Help a Mammoth, Win a Shirt!

Just about every crowdfunding campaign I've seen has included some form of this refrain: Even if you can't afford to donate, helping spread the word is a great form of support. It's true. You may have seen my post last week about my funding campaign to publish the children's book Mammoth is Mopey, a collaboration with my wife, Jennie. And if you follow me on Twitter, you've most certainly seen me mention it a few (dozen) times. So, if you're sympathetic with the mission of the book - to put cool, whimsical, modern versions of prehistoric animals in the hands of young potential scientists and artists, I hope you'll consider sending out a tweet, pin, Facebook link, or any other form of social media post to help us hit our goal.

To sweeten the deal beyond words of appreciation, we've decided to hold a contest. If you post about Mammoth is Mopey on social media, you have the chance win any tee shirt of your choice from my Redbubble shop. The rules are simple: Between now and Sunday, April 5, make a public post on a social media network. In the comments below, include a link to your post. Next Monday, I'll use the random number generator at Random.org to choose a winner and make the announcement. If you've already shared a link to Mammoth is Mopey, that's okay - share it again over the next week, and comment below!

If we keep up at the rate we've been going, we should fund fully during the last week of the campaign. But that's not guaranteed, and I'd love to wrap up before that. Every time we hit a 10% milestone, I reveal another character from the book. I'd love to knock five or six this week, and your shares can help. Here's the progress so far.

Thanks again to the on-line palaeontology community for the support - we've received so many kind words since we began the campaign that it's made us more confident that this book has a place in the world. The latest has been Chris DiPiazza, who totally gets what we're aiming to do with the book. Now, go spread the word and pick your prize! Some of the designs available are the official Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs tee, Palaeontology Fanciers, the pixel art Dinosprites, I Left My Heart in a Prehistoric Age, the Dinosaur Hearts, the Dinosaur Family Crests,the "You Complete Me" toon, or the new Honest To Goodness Dinosaur series.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: I Can Read About Dinosaurs

Late update: David covered this one before! Be sure to read his take. I try not to go over the same ground, but mistakes happen.

The 1970s are a particularly rich source of popular/children's dinosaur books, fuelled no doubt by the Dinosaur Renaissance, the fantastically cheesy B-movies of the time (the seminal example When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth appeared in 1970), or some combination thereupon. I Can Read About Dinosaurs (1972, illustrated by Judith Fringuello) is very typical of kids' books of the era; although the restorations are still old-fashioned in outlook, they're a lot more lively than they might have been back in the Zallinger days. It also features a very cool, nicely composed cover. Just check out those heroically posed Sexy Rexies, nonplussed by angry mountains and demonic, wraith-like pterosaurs. Aw yeah.




Sauropods are still depicted as being water-borne, albeit to various degrees. Diplodocus opts merely to wade in up to its knees in order to eat the mushy water plants that it surely had to feed on (just ignore all the hard evidence to the contrary, please), although it looks particularly smug about it. It's probably having a good laugh at some hydrophobic theropods on the shore, waving their arms around in frustration, thrashing their tails about on the ground and curling their lips (because it distracts from any mistakes in the animation, see).

Meanwhile, other sauropods - like these presumed brachiosaurs (below) - would rather go a little further, and have presumably swallowed huge quantities of rocks (or Brian J Ford manuscripts) before completely submerging themselves in the nearest deep lake with a sheer drop for a shoreline. As Matt Martyniuk noted over on our Facebook page,

"As a kid reading books like this, I was always impressed by how there were so many lakes that were basically steep 40ft vertical pits in the ground...lots of flooded mining operations back then I guess."

 So little about this idea makes any sense, it's a wonder that it persisted as long as it did, even as other completely silly notions were consigned to the dustbin of hilarious palaeoart retrospectives. But persist it did. Particularly enjoyable in this scene - quite apart from the sheer convenience of that 'mining pit' - is the depiction of a rubbish pig-nosed allosaur squatting on the bank, cursing his luck that he doesn't have a pair of strong legs and some kind of organ that could be used for sculling. "Isn't it about time Greg Paul showed up!?!"

Speaking of allosaurs...the name never suited them more than here. Allosaurus pops up twice, but looks completely different on each occasion. First time around, it's in a pot-bellied, spiky-crested Zallingerian guise, having somehow caught up with an unfortunate (but probably very careless) ornithopod. While clearly taking inspiration from the Peabody mural, this restoration has ended up more of a Godzilla-like fantasy creature than a theropod dinosaur. There's a nice sense of chaos and panic created by the use of harsh parallel lines around the animals, but it's definitely an illustration on the weirdo end of the scale; it's completely out of proportion, with all the horrifying rotundity of an oblivious middle-aged male tourist from northern Europe sunning himself on a Spanish beach.

Then, directly afterwards, we have this - an entirely different-looking, still very old school but notably better-proportioned beastie, depicted threatening Stegosaurus with a lascivious stare and toothy grin worthy of a sinister drunken aristocrat (so that's where Darwin came from). Steggy, of course, is having none of it, and offers the leering old git a face full of spikes by return. There's a bit of a perspective fudge going on here, where Stegosaurus is somehow both level with and in front of Allosaurus at the same time. Either that, or Steggy's tail tip is growing out if its knee. It could do with one on the other side, in which case it could spin them both around at the same time and take on two enemies at once, like some kind of walking war chariot. (Come to think of it, some stegosaurs - with their shoulder- or hip-mounted spiky bits - actually came quite close to that.)

While Allosaurus gets in on plenty of predatory action, he is - as ever - merely the warm-up act for the Greatest Predator the World has Ever Known (except those other ones we don't talk about), Sexy McRexy. Happily, Rexy's depiction in this book is rather more consistent and better researched - why, he even has distinct shoulders and a muscular neck. First on Rexy's menu is a hadrosaur gaily dancing the cancan. Crashing through the wall of the Parisian club in which La Troupe de Trachodon is performing, Rexy makes for the nearest web-footed dancer, who sadly has nowhere to run...and thus, the inevitable happens.

Quelle horreur! Alas, hadrosaurs have always been easy meat. Although this is a rather bloodless encounter, the text makes it clear that 'a terrible battle' is about to ensue, which at least implies that the herbivore won't go down without a fight (no matter how futile).

As ever, things don't always go Rexy's way. The below illustration is Fringuello's take on the classic Tyrannosaurus v Triceratops encounter. The latter's frill looks a bit odd, but I love the stylised billowing dust clouds being kicked up by its feet. Rexy, while looking a little unimpressed, has sensibly chosen not to try and nibble the raging ceratopsian...

...Unfortunately, he isn't so wise in his approach to tackling ankylosaurs, incurring an eye-watering dentist's bill by trying to chew on the armoured carapace of an adorably dinky '70s-style Ankylosaurus. Which, by the way, is pronounced An-KILL-o-sawr-us. KILL. KILL. KILL. Like many contemporary depictions of Ankylosaurus, which were based on scanty remains, misinterpreted fossils from other ankylosaurs, and older palaeoart, this one resembles some sort of angry, mutant exotic fruit. A kind of Killer Pineapple from the Kretaceous.

And finally...because you've probably had enough of theropod dinosaurs doing what Internet folk would probably describe as 'nomming' things, here's a marine sauropsid. Specifically, it's the elasmosaurid plesiosauroid plesiosaur, Elasmosaurus platyurus. Sadly, the work of utter killjoy plesiosaur researchers* now means that we know that animals such as this could not adopt the snaking neck positions that the artists of yesteryear were so fond of. It means that, except in the cases where books are extremely sloppily researched (as if that ever happens), we'll no longer see cocky-looking oceangoing reptiles adopting heraldic poses and poking their heads out of the waves just 'cos they can. Even though they can't. Alas, alas.

Oh, there is one more thing - many thanks to Niroot for letting me borrow this very precious book, and for braving the potential beer stains, torn pages and laboured jokes that would result. Au revoir!

 

*I'm joking, of course. It's just 'cos I happen to know one.

Mesozoic Miscellany 73

In the News

Meet Carnufex carolinensis, a new Triassic crocodylomorph that hit the web with a splash last week. Described by Lindsay Zanno and team in Scientific Reports, C. carolinensis was a massive, top-of-the-food-chain predator nicknamed "The Carolina Butcher." Co-author Susan Drymala discussed the find with BBC Radio's Up All Night. Brian Switek wrote about it over at Laelaps. Chris DiPiazza also whipped up a fantastic illustration of the new beastie. The Guardian published a report as well. Good to see this one getting so much press, and more on that a bit later in this post...

In ichno-news, Lisa Buckley has written a great post about a new set of lower Cretaceous trackways: ornithopod, non-avian theropod, and a newly described avian ichnotaxon, Paxavipes babcockensis. The bird tracks are notable, Buckley writes, for their unique orientation of toes, which reminds her of our extant Killdeer. Also check out the paper in Cretaceous Research.

Ha?eg Island continues to produce oddballs: this time, evidence of a new short-necked azhdarchid. Mark Witton discussed the research at his blog, while teasing that a complimentary publication relevant to Cretaceous pterosaur evolution is on its way. Nab the PDF here.

A new Pachyrhinosaurus bonebed has been discovered in the Upper Cretaceous Wapiti Formation. As the abstract says though, there's more here than the title of the paper suggests. "About 88% of vertebrate remains are ceratopsian, and dromaeosaurid, hadrosaurid, troodontid, and tyrannosaurid remains have also been identified." It's also notable for being the farthest-inland bonebed yet discovered, at almost 300 miles (450 km) away from the coastline of the ancient sea.

In other bonebed news and other Triassic news, squeaking in just as I wrap this post up, a new Triassic species of Metoposaurus, M. algarvensis, has been described in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology by Steve Brusatte and team. Coming from a new Portugese bonebed, this monstrous temnospondyl offers up new details of skull anatomy that will assist in further phylogenetic work on the metoposaurids. And the reconstructions released with the news are terrific, too. Read more at Live Science.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

Back to Mark Witton, as he has been putting out a ridiculous amount of beautiful work lately. Witton has been revisiting some of his older pieces to incorporate changes in his thinking as well as his artistic technique. Check out his recent posts on his reclining Torvosaurus, pigeon-like Therizinosaurus, and a pair of controversial ceratopsians.

At his New Views on Old Bones blog, Paul Barrett republished his guest post at Dave Hone's Guardian blog on the process of the NHM acquiring their stunning new Stegosaurus, Sophie.

Speaking of Stegosaurus, Matt Martyniuk has written a wonderful, thorough post on the evolving look of the iconic taxon over the years.

Dean Lomax and Nobu Tamura collaborated on a recent book on British dinosaurs, and Darren Naish has an in-depth review for us.

Darren also reviewed Matt Martyniuk's gorgeous recent Beasts of Antiquity: Stem-birds in the Solnhofen Limestone.

At Extinct Monsters, Ben Miller writes about famous mounts that share an origin in the Carnegie quarry, though they may be stars of distant museums now.

Always a good time to talk about Mary Anning, and Fernanda Castano wrote a tribute to her at Notes from Gondwana.

Gareth Monger wrote a nice post about his process of rethinking his own Rhamphorynchus reconstruction, showing how he's improved on it since its conception and considering the possibility of showier color schemes than his earlier work.

Extant Theropod Appreciation

Some wonderful news from Colombia: the Blue-Bearded Helmetcrest (Oxypogon cyanolaemus), thought extinct, has been rediscovered. Its ultimate survival, however, is anything but guaranteed, as its habitat is threatened by livestock grazing and fires set for agricultural purposes.

Palaeoart Pick

It's not every day that an ancient crocodylomorph makes international news, but props to Zanno, Drymala, and team for achieving such coverage for The Carolina Butcher. One of the reasons for this must be the stunning restoration included in the press release. The work of one Jorge Gonzales, this fantastic piece is one more example of how important good palaeoart is. I've said it before, and I'll probably never stop: There is no palaeontology outreach without palaeoart.

Carnufex carolinensis, � Jorge Gonzalez, from the press materials distributed by NC State University.

Mammoth is Mopey, a paleoart alphabet book

I am excited to announce that the children's book Mammoth is Mopey, written by my wife Jennie and me and featuring 26 of my original illustrations, is close to publication! It has been a labor of love for the last few years, and I'm on pins and needles as we work on the crucial last step. What's the book about? This Venn diagram is a good place to start.

At its heart, Mammoth is Mopey is simply a fun celebration of prehistoric life. Written as an alphabet book, it features 26 animals spanning 500 million years of Earth history. Some are familiar - Ankylosaurus, Velociraptor, and the title character for example. But most of them are not household names, from Permian synapsids to recently discovered non-avian dinosaurs to a terror bird and a temnospondyl. They're whimsical and cartoony, but they are thoroughly contemporary, with the kinds of integumentary variety and other anatomical details we are accustomed to nowadays, and that we wish the mainstream pop culture would embrace more quickly. Emily Willoughby wrote eloquently on this angle of the book in a wonderful post at her Things With Feathers tumblog. Mark Witton also gave it a big thumbs up at his blog.

Not that I'm seriously suggesting therapsids were either bipedal or nattily dressed...

...or that ankylosaurs fancied painting the occasional still-life.

Another reason for the book is to provide a fun way for adults and children to learn about these amazing animals together. Each spread includes information about when and where each critter lived, and pronunciations produced with help from Mike Keesey. Big and small readers can learn the names together and talk about the emotions and actions of the animals.

Our funding campaign via Indiegogo has two goals. First, we want to print an initial run of 1,000 copies of the book. We're not skimping on it. After much deliberation about materials, we settled on doing a solid casebound hardcover format with a thick, uncoated interior paper stock. It will be a sturdy little book.

Second, we are raising money to fund an art exhibition to be held this June at Wonderlab. As part of their larger "Science A-Z" programming over the summer, prints of every one of the book's animals will be displayed on their gallery wall. Wonderlab will also have signed copies of Mammoth is Mopey for sale in their gift shop, provided we can fund it.

We would greatly appreciate any support, and to sweeten the deal, we have all sorts of excellent perks for people who donate to the campaign. Physical copies of the book come with donations as low as $15, and there are 1" buttons, character prints, posters, and even custom illustration commissions at higher level. Want an illustration of your daughter riding a Postosuchus or you giving Futalognkosaurus a hug? I'll do it! Of course, tweets and Facebook shares are all appreciated as well, if you're not able to donate.

Please check out our campaign page and learn more about the book at MammothIsMopey.com, which will be dedicated to the book and its supplemental content in the eventuality that the campaign is successful!

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs (BBC Fact Finders)

After our sojourn to the 1960s in the last post, I'm afraid it's back to 1990 for this one, with all of the Sibbick rip-offs that that tends to entail. Part of the BBC Fact Finders series (other titles included Egypt, Weather, Seashore and Nutkins on Pets, which presumably featured stalwart children's TV presenter Terry Nutkins, or else has a very baffling title), Dinosaurs is a very typical book of the post-Normanpedia, pre-Jurassic Park era (the Sibbickian?). Greg Paul-type dinosaurs haven't yet taken over here, and the illustrators freely cobble together copies of different artists' work into the same piece, which leads to some wonderful juxtapositions. And a funky-looking Triceratops on the cover.

This Triceratops version of John Goodman is presumably the result of a perspective fudge, where the artist had to guess what the animal would look like face-on, having only seen photos of the skull from other angles. Either that, or they just thought they'd connect the ends of the snout to the flared jugals, although that still doesn't quite account for the wide face. In any case, it's definitely entered the Valley that is Uncanny. More fascinatingly, the bottom left-hand corner features a photograph of the former Hypsilophodon mount at the Natural History Museum - the specimen has now been remounted and sits in a corner of the ever-crowded dinosaur gallery where very few people notice it. Which is a shame.

With perspective fudges in mind, here's a Baryonyx with stegosaur hips. Depicting Baryonyx as an occasional quadruped wasn't considered too unreasonable in the 1980s (and was handled quite well in a few illustrations and a certain toy), but...no. Say what you like about Spinosaurus - Baryonyx was considerably leggier. Depicting theropods with enormously wide hips was also quite common, and was likely the result of a lack of three-dimensional references available to illustrators back in the day. The head and noodly neck of this Baryonyx don't quite look like they belong to the body, and the wrinkly look appears to have been based on an illustration that appeared alongside the original paper describing the animal (although I can't remember who the artist was - help, please!). Also noteworthy here is the backdrop - although the varied topography is welcome, the vegetation is very sparse, and this is quite typical of the illustrations in this book...

...Such as this one, featuring a highly 1980s-looking Deinonychus. It's odd-looking nowadays (especially those reversed first toes...huh?), but the colour scheme's quite natty, and at least the artist hasn't resorted to copying either Bakker's 'original', or Sibbick's freaky aye-aye fingered monstrosity. Why, there's even a hint of birdy wrist-flexion in the right arm (or am I being effusive again?). And those are some seriously meaty thighs. KFC would be proud to coat those in grease, stick them in a bucket, and sell it to people with questionable tastes.

Thankfully, not all of the illustrations dump saurians in a barren landscape full of intriguing rock formations; here, Diplodocus is shown rearing among the trees in a lush, jungley flood plain. Hurrah! This is a particularly dynamic depiction for a book like this - it might not be galloping along like a pin-headed enormo-giraffe, but nor is it hanging around in a swamp, dragging its tail awkwardly about and looking gloomy. On the other hand, it's also a bit weird, particularly for the polydactyly evident on the hands - there are no fewer than six fingers, and every single one has a claw. Blimey. It also has that wrinkle-tastic look that many sauropods sported back then, no doubt inspired by some combination of pachyderms and the work of Sibbick, Gurche et al.

Inhabiting a similar verdant fernscape is this Hypsilophodon, featuring in what might just be the best illustration in the book (by Norma Burgin, since you asked, as were the above three). The anatomy might not be perfect, but it's good enough to get the overall appearance and, dare I say it, 'feel' of the animal just right; there is a convincing dynamism about it, and the illustrator doesn't forget to include the little ornithischian's adorable frowny face. It's also lovely to see an illustration of this animal in which the 'terrified wide-eyed gazelle' analogy isn't rammed home (we'll just ignore the huge photo of grazing gazelle on the opposite page, ahem). It's always good to see Hypsilophodon considered cool enough to stand on its own, rather than being chased by some bigger, toothier, sexier animal.

Speaking of which...here's Sexy Rexy, in a pose apparently based on the old tripodal mount at the American Museum of Natural History, complete with brandished claws. It almost looks as if the old fella wants to push against the frame of the image. It's a bit of a strange illustration to appear in a book from 1990, although these images were still lingering about in pop palaeo, mostly the result of the sheer number of old books still in circulation.

Rexy puts in another appearance in a piece painted by a different illustrator (David Holmes), in which a number of Cretaceous dinosaurs inhabit a barren, desert landscape for reasons probably related to it being difficult to get the plants right. This is one of those portmanteau images I mentioned earlier, in which Sibbick's Parasaurolophus casually share a scene with an anachronistic T. rex copied from another artist's work (although again, I can't remember who! Aaargh! Overload!). For some reason, the front Parasaurolophus has four toes on one foot, in spite of the Sibbick original correctly having only three. Maybe the artist was working from a miniature reproduction propped up on the other side of the room.

Similarly, this Early Cretaceous scene (by Ray Burrows) borrows simultaneously from Sibbick (the Polacanthus) and other artists, and features a Megalosaurus who really, really doesn't belong here, but hey - this is the UK, and you can't argue with tradition. That's why we still have a monarchy, in spite of it making no sense whatsoever. The tripodal Iguanodon also seem to be lost - they are presumably looking for a route back to the 1970s, and should probably follow the tottering theropod Time Lord back to his TARDIS.

As far as oblivious ornithopods go, one can't also help but wonder how this Camptosaurus didn't see this enormous allosaur coming, given the apparent scarcity of tall foliage in this landscape. It may be that, owing to the identical colour, the herbivore mistook the predator for one of its fellows. And that's why ornithopods evolved such elaborate crests, you see - to Recognise members of their own Species! Now, if only someone would propose that as a serious hypothesis.

And finally...giant mounds are what you make, nesting on the moon! I had to include this one after Niroot pointed out that the Maiasaura had a few more noggin nodules than were strictly necessary. Quite fascinating.

A Baker's Dozen Dinosprites

In December, I was commissioned to create a pixel art illustration for an ad campaign. It was a good fit for me, as I've long wanted to delve into the style. It fits in well with my love of 8- and 16-bit video games and chip music. It was inevitable that I would also bring my love of dinosaurs into the fold. I began experimenting with pixel saurians, trying different methods, various scales at which to draw my subjects, and with that, different levels of detail. I wrote about the first few in a December post, and then announced the series I'd whipped up. Fittingly, these posts sandwiched my interview with the Saurian development team. Digital dinosaurs of retro and modern realms coexisting side by side.

The 13 Dinosprites have now all been shared, so I'd like to wrap them all up in this post. This was an experimental series in which I explored another way to distill saurian forms to bare essentials, but it's definitely stoked my interest in trying other ways to use pixel art dinosaurs in projects. They beg to be animated. And I can imagine some of the educational palaeontology websites I've been kicking around my head for years being brought to life with pixel art.

But wait, there's more! All of the Dinosprites are available on merchandise in my on-line store, anything from mugs to pillows to tees and hoodies.