Given that dinosaurs are so notorious in the popular imagination for having grown Very Large far more often than they had any right to, it’s only fitting that so many dinosaur books – especially those aimed at children – have adopted a correspondingly chunky, oversized format. The appeal is obvious, even if it means that the bloody things simply refuse to squeeze under my scanner. The Giant Book of Dinosaurs is around 24.5cm wide and 34.5cm tall – big enough…
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…
Following on from Ranger Rick’s, here’s another more detailed look at a book that received some very brief attention long, long ago (2010). Why, it’s Dinosaurs and Other Archosaurs, written and illustrated by Peter Zallinger and published by Random House in 1986 (the year before I was born, incidentally). Once again, you can thank/blame Herman Diaz, who sent this book all the way over from the US. Cheers, Herman! Ten years ago, David noted that Zallinger’s work here “reflect[s] the…
While my previous post on this book focused on the work of someone who is an acclaimed wildlife artist – but not a dinosaur specialist – it should be noted that Ranger Rick’s does feature rather a lot of work from some Big Names in palaeoart, especially Mark Hallett and Ely Kish. Most of the Kish pieces have been featured on this blog before (often multiple times, including in David’s 2010 post), so I thought I’d take a closer look…
Now here’s a blast from the past, and in more than the usual multiple senses – for David took a very brief look at this book back in 2010. It’s a measure of just how much things have changed in a decade that David’s post now seems incongruously short – just a smattering of pics from Flickr, shared by the wonderful Trish Arnold. That does mean that there’s an awful lot left to explore in Ranger Rick’s Dinosaur Book, and…
Some more Steve Kirk for you now, why not? You might have noticed that my first post on this book only covered theropods (for reasons that are surely well known by now), so let’s now turn to those pesky Other Dinosaurs. A good place to start would be what appear to have been the cover stars (I lack the dust jacket) – these two hadrosaurs, here. And suitably 1980s-looking they are, too. Prior to the Dino Renaissance, hadrosaurs tended to…
Steve Kirk’s an underappreciated talent in the world of palaeoart, so I’m happy to say that we’ve featured his work a few times before, both here and over at our old home. Previously featured Kirk works have predominantly been from the 1990s, so imagine my delight when one John Conway thrust The Big Book of Dinosaurs into my hands – a Kirk-illustrated book from 1989! It’s fascinating to see just how much Kirk’s dinosaur art evolved in really quite a…
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 someone who reads this blog (hopefully on a regular basis), you’re no doubt familiar with Greg Paul’s Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs (aka Dinosaurs: a Field Guide), first published in 2010 with a second edition arriving in 2016. It’s arguably one of the most significant popular books about dinosaurs written this century, an attempt to catalogue dinosaur diversity in (almost) its entirety, complete with copious illustrations. Such a feat hasn’t been attempted too many times in the past (because…
As promised, here’s some more from Dinosaur, part of the Eyewitness Guides series, on the occasion of its 30th anniversary – and not a Diplodocus in sight. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the emphasis of this book is definitely not on life reconstructions, which always play second fiddle to gloriously large photographs of fossil specimens. It’s an approach that I doubt a publisher would encourage these days, and indeed the most recent edition of Dinosaur leans far more heavily on (often…
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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.