Greetings, one and all! Today’s episode features quite a contrast: the naïve, childish creatures illustrated by Hillary Stebbing in her 1946 children’s book Extinct Animals, contrasted against the gnarly, outlandish modern work of Zubin Erik Dutta, a true up-and-comer in the palaeoart world. How do horror and pin-ups influence dinosaur art? Does every ceratopsian scrap gets its own genus name? What on earth is a Jakapil? And how did we end up with a dinosaur book with no T. rex…
Hilary Stebbing
I’ve found another very old dinosaur book! This one was released in 1946, and it’s a short but sweet one. The author and illustrator is one Hilary Stebbing, a stalwart of children’s literature of the mid-20th century. It’s rare to find dinosaur art from the 1940’s, a quiet time for palaeontology for obvious reasons, so kudos to Stebbing for getting this book out! I always like to give some biographical information or historical context when reviewing a book like this,…