No doubt you’ve seen part one of our deep dive into Záhada Dinosaurů, this obscure gem from Czechia, written by Jaroslav Mareš and illustrated by Barbora Kyšková. Obscure unless you’re Czech, that is, in which case you will probably know this book very well. The comments on this and other platforms tell me it’s a divisive book, with divisive artwork, and Jaroslav Mareš a divisive character. We’ve already seen most of the theropods, but a big aspect of the book’s…
In my previous post we took a look at Dinosaurus, a 1998 volume that I now know is essentially a compendium of the Looking At…Dinosaurs series, featuring much of the same dreadful artwork. (Thank you commenters!) For reasons best known to the publishers, artist Tony Gibbons – who was responsible for some of the weirder illustrations that appeared in the early issues of Dinosaurs! magazine in 1993 – was here let loose on dozens of pretty painful illustrations of dinosaurs,…
Ahoy-hoy, whippersnappers! I guess it’s been a while since we did part one of the 1990 Golden Guide to Dinosaurs, illustrated by John D. Dawson. The “D” stands for “Dinosaur”, one imagines. It’s time for some more early nineties Sibbicksaurs from this tiny spotter’s guide. Deinonychus is at least partially based on the somewhat notoriously freaky creature from the Normanpedia. Dawson manages to tone down its creep factor a little bit. All the wrinkles that carried over from Bakker have…
Here’s another book found through sheer serendipity while browsing charity shops with a friend – Prehistoric World, written by Richard Moody and published by Hamlyn in 1980. That means it was published a few years after another Moody-authored book that I reviewed in 2019 – A natural history of Dinosaurs – and it recycles a fair few illustrations from said earlier tome. No matter – there’s plenty of unique material here to make it worthy blog fodder, not least because…
I check the copyright page, and I check it again. 1993? Really? Surely that can’t be true. Surely this book is at least fifteen years newer than that. But no. The proof is right there, undeniable, clear as day. What sorcery is this? Who stole a time machine? How is this book so good? That year again, that fateful year. 1993. The Year of the Dinosaur, according to ancient astrology that I made up. The deluge of dino books from…
As you can well imagine, I’ve read a fair few dinosaur books from the latter half of the twentieth century, and while they are almost always dated in just about every respect, there are very few that stun me with their sheer strangeness. One can well understand outdated views on dinosaur evolutionary history, anatomy and biology, but it’s quite something else to encounter a book that’s such a culture shock that it might as well have emerged from a completely…
Episode 2 of the Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs Podcast is here! This month, Natee, Marc and Niels talk about dinosaur butts! We also discuss some legendary paleoart by John Sibbick that is tattooed on every dinosaur fan’s DNA, and interview the talented Natalia Jagielska. On this page, you can see the images we discuss and follow links to relevant pages. In the News A remarkably well-preserved Psittacosaurus, earlier responsible for telling us about its colouration, has yielded secrets…
On more than one occasion, I’ve bought an intriguing-looking old dinosaur book on eBay, only to find that it’s filled with artwork from an older book that’s already been featured on the blog. This would be one of those cases…almost. For you see, while an awful lot of the palaeoart in this book is recycled from 1992’s Gollancz Dinosaur Enyclopaedia for Children, there’s a significant amount of newer material here too, and given that it’s all from the same artist…
Happy New Year! Last month, I promised you I’d take an in-depth look at the dinosaur designs from The Land Before Time, and I’m still going to, but life, uh, got in the way (not least because there was a podcast to edit). Today, to cleanse the palate, I’m going to give you something small and quick and dirty and a little bit ridiculous. This is a book I found in my attic. It’s dusty, slightly battered from years of…
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…
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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.