John Conway (3)

I heard about this book maybe a year ago, and wanted it immediately. At the time, though, I could only find it as an e-book, which, meh. Somehow I saw that it was in paperback right around the time I was putting together a Christmas wishlist, and a few weeks later, I was delighted to unwrap it. It was instantly at the top of my reading pile.

It took longer than I would have predicted to read, but in all the best ways! I had been expecting just an art book -- creatively imagining how dinosaurs might have looked because -- who knows!? The sample illustrations (especially the sleeping T Rex) sold me, I wasn't really expecting science. But it was science. Each picture came with a story of how paleoart works, and the prejudices we hold that have prevented species from being depicted a certain way in the past. For instance -- why are there almost no pictures of dinosaurs sleeping? Why no pictures of smaller dinosaurs sheltering in dens, despite recent evidence some certainly did. Why are all tall spines in dinosaurs almost always interpreted as "skin sails" like the Dimetrodon, even though the Dimetrodon isn't a dinosaur, and modern species like chameleons exhibit tall vertebral spines but do not have sails.

In addition to all the cutting edge paleoart discussion, there was also a fantastic section illustrating the difficulties of drawing an animal based only on its skeleton by imaging future scientists, lacking picture of present-day species, trying to imagine what cats, cows, vultures, etc., looked like based only on theirs.

Fascinating and delightful. Highly recommended!… (mere)