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.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Rourke's Ankylosaurus

Yes, it's time once again to wander into the Mesozoic as rendered by Rourke Publishing. This will be the sixth go-around in Rourkeland for LITC, and it's always a treat. These books, which tell stories about prehistoric animals set in environments built on the latest paleontological understanding, generally provide an excellent snapshot of pop-paleontology in the eighties. More often than not, they feature excellent illustrations as well. Bernard Long's work in the Ankylosaurus title is another good example of the quality titles Rourke released.



One thing which dates the title, as is usual, are the bunny-handed theropods, devoid of the fuzzy and feathery coverings which have become de rigeur these days. The book opens with the titular character waking up to see a Troodon - here called Stenonchysaurus - trotting by with something furry for breakfast. The Troodon is clearly based on the Ron Seguin sculpture (the one almost always seen with the dinosauroid), which I will admit is always going to be the first thing that pops into my head when I hear or read the name. It was the most striking image in my old Doring-Kindersley visual dictionary; something about those big lantern-eyes and smooth, slick skin captured my imagination. It's nice to see my obsolete pal make an appearance here.



A pachycephalosaur makes a cameo as well, in the form of Gravitholus, and the text refers to the well-accepted idea of courtship battles between the "boneheads," which made an appearance here last week.



Our protagonist also meets some hadrosaurs, in the form of Parasaurolophus. I particularly enjoy the look of the one in the foreground. She looks like she's asking to bum a smoke off of Ankylosaurus, though the text says that she's "uttering fierce noises." The reason, of course, is that Ankylosaurus has wandered too closely to the Parasaurolophus nesting grounds, clearly a reference to the then-recent revelations into nesting provided by Jack Horner and his work on Maiasaura.



The next encounters with other dinosaurs is a bit more eventful. The ankylosaur runs across a couple of roughneck Tyrannosaurus rex, immediately going into "stop, drop, and swing" posture. This doesn't stop one of the tyrannosaurs from performing the indignity of jumping up and down on her back, which seems like as good of a method of taking down an ankylosaur as any.



Luckily for Ankylosaurus, an Alamosaurus distracts the giant theropods and they run off for another chance at lunch. Last week's post by Marc also featured T. rex and Alamosaurus, and Hadiaz mentioned in the comments that the Rourke Tyrannosaurus title also features this pairing. I'll be posting about that one soon. It's a bit of a fudge to include Alamosaurus here, as it doesn't occur in the Hell Creek or the Lance formations with Ankylosaurus, coming instead from the Southwest US, either from the Kirtland or Ojo Alamo Formation.



After this long, eventful day, our hero finds some supper and settles in for a well-deserved slumber. but not before watching a slightly anachronistic hunt in which Saurornitholestes slaughters the ornithopod Parksosaurus. The day ends as it began. Nothing like a little dinner theater.



As usual, this Rourke book ends with a great section giving the scientific background so the story we've just read, and this one features a little illustration of the all-but-abandoned Palaeoscincus, a grumpy little guy.



As I said, this is another good example of what a fine job Rourke did with their line of dinosaur storybooks. Ankylosaurus herself is pretty respectable for an 80's reconstruction; Bernard Long avoids the old neckless sluggard look of mid-century depictions as Palaeoscincus above demonstrates, imagining the famous "tank-dinosaur" as a dynamic animal. The plates are a bit armadillo-ish, but on the bright side, Long doesn't slavishly repeat mid-century tropes and the osteoderms and spikes are not too far off of the newer ideas of what Ankylosaurus looked like - see Kenneth Carpenter's recent redescription, for example (PDF). Well done, Mr. Long.

Previous Rourke books featured here:
Brontosaurus (Colin Newman)
Iguanodon (Bernard Long)
Triceratops (John Francis)
Pteranodon (Doreen Edwards)
Allosaurus (Doreen Edwards)

Ankylosaurus and Dimetrodon Slug It Out!

In 1977, the year I began, the Chivers Jelly company ran an advertising promotion which enticed consumers into purchasing their delicious gelatin products with that time-honored prize of little plastic prehistoric beasts. It also came with a book called "How The World Began," which hopefully was a bit more accurate than the lurid print ad they ran.

Image shared by Combombphotos at Flickr.

I love the Dimetrodon vs. Ankylosaurus battle. Such a wildly anachronistic fantasy. Seriously: drawing me fighting an Ankylosaurus would be less anachronistic by about 200 million years. That is staggering. It's also less likely: I'd rather be good buddies with the big lug than scrap with him.

Of course, I shouldn't make any hasty presumptions: this may very well be a stolen moment from an interspecies courtship ritual. This would certainly fit in with the ouevre of its illustrator, British comic artist Frank Langford, best known for his saucy romance comics. He also drew the space opera comic strip The Angry Planet. More on Langford at the romance comics blog Sequential Crush.

So, do you want to see what the Chiver's Jelly toys looked like? Of course you do. Little plastic dinosaurs: there is no more effective way to make children cajole their parents into buying them sweet treats.

The Flying Ankylosaur

As the Houston Museum of Natural Science undergoes a major expansion, including a new Paleontology Hall, things naturally need to be moved about. Some of these things are quite large, such as the Ankylosaurus created by Louis Paul Jonas for the 1964 World's Fair and extracted from the museum last Friday, January 21. More photos of the museum's expansion are available here, with more Ankylosaurus photos here.

More Dinosaurigami

In September of last year, I featured a couple examples of Nicolás Gajardo Henríquez's dinosaur origami. Flickr user origamiPete also has a fondness for things paleo. Here are some of his.

Styracosaurus:


Ankylosaurus:


The Mesozoic aquatic bird Hesperornis:


Pete has also done some other ancient creatures, including the hammerheaded amphibian Diplocaulus and the saber-toothed cat, Smilodon.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: High-Kickin' Allosaurus

Here's a two-page spread from a 1979 Scholastic book called the First Picture Encyclopedia. It's a pretty sweet piece, complete with a gaggle of erupting volcanos, anachronistic fauna, Rudolf Zallinger-inspired Stegosaurus, and one heck of a high-kickin' Allosaurus, which I find particularly amusing. Not only would it be a crazy way for a big theropod to attack its prey, the stance looks pretty implausible.

The book credits four illustrators: Roy Coombs, Cliff Meadway, Mike Atkinson, and Graham Allen, with Coombs' name most prominent. None of them are particularly visible on the web. Mr. Atkinson has a website, but the style doesn't quite match what we see here.