Carl Zimmer's Feather Evolution video

Science writer Carl Zimmer narrates a recent TED educational video summarizing our knowledge about the evolution of feathers. Part of a lesson at the TED-Ed site and animated by Armella Leung, it's a really well done crash course in current thinking on feather origins.



Did you note the derivatives from different pieces of paleoart? The Epidexipteryx is clearly based on the Qiu Ji and Xing Lida reconstruction, and the displaying Caudipteryx is Sydney Mohr's.

Those bits aside, I love the way the idea of deep time's mysteries and evolution's imperfect and haphazard processes are illustrated with the sketchy illustration style, and the use of the white feather silhouettes when Zimmer discusses the early functions of feathers is inspired.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs - A Picture Dictionary

Today's featured book is 1990's Dinosaurs: A Picture Dictionary. Featuring evocative artwork by Tessa Hamilton, it features a welcome variety of animals due to its alphabetical imperative - an organizing theme which also forgives some temporally and geographically questionable pairings of animals. It also just so happens to be the book I chose for Mike Keesey as his prize for his second place showing in the LITC All Yesterdays contest.

It begins with a brief introduction to dinosaurs, set against a landscape populated by some of the usual suspects, as well as an odd theropod that may be Monolophosaurus, as it had been described not long before this book was published. Or maybe it's just an oddly rendered Allosaurus or Ceratosaurus. Since the fauna has been run through a temporal blender, it's hard to tell; what seems at first to be a Jurassic scene is confused by what seem to be ornithomimosaurs in the distance, an anachronistic assortment of pterosaurs, and what may be a dead Corythosaurus. My favorite bit is the elasmosaur carrying a huge turtle in its mouth as it glides through the lagoon. Don't let its scrawny profile fool you. This is the strongest elasmosaur ever known (reminds me of this old Mohler rendering, use over at Oceans of Kansas).



I especially appreciate Hamilton's color treatments throughout the book. Expressive but not outlandish, the artwork reflects the livelier dinosaurs that were becoming more and more acceptable in the late 80's. In the below spread, typically drab Pachycephalosaurus bears a vibrant diamond pattern. It's also a good example of the sidebars employed throughout the book, here sticking to the alphabetical scheme.



They may not get the colorful garb of Pachycephalosaurus, but a welcome inclusion is the oft-overlooked Nodosaurus. Here, the supplemental material strays from the alphabetical order to show a variety of other armored ornithischians, including the dubious Palaeoscincus and a lively Scutellosaurus. The lavender flowers in the background are a nice touch. One of the common bugaboos in Mesozoic illustrations is the depiction of grasses as in this and other scenes in the book. Though there were some grasses around in the latest Cretaceous when Nodosaurus shuffled about, they were probably not present in wide areas as depicted here.



Hamilton's skill is well-demonstrated in the closer views she gives us of many of the animals, displaying fine detail of skin texture and coloration. I love her Lambeosaurus in its mud and clay colors, barely tolerating the annoyance of a Lesothosaurus, seemingly leaping into frame, demanding to be given attention in a popular dinosaur book. Hypsilophodon is given a similar treatment with bright green scales and a humorous "bag" under the eye that reinforces the grim expression on its face created by the prominent brow.





More obscure denizens of the Mesozoic get time in the foreground, such as Leptoceratops and Heterodontosaurus. I appreciated the inclusion of the line art rendering of the latter's skull, as it illustrates the varied dentition which gave the critter its name. These lateral portrait views invite the reader to imagine that these are puppets, with human arms cropped out of the frame.





The "E" spread offers more thyreophoran fun in the form of Euoplocephalus, which is quite well-done in its arrangement of knobs and spikes (though Victoria Arbour has written a bit about the popular ankylosaurid lately which begs your attention). Edmontosaurus is similarly well-rendered, though it does sport the odd human-style hands so often drawn by uncertain illustrators. The noggin is suitably elongated, though. Elasmosaurus is a bit of a stretch, curving its neck in what appears to be a painful contortion. It looks like it saw a pile of discarded fish on the shore and decided it simply could not leave them be.



"C" gives us a familiar trope, somewhat modified. The famous "bird-hunting" Ornitholestes part here is played by Coelophysis, evidently modeled on the "robust" form of the animal. Her hands are almost right, with a reduced fourth digit which should nevertheless not be visible to the viewer. Coelophysis is accompanied by Compsognathus and Coelurus, fulfilling the "not all dinosaurs were huge" requirement of the book. To drive the point home, a single forelimb of Camarasaurus just barely enters the frame on the left, elephant toes and all. The delicate treatment of the flora make this spread one of my favorites in the book.



Not much of a surprise when we visit "T," is there? Torosaurus gets to do the dirty work here, and seems to be doing a competent job of scaring the tyrant lizard off. Triceratops hangs out in the background, its frill proportionately smaller than Torosaurus's. While the head of the Tyrannosaurus is clumsily rendered, reminding me of a carcharodontosaurid, its coloration is beautifully done, with lurid splashes of orange mingling with contrasting greens.



Hamilton is not well-represented on the web, though you can see a few of her illustrations for Tales of the 1,001 Nights. Her nuanced artwork is a nice match for a title that aims to give more than a red-in-tooth-and-claw look at the Mesozoic, taking time to point out evolutionary trends and present dinosaurs that are too often forgotten in a way that gives them equal footing with the superstars of the era.

Mesozoic Miscellany 59

Plenty of news about Jurassic Park 4 lately, with the latest latest news being that it might not be happening any time soon. Still, it's inspired a nice flurry of writing among our blogging comrades, and that's a good thing.

Matt Martyniuk at DinoGoss wrote about it, with this nice turn of phrase: "it's a bit sad that JP has eaten its own tail and become the self-perpetuating font of inaccurate science the original film was designed to destroy."

Andrea Cau doesn't really care either way, and invites those who might be losing sleep over scaly raptors to worry about more important things.

At the increasingly super Walking With Dinosaurs blog, Mike Taylor offered his opinion on what might make for a more interesting sequel than another trip to Nublar or Sorna.

Michael Marshall at New Scientist wrote a summary of the news, with a perturbed quote from Tet Zoo's Darren Naish, which I saw pop up in a few places going for the "paleontologists' reaction" angle.

John Conway wrote a great piece at his blog on Jurassic Park 4 and "AWESOMEBRO!" culture, which I'm sure we'll all agree is typified in John's lurid and gory work.

I'll wrap up this section with Mark Witton, who wrote about the resistance to feathery dinosaurs at his blog, doing a nice job of explaining how feathery integument might undercut an animal's monstrous nature.

"If popular depictions of dinosaurs are anything to go by, they were only vulnerable to two things: other dinosaurs, and giant rocks from space. Anything else can bugger right off: they're that freakin' hardcore. Modern animals, by contrast, struggle when someone redirects a river or we drive our cars too much. Dinosaurs could take that, and they'd eat your mother just for even suggesting otherwise."

Friend of LITC and super-terrific artist Sharon Wegner-Larson has added some super-terrific art prints to her Etsy store, including her incredible Dimetrodon piece entered in our All Yesterdays contest.

At The Bite Stuff, Jaime Headden wrote about the twin sides of his brain, the artist and the scientist, and how they work together in the process of reconstructing prehistoric forms.

You've surely seen it all over, but hear straight from Emily Willoughby the story of her fish-eating Microraptor illo.

Darren Naish visited the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival, and brought us the skinny at Tet Zoo.

At the Dinosaur Toy Blog, our own Niroot covered the new Collecta Diplodocus figure. And Marc wrote about that popular newish ceratopsid, Diabloceratops.

In response to the passing of Dr. Larry Martin, both Jason Brougham and Mickey Mortimer have written posts about his legacy in paleontology.

Happily having joined up with ART Evolved, frequent LITC commenter Herman Diaz as been writing some great stuff, including book reviews and a piece on his fun alvarezsaurid for our contest.

Marc and Niroot are admirers, and Trish Arnold also implores you (and me, I'm afraid), to get off our duffs and pick up Katrina Von Grouw's The Unfeathered Bird.

We've had notice of some dinosaur-related Kickstarter projects in the last week, and I share them here for your consideration. First up, Andy Nguyen's Dinosaur Poster project.
See more at the blog dedicated to his project.

Next, a short film called "Dino Hunt" has an Indiegogo campaign running.

You can keep up with the campaign and production at the official Twitter and website, as well.

Finally, check out a Kickstarter by the More Dinosaurs folks to fund a new dinosaur art website.


If you've got some spare nickels knocking around your pockets, there's never a shortage of dinosaur goods at which to pitch them, is there?

The Valley of Gwangi

I've been working off and on on this review for a while. Some of you will recall my occasional promises to have it up "soon," which you probably and reasonably disbelieved. But recently, we got some sad news: the death of one of special effects' greatest legends, a personal hero of mine, the affable and talented Ray Harryhausen. In recognition of his life and work, I leave the following for your perusal. 

Ray Harryhausen died May 7th, 2013, at the age of 91. This is one of the things he left behind.

The year is 1969. America's long love affair with western movies is ending, and its tolerance for rubber creature features is waning as well. A middle aged special effects technician named Ray Harryhausen has put together a film that unfortunately falls squarely in the middle of these two genres; a tale of cowboys and dinosaurs, of lassoed monsters and breakneck chases across the dusty deserts. It is released to little fanfare and rapidly sinks into obscurity, just as its fellow westerns and monster movies have done. It's about to be the 70's, after all. America has weightier things on its mind. But The Valley of Gwangi, as it turns out, has charms of its own; charms enough to keep it from disappearing completely into pop culture oblivion.

Our story begins somewhere south of the Mexican border, around the dawn of the 20th century. T.J Breckenridge, a young woman of surpassing loveliness and somewhat wooden affect, is in deep water. Her traveling western circus has fallen on hard times, but T.J is still doing her best to make a go of it, touring small Mexican towns who are sure to be entranced by their increasingly shopworn acts. But circumstance throws two different twists at this fragile state of affairs. The first comes in the form of the dapper, fast talking Tucker, an independent operator (and T.J's former fiance) looking to buy up bits of the Wild West show's act. The other is altogether stranger; a mysterious little horse from a forbidden valley off in the desert, which has the potential to save the struggling circus.

Enter Professor Bromley, an English paleontologist of dubious morality. He's working out in the desert searching for remains of Eohippus, a tiny prehistoric horse, and he thinks he's found the fossil of a lifetime: a human leg bone with tiny horse tracks set in the matrix. Such a find should be impossible, which is why he flies into such paroxysms of glee when he sees the circus's newest attraction: a real, living, Eohippus! 

Not everyone is so thrilled, however. The town's gypsies (which, incidentally, are not as out of place as you might think) are deeply worried by the appearance of the tiny horse. They are the ones who declared the forbidden valley off-limits, in fear of the ferocious and vindictive spirit that guards it--a spirit known only as Gwangi. If they don't get the little horse back to the valley soon, their matriarch warns, then the wrath of Gwangi will fall upon them all. So saying, the gypsies steal the Eohippus from T.J's circus and flee, making for the distant mountains that mark the border of the secret valley. Tucker, the Professor, and T.J's crew of carnies  all race after them, vying with each other for who can capture the precious little horse first.

But what waits for them beyond the mountains is far more impressive than any horse, tiny or not...

'

The Valley of Gwangi is clearly a direct descendant of King Kong. The requisite check marks are ticked off; superstitious locals? Yep. A prehistoric monster with a savage name? Check. A public escape, rampage and subsequent poignant death? Of course. However, it comes by the similarity honestly; Willis O’Brien himself, the stop-motion guru behind The Lost World and King Kong, came up with a rough treatment for the idea that he never managed to get off the ground.

Copyright Willis O'Brien

O'Brien's conception of Gwangi was apparently deeply old fashioned, as the above concept art attests, and not many details of what he had in mind have survived. Harryhausen, a protégée of O’Brien’s, was the one who got the film made, and he himself was hugely influenced by King Kong. The finished film is thus a union of two fairly similar sensibilities, and it shows. 

Copyright Ray Harryhausen

Both King Kong and The Valley of Gwangi fit comfortably into a tradition you might call the “lost world” narrative; they focus on the discovery of an isolated prehistoric ecosystem, and the immediate consequences to life and limb for bringing a piece of that ecosystem back. Yet while the original King Kong played the idea for as much fantastic horror as it could muster, Gwangi is much more understated. The nightmare jungles of Skull Island are replaced by the barren wastes of the desert, and where Kong scaled the heights of Manhattan, Gwangi’s rampage is limited to a little town of white adobe and a cathedral. Kong’s death requires airplanes at the heights of the world. Gwangi is killed by fire and a falling ceiling.

The end result of this is that The Valley of Gwangi feels weirdly believable. Yes, it centers around a lost valley of dinosaurs out in the Mexican desert, but if you’re willing to accept that (and if you’re reading this blog, it’s a good chance that you are) then the central plot of the film is filled with the kind of stumbling and foolishness you’d expect from real people placed in extraordinary circumstances. Guns are useless, for example, against the primeval might of the valley’s inhabitants–until one of the circus cowboys checks the cartridges and discovers, to his consternation, that whomever grabbed the rifles didn't bother to take the blanks out first. The gypsies, for their part, are so blinded by superstitious terror of Gwangi that they attempt to get rid of him as soon as possible–even though that entails freeing him in the middle of a packed stadium.

Even when Gwangi is released onto the dusty streets to wreak havoc, the vast majority of the damage is done by the fleeing crowd, with only a few people falling prey to the dinosaur’s jaws. The whole plot has the feeling of something that could actually have happened; a backwater little disaster unfolding out of the public eye, with no official authority to witness and record it. Unlike Kong, whose very public rampage and death must have shocked the world, the escape and subsequent death of Gwangi the Great seems destined to be ignored. An interesting bit of local folklore, perhaps, or a footnote buried in an obscure text.

Gwangi himself is a fantastic creation. Sculpted over an armature of ball and socket joints, moved minute centimeter by minute centimeter, the flicker of the camera breathes into him unbelievable vitality. Gwangi arrived in theaters in 1969, as the fabled Dinosaur Renaissance was beginning, and in many ways its title character embodies the changing times. While he is shaped in the mode of classic tail dragging carnosaurs, he moves with deceptive speed, trotting and even leaping across the screen. There is little of the reptilian stillness about him: even at rest, his tail slithers and twists in the air, dancing with malignant energy. He snarls and sneers in expressions that don’t quite reach his mad little eyes, his fingers twitching as he contemplates his prey. He could never be mistaken for accurate, now. There’s something vague about the specifics, his form a mix of the tyrannosaur and the allosaur, his tail too flexible, his form too hunched. But it doesn't matter. Gwangi may not look real, but by god, he looks alive.

This was the genius of Ray Harryhausen, of course. He poured his heart and soul into his rubber creations, and it shows; nothing in The Valley of Gwangi seems as carefully labored over as the creatures of the forbidden valley, and nothing else in the film holds up quite as well. The Styracosaurus is bullish and stubborn, the Pteranodon a flapping menace, the Ornithomimus jumpy and comical. The human actors of the film acquit themselves acceptably, but Harryhausen's creations are indisputably the stars of the show. In a lot of ways, The Valley of Gwangi is representative of Harryhausen's life and work: a solid, unpretentious film, filled with unexpected charms and wonderful special effects. What more fitting tribute to the master could there be?

Ray Harryhausen died May 7th, 2013, at the age of 91. Gwangi, as always, abides.

The Thecodontosaurus that Didn't

This was originally conceived around this time last year as my entry for Bristol Dinosaur Project's Thecodontosaurus Illustration Competition. Sadly (though perhaps predictably), I failed to make the competition deadline.

Thecodontosaurus (with sphenodont). Sepia ink on Saunders Waterford hot pressed watercolour paper; 150 x 280mm. I've decided that her name is 'Thesis'. Yes.

Details. Unfortunately, this illustration suffers somewhat from reduction, though it seems to withstand considerable enlargement. Opening the images in a new tab is recommended for best viewing.

My many thanks to Jon Tennant of Green Tea and Velociraptors for very kindly supplying me with the Thecodontosaurus paper (Adam M. Yates (2003)) and Dr. Heinrich Mallison of Dinosaurpalaeo for his input during the progress. I still didn't get the tail quite right, and it is on the whole considerably leaner than I would restore it now. Though as I said at the time: 'I felt like quite the grown-up palaeo artist'.

In the event, Fabio Pastori won the first prize in the professional category with his piece. Though it looks curiously as though his was the only entry in the category, judging by the gallery of entrants and winners; but please do correct me if anybody knows otherwise. Still, I should not have minded coming second to him. Ahem.  

----------

In an attempt to present a little more of my 'serious' palaeoart -- I mean, palaeontography -- to LITC readers, this entry has been re-posted, slightly amended, from Himmapaanensis, with our great Solomon's sanction (if you miss this joke, why then, you haven't been paying attention, for shame). The mercenary part: prints of this illustration are available. Help a fading little Djinn continue producing its meagre magic. I shall be enormously grateful.

N

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaur Dream

In my last-but-one Vintage Dinosaur Art post - about three years ago now - I reviewed a book entitled Dreaming of Dinosaurs. While some commented that it wasn't very vintage, others (on Facebook, mostly) noted how its title reminded them of a different book that they treasured as a child - Dinosaur Dream. Well wouldn't you know, I've only gone and procured that one too! And no, as it's from 1990, it isn't very 'vintage' either. However, hopefully this will be forgiven on the grounds that it's really quite beautiful.

Both written and illustrated by Dennis Nolan, Dinosaur Dream is the charming story of a young boy's journey back through time, dressed in his snappy red pyjamas and accompanied by his juvenile sauropod friend. Whether or not the trip really was just a dream is, happily, left ambiguous. The boy - Wilbur - is disturbed in the night by a baby apatosaur's approach outside his window, shortly after he has put away his favourite dinosaur book and settled down to sleep.

Wilbur's room betrays Nolan's primary paleaeoartistic influences - and they are most definitely vintage. Wilbur not only has a poster of Knight's famous Tyrannosaurus v Triceratops piece on his wall, but an enormous great frieze of the Zallinger Age of Reptiles mural. Anyone who was obsessed with dinosaurs as a child will recognise that fundamental need to have absolutely everything they owned adhere to a prehistoric theme, right down to their duvet cover (I've got to say that my Jurassic Park example didn't quite have the timeless, graphical appeal of this one). If it seems a little odd that a child in 1990 would have a Knight poster on their wall, well, I imagine that's a little nostalgia on the author's part, which I certainly won't begrudge him.

When Wilbur first meets the young Apatosaurus, he immediately decides to name his new saurian friend 'Gideon', after Gideon Mantell (which is lovely - I might have felt rather differently had he named it 'Richard'). Rather less cleverly, he decides to try and stash the dinosaur away in a barn with a gaggle of disgruntled farm animals. Realising his error, Wilbur elects instead to try and get the Apatosaurus back to the Jurassic where it belongs, and the two set off on a long walk back in time. At this point, connoisseurs of dinosaur art will have already noted that Gideon has a distinctly retro appearance - rather portly and wrinkled, with inaccurate plantigrade hands and feet and a highly arched, humped back. Nevertheless, Gideon's a very active little beast, not only harassing livestock but easily keeping pace with his smelly mammalian charge, even through thick snow. Retro in appearance, but definitely Renaissance in habits.

While wisely keeping their distance from a herd of mammoths, the bumbling pair somehow end up alarmingly close to the business end of a Smilodon, and are forced to clamber up a cliff face to safety. The appearance of the toothily endowed moggy owes much to Knight, but definitely falls on the right side of the 'loving homage/lazy rip-off' divide. The composition of this illustration is beautiful, with Gideon's back and tail forming a wonderful, sigmoid shape opposite the near-geometric peaks of the distant mountains. All right, so Niroot may have pointed that out to me, but the point stands - Nolan is a superb illustrator with a keen eye for an excellently arranged scene.

The two go on to find a 'dawn horse' (presumably Eohippus), frolicking atop a suitably picturesque waterfall, and Wilbur realises that they are indeed travelling far, far back in time. Before too long, they pass through the Mesozoic border - thankfully rather lax on security measures to prevent the entry of temporal migrants in nightwear- encountering flocking Pteranodon as they go.

While the above illustration may give the impression that the pair are passively observed by Triceratops as they pass, the text describes Wilbur walking up to the sleeping ceratopsians, disturbing them, being charged and making a rather narrow escape. The use of perspective in this picture is wonderful, making ol' Pointyface look suitably massive and slightly sinister, if not a little retro once again. Of course, given Wilbur's predilection for getting into near-fatal scrapes with enormous, bad-tempered prehistoric creatures, it's only a matter of time before he's running for his life while a Tyrannosaurus snaps at his stupid little heels.

Sexy Rexy strikes a suitably athletic pose in Nolan's gorgeously lit scene (the sky! Look at the sky! By Bakker's beard, it's beautiful!), but again its loosely interpreted head and rather lizardy limb muscles show off his very old-school influences. Nevertheless, it's difficult to argue with something quite so fantastically painted, and I love the panicked, galloping pose of Gideon. Just as the dino-dream threatens to come to an abrupt and rather gastronomically unsatisfying conclusion, the hapless pair escape into a river...

...only to be hurled straight over a waterfall. While the characters' expressions are priceless, this painting does unfortunately reveal that Nolan really did have no idea where to put sauropod nostrils (thanks to Hugebody McTinyHead on Facebook for pointing that one out. No, I don't make these names up).

At last, Wilbur is able to reunite little Gideon with his retrotastic extended family in the Great Valley (maybe). While these humpbacked mountains of flesh are quite comically backward-looking, even for 1990, they are nevertheless possessed of a certain charm, no doubt enhanced by their gormless, perma-smiling faces and pleasant demeanour. A larger-than-usual double page illustration (detail shown above) helps emphasise the sheer size of these nostalgia-tinged brontos, with the entire left hand page being dominated by the Burianesque body of one of the beasts. This is further enhanced by the perspective, which is at Wilbur's level; from here, the sauropod necks crane up very high indeed.

Finally, an exhausted Wilbur is given a lift back home by the largest Apatosaurus of the herd, falling soundly asleep in the many folds of its gigantic hump. Another ludicrous-looking dinosaur (who else is reminded of the Dino Riders toy?), but a sumptuous illustration boasting an expertly painted and highly evocative skyscape. It's a fittingly warm conclusion, in every sense, to such a deservedly adored book. Dinosaur Dream really is the cat's snappy red pyjamas.

The Prize

Regular readers may dimly recall that we held some sort of daft art contest here a few months ago, based on the concept of some well-known palaeoar...palaeontography book or other. Hopefully, you were all paying attention when we announced the winners - with first place going to one Andrew Dutt of New York. Naturally, it wasn't enough to simply send a copy of Dinosaur Art - it had to be enhanced with some glorious Himmapaanification first. (Oh, and slightly ruined by me.)

Now, I should definitely point out that these were drawn completely freehand, which in Niroot's case is pretty damn remarkable. Sure, he took it home to finish off, but it was started in a pub near Oxford Circus (see below). If you're having a hard time reading Niroot's writing, which is sufficiently beautiful to drive grown men to weep uncontrollably in public (now that was quite an evening), then allow me to transcribe:

For Andrew
Many congratulations on winning the LITC All Yesterdays contest. Thank you so much for your beautiful entry. Enjoy this fantastic book!
With very best wishes from the Chasmosaurs Team.
(It was inevitable that Marc chose to draw a theropod and I a hadrosaur).

Meanwhile, the smeared mess on the opposite side reads as follows:

Andrew,
Congratulations on your win.
I hope you enjoy the book.
Please excuse the allosaur, as I drew it in the pub.
Cheers!

Andrew received the book only recently, hence this post only arriving now; we wouldn't want to spoil anything. Happily, it only had a few jacket scuffs from where I had kept it stacked in a pile of all the rubbish I buy to review on this blog. Hearty congratulations to him again for producing the winning piece! Oh, and there will be a new Vintage Dino Art post in the next few days, I promise (I've been on leave). Until then, here's Andrew's bone-dropping Dsungaripterus once again.

Walking With Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie

Ceratopsia triumphant! The international trailer for Walking with Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie is here, giving us our first good look of what to expect. Pachyrhinosaurus takes center stage here, and among the supporting cast are mighty Edmontosaurs, feathered Troodons, and a few big nasty theropods. No Wittonesque shaggy coats or bristly bits on the Pachyrhinosaurs, but it's going to look mighty pretty. Guess I'll have to get over my aversion to 3D.



I'm feeling pretty stoked. This is exactly the kind of dinosaur story I want to see on the big screen. More to come, I'm sure.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: more from The How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs

Yes, it's back! After the rapturous reception it received last time, a return to the glorious How & Why Wonder world seemed absolutely necessary - vital, even. This was, after all, the "terrible, terrible book" that proved to be a key source of childhood inspiration for a number of celebrated palaeontologists. Also, how could I have left out this disturbingly anthropomorphic creature last time...?

Why, "Trachodon", if it weren't for your alarmingly flattened facial features, you would be quite outrageously sexy. The forelimbs in particular here are absurdly, comically/distressingly humanoid and dainty; this is a creature best imagined seated at a piano in a cavernous mansion, playing hauntingly beautiful piano pieces to itself while staring blankly from within its dark, bovine eyes, its beaked face utterly expressionless. I should probably also mention that illustration rather obviously, er, references Burian. The shading is still wonderful, too, although here it has the disconcerting effect of making the animal look rather...smooth. Shudder.

Ankylosaurus, that perennial tyrannosaur-clobbering lumberjack, is shown - typically for the time - as an extremely squat, short-legged, neckless and permanently grumpy creature, although the tail here is not as truncated as was frequently depicted. The shoulder spines would appear to owe something to Edmontonia, suggesting that this illustration may be inspired by the chimeric "Palaeoscincus" that often popped up in pre-Renaissance palaeoart. The texture work on the animal's back, and in particular its scutes, is actually remarkably well done; it's possible to imagine running a hand over their tough, bony surface. These monochrome illustrations are by far the most accomplished in the book.

Protoceratops, the nesting lizard - a palaeoart canard that took decades to die and was adopted by absolutely everyone, from Neave Parker to Zallinger (if anyone can enlighten me as to the origin of the whole 'sprawling limbs' trope, I'd love to know). For me, this one resembles Parker's in particular, and, well, it's a bit dull. Really, Protoceratops just serves as the warmup act in popular dinosaur books for everyone's favourite...

...Triceratops! Here, 'old three horns' (or whichever corny, affectionate nickname you're most fond of) appears suitably stoic and battle-weary - probably because it's a dead ringer for the animal in Charles Knight's famous Triceratops v T. rex painting, right down to the perspective and alarmingly chunky limbs (knees? Where we're going, we won't need knees!). Still, drink in that highly skilled texturing and marvel at that tangible fleshiness, for we are about to return to the book's colour illustrations, where things really do go downhill somewhat.

I should point out that the anachronisms in the above picture are deliberate (and the title relates more to the text than the illustration), but these are still some seriously goofy-looking beasties. Charles Knight's painting of a misidentified Dimetrodon/Edaphosaurus chimera seems to have inspired the cutesy-pie Dimetrodon in this image, but while Knight's had a Dimetrodon head, this one appears to have the skull of a loveable frog. I'm also very fond of the crudely drawn 'ornithopod', complete with tiny arms sprouting from its neck. Bless.

The book's pterosaurs fare little better, boasting as they do some seriously bizarre and grotesque heads - I mean, more so than in reality. The googly-eyed, lumpen-headed Dimorphodon is a particular highlight here. Note also the inclusion of Archaeopteryx on the pterosaur page because, well, it lived alongside the dinosaurs and it flew, right? It made good sense at the time, of course, but it's heartening to look back and reflect upon how far the science has come, and all the hard work it took to get us to where we are today - much of it inspired, in the first instance, by this very book.

I've come over all sentimental. Quick, another silly illustration!

One lazy trope that absolutely, positively refuses to die - even after literally generations of writers have used it - is the direct comparison between extinct marine reptiles and mythological sea monsters. It gets right on my nerves, so it does. While THWWBD doesn't quite sink to mentioning Nessie, it sets the trend for many, many books and articles since in which plesiosaurs are referred to as 'monsters', complete with a little sojourn into the realms of cryptozoology - since after all, they could be alive today, hanging around in the abyssal depths with Godzilla and that giant killer newt thing from Cloverfield, and we'd never know, wooooo! The illustration plays up the 'serpentine' aspect of the ludicrously long-necked Elasmosaurus by giving it an equally long tail, when of course it had a rather stumpy one in reality; however, this would again appear to have been inspired by Knight, specifically his late 19th century painting of the animal (the snaking neck of which would also inspire a meme that lasted a good century).

I'd like to end on a monochrome illustration, however, for they represent THWWBD at its best. The Styracosaurus here is actually rather good for the time (I await the first reader to point me toward the much earlier illustration it's a copy of), while the Allosaurus - with its relatively short arms - is a far cry from the bizarre-looking creature that features in one of the book's colour plates. It's enough to make one wonder if they really were by the same artist...

Whatever the case may be, and at the risk of repeating myself (see previous post), this is a charming book, and it's no accident that it got so many people hooked on dinosaurs. We have an awful lot to thank it for, and it remains an entertaining read!