Mesozoic Miscellany 67

The Big News: Mega-Freaky Deinocheirus edition

The publication of new Deinocheirus mirificus material, finally fleshing out the body that was attached to those enormous arms, made a huge splash last week. Or, I should say, finally officially fleshing it out. We've known about the new Deinocheirus in broad strokes in a back-channel, unofficial sense, since last year, after paleontologists and other attendees of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's 2013 meeting had a peek at it. It only took an additional year for the thing to actually be published. Our new Deinocheirus builds on what Brian Switek described last November: a weird, hump-backed, giant ornithomimosaur. Since then, the head has turned up. How the head was procured from the black market has not been explained in detail, and that's a story I'm really interested in hearing.

More about our new superstar dinosaur: Ed Yong wrote about it at not Exactly Rocket Science. Ian Sample covered it for The Guardian. PRI interviewed Steven Brussatte about it. BoingBoing's Rob Beshizza called it adorable. The Associated Press put the image of a Barney/ Jar Jar Binks hybrid in our minds, threatening our collective sanity. Andrea Cau's multi-part series on the beast begins here.

Finally, see John Conway's wonderful illustration of a Deinocheirus pair, and buy a print for someone you love.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

You've probably seen the "tiny Brontosauruses" illusion meme pop up on Facebook or Twitter; if not, check it out at SV-POW. At this point, the original source of it is irretrievably lost, as it's reshared over and over. Search "tiny brontosauruses" on Twitter and marvel at all the spammy accounts claiming it as their own. And all the people who don't really care where it came from, because who really worries about something silly as who creates images? That's so last century.

A cool bit of Triassica: Thousands of burrows ranging from 14 to 40 cm (~5 to ~15 inches) in diameter have been found in the ~210 million year old Petrified Forest Member of the Chinle Formation in the vicinity of Canyonlands National Park in Utah. They had been provisionally assigned to lungfish, though more research was needed. At the Geological Society of America's annual meeting in Vancouver, Stephen Hasiotis presented a poster offering a new interpretation of the burrows: tetrapods, perhaps small therapsids, due to similarities to Permian burrows.

If you like your dinosaurs on the campy side, see Kevin Dart's "Queen of Dinosaur Island" poster art Michael Ryan shared at Palaeoblog.

Check out the amazing winners of the Dinosaur Toy Forum's Diorama Contest. Really creative use of photography across the board.

Jaime Headden posted a wonderfully illustrated big-picture piece about toothed birds at the Bite Stuff.

Albertonykus was able to visit the National Geographic Museum's Spinosaurus exhibit, and has a report. I'm hoping to have the chance to see the exhibit in February, fingers crossed!

Meet the Underwhelming Fossil Fish of the Month! At the University College London's Museums and Collections Blog, Mark Carnall writes about the unloved Devonian ray-finned fish Cheirolepis.

Paleoart Pick

Robert Bakker presented a poster at the GSA meeting: Stegosaurian Martial Arts: A Jurassic Carnivore Stabbed by a Tail Spike, Evidence for Dynamic Interactions between a Live Herbivore and a Live Predator. And he illustrated it, too! Here's the newest Bakker original, seemingly a single screencapped moment from an animated battle.


Illustration � Robert Bakker.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: The BBC Book of Dinosaurs

In terms of saurian-related output, the BBC is best known these days for Walking With Dinosaurs, the super-expensive CG-laden Brannagh-narrated behemoth, sire of numerous tie-in books (and a movie that we won't mention). Nine years earlier, however, Auntie Beeb saw fit to give its endorsement to this little lost nugget of dinosauriana - The BBC Book of Dinosaurs. Authored by Paul Appleby and illustrated by Gill Tomblin, this rather obscure book is sweetly nostalgic for those of us raised on slightly shonky early '90s dinosaur books...even if we'd never actually seen it until now.

As is so often the case with late '80s/early '90s books, regardless of whether or not one has come across this specific publication before, everything seems ever so comfortingly/tiresomely familiar. The cover features an ensemble of dinosaurs being measured up, by way of grid and dotted lines, against that scientific size comparison staple, the Striding Streaker. Why the grid was deemed necessary is a bit of a mystery, but it's probably down to the need to stress that this is an Educational Book (which might also be why Triceratops has been reduced to a skeletal diagram). Rexy and Diplodocus are plainly cheating, mind.

The Beeb Book hails from a time when theropods were still going through an awkward transitional period in many popular books - a lot of artists simply didn't know what to do with them, resulting in some weirdly contradictory reptilian monstrosities that look rather laughable today. This is particularly true of maniraptors, which have long had a particularly rough ride in poorly researched art, bless 'em. When drawn more accurately - such as by Luis Rey - naked dromaeosaurs inevitably looked 'plucked'. However, most of the time early '90s audiences were subjected to the likes of the above, in which pin-headed weirdos straight out of the Super Mario Bros. movie gather round to gnaw ineffectually on an unfortunate green fellow. It wasn't pretty.

When Tomblin does turn in a half-decent maniraptor - in the form of the above Troodon - the Sibbickisms are quite evident. Pieces 'inspired' by Sibbick's Normanpedia take on Troodon are very easy to spot - just look at the feet, where the second toe will inevitably be flicked backwards. In the late '80s and throughout the 1990s, this very particular take on troodontid feet became a mini-meme all of its own.

Speaking of Sibbick...his Normanpedia work might have been very beautiful, and quite unnervingly hyper-realistic, but that didn't mean that copying it was always a good idea. Many of the Normanpedia dinos were scientifcally outdated even when they were created, and some a lot more so than others. Bring on Oviraptor!

Oh boy. Admittedly, dumpy-bodied, lizardy-looking Oviraptor were two-a-penny back in the early '90s, with Dinosaurs! magazine featuring a particularly memorable series of them. All the same, the inclusion of the mistaken 'nose horn' interpretation is telling, as is the extremely Sibbickian skin texture and musculature (or rather, lack of it). This is also another one of those theropods without much in the way of shoulders to speak of. At least it can boast a pretty colour scheme, as can...

...this adorably humanoid Compsognathus! One can easily picture it donning a dapper outfit (top hat and tails, naturally), then taking to the stage and performing kicks while singing a jaunty music hall number. That Iguanodon foot could be appropriated as a Monty Python-esque prop, although it might be worth painting the creepy human fingernails on its toes first.

As with many popular dinosaur books, panoramic scenes of prehistoric life in a certain place and time period accompany the 'profile' illustrations, and are inevitably crazy-packed full of interesting fauna. In this scene, the (until recently) butt of many puerile jokes, Tsintaosaurus, joins forces with Corythosaurus, birds, butterflies and flowers in order to make the place look vibrant and colourful (while Triceratops just squats around looking boring and a little grumpy). Hogging the foreground - as usual - is Rexy, here looking a little too friendly and welcoming for a terrifying flesh-tearing dino-tank. It's almost as if he's inviting the reader into the party. "Hey guys, welcome to the Late Cretaceous! Enjoy a refreshing dip in the river, feed the oddly toothy birdlife...just watch your back, 'cos you look like you've been treating yourself a little too much recently, and I do enjoy a plump one."

Corythosaurus and Tsintaosaurus (shown impersonating a sea monster from a medieval map) also appear alongside Parasaurolophus and plain ol' Saurolophus in an illustration depicting hadrosaur diversity. The inconsistent approach to hadrosaur 'cheeks' here is a little odd, although it's good to see both possibilities explored, I guess. I also really like the red patch on Parasaurolophus' face. We don't see enough brightly coloured hadrosaur heads these days.

Triceratops appears again too, looking, er, completely different; here, it sports plate-like scales and osteoderms that will look very familiar to anyone who has seen the scale model next to the Triceratops mount in London's Natural History Museum, or indeed has ever owned the similar-looking Invicta toy. The white sclera on the adult makes the eye really 'pop', and gives the creature appear amusingly as if it's nervously giving us the eye.

And finally...it's THE END! Copious volcanoes erupt noisily in the distance, snow blankets the ground, immaculately bleached hadrosaur skeletons lie about the place, and tottering tyrannosaurs throw up their tiny arms in fright. It's a horrifying scene of death, destruction and gloriously bright head crests. It's a little nonsensical (when is this scene set, exactly?), but great stuff all the same. It's also worth mentioning that the book goes on to point out that perhaps dinosaurs aren't extinct after all. To wit:

"So the survivors of the dinosaur line were the birds, and they are the dinosaurs that are still alive today!"

Not bad for a popular book from 1990!

DinosaurChannel.tv Needs You!

Bob Walters and Tess Kissinger, known for their terrific paleoart studio, have launched a multimedia educational website called DinosaurChannel.tv. In order to pack it full of cool content, they need a bit of help, and have launched a Kickstarter campaign. Here's their video.



The site is up, though not updated with a lot of content, but the Kickstarter project video here gives a good taste of what they'd like to do. I especially liked the illustrated title cards for the different series, which strike a great balance between "accurate" and cartoony, and the hand drawn lettering is terrific. There's a lot of potential, so hop over and throw some money their way - or at least spread the word so fellow paleo-geeks can help out. As an admirer of their work, I'd love to see what they can do with full funding.

Dragon Tongues

I recently had the pleasure of being commissioned to create a new logo for the Dragon Tongues podcast, and since I'll take any opportunity to share relevant work from my livelihood at LITC, here it is.



Dragon Tongues is the creation of Sean Willett, and it's highly recommended if you haven't had the chance to hear it. As luck would have it, Sean and I were both fans of each other's work, and the process was a lot of fun from start to finish. We met via a video chat (the future is truly here, isn't it?) and hashed out some basic ideas. Besides the need for the work to stand out on the iTunes podcast browser, I knew that it needed to have an aaspect of intimacy to it. Sean does an incredible job recording and producing his podcast, with the result feeling like you're an audience of one, listening to an expert storyteller.

That sense of intimacy and a respect for scientific and natural history were guiding lights as I developed a few different ideas. All involved Megalosaurus in some way, to honor its important role in early dinosaur paleontology. Of theses ideas, Sean was smitten with the design you see here, featuring a juvenile and parent megalosaur in front of a mountain range that bears a strong resemblance to a certain iconic fossil.

Anyhow, go listen to the show! Visit the official website, find it on iTunes, follow Sean and the show on Twitter, and pick up a tee shirt at Redbubble.

Oddly enough, I have another commission for a soon-to-be-announced paleontology podcast I'm really excited to hear, and to share here. Stay tuned!

Mesozoic Miscellany 66

In the News

Venezuela has gained another non-avian dinosaur taxon, making 2014 something of a boom year for the early Jurassic La Quinta Formation. Following the publication of Laquintasaura venezuelae in August, we now welcome Tachiraptor admirabilis to the fold. Mike at Everything Dinosaur has terrific pieces on both taxa: read his takes on L. venezuelae and T. admirabilis. Because of my recent post on dreadful stock image dinosaurs, please note that each of these publications were accompanied by commissioned illustrations for their press releases (by Mark Witton and Maur�lio Oliviera, respectively), resulting in the public reading stories illustrated in thoroughly non-embarrassing ways. Which is always nice.

A late Cretaceous ankylosaur from New Mexico was described in PLoS One in September, dubbed Ziapelta sanjuanensis. Lead author Victoria Arbour wrote at Pseudoplocephalus that this new armor-bearer "doesn't seem to be particularly closely related to the other ankylosaurid from the Kirtland Formation, Nodocephalosaurus. Instead, it's a close relative of Euoplocephalus and friends from Alberta." Read more on Ziapelta and its implications for ankylosaur evolution from Brian Switek.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

Mary Anning's name is well-known, but what about other early female pioneers in paleontology? Fernanda Castano fills in the blanks at Letters from Gondwana with a post about Mignon Talbot and Tilly Edinger.

At Hawkmoth, Amy McDermott wrote about communing with Sue.

Zach Miller has returned to paleontology blogging, with his new posts at Waxing Paleontological. Hop over to welcome him back, and to read why he is greatly annoyed by the practice of naming new taxa after place names. So, our first news item up top is perfectly suited to peeve him.

Over the summer and fall, Mark Wildman has written a fossil hunting diary at Saurian. Read about his amble for ammonites in From the Toarcian to the Callovian: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and the addendum, which is essential to you intrepid explorers looking to replicate his journey.

Herman Diaz continues his book review posts at ART Evolved, and recently gave the thumbs up to Prehistoric Monsters and a big thumbs down to Brussatte and Benson's Dinosaurs. If you find yourself nodding along, be sure to click through to Amazon to upvote the reviews.

Robert Alicea still occasionally draws dinosaurs at Doodle of Boredom, such as a recent, adorable Allosaurus hug.

At the Dino Toy Blog, Gwangi writes about a 90's Velociraptor figure that *wasn't* influenced by the omnipresent JP design.

Matt Martyniuk also offered a critical look at a feathered theropod toy at Dinogoss with a look at a museum-endorsed dromaeosaur figure that nonetheless gets the feathers wrong.

Paleoart Pick

Why not continue the theme of feathered Mesozoic dinosaurs and how to restore them? Here's a terrific graphic by artist Mette Aumala, AKA Osmatar at DeviantArt. It's been shared around social media recently, as well as being tipped to us by reader Lew Lashmit. I love the subtlety of the humor.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: 100 Questions and Answers - Dinosaurs

Picture yourself back in the early '90s - specifically, 1993. Double denim is still acceptable, Jurassic Park is proving to be a boon for the manufacturers of hollow, gawping dinosaur toys, and endless, near-identical children's books on prehistoric animals line the still plentiful bookshops. What a wonderful time to be alive. 100 Questions and Answers: Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals is a very typical book of the age, which is to say that it's filled with shameless John Sibbick rip-offs. But hey, there's still some entertainment to be had along the way. Unless you're John Sibbick.

The cover was painted by a different illustrator to the rest of the illustrations - namely, John Butler. The scaly textures are actually rather nice, and reminiscent of our old favourite Bernard Robinson's work. The creature itself leaves a little to be desired - it's one of those peculiar, late '80s style 'diddy allosaur' dromaeosaurs, illustrated for whatever mad reason in a squatting position, like it's about to...lay an egg. Although there's no nest. Judging by the expression on its face, that's a particular large and painful...egg that it's trying to pass. Poor thing. Note the once obligatory 'Deinonychus dewlap', invented by Bakker and perpetuated by many others, including, yes, Sibbick in the Normanpedia. As I've said countless times, I'd still rather have carefully painted, but thoroughly inaccurate stuff like this than the CG eyesores that clog cheapo dinosaur books these days (see David's recent post).

All of the inside illustrations are supplied by Peter Bull. If he lived in the East Grinstead area at the time, he was presumably the sole reason why I could never find the Normanpedia in my local library. The title page, admittedly, appears to be quite Sibbick-free; here, we have an allosaur threatening a small sauropod, while in the distance another (quite Bakker Barosaurus-esque) beast is distracted by passing pterosaurs. Delve a little further, however, and things start to become a whole lot more tiresomely predictable.

Oh boy. Every single one of these creatures is a Normanpedia copy - even the oddball upright poses of the Tyrannosaurus and Pachycephalosaurus are reproduced faithfully, and it's pretty clear that Bull didn't really know how large these animals were relative to one another. Furthermore, there are some seriously iffy perspective fudges going on. A number of the animals, including Rexy, have legs that seem to be cut off at the knee, while Stegosaurus' head pokes out in front of Pachycephalosaurus in spite of the fact that it's clearly standing behind it. The Diplodocus, meanwhile, is just...horrible. And probably a mislabelled Apatosaurus.

Thankfully, there's a full-length illustration of the adorably goofy-looking, googly-eyed Rexy later on in the book, chowing down on some unfortunate green thingamabob. Rexy's malformed feet are a Sibbick feature, but his fantastically gormless expression and popping orange eyes are new. But where do the legs end and the feet begin?

Perhaps the most revealing spread in the book is on dinosaur intelligence. Naturally, troodonts are showcased as being especially brainy dinosaurs, perhaps capable of later evolving into shiny, dome-headed, tool-using green fellows. The individual on the left is obviously a direct copy of Sibbick's Troodon, and appears fairly respectable for the time. Meanwhile, the one on the right shows all the evidence of the artist having only the one reference to go on, what with its stumpy tail (foreshortened in the original) and spindly, atrophied calf muscles (hidden in the original). As if to accentuate its sheer derpiness, it even has the more vacant-looking face of the two. Still, if it's lucky, maybe Sibbick-Troodon will give it a smooch.

Equally brazen are these Tuojuiangosaurus. Again, the individual on the left (foreground) is simply a direct copy, while the one on the right is a deformed mirror-image. It's as if Sibbick's creations stumbled upon the land of their ugly, evil doppelgangers - the Lost Valley of the Shambles-o-saurs (which I'm quite sure is actually the title of the 23rd straight-to-video Land Before Time sequel).

Care to guess what the title of this spread is?

Of course they weren't - among animals, 'stupid' is rather relative. On the other hand, the Dinosauroid was pretty bloody stupid, and this one has a face like an adorable little octopus (or perhaps an Octorok). Say, has anyone drawn a feathered Dinosauroid yet? With cockerel-like tail feathers protruding from its pygostyle/coccyx. A Dinosauroid-rooster! Make it happen, as an amusing commentary on advances in palaeontology!

Thankfully, it's not just Sibbick who gets ripped off in this book - there's room for a little Greg Paul plagiarism, too. Note that the Paul copies immediately look more 'modern'; this Brachiosaurus, based on Paul's oft-updated Giraffatitan piece, appears incongruously lithe and muscular when compared with other sauropods in the book. By virtue of the magnificence of the original, this is one of the better illustrations in this book.

Other Paul copies are, shall we say, less successful. One has to feel a little sorry for these Allosaurus, apparently ignorant of the fact that their quarry sports the same very toothy head as they do. It'll be a bit of a shock when they get down to the good ol' fashioned neck bitin' later. (And yes, that's Nessie. And yes, it's mentioned that if it were ever found, it would probably be a marine reptile, and not a dinosaur. What's wrong with it being a freakishly gigantic temnospondyl? Or the twisted result of genetic experimentation by a hitherto unseen relict race of chrome-domed scaly green men living in a bubble base deep beneath the loch? Come on, use your imagination.)

And finally...Archaeopteryx, here painted as the Rainbow Chicken of Doom. Because birds are colourful, right? 'Cos they have feathers, yeah, and feathers are for showing off and that, right? Don't you remember that outbreak of mass hysteria in London in the 1960s, when a bunch of tripping hippies attempted to follow a flock of day-glo acid sparrows into the sky? Crazy times, man. Anyway, this Archaeopteryx at least doesn't have a scaly face or wing-hands (at least, the main illustration doesn't), but it's also lost its tail along the way. I blame the hungry, hungry hippies.

Book Review: Tales of Prehistoric Life by Daniel Loxton

This spring, Daniel Loxton published his third and final children's book in the Tales of Prehistoric Life series: Plesiosaur Peril, the story of the dangerous life of a young Cryptoclidus in the Jurassic. It was proceeded by Ankylosaur Attack (2011) and Pterosaur Trouble (2013). Today I'll cover all three. The TL;DR version: they're great.



Daniel Loxton's name is probably recognizable to the portion of our readers who also follow skeptical media. He cowrote Abominable Science with Donald Prothero as well as writing and illustrating the children's book Evolution: How We And All Living Things Came to Be. Loxton is also well-known for his work editing the Junior Skeptic section of Skeptic Magazine. Illustrator Jim WW Smith, who has also worked for Junior Skeptic, provides work on the models for the Tales of Prehistoric Life series. Loxton provides the finishing textures and colors, as well as photographing environments.

I especially appreciate Loxton's series for taking up the mantle of the Rourke titles we've covered so many times during the Vintage Dinosaur Art series. Like the Rourke collection, each Tales of Prehistoric Life book is a narrative story, detailing interactions between temporally and geographically appropriate animals. I love this approach. When grounded in modern paleontological understanding of the life and times of the animals involved, it's both engaging and educational. Like the Rourke titles of yesteryear, each book in this series also wraps up with a brief explanation of the scientific grounding of the story.

The Cryptoclidus family swims through a teeming Jurassic sea. � Daniel Loxton.

The animal interactions are firmly in the realm of plausibility. There are moments that seem a bit of a stretch, such as a veritable army of Saurornitholestes laying seige to the Quetzalcoatlus hero of Pterosaur Trouble. However, there's nothing more outlandish than Dinosaur Revolution's more slapstick moments. Since I'm on the record of admiring much of what that series did, you can predict my reaction here. When the Quetzalcoatus quad-launches to escape his attackers, one of them inadvertently hitches a ride before being flung onto the head shield of a Triceratops, and I couldn't help but crack a smile.

3D dinosaur art is too often only mentioned when picking out the worst offenders, so it's easy to forget that it is often done very well, and Loxton's work here is a prime example. For the most part, the animals are integrated into their photographic environments very smoothly, and interact with them believably - there is a sense of weight and heft to the animals as they walk on sand, browse vegetation, or fall into water. The experience is an immersive one, with illustrations filling entire spreads. The point of view is often right in the middle of the action. Loxton's attention to detail rewards free exploration of the environments and their inhabitants. Feathers float on the air in the midst of combat. Age and experience are obvious, as in an old ankylosaur with battle-damaged armor or a pycnofibre-covered pterosaur.


Quetzalcoatlus soars over the late Cretaceous world. � Daniel Loxton.


An Ankylosaurus couple browses in the forest. � Daniel Loxton.

Coloration is handled conservatively. There are no Rey-style color schemes. Proto-birds and dromaeosaurs are given the most colorful integument. I particularly liked the ruddy tones of Saurornitholestes, reminiscent of the Brown Thrashers who inhabit a similar woodland habitat in my neck of the... er, woods. I also enjoyed touches like subtle sexually dimorphic coloring on the Triceratops, and a seaweedy-green on the Cryptoclidus family at the heart of the most recent book. The tyrannosaurs who appear in Ankylosaur Attack and Pterosaur Trouble could do with some plumage and a splash of color (as well as some more neck musculature, which to my eye looked a little skinny). On the other hand, it's refreshing for the tyrant king to step out of the spotlight.


A Saurornitholestes pack smells something big and tasty on the wind. � Daniel Loxton.

Loxton's choices in depicting behavior are the strongest aspect of the stories, as pains are taken to focus on details of Mesozoic life lent us by recent paleontological research. Quetzalcoatlus falls prey to small dromaeosaurs because of tooth marks found on actual fossils of the great azhdarchid. It bears repeating that the pterosaur is depicted performing a quad-launch, too (a touch which pleased Mark Witton greatly). The family unit in Plesiosaur Peril is based on evidence that these marine reptiles were viviparous. It's a stretch to lump Loxton's book series in with the All Yesterdays Movement. But it is certainly complimentary in its dedication to anatomical fidelity and reasonable inference, while offering views of prehistoric life which reflects the way extant animals act rather than what Hollywood dinosaurs are asked to perform for the masses. There's no need to layer on excessive personification or spectacle after spectacle. Loxton's adherence to this is the main reason the books succeed.

The Cryptoclidus family feeds on belemnites. � Daniel Loxton.

My only major critique is that a more readable typeface for the body copy of the books could have been chosen, but that's a small quibble in the big scheme of things. This is as good as prehistoric fiction gets. The life restorations are exactly the kind that the new generation of paleontology fans should have access to: contemporary, not stuck in decades-old knowledge. All books in the series are available at major booksellers or via Skeptic.

Around the web: Check out Loxton's post about Plesiosaur Peril at SkepticBlog. Darren Naish wrote a detailed post about the book at TetZoo - fitting since he served as technical consultant for the whole series. Adam Stuart Smith reviewed Plesiosaur Peril at Plesiosauria.com. Dispersal of Darwin's Michael Barton reviewed Plesiosaur Peril in March (and reviewed the other titles in the series previously). Ankylosaur Attack recieved positive reviews from Quill and Quire, Kirkus, and SkepticDad.

Mesozoic Miscellany 65

After a really super-long break, we're back with the 65th post in the Mesozoic Miscellany series. I really haven't meant to do these posts so sporadically, but I had some freelance jobs come up that took up a lot of time over the last few months. Sorry about that! I hope to get back on a more regular schedule with them.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

At Life Traces of the Georgia Coast, Tony Martin wrote a touching post in the wake of his mother's passing, reflecting on how he came from a childhood in poverty to pursue his passion for learning about nature. It's a must-read.

A new site dedicated to Mesozoic paleontology has launched, called Dinologue, and is also active on Twitter. Dinologue also features the writing of Brian Switek, who also hosts short video features such as this one, in which Brian fields a question about whether Mesozoic dinosaurs lived in the mountains.


Surely you've heard of the minor kerfuffle kicked off by the new Spinosaurus material revealed by Nizar Ibrahim and team? Ben Miller at Dinosours! gives us a look at the exhibition tied to the publication at the National Geographic Museum.

Darren Naish, Mark Witton, and John Conway collaborated on an article for Palaeontologia Electronica, State of the Palaeoart, looking at the continuing difficulties of paleoartists wishing to be paid fairly in an atmosphere that rewards original, creative work.

Beasts of Antiquity: Stem-Birds in the Solnhofen Limestone, the new book by Matt Martyniuk, has been released in Kindle, iBook, and print formats. As he wrote at DinoGoss, there are "other books written on Solnhofen, but this is intended to be more of a synthesis of current research and understanding of it and its stem-bird fauna accessible to a general audience." Best of all, it's the first in a Beasts of Antiquity series.

The pneumaticity of bird skeletons and their evolution was covered by Liz Martin at Musings of a Clumsy Paleontologist.

Over at Jersey Boys Hunt dinosaurs, Chris DiPiazza treats us to a peek inside Jamie Oliver's American-themed diner in London. Why? Because it's packed with dinosaur stuff. There's a nice assortment of derpy, clever, and just plain neato art and sculpture, so check it out.

Maija Karala is back, and has been writing a series called Botany for Paleoartists at the Humming Dinosaurs blog (Parts 1 on ferns, 2 on fruits, and 3 on grasses). And if you didn't see it then, check out my interview with Maija published in July.

LITC contributor Asher Elbein was published at Bitter Southerner, writing about the phenomenon of snake-handling churches in the southern US. It's a terrific piece. Congrats, Asher!

Paleoart Picks

Hard to pick just one, so here's a brief round-up within the round-up of cool stuff that's crossed my path recently.

Shields and Spears is the title of the new art show from Raven Amos, Scott Elyard, and Zach Miller, opening at the Yak and Yeti Caf� in Anchorage today, October 3. I've been enjoying the works-in-progress shared on social media, including this great time-laps of Raven's great Leptoceratops piece.



Read more at Coherent Lighthouse.

Speaking of ceratopsians, Julius Csotonyi's "Ceratopsian Cornucopia" is available as a poster, a beautiful piece demonstrating the diversity of headgear among the ceratopsians.

Angela Connor, known as Amaruuk at DeviantArt, Newgrounds, and Twitter, also has a great Redbubble shop. Paleo Portraits is a charming series of various extinct taxa, available in a variety of formats.

Atlas of Dinosaurs, The Return

Our sole criterion for a book to qualify for the blog's Vintage Dinosaur Art series is that it is 20 years old. (And yes, because of that, I am very guilty of stretching the definition of 'vintage' to breaking point.) Atlas of Dinosaurs is rather newer than that, but as was plainly seen last week, it might as well be straight out of the 1980s. Following the panoramic illustrations in the previous post, I'd like to dedicate this one to depictions of individual animals. Warning: levels of plagiarism and the positions of eye sockets may vary.

For all the blatant copycatting, there are a few neat ideas here. Behold, tree-climbing Deinonychus! Well, why not? Although I'd be interested to know what the text says, taken in isolation, this is an intriguingly different take on the beast, laudibly free of blood, guts, roaring, and Bakker imitating. (You ever seen a Deinonychus with a huge beard and cowboy hat? They look ridiculous.) All the same, there are some serious problems. For one, it's completely unfeathered (far less acceptable in the late '90s-early '00s than in the early '90s). For another, its eyes have migrated forwards and now sit in the wrong holes. Oops.

It couldn't have been that long ago when I noted that Mononykus, along with Avimimus, was one of the very few non-avian theropods to be almost ubiquitously depicted with feathers since the 1980s, if not even earlier. (Proper feathers, that is - not just a few half-hearted quills on the head and a sandwich board reading 'MISSING LINK!!!!!') Unhappily, there are always exceptions. Behold, the full horror of lizardy, figure-skating Mononkyus! Are those feathers on its arms, or weird flaps of flabby excess skin? Why does it just have that single line of bristly things on its head? Why does its neck articulate with its jaw? Why? Why? WHY? Wah!

Mononykus might appear rather undignified, but at least it doesn't have testicles hanging from its chin - like the fellow above-left. This creature is Shuvosaurus, and is likely based on the original interpretation of the animal as a Triassic ornithomimosaur (it's now recognised as a non-dinosaur archosaur closely related to Effigia). At the bottom we have an even more problematic animal - Protoavis, here depicted, very unusually, without feathers. Beloved of BANDits, it's been described as a bird more 'advanced' than Archaeopteryx, but living in the Late Triassic. In reality, it's a handful of badly damaged bits and pieces that have proven very difficult to conclusively identify. Whatever the case, this version looks more like a 1980s troodontid, but given those animals' close relationship with birds, that's probably not so surprising.

Strangely, better-known animals often take on a more retro appearance than those only recently discovered, or known from scrappy material. This probably has something to do with the fact that a lot of decades-old artwork depicting these creatures was more readily to hand. Take the Sexy Rexy duo - while the foreground animal has a comparatively 'modern' stance (weirdly directed left foot aside), the background one appears to be based on Burian's famous Tarbosaurus. Both are made to look more 'reptilian' by having the upper tooth row extend under the eye socket, contrary to the animal's actual skull.

At the bottom, we have a mosasaur with that good ol' Knightian crest. Sometimes, I almost start to miss 'em. On the other hand, modern mosasaur restorations are much cooler-looking.

Furthering the retro-'80s theme, here we have a copy of Sibbick's unduly chunky Dilophosaurus from the Normanpedia. Sibbick's isn't the only historic example of Dilophosaurus drawn as a Big Generic Theropod, Now With Crests!, but like so many of his creations, it's the one that tends to get around. Sichkarya's version faithfully reproduces the Normanpedia pose, but manages to make it look even more, er, 'robust', like it's just swallowed a comedic money-grubbing computer programmer whole. Meanwhile, Dimorphodon actually looks less silly than the real thing. Go home Dimorphodon, etc.

In the end though, while the Dilophosaurus might harken back to the days of leg warmers and big hair, this Polacanthus is so retrograde that it's lost its favourite pipe and slippers and is very suspicious of those well-dressed men who've moved in together across the street. Having said that, it's not dragging its tail along, so that's something.

The brachiosaur on the above page is also quite retro, and the Compsognathus is quite Sibbickian. But of course, you aren't looking at those. Your eyes have been drawn to the white and pink Pteranodon, head retracted back to its body, pelican-stylee. It does look a bit barmy, and has its share of anatomical problems. Still, it somehow seems preferable to yet another boring, brown, Burian-style Pteranodon. At the very least, it's an inventive take. Which brings me to...

...The exact opposite. A Sibbick copy so unashamed, even the colour scheme is the same. Same red head. Same backward-facing skull nubbin. Same everything. If only some people were making a stand for originality in palaeoart - for quality, for accuracy, and against plagiarism. Why, it just so happens (TOPICAL!) that they are! I realise that I've linked to Mark, Darren and John's article on Facebook already, but if you haven't checked it out already then I must insist that you do; it's an indictment of all the ill-practice in palaeoart that I've spent the last few years whinging about.

But I digress. Thanks again to Vladimir Nikolov for all his trouble, and I hope this sojourn into the world of Russian books has proven to be entertaining. (If it hasn't, may I suggest sending crates of the finest Belgian beers to my address in order to improve future post quality.) Coming up next: the return of regular Vintage Dinosaur Art! Will it feature Sibbick rip-offs? Probably. Poor John Sibbick.