The Tyrannosaur Chronicles book launch

Friday the 22^nd April saw the official launch of Dr. David Hone’s first book, The Tyrannosaur Chronicles (Bloomsbury Sigma), at Queen Mary University London, in the rather lovely book-lined Octagon of Queen’s Building -- which, if the British Museum’s Enlightenment Gallery should fail to become my library, would serve pretty well in its stead. Dr. Dave has written about the book’s publication on his blog, and it has already gained a deservedly positive reception, not least among which is Tom Holland’s glowing review on New Statesman. And we at Love in the time of Chasmosaurs are very much hoping to post one or two of our own in due course.

 
After an introduction by Dr. Steve Le Comber, Dr. Dave read two short extracts from the book. The first, on a method of prey despatch, was especially illuminating and memorable for me simply because the conjecture never once occurred to me, but which once posited made such elegant sense: 

‘The huge caudofemoralis muscles ran from the femur and up most of the first third of the tail in all dinosaurs. The tail gave a huge amount of power to the legs for running, was full of major blood vessels and was not surrounded by bone. A heavy bite anywhere around the thigh or first part of the tail might well have crippled an animal, leaving it unable to run and bleeding badly. Also, the tail was one of the first things a pursuing hunter would encounter in a fleeing animal, so using this technique would have reduced the chase distance, which would have been important especially if the prey animal was fundamentally faster than the tyrannosaur. Notably, there are two fossil hadrosaurs showing injury to the tails from tyrannosaur bites, and another with a wound to the leg; it’s a very limited data set, but it does nonetheless point to this as a strategy.’

 After the readings, the audience was treated to a live link-up via Skype with the book’s illustrator, Scott Hartman, whose trusted, accurate skeletals I’m sure require no introduction here. Dr. Dave prefaced this by pointing out the precision of Scott’s working methods, and recounting how, during the course of writing the book, when Dave was asked whether he had a second choice in mind in the event that Scott couldn’t be procured, his answer was a quite decisive ‘well, no.’

The last of the formalities was the purchasing and signing of copies of the book (all which were brought to the launch sold out), whilst guests also had time to ogle at, photograph, and even handle the various casts that were on display.

Dave points out that the manus here belongs to Albertosaurus rather than T. rex

It was a great pity that Marc couldn’t make it this time, or without question there would have been some choice goofy pictures with the fantastic skull, and you would have had a superior post than this besides (in more ways than one). Never mind. I did at any rate get a picture of another star who also happened to be there.

Luis Rey!

The evening itself was rounded off with the hosts and guests all trooping off to a nearby pub for a celebratory drink. Marc was more than especially missed at this point. On that note, he and I have been chatting over a little competition which we’re hoping to launch very shortly, with copies of this very book as prizes, hurrah! Watch this space, as they say.

    

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!

The Great 2014 Dinosaur Gift Guide: Volume 3!

And I'm back to wrap up the gift guide, in which I gently exhort you to bestow the gift of paleoart upon your dinosaur-loving friends and relations, It's a clear win-win in that it supports independent creators who work hard to produce engaging, accurate representations of extinct life and it provides the recipient with a unique and memorable gift. Catch up with parts one and two, if you haven't seen them yet.

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The Tales of Prehistoric Life series of books by Daniel Loxton, published by Kids Can Press.

Daniel Loxton's three-part Tales of Prehistoric Life series is a great way to fill a young dinosaur hunter's bookshelf. I've given them as a gift to a precocious young paleontologist-in-training, and he was particularly taken by the books' combination of realistic dinosaurs in a narrative story. I reviewed the books here recently; take a look and see for yourself.


The Paleoart of Julius Csotonyi, published by Titan Books.

Julius Csotonyi is a modern master of paleoart, as evidenced by his winning the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology’s Lanzendorf PaleoArt Prize for 2-Dimensional Art three times. He sells prints of his immaculately rendered prehistoric scenes on his on-line store, and was also the subject of this year's Titan Books publication The Paleoart of Julius Csotonyi: Dinosaurs, Saber-tooths, & Beyond.


Pteranodon © Mark Witton, via Flickr.

Mark Witton is another influential figure, perhaps more than any other single artist popularizing the appearance of pterosaurs as informed by modern science. He recently began selling prints, and authored Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy, which was published last year.

The LITC Aisle






Top-to-Bottom: Deinocheirus by Asher Elbein, Lambeosaurus by Niroot Puttapipat, and Buitreraptor by David Orr.

Finally, I'd be a poor capitalist if I did not mention that your intrepid bloggers here at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs have their own wares for sale. I feel very lucky to share LITC with such talent. Asher's art is available at DeviantArt, Niroot's is available from DeviantArt and Redbubble, and my designs and illustrations are all at Redbubble.

I'm also supremely delighted to announce...



You can support the blog directly by purchasing official LITC merchandise! The logo is available in pink and black or in all white, both on a wide variety of products. I'll be rolling out a redesign of the blog soon, but as a sneak peek I've created merchandise of the new logo. Proceeds from these sales will help us purchase books and offset possible future expenses related to the hosting of the blog. Not a bad present, just imagine gathering the whole family (however you may define it, of course) for a holiday portrait in red and green LITC tees...

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I hope this series has inspired you to support paleoartists and publishers releasing good work. There are so many options for dinosaur toys, videos, models, games, and books. If even a fraction of the people who keep the Big Dinosaur Merchandise Train rolling down the rails patronized artists and small publishers who consistently push out inspiring work, it would be a heck of a lot easier for those creators to keep doing it.

Vintage Dinosaur Bots: Dinamation's Dinosaurs Alive!

All right then, hands up - who remembers these? Of course you do. You're reading Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs.

It didn't feel quite right to slot this in with the Vintage Dinosaur Art posts, so it's getting its own special entry. As you've already gathered, this book was produced to accompany the touring Dinosaurs Alive! exhibit from Dinamation Corp. In 1996, Dinosaurs Alive! came to Brighton and, of course, I wrote a review:

"Come out of busy, bustling Brighton and step one step back in time. See a Tarbosaurus leg and head. Step into an indoor Jurassic jungle and bump into a Pachycephalosaurus." (Dinosaur Footprints magazine, issue 1, September 1996. P. 5)

While Pachycephalosaurus may not have lived in the Jurassic, I was certainly enthused by the big old American robots. Sadly, my memories of that visit have all but been erased by three years of vodka abuse (known as 'university' in common parlance), so hooray for eBay! As an extra pleasant surprise, a lot of the Dinamation robots actually appear to be a lot better than I had previously very dimly remembered. So let's get the weirder ones out of the way first.

If you think it looks creepy here, just imagine encountering this monstrosity as a towering, life-size bot in a dark, dry ice-filled hall. It's like Allosaurus via a nightmarish 1980s latex beastie horror movie. It should have tendrils of gelatinous drool hanging from its maw.

Sticking with the orange-and-black theme, here's a very tiger-like early '90s Deinonychus. Dinamation had a trio of the animals snacking on their perennial favourite food, Tenontosaurus - a dinosaur rarely seen alive or dead in art without any number of dromaeosaurs hanging onto it. Interestingly, the Natural History Museum had a similar, non-Dinamation scene (with somewhat less rubbery-looking robots) installed in the early '90s - makes one wonder which came first...

Near the naked Deinonychus sits a Pteranodon that just looks....plain wrong for reasons that I can't quite put my finger on (knowing little about pterosaurs as I do). Pterosaurs can be pretty creepy anyway, but there's something particularly Chernabog about this restoration. It looks like it should be sitting up high on Notre Dame Cathedral. To make matters worse, its pterosaur fuzz has been rendered as long, whispy strands coming down from its neck. Shudder.

Never mind that, though - here are some outraged sauropods.

The biggest Dinamation Apatosaurus was apparently 'only' half size, but the company had a pretty decent go at the beast (too-thin neck aside). I've no doubt that the juveniles would look somewhat different today. Thankfully, while it seems that the brown stripey brontobots didn't get along too well, the tangerine version (below) was somewhat more serene.

This Stegosaurus is pretty cool - it looks like it only has a few, quite minor anatomical faults. Unfortunately this photo, like many in the book, is less than brilliant - thanks to the strange focus the life-size model looks like a miniature, and those odd speckly bits aren't the result of my scanner having a fit - they were actually on the original page. Shame. The Triceratops (below) is rather good too, although of course it has old-fashioned elephantine hands*, and a rather conspicuous ear opening has been placed in a strange position directly behind the eyes. Maybe they thought the skull opening immediately behind the orbit was an ear-hole. I do love the dimly-lit pine forest setting, though.

Thought I'd save the best 'til last. As I previously mentioned, a lot of the Dinamation bots depicted in these pics surprised me with how good they were - I guess I haven't been giving them enough credit in the past. While the arms are obviously wrong by modern standards, this Tyrannosaurus is generally excellent - there are robots still out there doing the rounds that aren't any better than this one. It's hard to believe that this and the terrifyingly strange Allosaurus were made by the same company - I can't help but wonder if they represent 'before' and 'after' representations of how the models changed when the company sought out advice from palaeontologists. (They may have had different people involved in their production too, of course.)

To wrap this up - it seems a real shame, seeing how good some of their robots were, that Dinamation folded amid all sorts of dodgy financial goings-on (or so sayeth the Wall Street Journal). Various vestiges of their long-lost dinobot empire can be seen all over the world, like bits of town wall sticking out of some forgotten corner of a former Roman city. I've posed next to a few while on my travels. If you've seen anything out there then I'd love to hear about it.

One last thing, actually...D'AWWWWW! And I'm sorry if this post isn't up to standard (which it probably isn't) - I've started a new job recently, and some other stuff's been going on, and I'm not quite on top of everything yet. I'll improve, promise!

 *I keep getting comments when I mention this, so I'll explain. In a lot of old palaeoart, ceratopsians were shown with elephantine 'paws' for hands. In fact, the digits were distinct and the hands were turned quite strongly outward (so that the palms faced in). This was actually a rather primitive condition for large, quadrupedal dinosaurs.

Darren Naish publishes Tetrapod Zoology Vol. 1

Today, Darren Naish announced the publication of Tetrapod Zoology Volume One, a compilation of posts from his blog of the same name. Anyone who's poked around the science blog scene has likely run into his blog and found that Naish consistently delivers well-researched, very readable essays on a wide variety of animals. Naish writes,

Chapters that discuss the possibility of parasite control in Mesozoic birds and other feathered theropods, new ideas about compsognathids and tyrannosauroids, and the life appearance of the weird fossil seal Acrophoca should make the book interesting reading for those of you with palaeontological interests, while the several chapters on recently discovered living species should be required reading for those interested in cryptozoology.

One of the joys of reading TetZoo is that you never quite know what to expect - it could be an analysis of a cryptid claim, a series on an obscure line of extinct beasts, or a look at an odd anatomical feature on an animal you think you know. I hope he does well with this publication, because he certainly deserves an audience beyond the blogosphere. Buy here.

Mark Witton, Author of Note

Launching Pteranodon by Mark Witton, via Flickr.

Welcome news: Mark Witton is writing a book on the pterosaurs. It's going to be released by Princeton University Press next year. Click here for a teaser, immediately. If you read that "immediately," you didn't click fast enough.

Here's hoping that it's liberally sprinkled with the slice-of-life anecdotes that make his writings so enjoyably nifty.

The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs

This October, Princeton University Press will release Gregory S. Paul's new book, The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs. If you'd like a sneak peek, a twelve page preview is available right now (hat tip to Ian Paulsen for posting it to the Dinosaur Mailing List). This should sufficiently whet your appetite, and there's a lot more meat on the bone: 320 pages, to be exact, with over 500 illustrations.

Paul is renowned for his reconstructions of ancient life, and his Predatory Dinosaurs of the World is still held up as one of the great pieces of dinosaur literature, twenty-one years after its first publication. If you've seen an animated dinosaur from the last two decades, chances are it is strongly influenced by Paul - or directly guided by him. For more, visit his official site, which includes galleries of his work and an exhaustive autobiography.