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…
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…
As every year, Marc, Natee and Gemma visited TetZooCon, Darren Naish’ big annual London event about animals, palaeontology, palaeoart and all things tetrapod. And this was a special edition indeed. Not only has this been the last ever edition of the Tetrapod Zoology Conference in its current form (more on which on the show) but we actually gave a talk this time! And what’s more, the talk has been recorded and is included in full on this very special, extra…
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,…
While at TetZooCon 2024 (the last one ever! Sort of), I took the opportunity to pick up the latest book from Dave Hone (for it is he) – Uncovering Dinosaur Behaviour: What They Did and How We Know, published by Princeton University Press (in early November for the non-TZC-going public). Dave’s previous book, The Future of Dinosaurs (known as How Fast Could T. rex Run? in the US for reasons best understood by the publishers) was certainly a decent read,…
Have I told you about Marie Hubrecht? Wasn’t she the Dutch aristocratic lady turned suffragette turned idiosyncratic palaeoartist? After first finding out about her through the palaeoart exhibition at Teylers Museum, I fell in love with Marie’s work, initially just for its novelty. There’s simply no vintage palaeoart that looks like this. In the time of semi-realists like Knight, Harder and Zallinger, you just don’t get palaeoart that is stylized like this. Plus, how many palaeoartists are eccentric old lesbians?…
Today’s entry is rather similar in concept to the later Dinosaur Park, which I reviewed back in 2020, but quite unlike the DK ACTION PACK (in spite of the rather similar title). It would appear to be a straightforward book at first glance, but upon opening an instruction is immediately given to prise out the staples and then remove all the pages. What’s this, a book that wants you to destroy it?! Of course not – well, sort of, actually,…
As the train rushes trough the flat landscape, as the towns and villages become fewer and farther between and as the forests of the Veluwe give way to the lakes and fields of the North, I feel strengthened. I’ve lived centrally in the Netherlands for years, but my inner compass still points due North. It’s always worth coming out all this way. There’s always some dinosaur exhibition going on somewhere. Three years ago, it was Denekamp; last year, it was…
Rise and shine, the LITC podcast is here again! We have some colourful and pretty gnarly palaeoart to show you from the spectacularly-named Tudor Humphries. For the interview, Marc and Natee discuss the lovely – and somewhat controversial – book The Iguanodon’s Horn, with its author and illustrator, the award-winning Sean Rubin. Is making fun of outdated palaeoart tropes fair game? Will we keep comparing dinosaurs to fish? Why is there a tiger in Africa? Will Natee finally admit that…
The palaeontologist Dr William Elgin Swinton (W E Swinton to you) is perhaps best known, in the context of popular books about dinosaurs at least, for works published by the Natural History Museum (or the British Museum (Natural History) as it then properly was) that featured artwork by Neave Parker. I reviewed such a book back in 2011, a rather dry affair filled with strange ideas that must have seemed a little outdated even at the time. However, it’d be…
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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.