It’s the triumphant return of The Giant Book of Dinosaurs, everyone’s fifth or sixth favourite children’s dinosaur book from the 1980s to be written by Mike Benton. As we’ve already examined the book’s theropods, let’s turn now to the lesser dinosaurs that pad out the rest of this irritatingly proportioned book – starting with the sauropodmorphs. As I mentioned last time, this book’s slightly too large for my scanner, so I’ve taken some photographs instead – therefore, these images might…
Hylaeosaurus
Gather round everyone, it’s time for the fifth and final look we’re having at the fabulous book of The Great Dinosaurs, the swan song of the great Zdeněk Špinar, who died shortly after publishing this book, and the artistic masterpiece of his fellow Czech Jan Sovák. Here are part one, part two, part three and part four, if you’ve missed them. There’s been a healthy number of comments and discussions under each of these so let’s see if we can…
Back in the early 1990s, John Sibbick’s artwork for the Normanpedia (that is, 1985’s The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, authored by David Norman) was simply everywhere. There was no escaping it. Pick up a magazine – Sibbick. Box of chocolate-coated biscuits – Sibbick. Breakfast cereal – Sibbick. Naturally, the ubiquity of Sibbick’s gorgeously painted, but rather idiosyncratic, illustrations from the mid-’80s resulted in a huge number of imitators and outright copycats – there was even a mysterious company apparently named…