Mighty Bones: Museum für Naturkunde Berlin

Berlin's a fascinating city and all, drawing people for its rich, tumultuous history as much as its present-day reputation for 'cool' (whatever that is. Like I'd know). But in the end, dinosaur enthusiasts will only have one destination in mind upon arriving in the city - the Museum für Naturkunde, home of the certified Tallest Mounted Dinosaur Skeleton in the World™. I visited on my second day in the city, and let me assure you, man-sized humeri were just dancing in front of my eyes before that. No amount of refreshingly inexpensive beer was going to distract me on my pilgrimage to the holy hall of bones on the Invalidenstraße. It doesn't disappoint.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: George Solonevich

A George Solonevich Compsognathus

George Solonevich, a Russian political dissident, escaped the Soviet Union and eventually had a successful art career in the United States. He is well known for his space illustrations; here are some created for the Golden Book Planets: Other Worlds of Our Solar System.

Solonevich worked in various styles, from grotesque portraits to those subdued, technoutopian space paintings. The dinosaurs in 1965's Dinosaurs and More Dinosaurs fall on the grotesque edge of the spectrum. See the Ceratosaurus featured on the book's cover: an oily, brutish monster. You can imagine touching it and winding up with a hand smeared in grease.


The cover model: Ceratosaurus.

These two early theropods aren't too cuddly, either. Creeping things with spindly legs and beady eyes.

Coelophysis and Podokesaurus: A pair now thought to be one in the same.

Of course, a mid-century dinosaur book wouldn't be worth the glue that binds it if it didn't include at least one submerged sauropod.

A Dicraeosaurus, snorkling. Do fish blow bubbles?

More information: Roanoke College has an online gallery of their collection of Solonevich art. For the really curious, you can check out a short video about him, dating from 1991.