Dinosaurs

Monday, December 28, 2015

2015 in Review

We have not done any proper navel-gazing posts here in a while, and with a new year on the calendar about to flip over, it's a good excuse to do it. So here we go! A look at what we did here in 2015, a look forward, and just for fun, a run down of our ten most popular posts of all time.

Interviews

I love doing interviews, and this year I conducted three that are well-worth reading if you missed them. First, I talked to illustrator Angela Connor, who created the "Paleo Portraits" series. Then I talked to ichnologist Lisa Buckley about the crowdfunding effort to protect an important trackway in British Columbia. Finally, I spoke to Brian Engh about his process, his biggest paleoart pet peeve, and tickling Western Fence Lizards.

Vintage Dinosaur Art

The Vintage Dinosaur Art series, largely written by Marc, has continued to spotlight fun and occasionally perplexing dinosaur illustrations from days of yore. When looked at in macro view, these posts ably depict the growing pains palaeontology has experienced in the public imagination, as the old visions of prehistoric life that coalesced in the middle of the twentieth century slowly, begrudgingly give way to what scientists have been learning for the past few decades.

If you look at the first entry in the series, you'll see humble beginnings. I knew it would be a fun idea for a series. My initial idea was to give recognition to lesser known illustrators outside of the pantheon of palaeoartists, as well as to show how images of dinosaurs changed over time. Rather than any higher strategy, my book choices were dictated by what I found on visits to secondhand stores and yard sales. When Marc wrote his first guest post, it was clear that he was well-suited to the series. Then he came on as a regular contributor, and has really made it his own, far exceeding what I could have done. It's become clear that this series has become the core of the blog, generating the most likes on Facebook and inspiring the most lively comment threads. It is testament to the good work Marc has done over the last four years, so I wanted to take a moment to give him some props here. Props to Marc!

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Life Through The Ages

It's difficult to imagine now, but there was a time when the cover star of a book on prehistoric animals wouldn't inevitably have been a (Mesozoic) dinosaur. In our post-post-Dino Renaissance world, we're used to fast-moving, feathered theropods, ankylosaurs with legs and necks worth a damn, sauropods not just wandering around on terra firma but brontosmashing each other in the process, and Bob Bakker's face replacing that of Santa Claus so slowly, no one even noticed. Back in the day, however, dinosaurs were seen as mere failures of evolution, twiddling their stupid fat reptilian thumbs until they were all wiped out and the superior mammals could saunter in and take over. Picture yourself now in 1961, thumbing your own way through Life Through The Ages.

It might not feature a (Mesozoic) dinosaur, but the cover is certainly arresting. Front-and-centre is a freakishly large bird with a giant beak, lashing out at a big cat-like animal in an exciting battle scene. Yeah, there's some weird stuff going on (cat thumbs?), but it's an effective composition, nicely stylised, and it makes you interested in reading the book to find out what on Earth's going on here. The cover art is credited to Howard Price (and authorship goes to Bertha Morris Parker, which is a great name) but, sadly, the illustrator behind the artwork inside the book remains a mystery. Boo.

The book is a fairly straightforward 'journey through time' affair, although for some reason the very first plate features a jolly-looking plesiosaur. Hello there, plesiosaur! Curiously, the caption for this image reads "A Plesiosaur (1/40) - Model Courtesy of Milwaukee Public Museum", in spite of the fact that this appears to be a painting rather than a photograph of a model. Of course, this could well be down to the poor reproduction quality of the images, or else it may well be a painting based on a model. In any case, the animal's rubber toy face is immensely cute.

Otherwise, the first tetrapod to appear is Eryops, looking rather pleased with itself by the side of a swamp (the lack of vegetation is probably just down to needing to fit the text in). It's not a bad illustration - the tail may be unduly short, but the bumpy skin is there, as is a hint of the many spiky teeth that lined its jaws.

It's not long before everyone's favourite diapsid reptile clade shows up, but - perhaps reflecting the general consensus of the time that they weren't terribly important or interesting - they're humiliatingly relegated to a series of small illustrations, a reel of the Usual Suspects. Allosaurus, Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, "Trachodon"; I believe we're done here. The reconstructions are very much of their time, featuring rather dull, static, and very brown animals (with the exception of "Trachodon", decked out in stunning swampy green).

In spite of the illustrations' small size, it's possible to see where some of them were copied from. In particular, the Stegosaurus is quite Burianesque, while the Tyrannosaurus is a dead ringer for Charles Knight's. Of more interest is the text, which makes much of the dinosaurs' tiny brains. To wit:

"There was not much room in [Brontosaurus'] head for brains. It had less than a pound of brains in 35 tons of body! Brontosaurus must have been a very clumsy, stupid animal."

"Stegosaurus, like Brontosaurus, had a huge body and a small brain. Its brain was not much larger than your fist."

"Inside all this [head] armour Triceratops had a brain the size of a kitten's and not nearly so good."

Take that, dinosaurs! No wonder you all died out and the world was inherited by mammals and generally compact, feathered archosaurs of uncertain affinities.

Given their tragic lack of brains, dinosaurs can't be allowed to hog the Mesozoic limelight, and so here's Pteranodon, looking peculiarly googly-eyed and seemingly lacking pteroid bones. But somehow they just look so cute! I'm sensing a pattern developing. Hey, at least they aren't terrifyingly skinny, or hanging like bats from cliff faces. For 1961, they're not too shabby.

The final Mesozoic animal to appear in Life Through The Ages is a dinosaur, although it wouldn't have been widely acknowledged as one at the time (and so isn't here). Why, if it isn't everyone's favourite loon-like toothed diving bird Hesperornis, here given a quite delightful treatment with unusually duck-like plumage and a clutch of young 'uns. This is probably the best illustration in the book for my money - depicting an animal that would be tempting to monsterise as a "BIRD WITH TEETH!" in an entirely naturalistic and understated fashion. It's really quite beautiful. Pretty, even. Also, how often do we get to see Hesperornis babies? I wanna see more!

At the end of the Mesozoic, the dinosaurs are dispatched to the Great Swamp in the Sky and, as the book puts it, The Mammals Come into Their Own. "They are the lords of the earth now...Of course, you are a mammal yourself," we are told. Ah, hubris. Of course, the mammals started out small; as the above illustration depicts, Early Mammals resembled mangy, lanky fossas. But they soon diversified.

'Sabre-toothed tigers' put in an appearance, of course, depicted resplendent atop a rocky outcrop, as they tend to be (when not simply illustrated plunging their absurd canines into some unfortunate ground sloth or other). The animals as painted would appear to be Smilodon. Although Parker is quite approving of their impressive weapons, she also dismisses them as being "one of nature's mistakes, for the sabre-tooth disappeared from the earth thousands of years ago," only to be replaced by felids more suited to internet memes.

Speaking of ground sloths...here's one now. Again, no specific sloth is mentioned in the text, but the image caption reveals the creature to be Megatherium. There's no break here from the stereotypical image of Megatherium utilising its enormous size to reach up into the treetops while standing bipedally - an image probably cemented by certain early skeletal mounts. Indeed, a quick Google image search reveals a plethora of bipedal Megatherium reaching into trees, with a few notable exceptions and some, er, oddities. At its feet stands Doedicurus, incorrectly identified as Glyptodon in the image caption. This is a shame, as Doedicurus was obviously much cooler than Glyptodon on account of the spiky tail club. It's also a noted survivor of the Great Blackgang Chine Fibreglass Beastie Apocalypse of 2014. Overall, it's another pleasingly painterly scene of prehistoric goings on.

And finally...it's the back cover, which doesn't quite form a continuous scene with the front. My attention here is mainly drawn to the strange rhinoceros-like beast in the centre, whose name I'm sure I used to know, but escapes me now (commenters to the rescue! Please [EDIT: Tristan Rapp to the rescue! They're Uintatherium). There's also a wolf thing and what appear to be tarsiers. Meanwhile, we're teased with various other titles of books from the same informative series. I'm particularly interested in The Insect Parade, as long as there are fleas. Clown fleas, high-wire fleas, fleas on parade...

Whether you grasped that reference or not, may I take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, or if you'd rather not, have a very jolly time doing whatever you're doing during December. (I'm an atheist myself, but also a sucker for sparkling wine, flashing lights and camp.) Thanks for sticking with your pals at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs, and here's hoping 2016 is as joyful as a nest full of Hesperornis chicks.

Monday, December 7, 2015

Paleoartist Interview: Brian Engh

The Mill Canyon Dinosaur Trackway... now available on Yoga Pants! � Brian Engh. Shared here with permission.

Just about a year ago, the world was introduced to Aquilops, a darling little primitive ceratopsian from the early Cretaceous Cloverly Formation of North America. Farke et al's PLOS ONE description of the animal also brought the world one of the most breathtaking pieces of paleoart in recent memory, a dynamic scene by Brian Engh. Marc wrote up an in-depth analysis of the piece here, a must-read if you missed it. Since then, the hits have kept coming, with a series of hilarious (and possibly disturbing, YMMV) illustrations for the #BuildABetterFakeTheropod hashtag he originated, a pair of clashing apatosaur illustrations, two musical releases (the Jungle Cat Technique mixtape and his newest album, Gather Bones), and a gorgeous scene commissioned for the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Trackway, depicting the origin of the site. That piece can be seen at the head of this post, and you can buy prints from Brian at his website.

In 2011, invited by Glendon Mellow to take part in the ScienceOnline Sciart panel, Engh's wild Sauroposeidon illustration was a cornerstone of my portion of the chat, as I spoke about the developing paleoart paradigm that has since become known as the "All Yesterdays Movement," based on the seminal book published by Darren Naish, Memo Kosemen, and John Conway in 2012. His artwork continues to hold a prominent place in my imagination.

Sauroposeidon showdown � Brian Engh. Shared here with his permission.

In addition to his paleoart, Engh is a filmmaker, puppeteer, rapper, creature designer, and he makes art of the non-paleo variety. This disparate body of work is all imbued with a definite Enghitude. To me, it's clearly the work of a restless, adventurous spirit. He questions what is possible, never settles, and sees no obstacle that can't be turned into an opportunity. I recently interviewed Brian about his work, and I'm thrilled to share it with you.

Your first piece of published paleoart was of Spinosaurus, for the 2010 Tor Bertin paper. How did that opportunity come about?

That opportunity just came out of the blue. Tor saw my work on my website and asked me and I was super stoked to have an opportunity to get some work published, and especially a huge weird aquatic theropod. Even though he was just an undergrad and could only pay me $100, I put about a month of work into researching, sketching, gathering reference - including making a model and photographing it - and finally illustrating it.

That would have been 2009 or so, right? What was in your portfolio at that time?

Man... Honestly I don't even know... I think I've taken most of that early era stuff off my website because it's embarassingly feeble & innaccurate. I think the only piece still on my website from that era is this Acrocanthosaurus reconstruction, which was one of my first forays into combining traditional pencil drawing with painting in Photoshop. Also, most of the drawings in the "MONSTERS!" section of my portfolio are from around that time (I really need to update my website).

You've given talks about paleontology and paleoart. As a fellow paleo-freak who always looks for ways to talk about this stuff with normal people, I'm wondering what you've learned in that regard - what do you think is worth focusing on, what do people respond to?

First, and most importantly, natural sciences make sense to pretty much everyone when you explain them in simple terms, using as little jargon as possible. Paleontology is really just animals and plants doing animal and plant stuff, then dying and getting buried and all that stuff stacking up for unfathomable expanses of time. When explained in those terms I've seen people get it. On the flipside, I've been disappointed to find that people just don't care about plants. When I get to the section of my talk about plants I've literally watched people get up and leave. Which is a huge bummer, because plants are foundational to damn near every ecosystem and it's fundamentally impossible to understand any animal without them. Also they're beautiful and weird and dynamic and are texturally delicious. Whenever I go to a botanical garden I'm always touching everything up, and I really need to figure out how to translate that fascination so that people feel themselves walking in the living landscape of the deep past.

The spear bill, a giant killer heron-like ornithomimid created for the #BuildABetterFakeTheropod hashtag, � Brian Engh. Shared here with his permission.

You once wrote that you'd never seen a reconstruction of T. rex that felt "right." Has that changed?

No. I still feel like T. rex is too deeply mired in our cultural consciousness for anyone to really see it. The more people study large tyrannosaurs the more it becomes clear that they were doing something pretty unique. They were huge, insanely high metabolism predators whose bodies changed dramatically as they matured and whose jaws and dentition were specialized for bone crushing. Oh, and they probably had bird-like skin & possibly feathers. So goddamn weird. Sometimes when I stare into the eye sockets of really complete skulls and I see the gnarled rugosities surrounding them I start to get a weird feeling of this bizarre giganto bird monster with deep facial scars and mouth infections and a bulldog neck for yanking triceratops apart. But the whole time I have the sneaking suspicion that the soft tissue was doing things that we just can't imagine. Try to imagine a big male lion without ever seeing even complete soft tissue impressions of a housecat. You'd never guess he had a mane and ruled over the land with that intangible formidability that those beasts emanate... But I am currently working on an illustration of an Allosaurus that's almost starting to come close as far as character goes... almost.

I've written a bit at LITC about my perpetual dissatisfaction with dinosaur movies and documentaries, and have sort of given up hope, concluding that our best hope to recapture the adrenaline jolt of the first Jurassic Park will be games like Saurian. How hopeful are you that we'll see a major, mainstream piece of dinosaur entertainment that knocks us on our butts again?

I dunno. It could maybe happen. I've worked in the entertainment industry a bit and all my closest artist friends work full time as animators or in other aspects of the industry and there are a lot of people working really hard to make the best stuff they can. That said, the corporate side of things is definitely messing with the creative process and that makes it hard for a strong grounding in science or really any new or innovative concepts to work their way into movies. New or foreign ideas (like dinosaurs with feathers that don't roar every time prior to charging their prey) are seen by corporate executive producer types as risky, especially when the production is big and there's an ungodly mountain of money being invested into it as is pretty much always necessary to make elaborate dinosaur films.

That said, I think part of the blame for shitty representations of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals in media should be placed squarely on the shoulders of the paleontological community. There are a lot of mediocre to downright terrible reconstructions that come out of the science side and those all influence how people on the tv/movie production side visualize prehistoric animals. Also, there's a lot of disagreement in the paleontological community, and for people on the outside who don't have a strong biology background it can be really difficult to get a sense of who actually knows wtf they're talking about. And a fair number of paleontologists, (some well known ones in particular) simply don't have a strong enough background in the biology and anatomy of extant animals. But that's changing... And so is paleoart. And so is the entertainment industry. Everything is in flux right now, and it's awesome.

So short answer: if we support good paleoart, the entertainment industry will have more good examples to draw from, but in particular support my work because I also make videos with practical creature effects and I have an idea for a low-budget dinosaur horror film that I desparately want to make because I believe in my ape viscera that a 20 foot long bipedal bird-like creature with razor sharp teeth and clawed forelimbs would make a really goddamn scary movie monster (but I need, like, 300 grand to produce the project).

A pair of Diamantinasaurus explore an ancient Australian cave, lit by glow worms. Check the whiskery faces - and read more about it from Brian and SV-POW. � Brian Engh. Shared here with permission.

How much contact, if any, have you had with prominent paleoartists? Any pieces of advice or insights they've shared that have stuck with you?

I went to SVP this year and met a handful of paleoartists, but I suppose the most prominent one I met was Julius Csotonyi. We only talked briefly, as he was working in the lobby on his laptop on his recently announced shark book. In the brief conversation I asked Julius how long a big book project like that takes and he said something like "oh, a few months" to which I had to reply "whoa! so you're putting out a new [gorgeous] illustration every 2-3 days or so??" That was a real kick in the pants. I'm meticulous and obsessive and good at thinking up a million concepts, but all of that eats up time. Julius is able to concieve and execute near-photoreal illustrations at a pace I can currently only dream of. Suddenly his success in an under-funded super-niche creative field finally made sense. He's able to blast out work at a rate that enables him to sustain a living income. But it should be impressed upon non artists that his accomplishment in that regard is herculean.

Aquilops faces down a marauding Gobiconidon, � Brian Engh. Shared here with permission.

You seem like the kind of artist who is just constantly collecting inspiration, no matter where you are. How does that influence your paleoart process? When researching a new commission, how to you organize all the disparate tendrils of inspiration? What do those earliest stages look like as you settle on a composition?

I have big trees of folders of pictures, papers and sketched out ideas on my computer and I try to make a discipline of clearly naming new files and dropping them into the folders they seem like they belong in. I also record tons of ideas on my phone when I'm away from my desk. But a lot of the inspiration for a big paleoart piece comes from the paleontologists I'm working with and the resources they provide me with. The best collaborations happen when I'm provided with tons of reference material, especially visual stuff like high res images of fossils, fossil sites and modern environmental analogues. At some point I'm going to put up an blog post outlining the best practices for paleontologists working with paleo artists, and at the top of that list of good practices is providing tons and tons of reference material.

Aquilops process sketches, � Brian Engh. Shared here with permission.

When it comes to working out the final composition I make a lot of rough sketches based on discussions about behavior and ecology and send them to my collaborators to see what people like. Ultimately though, my final composition is often strongly influenced by going outside and trying to find environments with similar characteristics to the prehistoric ones being reconstructed. As discussed in my talk and blog post on Aquilops that meant going to redwood and Sequoia forests and thinking "where would I hide in this forest if I were a rabbit sized Deinonychus snack and Sauroposeidons were moving through grazing on the giant trees?"

Process layouts for the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Trackway illustration, � Brian Engh. Shared here with permission.

In the case of my Mill Canyon Dinosaur Trackway art that process got even more specific, in that I went to the actual trackway and stood where the illustration would be placed overlooking it, and I shot a photo panorama with ReBecca Hunt-Foster and John Foster (and even their 5 year old daughter Ruby as the dromeosaur) pacing out the various trackways so I could map them out precisely from that vantage point. I then used that exact point of view to come up with a couple dozen possible layouts which I then sent to ReBecca to see what she liked. I also camped out near the site and visited it all different times of day to find the best lighting for seeing the tracks (which turns out to be just after sunrise, as depicted in the final illustration), and I also walked all around trying map out and trace the shoreline of the ancient lake so that I could reconstruct that as accurately as possible in my image. When you take the time to really look at the environment you see some interesting things. Like, the bank of the lakeshore with the most croc slides is the one best angled to catch the first rays of morning sun. I got goosebumps when I saw the sun creeping accross that ancient shoreline. I cannot emphasize enough how important going outside and looking at rocks and climbing trees and catching frogs and snorkeling is to my process. I couldn't come up with this stuff by myself. Our prehistoric planet is alive all around us.

Besides the gross anatomical stuff that tends to be whipped like a dead horse (bunny hands and the like), what are a few habits or trends in paleoart that frustrate you? Your pet peeves, as it were.

Monkey puzzle trees and the same pruned cycads and naked horsetails being the only plant life in the Mesozoic. And just generally sparse undergrowth and clean ground. It's a symptom artistic laziness and the academic view of nature that we've all been raised with. We read "Araucaria-like trees" in the literature and we look up "Araucaria" and we pick the one that looks the most unusual & "prehistoric", ignoring the fact that the umbrella topped Araucaria only grow in really specific environments and that even today there is a wide diversity of growth forms among the Araucaria (and only 2 modern species form the umbrella topped things depicted in ever paleo painting ever). Also there was without a doubt a HUGE diversity of similarly leafed trees that lived at various points over the last 200+ million years, most of which we only have fragmentary fossils of, so their actual phylogenetic affinities are really really shady, especially considering the phenotypic plasticity of many plants, conifers being no exception.

So the repetition of the same shaped trees and forest architecture in paleo art is purely memetic mimicry and not a reflection of any real knowledge about the paleoenvironment being illustrated, which therefor calls into question ideas about the behavior of all the animals depicted in that environment. What's worse is that then paleontologists sometimes start thinking that's what the landscape actually looked like and then start interpereting everything based on an imagined landscape bizarrely warped by lenses of preservation (or lack thereof), interperetation, depiction in art, mimicry of that art, and then reinterperetation of the fossil record based on that now concrete mental image. At times it gets so wonky that I start doubting that paleoart is actually even helping the science. In a perfect world, with unlimited time and money, new paleontological discoveries should be announced with a number of different artistic interperetations showing a variety of possible behaviors, environments or environmental phases. I'd love to have the time to depict Aquilops' Sequoia forest right after a seasonal brush fire (which the fossil record indicates happened there), or even a series of images depicting seasonal change in that one environment...

More 'pod warfare: Apatosaurs tussle. � Brian Engh. Shared here with permission. You can, and should, buy a print.

I'm insanely jealous of young kids today, getting to grow up in a world with an internet. Assuming you're somewhat younger than me, what role did it play for you as a budding paleontology nut?

I'm 30, so good dinosaur information wasn't freely circulating on the internet until I was in college. In those days there was wikipedia, and the dinosaur mailing list threads. A few years later, wordpress and blogspot blogs by paleontologists started popping up. It was about that time that I realized I should start trying to make a discipline of improving my dinosaur art, as drawing dinosaurs at a young age was foundational to the development of every other subsequent creative skillset. Also, most of the paleoart I was seeing online was garbage and I thought maybe I could help change that. In the process of researching and putting out work online I discovered SV-POW (Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week, for the uninitiated). I loved that it was written by working paleontologists, was super technical and specialized, and yet was really easy to read. So I contacted Matt Wedel just to say thanks for making all that science available. That conversation basically lead to where I'm at today, conversing with the online paleo community and working with several paleontologists to make the best reconstructions of ancient lifeforms I possibly can.

That said, I'm definitely not jealous of young kids today because a lot of parents nowadays (when they themselves aren't obsessively reliant on their device) hand kids a device to keep them busy, rather than saying, "go outside" or "go make something." And the web is weird, and not well suited to our natural means of communicating with facial expressions, non verbal cues, jokes etc. And for a lot of kids communicating and understanding the world through the internet has become the primary, formative experience. For me it was playing in the back yard and looking for bugs under bricks and catching lizards and making things out of clay and pencil on paper. I'm somewhat concerned that in some cases people cultivate a purely academic understanding of nature, an that the internet is contributing to that. But, no matter how good the wikipedia page on western fence lizards is it definitely doesn't give you a real sense of who they are and how they behave and react to the world around them and to people. And yet the internet leads us to believe we have real knowledge about them.

And to be clear, I'm guilty of this too. I don't know how many times I've been looking at a living thing and trying to figure out what it is, and then somebody tells me the name and I go "ok, that's a Townsends Warbler" and then i stop looking at it because i now have a label by which to look it up later if it should interest me to do so. But to me, animals and plants aren't just objects to memorize names of and trivia about, or data points to be categorized according to a phylogeny, they are us. They're our family members, our fellow outgrowths of this bizarre teeming planet. That wikipedia page on fence lizards might let you know a few broad, concrete things about the group of animals we call by that name, and that's fine for building a concept of big picture patterns and relationships, but it definitely doesn't tell you that if you approach certain confident individuals, particularly dominant males with bright coloration, from a low angle, moving very very slowly, and not looking directly into their eyes, you can sometimes tickle them on their chin. I have done this. It is good.

I'm grateful to Brian for taking the time to answer my questions. For more insights, be sure to read his interviews with Dinologue, Cultured Vultures, and William Norman. Also check out Asher's post from 2014 on the "Earth Beasts Awaken" videos.

And for crying out loud, visit his website, pledge at his Patreon page, follow him at Twitter, check out his tunes at Bandcamp, and spend copious amounts of your hard-earned money at his new Redbubble shop.

Saturday, December 5, 2015

The Good Dinosaur - Marc's review

Given the extraordinarily high standards set by many of their previous films (perhaps not Cars 2), Pixar's first foray into the world of dinosaurs (that aren't toys) was an exciting prospect. As it transpires, The Good Dinosaur tells a rather well-worn story with ample flair, with Pixar's deftness at handling what could otherwise be mawkish emotional moments coming to the fore. It's also stunning to look at. On the other hand, there's no getting away from the fact that it feels like something of a missed opportunity - in terms of story and especially in terms of celebrating the weird and wonderful world of dinosaurs.

UK poster

The film's opening depicts the dino-killing asteroid of 65 million years ago dramatically heading straight for the Earth - only to skip across its atmosphere. From there, the film jumps to 'millions of years later' (although we aren't actually told how many), and we are introduced to a sauropod farmer, who (in the first of many nice touches) uses his enormous body in lieu of agricultural machinery.

He's the father of our main protagonist, Arlo (Raymond Ochoa), who (of course) is the runt of the litter of three, in spite of hatching out of by far the biggest egg (which is weirdly hollow but, hey, good visual gag). His rather weedy frame being unsuited to heavy manual labour, Arlo is tasked with trapping a 'critter' that's been stealing the family's crop. This turns out to be a human child (later named Spot), albeit one who acts exactly like a dog. Ultimately, Arlo ends up separated from his family and must embark on a long journey home, bonding with his man-pet in the process.

The story's rather predictable for the most part - hero is stranded far from home, must overcome his fear, the elements, the occasional villain to make it home, while bonding with companion he initially despised. That sort of thing. In fact, it's a tale familiar from previous Pixar movies. Having a familiar story arc in a kids' movie isn't necessarily bad in itself, but the film is lacking in the memorable characters that made Pixar's previous movies so superb.

Aside from Arlo's wholesome farming family of sauropods (who are only missing the flannel shirts), there's an apparently quite mad ceratopsian found living in the woods, a group of tyrannosaur ranchers, a gaggle of mangy-looking hillbilly dromaeosaurs, some villianous pterosaurs and...that's it. Aside from the amusingly eccentric Styracosaurus-like certatopsian (named Forrest Woodbrush and played by Peter Sohn), the characters are overly familiar archetypes, given previous little time to develop or do anything particularly interesting. Having tyrannosaurs as cowboys is a funny idea, but aside from having them effectively be their own mounts (which looks really rather odd), the concept isn't pursued in many interesting ways.

In fact, the whole movie seems to suffer from this to an extent - it feels like the whole conceit was never fully realised. The characters are dinosaurs rather than humans, and the 'dog' is a human boy, but that's it. The world isn't fleshed out to any great extent. Given the absolutely gorgeous backgrounds and scenery (including true volumetric clouds for the first time among other beautiful weather effects), it can occasionally feel like a tech demo looking for a decent story.

Which isn't to say that it's a bad movie, or cynical - far from it. It remains a compelling watch, and (as I've already mentioned) tender moments between the characters are handled in a manner that seemingly only Pixar can manage. It's a good film, but fails to reach the giddy heights of Pixar's classics, and most of that's down to the characters.

Speaking of which, given what this blog's all about, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the designs of the dinosaurs. Obviously they're heavily stylised, cartoonish and are inteded to represent hypothetical dinosaurs living long after the time when they went extinct in reality. And they talk. As such, any talk of scientific accuracy is a complete waste of time. All the same, the cultural influences behind the creature designs are interesting. The sauropods have more than a touch of the Gertie or Sinclair Oil about them, although Arlo's dad looks a bit like he was designed by Aardman Animations (the face). Elsewhere, the tyrannosaurs look very '90s, while the dromaeosaurs are feathered (albeit sparsely). The designs seem to cover several decades of pop culture representations of dinosaurs in the same movie, but never jar when placed alongside one another or with the environment, which is quite an achievement.

I must confess that, as a dinosaur geek, I'd like to have seen more dinosaurs/pterosaurs in the movie. Most of the choices are rather predictable - brontosaur, raptor, T. rex, horned dinosaur. The only left field casting is Nyctosaurus in the role of the villainous (and, rather cleverly, seemingly religiously-motivated) pterosaurs. Given the panoply of bizarre and often, let's face it, quite amusing-looking dinosaurs known to us now, this feels, again, like a missed opportunity.

Still, it's not a film for dinosaur geeks - it's a film for a general cinema-going family audience, and it's very good at being that. It still surpasses the vast majority of efforts put out by other studios, even if it's not up to Pixar's best. Oh, and the short film presented beforehand is bloody brilliant. Here's hoping a full-length Sanjay's Super Team is part of Pixar's plan...

Friday, December 4, 2015

Mesozoic Miscellany 81

In the News

Dinosaur eggs. We love 'em. New research comparing the porosity of 29 species of non-avian dinosaurs' eggs to those of hundreds of extant birds and crocs has concluded that maniraptorans were unique in incubating their eggs in open nests. Read more at Science, The Royal Tyrrell Museum, and Live Science.

A significant new dinosaur tracksite, dating to the Middle Jurassic and perhaps preserving the footprints of Cetiosaurus, has been discovered on the Isle of Skye. The BBC has produced an impressive multimedia feature about it. Read more at PopSci and NatGeo. Fans of shrink-wrapped dinosaurs will be over the moon when they see the illustration included with the press release.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

Parasitologist and illustrator Tommy Leung wrote a great overview about what we know about the parasites that hassled dinosaurs for The Conversation.

If you have the opportunity to check out fossil collections at a museum, be sure to read Victoria Arbour's post about how to prepare for your visit.

Gareth Monger probed the problems of skim-feeding pterosaurs at Pteroformer.

Emily Willoughby has written about Dakotaraptor in her first article for Got Science.

The second TetZooCon has come and gone, and LITC's Marc Vincent has recapped the festivities, as has Darren Naish.

You know you want to read about the Chinese museum that is packed with the most dinosaur fossils in the world, "stocked over just five years by the eccentric former head of a state-owned gold mining company." Dan Levin has the story at the New York Times.

"I want to give this animal the best chance of falling over..." is the kind of phrase we lovers of paleontology and its artistic interpreters are blessed with from time to time. At his blog, Mark Witton has taken a fresh look at the long-necked weirdo Tanystropheus, investigating the view that it could not have lived a terrestrial lifestyle because it was just too front-heavy.

Next time I'm in the Denver area, I hope I get to stay at the Dino Hotel. Check out the feature about Meredith and Greg Tally's labor of love at Atlas Obscura.

At ART Evolved, Herman Diaz reviewed The Puzzle of the Dinosaur-Bird and a Magic Schoolbus dinosaur book.

Liz Martin-Silverstone delved into the taxonomy of Dimetrodon at Musings of a Clumsy Palaeontologist.

David Prus wrote about the prehistoric wonderland that was Ha?eg Island.

Dinosaurs in Name Only: Andrea Cau has proposed a new term for those popular depictions of dinosaurs that can't be bothered to follow the palaeontological evidence.

The AV Club rounded up more than a dozen regrettable dinosaur entertainments - any they've unfairly maligned?

While Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus, and Torvosaurus get a lot of attention, Brian Switek urges you to appreciate Marshosaurus, a smaller but no less nifty Morrison predator.

Linocut dinosaur greeting cards by Frank-Joseph Frelier, available at Etsy.

These here dinosaur skull greeting cards are the bee's knees. If you missed it, do check out the LITC gift guide published earlier this week. And go see Gareth Monger's as well, while you're at it!

Video Pick

Cartoonist Bob Flynn alerted me to this video that Fablevision, the studio he works for, produced with the Smithsonian Science Education Center. It is an installment of the "Good Thinking!" series, which launched this summer. More than explaining the idea of Deep Time, it delves into impactful ways to teach the concept of Deep Time. I think it's fantastic.

Monday, November 30, 2015

The 2015 Dinosaur Gift Guide

The winter solstice rapidly approaches, and the advertising world's constant hum has risen to an insistent howl. If you've got an enthusiast of prehistory in your life and are looking for something special to give them, Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs has you covered. Last year, I posted a three-part guide to independent paleoartists (parts one, two, and three) who all deserve attention and patronage, and whose work would delight fans of paleontology. Since most of those listings are still active, go check them out.

This year, I'm featuring a fresh assortment of individual products, some from paleoart veterans, some from new names. As usual when I do list-y sort of stuff, I'm not pretending to enshrine a definitive List To Rule All Lists. These are cool dinosaur gift ideas that caught my fancy, and I think they have a fair chance of catching other fancies, so let's let the fancy-catching begin.

Ricardo Delgado's "Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians"

Ricardo Delgado has returned with a new batch of Mesozoic comics, this time focusing his eye on Cretaceous Egypt. The collected Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians is now available for preorder, with a release date of January 19.

Fred Wierum's "The Amazing Age of Dinosaurs" coloring book

Fred Wierum has been on an impressive paleoart streak this year, with a bunch of great work for #drawdinovember, his tyrannosaur resting in golden light, and a recent stunning tribute to Pixar's The Good Dinosaur. So pick up a copy of his coloring book!

Levi Hastings' "Claws, Spikes, and Dinosaur Stripes" coloring book

Since one totally excellent dinosaur coloring book is never enough, purchase a copy of illustrator Levi Hastings' tribute to mesozoic fauna, Claws, Spikes, and Dinosaur Stripes. More abstracted in style than Wierum's work, it's full of dynamic compositions begging for pigmentation.

John Davies' "Cucumbertops and Other Animals of the Veggiesaur Kingdom"

Even more fanciful than Hastings' work is the charming book by Jon Davies, Cucumbertops and Other Animals of the Veggiesaur Kingdom. Perfect for that vegetarian paleofanatic in your life.

Juan Carlos Alonso and Greg Paul's "Ancient Earth Journal: Early Cretaceous"

None other than Gregory S. Paul has returned to the bookshelves with his illustrations for Juan Carlos Alonso's Ancient Earth Journal: The Early Cretaceous. And if that's not quite enough GSP under the tree, grab one of his "Your Inner Dinosaur" calendars.

R.A. Faller's "Genderfluid Jobaria" illustration, from the "Pride Dinosaurs" series

This year, illustrator and character designer R.A. Faller created a series called "Pride Dinosaurs", celebrating the diversity of human sexuality. They are available on a wide variety of formats at Redbubble, but to just pick one, how about Polyamorous Prosaurolophus on a laptop skin?

Matt Martyniuk's "Ascent of Birds" illustration

Matt Martyniuk runs a Redbubble shop for his PanAves publishing imprint. I especially love the Proto-Birds and "Ascent of Birds" posters.

Brynn Metheny's "Saur" calendar

If your dinosaur-smitten loved one also nurses a serious astronomical obsession, Brynn Metheney's "Saur" calendar will do the trick, featuring a year's worth of astronaut dinosaurs.

Angela Connor's Kaprosuchus with boars illustration, from her "Copy Croc" collection

Angela Connor (ICYMI, read my April 2015 interview with her) has made an adorable set of prehistoric croc mugs, featuring Pakasuchus, Laganosuchus, and Kaprosuchus. They're fun plays on the animals' nicknames: cat-croc, pancake-croc, and boar-croc.

Gareth Monger's "Yi qi Express"

Gareth Monger has a bunch of cool stuff at his Redbubble shop, and my favorite is definitely this toon Yi qi. Hilarious, perfect, would be pretty great on a mug. A WWII bomber art-inspired depiction of a notorious weirdo of a flying dinosaur? What a time to be alive.

The cover of "Mammoth is Mopey," by Jennie and me

Finally, the children's book I published this year with my wife, Jennie, is raising money for the Jurassic Foundation, so half of your Mammoth is Mopey purchase goes to funding the researchers who make all of the delightful depictions of prehistoric life you've seen in this post possible. Every limited edition hardcover order comes with an expanded ebook. You can order them here.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaur Skeletons

Regular readers will know that I can't get enough of dinosaur pop-up books, having reviewed several over the years, and 1991's Dinosaur Skeletons is a worthy addition to the canon. Intriguingly, the book's concept is remarkably similar to that of 1984's Dinosaurs - a Lost World in Three Dimensions, only with considerably more up-to-date artwork - the titular skeletons are the pop-ups, while fleshed-out dinos are confined to the 2D illustrations. Not to worry - even a skeleton can threaten to take your eye out, especially when there's a mouth full of pointy teeth thrust in one's general direction.

The cover features a quite Sibbickian Torosaurus alongside a slightly iffy rendition of its skull (orbit's too big), which still works to get our attention. Note the fetching borders and decoration, which will be put to good use inside. All of the illustrations are by Bob Cremins.

The first animal to feature is Apatosaurus, and while hardly looking all thrusting and Paulian, it's nevertheless notable for holding its tail straight out behind it (except where curled to fit the page) - and that's without mentioning that glorious colour scheme. It's refreshing to see a sauropod of any era, never mind the early '90s, decked out in such a striking striped-and-spotted livery. While the animal is depicted simply standing around eating (rather than engaged in Brontosmash or whatever is fashionable among the kids these days), the single partially raised foot adds a subtle sense of motion that was always lacking in older kids' book palaeoart. (Mostly 'cos sauropods' legs were normally hidden by a good ten feet of water, but still.)

Unlike its fleshy counterpart, the skeletal Apatosaurus is still dragging its tail along - although it was probably based on an old skeletal mount. For the most part the pop-up skeletons in this book, while being necessarily simplified, are really rather good - just check out Apatosaurus' wacky-looking cervical vertebrae, there. (The 'creation and design' credit goes to Keith Moseley.) The background, with its evocative stony texture and lovely borders (which help emphasise the skeleton without distracting from it), features a number of pleasing touches. Chief among these is the remarkably creepy human skeleton, which looks as if it was walled into the backdrop and recently exhumed. If you're going to have a scale bar, make it a good 'un.

Of course, you can't have Apatosaurus in your book without introducing its erstwhile nemesis, Allosaurus. Or in this case, ALLOSAURUS!!! Having been quite classily understated so far, bringing in a giant theropod allows the book to introduce lightning, blood, leering shiny-toothed grins and jaws that go all the way, baby (you want more teeth? Well, I'm sure we could afford to lose some muscles, no biggy). It's only missing a sound recording of maniacal laughter.

Captain Evilsaurus is accompanied by a well-observed pop-up torso of, er, T. rex. It's especially baffling precisely because it is so well made - any dinosaur fan will instantly recognise that skull, sagittal crest and all. Still, neat mechanism (the whole thing appears to lunge forward and the jaws open as the pages are opened).

Parasaurolophus is next and, thankfully, the skeleton matches the illustration. The pop-up here is similar to that in Dinosaurs - a Lost World in Three Dimensions, only rather more detailed, and was likely based on the Parasaurolophus walkeri type specimen. It's a nice piece (and there's that human skeleton again).

The illustration's quite pretty too, and appears to show animals of different growth stages (or else sexual dimorphism, although that isn't mentioned in the text). We're certainly a long way from the retrosaurs depicted in Lost World in 3D. Interestingly, the foreground animal appears to be a better match for the skeleton, while the one in the background has a touch of the John McLoughlin 'leggy hadrosaur' look about it (although only a touch). Again, the colour schemes are very attractive (mmm, stripy) and the background birds are a welcome addition.

The backs of some of the flaps are occupied by animals that, sadly, don't get their own pop-up (I'd love to see an attempt at a Stegosaurus skeleton!). Cremins' Stego is something of a victim of a perspective fudge, although it is at least interestingly coloured and 'modern' in overall aspect. Great border, too (look! Amber! Before Jurassic Park!). Meanwhile, some sort of feathered maniraptor (presumably Archaeopteryx) scampers along the bottom. It's yet another victim of an artist taking 'clawed fingers' rather the wrong way (and it's always amusing given how hugely long the animal's fingers really were), although at least having the upper toothrow extend below the eye is keeping things consistent.

Remember Torosaurus? It's back, and this time, it wants to stick its horns in your face! And the orbit's shrunk.

The accompanying illustration is much better than the one on the cover, certainly in terms of getting the perspective right and keeping the eyes, horns etc. in their correct places. I also like the tunnel effect created by the trees in the background - there's a strong sense that the animal's rushing inexorably towards us. I'm sure it's also reminiscent of a Bakker piece, but I can't quit put my finger on it...

Much like Stegosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus appears as a 'supplementary dinosaur'. Disappointingly, this seems to be the one instance where Cremins just cribbed from the Normanpedia. Boo! We're also given the customary illustration of two pachycephalosaurs clashing heads, although in this case they look more like they're bowing. Polite pachycephalosaurs.

Thankfully, Sibbick's faintly terrifying probe-fingered, saggy-necked monstrosity of a Deinonychus from the Normanpedia does not put it an appearance here. Instead, we are treated to these none-more-'80s curly-armed fellows, mouths agog, no doubt ready to start tearing apart a doe-eyed ornithopod with a long tail. A little predictable, but that's OK, because the pop-up is awesome!

No, I don't know what's going on with that foot. Shut up. It all looks really cool when you have the page spread out in front of you, believe me.

What an excellent impression of a lean, fleet-footed predator. I'm especially fond of the way the neck and jaws protrude from the page - it's ready to snap your clammy fingers off. Great stuff.