Vintage Dinosaur Art: Tricia Zimic

Before I get to this week's bit of paleoartistic tomfoolery, I have a bit of a preamble. It's been kind of a weird week, to be honest. The PepsiCo/ ScienceBlogs thing took me by surprise, and caused me to really think about what I value in the science blogosphere. And the outpouring of support for the writers was tremendously heartening. Even more heartening was to see science writers banding together and standing up for their colleagues, no matter who their respective employers were. I can't help but think that it's a stronger community for it.

It made me seriously consider what I contribute, and how I can contribute more. Well, maybe not more, per se. I do still have a day job to answer to. Maybe what I really want to do is improve the value of my contributions. Improving my writing here is an ongoing process and hasn't changed. One thing I can change is my approach to Twitter: it was, after all, an important venue where writers discussed the PepsiCo shenanigans. I like Twitter, but until this week, I didn't recognize its value. So I've stepped up my game. I'm thinking of it as an extension of LITC, which will help me share things I find interesting but just don't have time to write about here. If you're a tweeter, my handle is @anatotitan.

What better way to decompress than with some dinosaur jokes? That's the mission of The Dinosaur Princess, published in 1989. Tricia Zimic's amazing cover art classed this title up quite a bit. The jokes are pretty corny. Big surprise, huh? I expected subtle, XKCD level science humor. The interior drawings are pretty cartoony and not terribly interesting, but the cover made this book impossible to put back on the Goodwill shelf.



The little monkeys are stickers placed by the previous owner. I usually leave such reminders of a book's history where they are. Removing them will probably rip the cover, and I'm sure that the little scamp had a solid reason for sticking them where they are.