The Tyrannosaur Gallery

Welcome to the Tyrannosaur Gallery, ART Evolved's final gallery for awhile.

As readers have probably noticed, both Craig and I have been posting less frequently on this blog.  In fact, we feel it is time to step back and take a break from ART Evolved for the time being.  Life has a way of getting in the way of life, and Craig and I feel we can't commit the amount of time needed to keep up the quality of ART Evolved.  We will leave the site online, but sleeping.  Perhaps sometime in the future, we will revive ART Evolved, but for now she rests.

Looking back, we have had a fantastic 4 years creating a community for talented artists and palaeontology enthusiasts to come together and share ideas and inspiration.  We hosted 20 themed galleries, with over 100 artists participating from around the world.  We raised over $500 for cancer research with Pink Dinosaurs.  We hosted tutorials and debated important questions, such as "What is palaeoart?" We promoted the talents of our readers, and defended their artistic rights as well.  Craig and I even had the pleasure to meet several of you!  You are all absolutely wonderful!

With that being said, we will be ending ART Evolved's regular Time Capsule Galleries with our favourite prehistoric animal:  the Tyrannosaurs.

Please enjoy the wonderful work of many talented artists below in the Tyrannosaur Gallery!

(Click on the images to enlarge them)

Head of T-rex with Spectacular Plumage by Christoffer Gertz Bech

Starry Tyrannosaur by Harrison Cooper

Teenage Tyrannosaurus by Vassika Udurawane

Tyrannosaurus Mother and Child by Vassika Udurawane

Yutyrannus Trio in Winter by Vassika Udurawane

Swimming Albertosaurus by Vassika Udurawane

Swimming Albertosaurus makes a playful snap at some small butterflies. The dinosaur is fully feathered, even to the point of those always-prominent jaw muscles being covered. It also has lips. I am tired of the old "roaring tyrannosaur" trope, and this one's mouth is open for a reason. Also, all animals play, especially intelligent carnivores, so why not dinosaurs too?

Dragon from Jiayuguan by Elia Smaniotto

The "Destroyer" Gets A Cleaning by The Nanotyrant

This is my drawing of Bistahieversor sealeyi with a weird twist. Similar to how some animals have birds eat out of their mouths to clean them, this tyrannosaur has an enantiornithe cleaning its teeth. It's inspired by All Yesterdays.

The Singing T-rex by Trish Arnold

Three Yutyrannus Moon by Trish Arnold

Awesome Overload by Trish Arnold

Traumador the Tyrannosaur by Albertonykus

GEOL 204 by Albertonykus

A dramatization of taking Dr. Thomas Holtz's course on the fossil record, "Dinosaurs, Early Humans, Ancestors & Evolution: The Fossil Record of Vanished Worlds of the Prehistoric Past" (GEOL 204).

The text references songs Holtz plays at the beginning of each lecture.

Tyrannosaurus 2003 by Peter Bond

Tyrannosaurus 2006 by Peter Bond

Tyrannosaurus 2008 by Peter Bond

Traumador the Tyrannosaur 2010 by Peter Bond

Tyrannosaurus 2010 by Peter Bond

Tyrannosaurus 2013 by Peter Bond

Albertosaurus into the sunset by Craig Dylke

Thank you so much for checking out ART Evolved's last Time Capsule, the Tyrannosaur Gallery!

On behalf of Craig and myself, I'd like to sign off by saying thank you so much for supporting ART Evolved and to continue to push yourself artistically, recreating wonderful worlds for the past.

Thank you,

       Craig Dylke and Peter Bond

So long and thanks for all the fish!

The Tyrannosaur Gallery extension

Given Bond and my own work related hassles and schedules, there is an extension on the finale Tyrannosaur gallery.

We'll be putting it up it up in the first week of August. So please consider putting together a tyrannical lizard this July for the last ever ART Evolved gallery!

Send your submission to artevolved@gmail.com

Thank to everyone who has sent in a piece already (I keep meaning to send individual emails, but then the pile of 100+ exams I have to mark distracts me)

Holtz's A Dinosaur Lover's Bookshelf

As you may remember, I said that "Good, Semi-good, and Bad Dino Sources 1" was inspired by Holtz's "A Dinosaur Lover's Bookshelf" ( http://blogevolved.blogspot.com/2013/03/good-semi-good-and-bad-dino-sources.html ). However, I've since realized that not everyone may have access to it, hence this post. Here's hoping you get as much out of it as I did. It's been very influential to my collecting ( http://blogevolved.blogspot.com/2013/03/introducing-hadiazmy-1st-listmania-list.html ).

P.S. I don't own anything in the following quote. For educational purposes only.

Quoting Holtz ( http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/book-reviews/16928013/dinosaur-lovers-bookshelf ): "A persistent problem for the dinosaur fan, and no less for the parents thereof, is the search for the perfect dinosaur book. What the reader is looking for is a work that is textually and visually accurate, up to date, and comprehensive.

The trouble is, no dinosaur book is going to get it all right, or have all the latest information. Dinosaur paleontology, like any other growing science, is a rapidly evolving field--as the articles in this issue, and the current dinosaur exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History, can attest. Investigators are describing new species all the time; a total of more than fifty new species or Mesozoic dinosaurs were named in 2003 and 2004 alone. New techniques of analysis are continually uncovering previously unrecognized details about the internal anatomy and growth patterns of dinosaurs. And finds of spectacularly well-preserved specimens are revealing unknown and unsuspected features of species first described many years ago: long tail quills on the horned dinosaur Psittacosaurus, for instance, were never dreamed of until a specimen clearly showing that feature was unearthed recently in China.

What all this means is that important descriptive details in dinosaur studies can change in less time than it takes to get a book from its author's hands onto the shelves of a bookshop. What is a discerning reader to do?

Luckily, there are signposts that point to the titles you can trust. The most significant discovery in dinosaur paleontology in recent decades, for example, is that birds are the direct descendants of dinosaurs--in other words, following modern conventions of classification, birds are the only living members of Dinosauria. A good book will recognize this discovery.

Another indicator that a work on dinosaurs is reliable and modern is the way it treats the question of scaly skin. Until the late 1990s it would have been acceptable, at least within permissibly cautious bounds, to depict the hides of deinonychosaurs (the "raptor" dinosaurs, small to medium-size bipedal predators such as Troodon and Velociraptor) as scaly. But recent finds in northeastern China, coupled with improved knowledge about the evolutionary relation, between advanced carnivorous dinosaurs and birds, demonstrate that deinonychosaurs were feathered. Depicting a Troodon or a Velociraptor without feathers, therefore, would simply be antiscientific.

Paleoart is, admittedly, a difficult enterprise: after all, its subject matter is long dead, and science can never expect to know very much about the creaturers' external surfaces or, for that matter, any of their other perishable features. Nevertheless, there is one inviolate rule of dinosaur restoration: if the known fossil skeleton conflicts with the shape of the reconstruction, the reconstruction must be wrong. That rule gives the casual reader at least a fighting chance of separating the wheat from the chaff: distinguishing books that depict restorations consistent with fossil specimens from books that have more in common with medieval bestiaries, conjured from rumor and imagination alone. One reliable clue that a book belongs to the former group is the inclusion of drawings or photographs of the fossil skeletons on which the restorations are based.

The popularity of dinosaurs, particularly among children, tends to make people forget that paleontology is a science. It's obvious when you think about it that understanding the research in the field requires a substantial amount of background knowledge. But, equally obviously, most of the people who produce movies, TV documentaries, and popular books about dinosaurs do not have such specialized knowledge. That line of thinking leads to a few more clues for choosing a dinosaur book: What is the expertise of the author? What subject is the focus of the text?

The discriminating reader will look for a book written either by, or at least in collaboration with, a paleontologist. That isn't to say that paleontologists always provide the most accurate or most entertaining information. But if you or your offspring are keen to find out about dinosaur science, you'll be better off relying on expert knowledge, or at least on well-informed opinion.

Of course, children love to master the blizzard of available trivial facts about dinosaurs--their height and weight, the pronunciation of their names--and publishers exploit that hunger for surface knowledge. But paleontologists know that, ultimately, the science of dinosaurs is all about methodology. The subject matter of the best dinosaur books will follow suit. Look for texts that explain how paleontologists discover fossils, interpret anatomy, and frame hypotheses about evolution and behavior. Check to see whether the artist has sought to make a lifelike restoration, based on a collaboration with a scientist.

Most of all, look for some hints about what is not known. A good book will explain that some of the most prominent physical details of a picture--the color of a dinosaur's scales or feathers, for instance, not to mention many aspects of dinosaur behavior--cannot be confirmed in the fossil record. Does the book make it clear that such things are still matters of pure speculation?

Although few books will meet all those standards, many of those mentioned below deal at least in part with the analytical side of paleontology. In selecting them, I've avoided coffee-table varieties with the format "dinosaurs from A to Z." Although some dino books are excellent examples of that genre, the selections that follow--which range from books for the very young to volumes for professionals in the field--comprise a variety of fresh approaches to the study of the "fearfully great lizards."

While I'm on the subject of the work of scientists in the field, a disclaimer is in order. The world of dinosaur paleontology is not only fast changing, but also rather small. There are only a hundred or so of us dinosaur paleontologists, and the community of paleoartists is even smaller. Together we represent a close-knit community. So I want to make it clear to the reader that I have previously worked, and am currently working, with some of the scientists, authors, and artists represented in the books reviewed, and have written chapters, in fact, for two of the volumes discussed below: Dinosaurs: the Science Behind the Stories and The Dinosauria.

FOR YOUNG READERS
Dino Dung: The Scoop on Fossil Feces,
by Karen Chin and Thorn Holmes; illustrated
by Karen Carr (Random House Step
Into Reading, 2005; $3.99)
In the past several years the Step Into Reading imprint has released a number of children's books about specific subtopics in dinosaur studies, written by subject experts. Previous works include the paleontologist Robert T. Bakker's Maximum Triceratops, and my own T. rex: Hunter or Scavenger? The most recent of" them, and a splendid point of entry for the ten-year-old in all of us, is Dino Dung, an up-to-date book on dinosaur paleontology.

Karen Chin, a paleontologist and the co-author of this newest member of the series, is the leading expert on dinosaur coprolites, or fossilized feces. Karen Carr, the illustrator, is one of the more subdued paleoartists working today. Unlike the images of artists such as Luis V. Rey and Michael W Skrepnick, Carr's dinosaurs don't seem to be hurrying off somewhere; they're just causally going about the business of contributing to the fossil-fecal record.

Chin and Thorn Holmes, a science writer, also tell the tale of how coprolite studies began: how, in the early 1800s, the English vicar and "paleontologist William Buckland discovered fossilized hyena dung in Britain, then carried out comparative analyses of fresh droppings from zoo-kept hyenas. Chin and Holmes go on to tell us how feces can be preserved, and what kinds of in formation can be retrieved from these often-overlooked, and generally underappreciated, leftovers of the ancient world. Chin's presentations at technical conferences are notorious for including at least one bad pun, and she doesn't disappoint her fans here: one chapter is titled, "The Scat with Nine Lives."

Dinosaurs! by Robert T. Bakker; illustrated
by Luis V. Rey (Random House,
2005; $8.99)
This book combines the talents of two of the more imaginative (some might say "controversial") workers in dinosaur studies. Robert Bakker, whose curriculum includes stints at both Harvard and Yale, as well as the Tate Geological Museum in Casper, Wyoming, was the enfant terrible of the dinosaur renaissance in the 1970s, when his research, combined with similar studies by his colleagues, laid to rest the mid-century vision of dinosaurs as inept, maladapted failures. Rey's dinosaur reconstructions (digitally superimposed for this book onto scenic background photographs) are so brilliantly colored they are almost garish, and the figures are probably the most dynamically posed of any in the tradition of paleoart. Yet despite the bold effects, the results are surprisingly mainstream, in the best sense of the word. That is to say, few dinosaur paleontologists today would find the information and reconstructions in Dinosaurs! at all unreasonable (except perhaps for the imaginative colors). If you are looking for a short, colorful, easy-to-read overview of the new understanding of dinosaurian diversity, this book will serve as an excellent introduction for young readers.

I Like Dinosaurs! by Michael W.
Skrepnick, a series for children ages six
through eight (Enslow Publishers, Inc.,
$21.26 each)

Diplodocus: Gigantic Long-Necked
Dinosaur (2005)

Sinosauropteryx: Mysterious Feathered
Dinosaur (to appear in June 2005)

Triceratops: Mighty Three-Horned
Dinosaur (2005)

Tyrannosaurus rex: Fierce King of
the Dinosaurs (2005)
Everything paleontologists know about dinosaurs is ultimately based on fossil discoveries, a concept this new series conveys to children in a sparse but visually inviting manner. Each volume features a single, famous dinosaur species (though often with some mention of related forms). Michael Skrepnick provides a short passage about the scenes depicted--only about thirty words per page. His paintings and drawings, combined with photographs from the field and from museum exhibits, support the brief accounts of the various species, their probable habits, and the way paleontologists have applied the available fossil evidence.

FOR INTERMEDIATE READERS
The Dinosaur Library, by Thorn Hohnes
and Laurie Holmes, illustrated by Michael
William Skrepnick (Enslow Publishers,
Inc.; $26. 60 each)

Armored, Plated, and Bone-Headed
Dinosaurs (2002)

Baby Dinosaurs: Eggs, Nests, and Recent
Discoveries (2003)

Gigantic Long-Necked Plant-Eating
Dinosaurs (2001)

Great Dinosaur Expeditions and Discoveries
(2003)

Feathered Dinosaurs (2002)
Horned Dinosaurs (2001)
Meat-Eating Dinosaurs (2001)
Peaceful Plant-Eating Dinosaurs
(2001)
Prehistoric Flying Reptiles (2003)
This series occupies an intriguing literary niche between a primer for beginners and a book for adults. In some sense, the Holmeses, a husband-and-wife team of natural history writers, have produced a collection of books that is more deserving of the name "endcyclopedia" than many single-volume texts in the A-to-Z format. Taken together, the books represent a relatively comprehensive survey of the major groupings within the Dinosauria. Individual volumes also touch on some related issues, such as dinosaur nesting behavior and field paleontology.

The taxonomic books--the ones focusing on particular dinosaur clades (groups of species that include all the descendants of one common ancestor)--all share the same structure. An opening story focuses on the life of a particular individual dinosaur. Introductory matter discusses dinosaur origins and diversity. Then several chapters cover the anatomy, physiology, and feeding habits of the group in question, and its probable extinction scenario. For a series aimed at young audiences, The Dinosaur Library is unusual in including footnotes that refer to primary literature in the field. The series also gives separate chronological and geographic listings of important discoveries.

DINOSAURS AS LIVING ANIMALS
How to Keep Dinosaurs, by Robert Mash
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003; $14.99)
A Field Guide to Dinosaurs: The Essential Handbook for
Travelers in the Mesozoic, by Henry Gee, illustrated by
Luis V. Rey (Barron's, 2003; $24.95)
These two books present rather different takes on dinosaurs as living animals. Mash, a zoologist who heads the biology department at a prestigious English secondary school, has revised and updated a highly amusing book that first appeared in 1983. Adopting the conceit that some dinosaur and reptile genera of the ancient world are still with us, How to Keep Dinosaurs provides the would-be saurian-pet owner with details of how to feed, house, raise, and train creatures that range from the diminutive pterosaur Anurognathus to the enormous Brachiosaurus.

Icons at the entries for each animal signal various aspects of dinosaur care in amiably wacky-ways: the dieticon begets "fussy eater," "will eat other pets"; behavior evokes "worryingly clever," "iffy with babies"; practical considerations prompt "messy moulter" "government license necessary." Etymological readings of dinosaurs' genus names are also a source of unsuspected humor. Some are accurate derivations with humorous interpretations: Ornitholestes, literally "bird robber," is so named "for a tendency to break into poultry farms." Others are amusingly skewed: Dicraeosaurus (properly "bifurcated lizard") has become "two-meat-tray lizard," in reference "to the amount of meat a hunter can expect to get as his share of a carcass: this dinosaur is a popular diet item in Tanzania."

The new edition includes many recently named species, and several of these, are appropriately feathered. But, in general, the science in this book is vintage 1980s. Many illustrations (superimposed onto photographs of contemporary domestic settings) are repeated from the original edition.

Whereas Mash brings dinosaurs from the ancient world into modern life, Henry Gee, a senior editor for paleontology at the journal Nature, takes us back to the world of the Mesozoic. Gee's work, perhaps not surprisingly, is far better informed than: Mash's is about current dinosaur research. And for Gee, dinosaurs 'also become jumping-off points for addressing such general biological issues as mating displays, growth patterns, and symbiotic relations.

Luis Rey's illustrations are done both in black-and-white and in brilliant (sometimes Day-Glo) colors. Particularly dramatic are his "fish-eye lens" paintings, which lead to some unfamiliar (and sometimes disturbing) perspectives, even for familiar dinosaurs such as Diplodocus.

Gee warns that readers who believe what they see in his book do so at their own risk. And it's true that the casual reader might not be certain how much of the information is based on new discoveries, how much on reasonable speculation, and how much comes out of Gee's and Rey's fertile imaginations. But aside from the bright palate and the odd perspectives, the expert quickly recognizes that Rey's drawings, at least, are based on the latest paleontological data, and are probably more accurate than the typical popular images we're all accustomed to. Still, I wonder if some readers think that the supposed Arctic carnivore Tyrannosaurus helcaraxae, for instance, is already known to science?

TRANSITION TO THE TECHNICAL
Dinosaurs: The Science Behind the
Stories, edited by Judith G. Scotchmoor,
Dale A. Springer, Brent H. Breithaupt,
and Anthony R. Fiorillo (American Geological
Institute, 2002; $29.95)
How do we know what we know about dinosaurs? In this book, dinosaur paleontologists, geologists, and paleoartists explain their work to a general, educated audience. Don't expect to see lots of different dinosaurs fully restored, or an alphabetical listing of major species. But if you are interested in such topics as how dinosaur fossils are found and collected, what fossil trackways can tell us about dinosaur locomotion, how evolutionary interrelations of dinosaur groups are reconstructed, or how science can infer various modes of behavior--this volume is an excellent gateway to the primary technical literature.

TECHNICAL LITERATURE
Feathered Dragons: Studies in the Transition
from Dinosaurs to Birds, edited by
Philip. J. Currie, Eva B. Koppelhus, Martin
A. Shugar, and Joanna L. Wright
(Indiana University Press, 2004; $49.95)
The Carnivorous Dinosaurs, edited by
Kenneth Carpenter (Indiana University
Press, to appear in July 2005; $49.95)
Thunder-Lizards:The Sauropodomorph
Dinosaurs, edited by Virginia Tidwell and
Kenneth Carpenter (Indiana University
Press, to appear in July 2005; $59.95)
These three volumes are the latest additions to the Indiana University Press series Life of the Past, which aims to publish peer-reviewed scientific literature on various topics in paleontology. The series is intended to reach a wider readership than the traditional scholarly journals do.

The Dinosauria, Second Edition, edited
by David B. Weishampel, Peter Dodson,
and Halska Osmólska (University of California
Press, 2004; $95.00)
The Dinosauria is the primary professional reference for dinosaur paleontology. Well-worn copies of the first edition, conceived in 1984 and published in 1990, still occupy the desks of curators, fossil preparators, graduate students, paleoartists, and professors, not to mention the shelves of university and museum libraries.

But the discipline has grown substantially in the past fifteen years, and the new Dinosauria is a more than adequate update of the original. The number of contributors has grown from twenty-three to forty-three; many were still graduate students when the original was first published. The new edition also includes, significantly, a chapter on birds of the Mesozoic, thereby officially recognizing that Ayes belongs to the larger grouping, Dinosauria.

Comprising more than 800 pages, this work is the ultimate reference on dinosaurs, detailing the adaptations, anatomy, diversity, and inferred habits represented on the many branches of the dinosaur family tree. One long chapter examines the occurrence of dinosaur fossils (bones, eggs, and footprints) around the globe. Concluding chapters discuss topics such as dinosaur physiology and extinction. The massive bibliography is the most comprehensive single source of guidance to the professional dinosaur literature ever published.

So this book is a must for the serious student of dinosaur research. But unless you have already mastered vertebrate anatomy, Mesozoic stratigraphy, and phylogenetic analysis, it's probably not the place to begin."

The Master Harryhausen Passes Away

A true palaeo-artist (artist in every since really) has left us. Movie animator Ray Harryhausen.

Decades before Jurassic Park, Harryhausen brought out some of the most definitive Dinosaurs to ever hit motion pictures, in addition to many other amazing and engaging monsters and creatures.

Considering he did this slow movement by meticulously movement by himself over the course of weeks sometimes it is no small achievement. Given the armies of artists it takes to make equal visuals these days, I think it is very safe to say the world has just lost a true master.

One of the most powerful Dinosaur recreations I recall from my childhood is the caveman vs. Allosaurus fight from One Million BC. I still love watching this film to this day (with the added bonus of in adulthood the boring parts with Racquel Welch suddenly are more watch-able :P)

Dinosaur feather colours may not be as easy to determine

(Thanks to Diagenesis for the heads up, also check out Ed Young's post on it here)

A new study by Maria McNamara of the University of Bristol calls into question some (emphasis some) of the recent claims about feather colour in fossil Dinosaurs.

By Emily Willoughby

Doing studies on the effects of heat and pressure on the molecular composition of pigments in modern bird feathers, Dr. McNamara found that these molecules changed even under just these limited conditions reproducible in the lab. Meaning that given millions of years with similar long term conditions pigments could radically change.

With that said the original author of the feather fossil study Dr. Jakob Vinther has come out with a rebuttal stating his team had noted such possible changes.

Only time and more studies into both feather pigments and the processes by which they fossilize will tell us if we have truly unlocked the colour scheme of some Dinosaurs.

So some flexibility (and less certainty) has crept back into feather reconstructions there artists.

An Anting Alvarezsaurid

As you may have noticed, LITC's "All Yesterdays Contest Gallery" ( http://chasmosaurs.blogspot.com/2013/04/all-yesterdays-contest-gallery.html ) includes my entry. I originally wasn't gonna enter any of the All Yesterdays contests given 1) my unrealistic style, & 2) my lack of artistic skill w/scientific accuracy. I generally avoid drawing real animals (especially those blameless, holy creatures known as dinos ;) ) for the same reasons as I just don't feel worthy. However, I was then reminded of LITC's contest rules. When that was combined w/the urge to put my ideas on paper, I decided to make an exception.

Now, for the entry itself. Of the 2 forms of anting (See the Editor quote), I figured the former was more likely given the facts that 1) alvazersaurids had long necks & short arms, & 2) alvazersaurids were probably seeking out ants for food, anyway. The alvazersaurid is generic, based loosely on Linhenykus ( http://www.desksketch.com/2012/07/24/it-is-a-linhenykus/ ), which lived in the Gobi region during the Late Cretaceous. The color scheme of the alvazersaurid is based loosely on a combination of the Northern Flicker (an insect-eater like Linhenykus) & the Scaled Quail (a ground-runner like Linhenykus), both of which live in the Nebraska Sand Hills & are known to ant (See the Viegas quote for why the Nebraska Sand Hills).

Quoting Editor ( http://www.birds.com/blog/anting-behavior-in-birds/ ): "Anting can take on different forms. Some birds will pick up ants in their beaks and rub the ant over their feathers, after which they eat the ant; while others will open their wings and lie down over an active anthill and allow ants to climb up onto them. But it does seem that one part of anting remains consistent: birds prefer using ants that produce formic acid. Ants use the formic acid their bodies produce as a defense mechanism, which they spray at their attackers, but at the same time provides birds with a certain something that scientists would love to discover."

Quoting Viegas ( http://naturalselectionsinscience.blogspot.com/2009/12/screaming-roadrunner-ran-circles-around.html ): "The presence of so much diverse wildlife in the Gobi region during the Late Cretaceous, along with geological studies, suggests that this area was once similar to the Channel Country of central Australia or to the Nebraska Sand Hills."

My 2nd Pair of Reviews

As an Art Evolved member, I post a pair of my reviews here every so often, the 1st being positive & the 2nd being negative. I'd greatly appreciate you reading & voting "Yes" for said reviews in the bolded links below. Besides wanting to make sure said reviews give a good idea of what to expect, they need all the "Yes" votes they can get because 1) the 1st is for a great book that deserves more attention, & 2) the 2nd is outnumbered by opposing reviews (which don't give a good idea of what to expect). Many thanks in advance.

P.S. For my previous reviews, see "My 1st Pair of Reviews": http://blogevolved.blogspot.com/2013/03/my-1st-pair-of-reviews.html

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The best dino Q&A book ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1BP8LPRNRAT01/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0520225015 ): 5/5

Short version: If you must have a dino Q&A book, get Norell et al.'s "Discovering Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Lessons of Prehistory, Expanded and Updated" (I.e. Evolution). It's as good as dino Q&A books get.

Long version: Read on.

I generally dislike the dino Q&A genre for 3 main reasons: 1) Redundant questions; 2) Vague answers; 3) Bad Q&As (I.e. Stupid or misleading questions & misleading or wrong answers). Evolution is the ultimate exception to said genre because it does the exact opposite of all that & MUCH more:
-Precise questions? Check! It helps that Evolution focuses on quality over quantity (unlike my next review's book, which features "more than 600 questions about dinosaurs").
-Concise answers? Check! Again, it helps that Evolution focuses on quality over quantity (E.g. Evolution does in 1 Q&A & 4 pages what takes my next review's book 26 Q&As & 15 pages to do).*
-Good Q&As? Check times infinity! As far as I know, they were accurate at the time of publication, & are still mostly accurate now.** It helps that Norell et al. are the curators of the American Museum of Natural History's (I.e. AMNH's) "Hall of Dinosaurs" & thus know what they're doing (unlike the authors of my next review's book, who are neither experts nor even collaborators with experts). & if that's not good enough, Evolution is basically 2 books in 1, the 1st section listing the Q&As & the 2nd/3rd/4th section describing the dinos on exhibit in the AMNH's "Hall of Dinosaurs"/the AMNH's dino discoveries from the 1990s/the AMNH's dino expeditions from 1897-2000, respectively.

If I could, I'd give Evolution a 4.5/5. My only gripes are the lack of life reconstructions (The photos & drawings of fossils are great, but I like it best when a dino book is also illustrated with life reconstructions based on said fossils) & the sit-on-the-fence attitude of Norell et al. when it comes to controversial topics (1st, see the Mallison quote for why that annoys me; Then, compare the Norell et al. quote to the GSPaul quote).*** However, for the purposes of this review, I'll round up to 5/5.

*I'm specifically referring to Q&A #7 in Evolution ("Why are birds a type of dinosaur?") & 26 Chapter 9 Q&As in my next review's book.

**Google "Dinosaurs Explained - YouTube" for updated versions of Evolution's Q&As.

***I picked the GSPaul quote because 1) like Evolution  it's from 2000, & 2) to quote John Kwok, it's from "a splendid summary of the current state of knowledge of dinosaurian paleobiology."

Quoting Mallison ( http://dinosaurpalaeo.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/review-of-brusatte-2012-dinosaur-paleobiology/ ): "With regards to physiology and in the final chapter on extinction Steve manages to present the highly controversial topics well, the evidence provided by all sides (as opposed to the BADNits with their lack of evidence; they get ignored), then finally sticks his neck out by hanging his hat on an option. Dinosaurs were, Steve concludes, what I term "functional endotherms", whatever the details and tiny differences from birds and mammals, and were killed off either directly and indirectly by the asteroid hit, or with ample help from it.I applaud Steve's decision to not sit on the fence out of a misguided sense of having to report evenly or some such nonsense. The evidence is clearly not evenly supportive of hypotheses, and Steve does a very good job of showing why that is the case. For a scientist that may not be necessary, but many laypeople will read this book, too."

Quoting Norell et al.: "Were nonavian dinosaurs warm-blooded? The evidence is still equivocal, and most claims that all dinosaurs are "warm-blooded" are speculative. There is no clear-cut evidence that dinosaurs were either cold-blooded or warmblooded, except that dinosaurs evolved endothermy sometime in their history, as documented by living birds."

Quoting GSPaul (See "The Scientific American Book of Dinosaurs"): "Reese Barrick has been involved in leading-edge research that could have only been dreamed of in the 1970s, using bone isotope ratios to more directly measure the thermodynamics of dinosaurs. His essay combines this chemical analysis with other lines of evidence to conclude, as have most other researchers, that Bakker was correct: dinosaurs did not have reptilian energetics, and they consumed and burned oxygen at rates far higher than seen in modern reptiles."

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The worst dino Q&A book ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2GYUK9TZ7D0HA/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B005SNKTJG ): 2/5

Short version: If you must have a dino Q&A book, get Norell et al.'s "Discovering Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Lessons of Prehistory, Expanded and Updated". The only thing Barnes-Svarney/Svarney's "The Handy Dinosaur Answer Book" (I.e. Answer) is consistently "handy" for is showing how bad dino Q&A books can get.

Long version: Read on.

I generally dislike the dino Q&A genre for 3 main reasons: 1) Redundant questions; 2) Vague answers; 3) Bad Q&As (I.e. Stupid or misleading questions & misleading or wrong answers). In my previous review, I referred to Norell et al.'s "Discovering Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Lessons of Prehistory, Expanded and Updated" as the ultimate exception to said genre. This review is about Answer, the ultimate epitome of said genre. Before I look at Answer's content, though, I want to briefly look at its paleoart (which is an important part of any popular dino book).

The cover art is a poorly-photoshopped stock photo of inaccurate, cheap-looking CG theropods running around roaring for no apparent reason. I can't even tell what kind of theropods they're supposed to be: On the 1 hand, they have very allosaur-esque heads; On the other hand, they have very ceratosaur-esque arms. The interior art is more of the same as well as stock photos of outdated dino models (E.g. Tail-dragging, swamp-dwelling sauropods & scaly-skinned, bunny-handed dromaeosaurs).

Remember what I said about Answer & the dino Q&A genre earlier? Answer is the ultimate epitome because it does all that & MUCH more:
-Redundant questions? Check (E.g. 7 out of 62 Chapter 9 questions ask, "What...survived the extinction at/did not survive the extinction at/did not disappear at/went extinct at/lived at/survived past the end of the Cretaceous period?")!*
-Vague answers? Check (E.g. See the 1st Barnes-Svarney/Svarney quote; Notice that it doesn't explain what it means by "certain modern reptiles" nor how they & birds are related to dinos nor how we know what we know)!
-Bad Q&As? Check times infinity! The 2nd Barnes-Svarney/Svarney quote is the worst because it fails on many levels: It promotes debunked fringe ideas (The 2nd camp's belief); It fails to understand how evolution works (If birds descended from dinos, then they ARE dinos, & thus the 1st & 3rd camps are the same); It fails to understand how much evidence the 1st/3rd camp has ("There are not enough fossils to come to a definite conclusion"); It fails to understand how bad the 2nd camp's arguments are ("All sides have good arguments"); It contradicts itself from a previous Q&A (See the 3rd Barnes-Svarney/Svarney quote; If paleontologists have "good arguments", that implies that they have "acceptable fossil evidence to support" their arguments). & if that's not bad enough, Answer repeats said fails as well as misspells animal names throughout (E.g. In Chapter 9 alone, Dilophosaurus/Rahonavis/P.robusta/dinosaurs/coelurosaurs are misspelled as Dilaphosaurus/Rahona/P.robust/dinosuars/coelurasaurs, respectively).

*Chapter 9 in Answer is "DINOSAUR CONNECTIONS".

Quoting Barnes-Svarney & Svarney: "What are the closest living relatives to the dinosaurs?
The closest living relatives to the dinosaurs are thought to be certain modern reptiles and birds."

Quoting Barnes-Svarney & Svarney: "What are the major camps in the dinosaur-bird evolution debate?
There are several camps of paleontologists in the dinosaur-bird evolution debate. One group believes birds descended from certain dinosaurs about 60 million years ago. Another camp believes proto-birds evolved separately from dinosaurs about 200 million years ago. And there is another group that has emerged: scientists who believe that birds are actually dinosaurs. Right now, there are not enough fossils to come to a definite conclusion, and all sides have good arguments. However, with the advent of DNA sequencing, scientists may one day have the answer."

Quoting Barnes-Svarney & Svarney: "Does everyone believe Archaeopteryx was a link to dinosaurs?
No, not everyone believes Archaeopteryx was a direct link to the dinosaurs. Some scientists believe birds and dinosaurs evolved separately from a common reptilian ancestor, but so far, no one has yet found acceptable fossil evidence to support or disprove this idea."

What sort of research do you use for palaeo-art?

I'm getting ready a couple more posts on All Yesterday's and the recent "movement" it has spurred (if through anything else all the recent contests surrounding it).

In getting my posts ready a thought crossed my mind that is a good topic of discussion.

What if any types of academic research do you reference, if any at all, when you are looking for inspiration to create your palaeo-art?

Feel free to either reply in the comment section, or if you'd really like your answer fleshed out, feel free to write up a guest post and email it to artevolved@gmail.com.

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I personally tend to read, at least these days, mostly taphonomy and palaeogeography related research. This is mostly due to the fact I tend to find tidbits of environmental information that set up interesting scenarios and settings for prehistoric critters to live in.

Additionally I did mostly geology science courses at University. I understand that end of the science more than anatomy. While I certainly can follow basic anatomy, the details tend to bore/bog me down, and I am not versed enough to draw any meaningful conclusions from it by myself. I certain will skim the discussion and conclusion sections of anatomic descriptions and there is definitely great info to be found in these papers, but typical find the most inspiration from taphonomy and palaeogeography papers (plus having to find ways to get them through the paywalls limits my paper tracking efforts).