Pop-up dinosaur books are always fun (if rare, although I’ve managed to get my hands on a few in the past) – there’s nothing quite like a satisfyingly well-executed bit of paper engineering. What we have here is something in the same vein, but with a rather entertaining twist. In Dinosaur Park, beautifully painted backdrops have pop-out foregrounds that form something of a stage – an empty stage. That’s because the papercraft members of the cast are all waiting in…
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…
In the beginning, there was Jurassic Park. Well, OK, that wasn’t the beginning; Jurassic Park was actually just one in a long line of movies that attempted to trick audiences into believing they were seeing living (non-avian) dinosaurs on the big screen. But as everyone knows, it did so in a way that no film had ever managed before. Much of that was due to advances in special effects technology, of course, but there was also a concerted attempt to…
Back we go into the wonderfully Bernard Robinson-illustrated world of 1978’s Dinosaurs, from St Michael (aka Marks and Spencer). Except this time, we’re actually looking at the art from this book that wasn’t provided by Robinson, but is instead attributed to various agencies. It’s a shame that we can’t put specific names to pieces, but at least the illustrations themselves are often good fun. Like this one. The above illustration forms part of a series that is intended to illustrate…
There are certain books that you’ll be absolutely certain you’ve seen before, but just can’t quite place where or how. This was just such a book for me. T. R. (Tyrannosaurus rex) & Friends was published in 1988, and would’ve still been hanging around in bookshops when I first got into dinosaurs as a child, only 4 or so years later. When reader Elsie Swann sent over images from TR&F, the distinctive illustrations instantly rang a bell, but I didn’t…
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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.