Browsing Tag

Iguanodon

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs (Ladybird Square books)

Vintage Dinosaur Art

Say “Ladybird dinosaur book” to someone, and they’ll very likely think of the book illustrated by Bernard Robinson that was reprinted a number of times and spanned the childhoods of multiple generations. (Well, at least two.) I reviewed it all the way back in 2011, so perhaps my review is now as nostalgic for some people as Ladybird books are for others. (Nah, just kidding. I’m not so deluded.) Robinson’s illustrations, while technically superb and highly memorable, were looking rather…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: Hubrecht at the Lyceum – Part 1

Vintage Dinosaur Art

Once again: Marie Hubrecht. Are you tired of me talking about Marie Hubrecht yet? Because I’m not done. If you want more Hubrecht, check out my reviews of Verdwenen Werelden here, here and here, and our Verdwenen Werelden podcast episode here! This post is a direct companion to my last one, in which I detail the time I went to see the spectacular murals she made in the 1920s at the former Girls’ Lyceum in Amsterdam. These paintings have been…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Dinosaur Action Set (Book One!)

Vintage Dinosaur Art

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,…

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Podcast Show Notes: Episode 36 – Sean Rubin and Tudor Humphries

Podcast Show Notes

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 Is making fun of outdated palaeoart tropes fair game?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…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Corridor of Life

Vintage Dinosaur Art

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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Crystal Palace dinner party by Sean Rubin

The Iguanodon’s Horn – review

Book Review

As children, we’re all told the same story about the scientific evolution of Iguanodon, one of the earliest-named dinosaurs – how it went from a whale-sized lizard (some kind of ‘cetiosaur’, if you will. OK, not that), to a mono-horned quadruped, to a tail-dragging thumbs-upping tripod, to the mean and muscular, mostly quadrupedal but facultatively bipedal, intimidatingly brutish beast we know today. Along the way, we’re typically encouraged to have a good old chuckle at just how wrong people got…

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Podcast Show Notes: Episode 35 – Snowball and the Raptor Boys

Podcast Show Notes

We’ve had a month off, but the famous LITC podcast is back in full strength with more fresh news, nostalgic art reviews and exciting interviews! After discussing the new films and documentaries that are coming our way, we review some very English palaeoart from the late 1970s by the unsung Peter Snowball. After that, Natee and Marc interview the Golden Boys of Dromaeosaurs, 3D sculptor Ruadhrí Brennan and returning LITC interviewee Jed Taylor, whose incredible Velociraptor sculpts have set last…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: Saltasaurus (Dinosaur books from The Child’s World)

Vintage Dinosaur Art

Saltasaurus – the little armoured titanosaur that could – was a staple of popular dinosaur books in the ’80s and ’90s, following its naming in 1980. Sadly, since then, it has largely disappeared from view – displaced, no doubt, by certain much, much larger other South American titanosaurs. Of course, I’ve said all this before, not to mention hosted an art competition based around a terrible pun, but it remains as true today as it was 11 years ago. Alas,…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurus – Part 2

Vintage Dinosaur Art

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,…

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Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurus – Part 1

Vintage Dinosaur Art

When I first started writing for this blog – many, many years ago now, possibly even as long ago as 2009 – I was accused of being overly-critical. “Who cares if a dinosaur’s gross anatomy shifts considerably from one illustration to the next?” “You’re pissing all over a classic!” You know, that sort of thing. And the accusers had a point, at least some of the time. As I’ve got older I’ve certainly mellowed – not to mention got to…

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