists copying Knight and Burian. I’ve long planned to do a “golden oldie” post on him, and today I’m finally marking that off the to-do list. I initially wrote a brief post about him in 2010, which Marc followed up in more fleshed-out form a few years later (part one and two). The bulk of today’s post…

Vintage Dinosaur Media: Extinction: A Lesson from the Past

Vintage Dinosaur Art April 25, 2022

It’s time for another trip down scicomm memory lane, courtesy Indiana University’s media collections online. 1971’s “Extinction: A Lesson from the Past” was written by Elizabeth Werrenrath and produced by her husband Reinald Werrenrath, Jr., a television pioneer and son of a famous opera singer. While Reinald passed away at the grand old age of 104 in 2019, Elizabeth is still with us at 108, and she seems to be a heck of a lady. Teetering on the very edge…

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Creatures of the Past – Part 2

Vintage Dinosaur Art April 12, 2022

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,…

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Creatures of the Past – Part 1

Vintage Dinosaur Art April 7, 2022

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?…

Vintage Dinosaur Art – Graveyards of the Dinosaurs

Vintage Dinosaur Art March 10, 2022

I always enjoy receiving books from overseas that date to my childhood, but were never released in the UK (or if they were, were really well hidden) – there’s a special fascination in seeing what contemporary, for example, American kids were reading while I was devouring The Ultimate Dinosaur Book and Dinosaurs! magazine (er, the UK version). Graveyards of the Dinosaurs was (very kindly) sent to me from the US by Herman Diaz – thanks once again, Herman. It features a…

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