Beautiful, Big, Bold Dinosaur Books: of Molina-Pérez and Larramendi’s Theropods, Rey’s Extreme Dinosaurs 2, and Parker et al.’s Saurian

One of the reasons you read TetZoo is because of the dinosaurs, and among the dinosaur-themed things I write about on fairly regular basis are new(ish) dinosaur-themed books.

Partly because I’m way overdue on the book reviews I planned to write during 2019, I’m here going to talk about some recently-ish published dinosaur-themed books that you’d do well to buy and read, if you wish, or can. I’ve written about recently-ish published dinosaur-themed books on quite a few recent occasions; see the links below for more. Let’s get to it.

Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs: the Theropods, by Rubén Molina-Pérez and Asier Larramendi

I can say right out of the gate that this 2019 work is one of the most spectacular dinosaur-themed works that has ever seen print. Think about that for a minute, since it’s a pretty grand claim. Yes. This book is spectacular: big (288 pages, and 24.5 cm x 30 cm), of extremely high standard, packed with information, and containing a vast number of excellent and highly accurate colour life reconstructions. Originally published in Spanish, it has now been translated (by David Connolly and Gonzalo Ángel Ramírez Cruz) and published in English by London’s Natural History Museum. The book consists of eight sections, which variously go through the theropod cladogram, discuss geographical regions and the theropods associated with them, and review theropod anatomy, eggs, footprints and so on. And it’s packed with excellent illustrations… hundreds of them.

A selection of pages from Molina-Pérez & Larramendi (2019). At left, eggs depicted to scale (with a basketball). At right, just two of the many pages that feature theropod skeletal elements. Images: Molina-Pérez & Larramendi (2019).

The art is great – the majority of colour images being by the phenomenally good and reliable Andrey Atuchin – and I’d recommend that anyone interested in the life appearance of dinosaurs obtain the book for its art alone. I have one criticism of the art though, which is that the colour schemes and patterns used for some of the animals are occasionally based on those of living animals (most typically birds).

Just two of the many UNNAMED theropod species reconstructed in the book. Exciting stuff! The humans that feature in the book are an interesting lot. Images: Molina-Pérez & Larramendi (2019).

Familiar theropods of many sorts are illustrated, but a major plus point is that many of the animals depicted are either obscure and mostly new to the world of palaeoartistic depictions (examples: Spinostropheus, Dryptosauroides, Bonapartenykus, Nanantius, Gargantuavis) or are as-yet-unnamed species: animals which clearly represent something new (since they’re the only member of their group known from the relevant geographical region and segment of geological time) but have only been referred to by their specimen numbers or by a ‘cf’ attribution (a theropod called, for example ‘cf Velociraptor mongoliensis’ is being compared by its describers to V. mongoliensis and is clearly very much like V. mongoliensis, but quite possibly not part of the species and perhaps something new. The ‘cf’ is short for ‘confere’, as in: compare with).

If the reconstructions in the book are anything to go by, Spinostropheus - according to one specimen (an ulna) it could reach huge sizes - was among the most remarkable of theropods. Just look at it. Image: Molina-Pérez & Larramendi (2019).

Two issues strike me as problematic though. One is that the arrangement is really difficult to get to grips with, and it’s taken me numerous attempts to understand and appreciate why the book is arranged the way it is. The second issue concerns what appears to be a suspiciously high degree of taxonomic precision for footprints. The authors depict footprints, said to be representative of the different theropod groups covered in the taxonomy section at the start of the book, and seem confident that the tracks concerned (which are often fairly nondescript) were made by species belonging to the relevant group. It’s hard to be convinced that this is reliable, except in a very few cases: I’m happy to agree that the giant Tyrannosauripus pillmorei track, for example, really was made by a member of Tyrannosauridae. Then again, maybe the authors have devised a new track identification method that isn’t yet known to the rest of us.

The several montages in the book are truly things of beauty. Image: Molina-Pérez & Larramendi (2019).

And on that note, it’s obvious that a vast quantity of novel science was performed as part of the background research for this book. The methods and data used by the authors are explained up front. Impressive stuff, and stuff which should be published in the technical literature at some point. Are their results always ‘good’? Well, I have my misgivings about the idea that Dinornis the moa was the fastest (non-flying) theropod ever and capable of sprinting at a phenomenal 81 km/h…

So, so many diagrams of tracks and trackways. Image: Molina-Pérez & Larramendi (2019).

Despite my minor misgivings, this book is attractive enough and interesting enough that it’s a must-have for those seriously interested in dinosaurs and in artistic depictions of them. Buy it if you can. This volume promises to be the first in a series. At the time of writing, the second of these – devoted to sauropods – is being advertised and is due to appear soon. Given that there’s every reason to assume that its artwork and overall quality will be similar to that of the theropod volume reviewed here, I have very high hopes and look forward to seeing it.

Molina-Pérez, R. & Larramendi, A. 2019. Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs: the Theropods. The Natural History Museum, London. pp. 288. ISBN 9780565094973. Hardback. Here at publishers. Here at amazon. Here at amazon.co.uk.

Luis Rey’s Extreme Dinosaurs 2: the Projects

Luis Rey (who blogs here) has been active in the palaeoart world for a few decades now, and most people interested in the portrayal of dinosaurs in art will be familiar with his vibrant, bold and dynamic style. Luis’s work has appeared in museum installations, exhibitions, and in numerous publications, including books. Most notable among these are his own Extreme Dinosaurs (Rey 2001) and The Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs, by Robert Bakker (Bakker 2013). I feel it would be wrong at this point to avoid mentioning the fact that Luis and I were regular correspondents back when the first of those books appeared, but that my dislike of the 2013 book – which I made clear in a TetZoo review – coincided with a cessation in any contact we used to have. But things have moved on; Luis’s art has continued to evolve and let’s put all of that behind us.

A collection of Rey works at TetZoo Towers. Image: Darren Naish.

Extreme Dinosaurs 2: the Projects discusses the intellectual and artistic background to several dinosaur-themed museum installations which Luis has created, but does so in an evolutionary fashion such that they’re used to describe our improving knowledge of the Mesozoic world. Luis was illustrating colourful, fully feathered dromaeosaurs, oviraptorosaurs and so on at a time when the majority of relevant academics were dead against this, so it would be fair to see him as one of several artists who were predicting things that would prove correct in the end. I was on side too, and consequently was a vociferous Rey advocate in the early part of my academic career, deliberately using his reconstructions of dromaeosaurs – even the turkey-wattled, shaggily feathered ones – in conference presentations and publications. And for all the success of All Yesterdays and its associated movement, we have never forgotten that Luis was saying many of the same things already.

Some representative pages from Extreme Dinosaurs 2. At right, note the person wearing an oviraptorosaur costume while sat in a nest.

Maniraptorans, thyreophorans, ceratopsians, dinosaur eggs and nesting and the dinosaurs (and other Mesozoic reptiles) of Mexico all get coverage here as Luis explains the thinking behind new pieces of art and also how and why he’s modified older ones. Our understanding of feather arrangements in non-bird maniraptorans have improved a lot in recent years, plus we have so much new data on ankylosaur armour, ceratopsian skin and so on. If you haven’t been keeping up, this book would be a good primer. The text is concise and written in a friendly, informal style.

More representative pages, this time depicting therizinosaurs. Brightly coloured faces, bold patterns on the feathering, inflatable throat structures… what’s not to love? Image: Rey (2019).

I’m still not keen on the photo-bashing that’s now integral to the Rey style and don’t find it effective or successful. A few pieces included in the book don’t, therefore, work for me (examples: Santonian hadrosaur hassled by theropods on pp. 104-5, the Labocania scene on pp. 106-7). But can I please emphasise that I still find this a valuable book, and I very much recommend it as an interesting addition to the palaeoart stable, the autobiographical angle in particular being useful. My copy of Extreme Dinosaurs 2: the Projects is an advance softback version but I understand that a hardback is available too.

Rey, L. 2019. Extreme Dinosaurs 2: the Projects. Imagine Publishing, London/Metepec. pp. 139. ISBN 978-0-9933866-2-6. Softback/Hardback. Here at amazon.co.uk.

Parker et al.’s Saurian: A Field Guide to Hell Creek

Even if – like me – you’re not a video game buff and have little interest in video games or the playing of them, chances are high that you’ve heard about Saurian, a role-playing, survival simulation experience in which you play the role of a dinosaur negotiating a Maastrichtian environment modelled on that of the Hell Creek Formation. You have to avoid predators, find and procure food, raise babies, and live as long as possible. I’ve played The Simms, back in the day, and recall the urge to sink hours of time into living a virtual tiny life, so I can understand the appeal.

Representative pages, here showing the raptor prey restraint model in action. Poor pachycephalosaur. Image: Parker et al. (2019).

The relevance of Saurian to the TetZooniverse is that the game has been designed and built according to an incredibly high scientific standard, the team behind it having done a vast quantity of research on everything relevant to the Hell Creek world. And the good news is that this work hasn’t been wasted. This book – written by Tom Parker, featuring the artwork of Chris Masna and RJ Palmer (of Detective Pikachu fame and much else), and produced following consultation with a long list of relevant palaeontologists – is the result: it includes a vast quantity of amazing concept art, detailed vignettes and scaled artwork of the organisms and environments that feature in the game, and is simply a joy to look at. The text is brief but functions well. The book is a sturdy softback (20 x 24 cm) of 182 pages, printed to excellent, glossy standard.

RJ Palmer’s T. rex is one of the stars of the show. Some of you will know that the Saurian team abandoned an earlier, more feathery version. Assorted humans function as scale bars; you can likely guess who this one is based on. Image: Parker et al. (2019).

As should be clear by now, the thoroughness of the project’s world-building means that there’s more information here on Maastrichtian North American trees, rainfall patterns, swamps, beaches, amphibians, lizards, crocodyliforms, fishes and so on than you’ve ever seen before. The result is one of the most interesting, detailed and attractive volumes dedicated to Late Cretaceous life. This book is a must-have for those seriously interested in palaeoart and in seeing prehistoric animals and environments depicted in detail, but it’s also good enough that those with a scientific or technical interest in Late Cretaceous life should obtain it too.

Oh wow, so much of the art in this book is just phenomenal. This scene depicts competition among scavengers at a carcass. You might just be able to see the anguimorph lizard inside the body cavity. Image: Parker et al. (2019).

Parker, T., Masna, C. & Palmer, R. J. 2019. Saurian: A Field Guide to Hell Creek. Urvogel Games. pp. 182. Softback. Here at publishers [BUT CURRENTLY OUT OF STOCK].

That’s where we’ll end for now. A few more dinosaur-themed book review are due to appear here soon, including of Donald Prothero’s The History of Dinosaurs in 25 Fossils and Michael Benton’s The Dinosaurs Discovered: How a Scientific Revolution is Rewriting Their Story.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to see me do more, please consider supporting this blog (for as little as $1 per month) at patreon. The more support I receive, the more financially viable this project becomes and the more time and effort I can spend on it. Thank you :)

For previous TetZoo dinosaur-themed book reviews, see… (linking here to wayback machine versions due to paywalling and vandalism of TetZoo ver 2 and 3 articles)…

• Long and Schouten's Feathered Dinosaurs, a review, January 2008

• Luis Chiappe's Glorified Dinosaurs: The Origin and Early Evolution of Birds, January 2011

• What they’re saying about The Great Dinosaur Discoveries, November 2011

• Greg Paul’s Dinosaurs: A Field Guide, August 2012

• New Dinosaur Books, Part 1: Barrett on Stegosaurs, August 2018

• New Dinosaur Books, Part 2: Ben Garrod’s ‘So You Think You Know About… Dinosaurs’ Series, August 2018

• The Second Edition of Naish and Barrett’s Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved, November 2011

Refs - -

Bakker, R. T. 2013. The Big Golden Book of Dinosaurs. Random House, New York.

Rey, L. 2001. Extreme Dinosaurs. Chronicle Books, San Francisco.

Philip J. Senter’s Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs?, the TetZoo Review

Many of us interested in the more arcane side of natural history will be aware of that body of literature that seeks to explain the biology, behaviour and history of living things within the words of a complex, multi-authored work known as The Bible. I refer of course to the creationist literature; to that number of books and articles whose authors contend that animals known from fossils simply must accord with the stories and descriptions of the Bible, and whose authors furthermore contend that the Earth and its inhabitants must have come into being within the last few thousand years.

Caption: a smouldering Parasaurolophus: the cover art for the book, by Leandra Walters. Image: (c) Leandra Walters/Senter (2019).

Creationist authors – the most familiar include Ken Ham, Kent Hovind and Duane Gish – have argued that non-bird dinosaurs and other fossil animals were inhabitants of the Garden of Eden, that predatory species like Tyrannosaurus rex ate water melons and sugarcane before The Fall, that humans and animals like Tyrannosaurus lived alongside one another during the early days of the Earth’s creation, that evolution cannot have happened, except when it did as species emerged from their different ancestral kind (or baramins), and that animals like Tanystropheus, tyrannosaurs and pterosaurs were seen and written about by people, and are responsible for the mythological creatures mentioned or described in the Bible and other ancient texts. Leviathan and Behemoth of The Bible, Grendel of the medieval epic Beowolf, the fire-breathing dragons of the Middle Ages and so on must – creationist authors contend – be descriptions of human encounters with giant reptiles otherwise known as fossils. And, yes: you read that right… creationist authors have argued, apparently seriously, that fire-breathing dragons must be descriptions of encounters with animals like dinosaurs and pterosaurs. So… they… breathed fire, then.

Caption: the Bible specifically states that the first few books of the Old Testament are not meant to be taken literally. Despite this, a number of Young Earth creationists promote a view of the ancient world where people lived alongside allosaurs and pterosaurs and so on. If you’ve seen a version of this page mentioning lemonade and homosexuality, it’s a spoof (the original text does not include that section of text). Image: (c) Ken Ham, Dinosaurs of Eden.

Over the past several years, Fayetteville State University biologist and palaeontologist Philip J. Senter has published a great many technical scientific articles evaluating the various claims and models of creationist authors; some of his articles are short-form versions of the text included in this new book (cf Senter 2017). His approach is to accept their proposals as valid scientific hypotheses, and not to knock, mock or discount them out of hand from the start. Remember that point; we’ll be coming back to it. This approach means that creationist claims can be considered tested in the empirical sense. It should also be noted that Senter is an Orthodox Christian with qualifications in theology, so his sympathetic and scientifically ‘honest’ approach to creationist claims should not and cannot reasonably be taken as any sort of attack on the Christian faith that the relevant creationists are part of. The fact that Senter is himself religious mean that he can make the argument (should he wish to) that the bad calls and bs put out by creationists is not just ‘bad science’ but ‘bad religion’, too. I’ve heard the same argument from other scientists who maintain an active religious life.

Caption: the book reviewed here is not the first time Senter has written about the ‘fire-breathing dinosaurs’ idea. Image: (c) Skeptical Inquirer.

For completion, and for those who don’t know, I should add that Senter is also an experienced and prolific author of studies devoted to more conventional palaeontological fare: descriptions of new dinosaur species, analyses of phylogenetic patterns, interpretations of functional morphology, and so on. The technical papers of his that I’ve found most useful and interesting include Senter et al. (2004) and Senter (2007) on dinosaur phylogeny, Senter (2006, 2009) on palaeobiology, and Senter (2005), Senter & Robins (2005), Senter & Parrish (2005) and Bonnan & Senter (2007) on dinosaur functional morphology.

Caption: the handsome cover of Senter (2019).

The early chapters of this book evaluate and discuss the creationist contention in general and the relatively young history of the entire movement. The impact of John Whitcomb and Henry Morris’s 1961 book The Genesis Flood is obvious, as is the fact that their arguments fail evaluation (Senter 2019). Nevertheless, their influence was such that – from the early 1970s onwards – a number of like-minded individuals were promoting Whitcomb and Morris’s vision, and were in particular arguing that ancient and medieval writings and works of art make explicit reference to dinosaurs and other long-extinct animals. Senter (2019) uses the term apnotheriopia (meaning ‘dead beast vision’) to describe the tendency of creationist author to interpret monsters in literature and art as long-extinct reptiles.

If apnotheriopia is one of your guiding principles, it ‘follows’ that the fire-breathing dragons canonical to Eurocentric, Christian mythology should be interpreted as dinosaurs or similar reptiles, and that such creatures were dragonesque fire-breathers. So integral has the whole fire-breathing thing been to these authors that they’ve proposed fire-breathing for dinosaurs of several sorts (most frequently hadrosaurs) as well as for pterosaurs and the giant Cretaceous crocodyliform Sarcosuchus (Senter 2019). You might know of one or two cases in which this idea has been mooted. Senter’s book shows that numerous authors have engaged with this vision and written about it. The sheer quantity of this literature is daunting – I was going to say ‘impressive’ but this absolutely seems like the wrong word – and Senter has clearly gone to some considerable trouble to obtain it. He must own a pretty hefty personal library of creationist volumes, and I’m reminded of a statement he makes in one of his papers, wherein he notes that collecting and reading creationist literature on dinosaurs and other extinct animals is one of his “guilty pleasures”.

Caption: some creationist authors have argued that certain dinosaurs could have functioned just like the living bombadier beetles AND SPEWED FIRE!!!!1! One minor issue: bombadier beetles don’t spew fire, they eject hot liquid. Image: Patrick Coin, CC BY-SA 2.5 (original here).

Indeed, the bulk of this book – the long section that runs from chapters 5 through 15 – is a chapter by chapter analysis of the different fire-breathing claims made by creationist authors. These people have, I’ve been surprised to learn, come up with six different mechanisms for fire production in extinct archosaurs. Senter (2019) goes through each in turn, in appropriate detail. In some cases, the proposed mechanisms are total non-starters (no, dear creationists, pterosaurs couldn’t house flammable gases inside their head crests) and can be brushed aside quite swiftly. But in other cases, Senter (2019) has to go down the rabbit-hole of gas chemistry, anatomy and biochemistry, and the history of burns and gaseous explosions in human medicine. All fascinating and well-argued stuff, and full of amazing nuggets of information.

Caption: Parasaurolophus - beloved posterchild of the fire-breathing dinosaurs movement - flames an anachronistic Ceratosaurus, a familiar image from the creationist literature. I believe that this is from one of Ken Ham’s books.

The conclusion, overwhelmingly, is that creationists have been spouting ill-informed (or uninformed) nonsense in coming up with their various fire-breathing fantasies. The proposals concerned are inconsistent with biology, chemistry and physics, and cannot have been present in animals governed by the rules that apply to the living things of planet Earth.

Caption: it’s well known that the crests of lambeosaurine hadrosaurs were hollow, and contained connected internal tubes and chambers. Were these used in the production of fire? No. Image: Sullivan & Williamson (1999).

The book’s final two chapters are connected to the fire-breathing creationist movement, but tackle rather different topics: the origin of dragons as a whole, and the true identity of the biblical Behemoth (Leviathan is covered too), often said by creationists to be a description of a sauropod or similar dinosaur. These two chapters are among the most interesting and valuable in the book.

Caption: why have creationists been so big on the ‘dragons were fire-breathing dinosaurs’ thing? I think it’s partly an effort to attract children to their cult. It isn’t coincidental that most illustrations of fire-breathing dinosaurs appear in books written for children, like this one by Duane Gish.

Even today, the notion that dragons must surely have been based on giant reptiles or reptile-like animals still unknown to science is not unpopular, and is occasionally promoted in the cryptozoological and conspiracy literature. But it’s wrong: the whole idea of dragons as we mostly imagine them (winged, fire-breathing, horned monsters, clad in armour-like scales and equipped with massive limbs and talons) is a mistake, and one that emerged, incrementally, from more mundane origins.

Senter (2019) shows, via statements made in antiquarian literature and by cross-referencing their use of terms, that the term dragon was used – unambiguously, consistently and repeatedly – for snakes, especially for large kinds like pythons. Yes, dragons were snakes. But how does this explain the limbs, wings, fire-breathing and other embellishments? These were added over time, mostly by medieval European authors who were no longer familiar with giant snakes and had heard rumours that dragons could fly (Senter puts this unfamiliarity down to the rise of Christianity and the closing of pagan temples). Feathered wings were added during the 8th century, which then became membranous wings thanks to inventive artists. By the 13th century, dragons were being depicted as quadrupeds (Senter 2019). What about the fire-breathing thing? If dragons were snakes, then some dragons were venomous, and capable of creating a burning sensation in human tissue. Embellish and augment this idea sufficiently, and the concept of fire-breathing winged mega-snakes has emerged. Chinese dragons, by the way, have an entirely independent origin and were mostly based on mammals; Senter (2019) even says that they shouldn’t be called dragons.

Caption: in this most famous depiction of Leviathan - that by Gustave Doré, dating to 1865 - Leviathan is depicted as a monstrous winged serpent of the seas. Image: public domain (original here).

Finally, Senter (2019) also shows – I think convincingly – that the creationist interpretations of both Leviathan and Behemoth of the book of Job are entirely erroneous, but so are the interpretations favoured by the majority of sceptical and ‘mainstream’ authors. I don’t want to steal all of Senter’s thunder, but… Leviathan and Behemoth were both gargantuan mythical serpents, and those authors who have interpreted these creatures as dinosaurs, crocodiles, or big mammals have misunderstood key descriptive phrases, or have been led astray by mistranslations or misinterpretations of the original Hebrew (Senter 2019).

Caption: Senter (2019) uses cartoons like this one to emphasise that Behemoth never was a dinosaur, elephant or hippopotamus, but “a demonic entity that the ancient Hebrews envisioned as a serpent” (Senter 2019, p. 142). The caption to this illustration is “Will be real Behemoth please stand up?”. Image: Senter (2019).

This book is not that lengthy. There are 201 pages, but 45 of them are occupied by a very voluminous bibliography. Plus the book is hardback (or, this edition is, anyway), so appears bulkier than it would do with soft covers. It’s well illustrated and includes numerous colour photos, diagrams of many sorts, and colour cartoons explaining and depicting Senter’s responses to creationist proposals and arguments. There are two things about the images that I dislike. Firstly, some of the colour photos chosen to depict given extinct taxa are quite anachronistic: things would be improved, I feel, if more contemporary reconstructions took their place. Secondly, the colouring used for many of the cartoons is less than great. I mean, the cartoons themselves – which I assume Senter penned himself (he’s a pretty good and competent artist) – are great, but it looks like they’ve been coloured-in with colouring pencils.

Caption: need to feature a depiction of an extinct animal? I, personally, would prefer it if a more up-to-date and aesthetically pleasing image were used in place of this one. Senter (2019) uses several images of models similar to this one when discussing extinct taxa. Image: I’ve been unable to find a source for this picture; it comes from that bottomless pit of hell called pinterest.

So far I’ve been kind to this book. I enjoyed reading it and think it’s a worthy addition to the literature. But I’m afraid that, by the time I’d finished reading it, I’d taken quite a disliking to it, for three reasons.

The first thing I dislike is the way in which creationist claims and proposals are framed. I’m not exactly a fan of creationism, creationist arguments or creationists themselves and I certainly agree with Senter (2019) that the authors who’ve pushed creationist agendas have been scientifically clueless, and/or have sought to wilfully promote anti-scientific gas-lighting. Senter (2019) even finishes the book with a prayer, praising creationist authors for their dogged promotion and energy but wishing and praying that they might make the world a better place by re-directing their energies to something good or constructive. Fair enough.

I do think, however, that Senter (2019) overdoes it in framing creationists and their ideas as ‘silly’ and ‘ridiculous’; Senter (2019) does this throughout the whole of the book such that its entire approach is “let’s all laugh at those whacky creationists” (the subtitle, I’ll remind you, is The Hilarious History of Creationist Pseudoscience at its Silliest). In my opinion (I’d be interested to know if others agree), the book would have worked better if Senter’s approach throughout was neutral and without the mocking. I’ve mocked creationists myself, for sure (Naish 2017), but I’m not about to write an academic book on the subject of their writings. Indeed, given that I’m familiar with Senter’s  many papers where he tests creationist claims (all are written in scholarly fashion and use language and phrasing typical for peer-reviewed science), I was surprised to see him follow this path, and I had the impression throughout that it was done in an effort to make the text lighter, more fun, and more appealing. I understand the need for that but I’m saying that – surely – there must have been another way.

Caption: Senter (2019) compares creationist decisions to those made by a character called ‘Silly Chef’ (the muppet-like individual in the middle) who features in a series of cartoons that appear throughout the book. Image: Senter (2019).

Finally on this point, it might be doubtful that the creationists and would-be creationists who are the focus of Senter’s (2019) discussion will ever read this book (it’s abundantly clear that they don’t, or haven’t, read any of the other literature criticising or demolishing their arguments; if they have, they do a good job of making it appear that they haven’t). But by framing the entire book as a “let’s all laugh at those whacky creationists” exercise, the people who might benefit most by reading it will (I assume) be thoroughly put off. Admittedly, this is a moot point anyway in view of my third negative point, but hang on, we’ll get to that in a minute.

The second thing I dislike concerns Senter’s use of humour. This book is well written, and well edited too (I didn’t spot a single typo). But the prose is ruined by Senter’s repeated, very weird forays into simile and metaphor. They are, I’m sorry to say, not just bad, but among the worst examples of writing I can recall. Not only did I not ever find his quips funny, I mostly found them tortuous and daft and I winced every time the text introduced yet another one. I feel bad for saying this and apologise for seeming like a miserable bastard. I disliked this stuff so much that I feel the book would be much improved if all of it was stripped out. And if you’re thinking that – surely – the relevant sections of text can’t be all that bad. Well, here’s one example…

“The misunderstandings and mistranslations necessary to force such an interpretation are almost as bad as those that would be required to infer that the story of David killing Goliath is about a vampire grapefruit preparing a pleasant pile of purple petunias as a fluffy pillow for the happily napping saber-toothed tiger that it keeps as a pet and is convinced for no apparent reason that it is a gigantic German bunny with adorable tiny little ears that wiggle ever so preciously when you gently blow into them” (Senter 2019, p. 144).

There are many other examples of this sort of thing. They ruin the book.

Finally, the third thing I dislike is that great bane of book-buyers from impoverished backgrounds: the price. This book is absurdly expensive; ridiculously so. It’s £69.99 in the UK, $119.95 in the USA (though Amazon is currently selling it at a mere $71.89). As per usual, I appreciate that publishers have to sell books at a given price to cover production costs and to compensate for a sometimes distressingly low number of sales, but I still don’t understand why a slim volume has to cost as much as this one does. Given the price, I fully expected this to be some thick, extremely heavy textbook of perhaps 700 pages or so. But no, it’s a small book of no greater size, production value, academic quality or paper thickness than a great many books half its price or less. I’m extremely pleased to have obtained a review copy but that’s the only way I could ever have obtained it. There is no way I would have purchased it. If a paperback version appears and is reasonably and affordably priced, I apologise for this complaint and may even come back to this review and remove this entire paragraph, but let’s see.

Caption: Senter (2019) is not a big book. Here’s a copy with my hand for scale. Image: Darren Naish.

Caption: I was expecting a much, much larger book. Image: Darren Naish.

I apologise for ending on such a downer.

Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs is certainly a unique book, and – as someone familiar with Senter’s writings on the creationist literature – it does have a magnum opus, end-of-the-road feel about it. As I’ve stated in this review, it’s well-written, has very high production values, and is of significant interest to those who follow the esoteric literature on Mesozoic archosaurs, and on the history of religiously motivated pseudoscience. But it has issues.

Senter, P. J. 2019. Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs? The Hilarious History of Creationist Pseudoscience at Its Silliest. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle Upon Tyne. pp. 201. ISBN 978-1-5275-3042-3. Hardback, refs, index. Here at amazon, here at amazon.co.uk, here from the publishers.

A few other reviews of Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs? are online. I deliberately didn’t read them until completing my own review. Having now read them, I see that they make similar points to my own…

• Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs?: A book review, by Jonathan Kane at Panda’s Thumb

• Don’t give Jurassic World ideas — ‘Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs? The Hilarious History of Creationist Pseudoscience at Its Silliest’ book review, by Justin Mullis at AiPT! Science

If you enjoyed this article and would like to see me do more, please consider supporting this blog (for as little as $1 per month) at patreon. The more support I receive, the more financially viable this project becomes and the more time and effort I can spend on it. Thank you :)

Refs - -

Bonnan, M.F. & Senter, P. 2007. Were the basal sauropodomorph dinosaurs Plateosaurus and Massospondylus habitual quadrupeds. Special Papers in Palaeontology 77, 139-155.

Naish, D. 2017. Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths. Arcturus, London.

Senter, P. 2005. Function in the stunted forelimbs of Mononykus olecranus (Theropoda), a dinosaurian anteater. Paleobiology 31, 373-381.

Senter, P. 2006. Necks for sex: sexual selection as an explanation for sauropod dinosaur neck elongation. Journal of Zoology 271, 45-53.

Senter, P. 2007. A new look at the phylogeny of Coelurosauria (Dinosauria: Theropoda). Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 5, 429-463.

Senter, P. 2009. Voices of the past: a review of Paleozoic and Mesozoic animal sounds. Historical Biology 20, 255-287.

Senter, P. 2017. Fire-breathing dinosaurs? Physics, fossils and functional morphology versus pseudoscience. Skeptical Inquirer 41 (4), 26-33.

Senter, P. J. 2019. Fire-Breathing Dinosaurs? The Hilarious History of Creationist Pseudoscience at Its Silliest. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle Upon Tyne.

Senter, P., Barsbold, R., Brtii, B. B. & Burnham, D. A. 2004. Systematics and evolution of Dromaeosauridae (Dinosauria, Theropoda). Bulletin of the Gunma Museum of Natural History 8, 1-20.

Senter, P. & Parrish, J. M. 2005. Functional analysis of the hands of the theropod dinosaur Chirostenotes pergracilis: evidence for an unusual palaeoecological role. PaleoBios 25, 9-19.

Senter, P. & Robins, J. H. 2005. Range of motion in the forelimb of the theropod dinosaur Acrocanthosaurus atokensis, and implications for predatory behaviour. Journal of Zoology 266, 307-318.

Sullivan, R. M. & Williamson, T. E. 1999. A new skull of Parasaurolophus (Dinosauria: Hadrosauridae) from the Kirtland Formation of New Mexico and a revision of the genus. New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science Bulletin 15, 1-52.

Books on the Loch Ness Monster 3: The Man Who Filmed Nessie: Tim Dinsdale and the Enigma of Loch Ness

The story of the Loch Ness Monster is not a zoological one, no matter how desperately those who support the alleged existence of the monster wish it were. It is, instead, the story of people. Of people who tricked others into thinking that they saw or believed in a monster, of people who really thought they had seen a monster, and of people who wrote about, and theorised about, the thoughts, beliefs and adventures of others who’d thought or claimed they’d seen a monster.

Caption: Tim Dinsdale with his own reconstruction of the Loch Ness Monster (a clay model, held in place on a painted wooden board). I presume this photo was taken on the set of the BBC Panorama studio. Image: (c) Tim Dinsdale.

One of the most important characters as goes popularisation of the monster and promotion of its ostensible reality remains aeronautical engineer Tim Dinsdale (1924-1987). Over the three decades in which he was involved in the Loch Ness Monster story, he wrote four Nessie-themed books (Dinsdale 1961, 1966, 1973, 1975; not counting later editions), produced the text for a map (Dinsdale 1977), procured what remains the most famous piece of Nessie-based camera footage, and was deeply and closely involved in several campaigns and schemes to have the Loch Ness Monster formally recognised as a genuine animal species deserving legal protection.

Caption: covers of Dinsdale’s Loch Ness books - though not depicting all editions. Image: Darren Naish.

Those familiar with Dinsdale’s writings will already know the basics as goes his involvement in the Nessie saga. However, a lengthy work dedicated to his life and adventures was always needed, and I’m pleased to say that this gap in the literature was filled in 2013 by Angus Dinsdale’s The Man Who Filmed Nessie: Tim Dinsdale and the Enigma of Loch Ness (A. Dinsdale 2013). This second Dinsdale is Tim Dinsdale’s son, who has written an affectionate but never overly sentimental review of his father’s life.

Caption: cover of A. Dinsdale’s 2013 book The Man Who Filmed Nessie: Tim Dinsdale and the Enigma of Loch Ness.

My review here is the third and final part of the connected series on recently published books about the Loch Ness Monster (the other parts are here and here), though rest assured that it certainly won’t be the last thing I say on the subject since there are several other recently published works that warrant review as well (Ronald Binn’s 2019 The Decline of the Loch Ness Monster will likely be next). I appreciate that it might seem a bit odd to review a book published more than six years ago, but better late than never.

Caption: Dinsdale’s 1977 map is meant to be about Loch Ness in general. It is, of course, quite heavy on monster promotion (Dinsdale 1977). Image: Darren Naish.

The Man Who Filmed Nessie begins with several biographical chapters on Tim Dinsdale’s family background and early adult life. It is partly autobiographical, discussing the Dinsdale adventure as seen through the eyes of his son, but also includes long quoted sections from Dinsdale’s writings. In the text that follows, any mention of or reference to ‘Dinsdale’ should be assumed to refer to Tim Dinsdale, not Angus.

The story of how Dinsdale became seduced by the allure of the Loch Ness Monster is familiar to those who’ve read his books (Dinsdale 1961, 1975) and those written about him (e.g., Witchell 1975, Binns 1983, 2017, Campbell 1986, Williams 2015). For a level-headed person with a ‘practical’ background as an engineer, it’s remarkable how quickly Dinsdale became essentially convinced by the monster’s reality. This revelation wasn’t achieved after a personal encounter with the beast, nor after he’d spoken to some number of sincere witnesses. No: he read a single article in a popular magazine (Everybody’s magazine), titled ‘The Day I Saw the Loch Ness Monster’ (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 42).

Caption: Dinsdale’s identikit rendition of what the Loch Ness Monster must look like, reconstructed by taking averages from the various eyewitness encounters he’d read. Image: Dinsdale (1960).

Inspired and excited, he decided that he had to go to Scotland to see the beast for himself, so off he went. Aaaand… immediately saw Nessie! Yes, on the very first day of his arrival at Loch Ness (16th April 1960), Dinsdale thought that he’d seen Nessie. It turned out to be a floating tree trunk (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 51). On 21st April 1960 (the fourth day of his scheduled expedition at the loch) – shortly after spending time with water bailiff and Nessie oracle Alex Campbell – he again saw, and this time filmed, Nessie: “a churning ring of rough water, centring about what appeared to be two long black shadows, or shapes, rising and falling in the water!” (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 62). And on the final and sixth day of his expedition (23rd April 1960) he again saw and filmed Nessie, this time procuring the famous Foyers Bay footage, featuring a humped object – Dinsdale likened it to the “back of an African buffalo” – moving across the loch. After obtaining control footage of a boat (albeit at a different time of day, in different lighting conditions, and with a white-hulled boat obviously different from the mahogany ‘monster’), Dinsdale immediately messaged the British Museum, his reasoning being that the leading zoological institution of the country should hear about it first. After having the film developed, he waited, honestly expecting an excited cadre of professional biologists to beat a path to his door. After about seven weeks of silence, he gave up waiting and went to the press, his ultimately successful plan being to have the footage screened on the flagship BBC news programme Panorama.

Caption: a screengrab from the approximately 1 minute long Dinsdale film of April 1960. The dark object was thought by Dinsdale to be the mahogany brown, ‘peaked’ back of a massive aquatic animal. Image: (c) Tim Dinsdale.

He brought along a clay monster model he had made, the fact that it had been kitted out with three humps now appearing inconsistent with the monster shown in the footage. Alex Campbell also featured on the same TV show. To Dinsdale’s eyes, the Panorama experience was not merely crucial as goes the promotion of his case, but valuable in the scientific sense since the “increase in definition and contrast” made to the film by the TV people improved its clarity and shed additional information on the appearance of the Loch Ness animal.

Caption: a key character in the Loch Ness saga is water bailiff and journalist Alex Campbell. While at Fort Augustus, I got to see his waterside home, Inverawe. It’s the building at far right here. Dinsdale spent time with Campbell immediately before seeing and filming his ‘monster’ of April 1960. Image: Darren Naish.

Our view of Dinsdale’s film today is that it isn’t impressive and almost certainly doesn’t depict a monster. There were surely viewers at the time who must have been equally unimpressed and Dinsdale’s view that the scientists and specialists who viewed the film in secrecy displayed nothing but apathy (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 73) is, of course, a biased take since he simply expected them to agree with his interpretation. The object he filmed was no giant unknown aquatic animal, but a boat (Binns 1983, Campbell 1986, Harmsworth 2010, Naish 2017; and see Dick Raynor’s page on the footage here).

Caption: Loch Ness is often a beautiful and serene body of water, but I can’t help feeling that it must seem remote and lonely at times of the year. This photo was taken in the Spring of 2016. Image: Darren Naish.

Prior to reading this book, my feelings about Tim Dinsdale were tempered by the fact that I thought him odd for abandoning his family for long stretches while engaging in the esoteric pursuit of an alleged mystery beast in a part of the country far from home. Furthermore, my idiosyncrasies mean that I’m automatically jealous or resentful of anyone who gets to engage in an expensive hobby at what appears to be infinite leisure.

Caption: few people seriously interested in the Loch Ness Monster can claim to have spent as much time on, or close to, the waters of the loch as Dinsdale did. But many people familiar with Dinsdale’s writings have sought to follow his footsteps, at least in part. Image: Darren Naish.

It turns out that none of these things are true. Dinsdale’s monster-hunting came at great personal expense and involved some degree of hardship. Furthermore, he deliberately included his family in his monster-hunting expeditions. I particularly liked Angus’s description of the childhood tradition in which he would procure the largest available carrot from the supermarket; this was to accompany his father on an expedition, the plan being that it would be fed to Nessie once she and Angus’s dad had made friends (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 86). Whatever Dinsdale’s legacy, the lives of his children were surely enriched by their regular trips to Scotland and their involvement in something as unusual as the pursuit of the Loch Ness Monster, though I have to admit that my personal circumstances while reading this book – I was working in China and missing my family – probably influenced my sentimental feelings on this issue.

Caption: you’ve probably read that the water of Loch Ness is tea-coloured. This is what it looks like when the bottom is less than 1 m away. Get to a depth of 10 m, and there’s essentially no light and nothing but darkness - at least, as far as the human eye is concerned. Image: Darren Naish.

While monster hunting, Dinsdale occasionally checked the shoreline. He was aware of the land sightings of Nessie and kept in mind the possibility that he might see the beast on land himself. I should mention here that refractory Nessie fan and blogger Roland Watson has recently published an entire book on the subject of land sightings, titled When Monsters Come Ashore. It’s written in extremely large font and in the bombastic and childish style characteristic of True Believers and is surely not a fair continuation of the level-headed and restrained, respectful tone of Dinsdale’s writings. In other words, poor Tim would not be happy with the state of Nessie promotion occurring among those few who might consider themselves his modern disciples.

One of the most interesting sections of the Nessie story concerns the arrival of the Americans and the use of assorted high-end bits of mechanical and photographic kit. While it might have seemed that Dinsdale and other British Nessie-hunters could have been gradually edged out of the quest, Robert Rines and his colleagues were on good terms with Dinsdale and even helped win him a lecture tour of the US, and ultimately to appear on big-hitting TV shows like The David Frost Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (A. Dinsdale 2013).

Caption: a Loch Ness scene, fortuitously featuring a waterbird (in this case, a Mute swan Cygnus olor) and a boat. Both objects have undoubtedly contributed in no small part to the phenomenon known as the Loch Ness Monster. Image: Darren Naish.

Indeed, Dinsdale’s fame reached its peak during the early and mid 1970s, as did the quest for Nessie in general. The mounting excitement that something was surely there and due to be confirmed – a belief fuelled by all that fancy American technology – inspired the idea that Nessie-like animals might lurk in other, nearby bodies of water. The book recounts Dinsdale’s expedition to Loch Morar, a place very different from Loch Ness but also said to have its own monster, called Morag. The main point of interest here to monster nerds is that the Dinsdales happen to meet a Mrs Parks, sister to one of two men who claimed a close Morag encounter.

Caption: Dinsdale was never explicit about the zoological identity he favoured for the Loch Ness Monster, but he clearly favoured the idea that it was a living plesiosaur, albeit one that had undergone a fair amount of change since the end of the Cretaceous. The legend of the late-surviving plesiosaur - reflected in this model, made for a TV show and photographed at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History in 2005 - owes something to Dinsdale’s writing. Image: Darren Naish.

The story – recounted in several monster books – is famous because the two men (Duncan McDonell and William Simpson) apparently had to use an oar to fend Morag away from their boat, and so vigorous was the interaction that the oar snapped. The story usually ends there. Another Nessie-themed book, however, explains how the individuals concerned had been poaching deer and were trying to discard an unwanted skin which, despite being filled with stones, refused to sink. Eventually it had to be whacked with an oar, and here we find what is claimed to be the actual explanation for the oar-breaking event (Harmsworth 2010, p. 218).

Caption: the ‘two people in a lake come so close to a monster that they have to hit it with an oar’ trope has been taken seriously enough to inspire this re-enactment, this time involving the Lake Storsjö monster of Sweden. The man with the oar is Ragner Björks. Image: Bord & Bord (1980).

In places, Dinsdale’s story arc is a melancholy one. He wrote of his realisation, years after his initial forays in boats on Loch Ness, that he had become an experienced and confident boatman, his long, quiet stretches involving grey water, and rain. He never was to experience anything again as thrilling as his 1960 filming of the ‘monster’s hump’, nor did this footage receive the accolade he hoped it would. The decline and demise of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau during the early 1970s marked “the end of an era” (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 200), and even the 1975 scientific symposium – the high water mark of Nessie’s scientific respectability, convened to discuss the sonar traces and photos obtained by Rines and his colleagues – was regarded as a disappointment (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 217). As scientific interest in Nessie waned during the 1980s, Dinsdale complained in 1987 that scepticism had taken over, that “Nessie in the 80s has, if anything, been going backwards” (Williams 2015, p. 202). A planned sequel to 1975’s Project Water Horse, intriguingly titled Loch Ness and the Water Unicorn, and said in the 1982 edition of Loch Ness Monster to be partly written, never appeared in print (Binns 2019).

Caption: scientific interest in Nessie might have waned during the 1980s, but this was the decade that gave us this fantastic book cover. You might doubt that encounters as close and thrilling as this ever occurred. It belongs to the sixth edition of this book, published in 1982.

Some authors, especially those championing the Loch Ness Monster’s existence, have framed Tim Dinsdale as the most brilliant, wise and relevant authority on the Loch Ness Monster (pro-Nessie author Henry Bauer is an example). It’s easy to be convinced from Dinsdale’s writings, and his son’s, that he was indeed sincere, honest, and trying as best he might to stir scientific and mainstream interest in something that he regarded as unquestionably real. And his underlying methodology was scientific. But he seemed never to grasp why the official response was one of apparent disinterest and apathy. It wasn’t down to “stubbornness … indifference … [and] arrogance” (A. Dinsdale 2013, p. 232), but to the fact that the evidence just wasn’t good enough, and that there never was a good reason to believe in a monster. That Dinsdale became almost fixated on the monster’s existence after reading a single popular magazine article does not – I have to say it, forgive me – seem consistent with someone who might be deemed wise, level-headed and of the most sceptical, rational approach.

Caption: the Peter O’Connor photo of 1960 - this is a low-res, cropped version - has appeared several times at TetZoo over the years and is almost certainly a hoax, most likely an overturned kayak and a model head and neck (Naish 2017). Dinsdale included it in early editions of his book Loch Ness Monster but it - and any accompanying prose devoted by Mr O’Connor - is absent from the fourth edition and those that appeared afterwards. Image (c) Peter O’Connor.

On that note, and while it again shames me to say it, I’m impressed – if that’s the right word – by Dinsdale’s naivety when we look at specific parts of his Loch Ness experience. Take his interaction with Tony Shiels, the self-proclaimed Wizard of the Western World. In 1977 Shiels claimed to capture on film the most remarkable colour photos of Nessie ever taken, an object affectionately known today as the Loch Ness Muppet. Any familiarity with Shiels and his adventures quickly reveals that he has, and seemingly always has had, a tongue-in-cheek, jovial take on monsters and how they might be seen. They’re not really meant to be undiscovered animals lurking in remote places, but interactive pieces of quasi-surreal art akin to open-air theatre, the ensuing cultural response in literature and news being as much a part of the event, if not more, as the claimed sighting and photo. While I undoubtedly write with the benefit of hindsight (and, dare I say it, some quantity of insider information), Dinsdale was seemingly unable to perceive this. And thus the muppet photo appears – as a legit image of the Loch Ness animal – on the cover of the fourth edition of Dinsdale’s The Loch Ness Monster, a decision that speaks volumes.

Caption: the infamous 1977 Shiels muppet photo. Exactly what it depicts (a plasticine model superimposed on a scene showing water? A floating model posed in the loch?) remains uncertain. Image: (c) Tony Shiels.

The Man Who Filmed Nessie: Tim Dinsdale and the Enigma of Loch Ness is an essential read for those seriously interested in the history of monster searching and the people who engage in it. The book has very high production values and impressive design and editorial standards, and includes an excellent colour plate section. I enjoyed reading it and think that Angus Dinsdale has produced a book that his late father would have been proud of, and moved by. Many interesting people have contributed to the lore of the Loch Ness Monster, and Dinsdale was without doubt one of the most important and influential. I leave you to judge whether this was time wasted, or a life enriched and made remarkable.

Dinsdale, A. 2013. The Man Who Filmed Nessie: Tim Dinsdale and the Enigma of Loch Ness. Hancock House, Surrey, BC Canada. pp. 256. ISBN 978-0-88839-727-0. Softback, refs, index. Here at amazon. Here at amazon.co.uk.

If you enjoyed this article and want to see me do more, more often, please consider supporting me at patreon. The more funding I receive, the more time I’m able to devote to producing material for TetZoo and the more productive I can be on those long-overdue book projects. Thanks!

Nessie and related issues have been covered on TetZoo a fair bit before, though many of the older images now lack ALL of the many images they originally included…

• The Loch Ness monster seen on land, October 2009 (now missing all images due to hosting issues)

• Dear Telegraph: no, I did not say that about the Loch Ness monster, July 2011 (now missing all images due to hosting issues)

• Photos of the Loch Ness Monster, revisited, July 2013 (now stripped of all images, so completely useless)

• Is Cryptozoology Good or Bad for Science? (review of Loxton & Prothero 2013), September 2014 (now stripped of all images)

• My New Book Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths, February 2016

• Books on the Loch Ness Monster 1: Ronald Binns’s The Loch Ness Mystery Reloaded, March 2019

• Books on the Loch Ness Monster 2: Gareth Williams’s A Monstrous Commotion, March 2019

Refs - -

Binns, R. 1983. The Loch Ness Mystery Solved. Open Books, London.

Binns, R. 2017. The Loch Ness Mystery Reloaded. Zoilus Press.

Binns, R. 2019. Decline and Fall of the Loch Ness Monster. Zoilus Press.

Bord, J. & Bord, C. 1980. Alien Animals. Granada, London.

Campbell, S. 1986. The Loch Ness Monster: the Evidence. The Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, UK.

Dinsdale, A. 2013. The Man Who Filmed Nessie: Tim Dinsdale and the Enigma of Loch Ness. Hancock House, Surrey, BC Canada.

Dinsdale, T. 1961. Loch Ness Monster. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

Dinsdale, T. 1966. The Leviathans. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

Dinsdale, T. 1973. The Story of the Loch Ness Monster. Target, London.

Dinsdale, T. 1975. Project Water Horse: the True Story of the Monster Quest at Loch Ness. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

Dinsdale, T. 1977. The Facts About Loch Ness and the Monster. John Barthlomew & Sons, Edinburgh.

Harmsworth, T. 2010. Loch Ness, Nessie and Me. Harmsworth.net, Drumnadrochit.

Naish, D. 2017. Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths. Arcturus, London.

Williams, G. 2015. A Monstrous Commotion: the Mysteries of Loch Ness. Orion Books, London.

Witchell, N. 1975. The Loch Ness Story. Penguins Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex.

Mark Witton’s The Palaeoartist’s Handbook

It’s probably – no, surely – true to say that palaeoart (aka paleoart) is more popular right now that it ever has been, a fact due in equal part to a vibrant, active community of people worldwide, to the instant, ubiquitous reach of the internet and the connectedness we feel via social media, to self-publishing and on-demand printing services, and to the excitement and discussion generated by what seems to be a never-ending stream of amazing fossil and anatomical discoveries relevant to ancient animals.

Caption: today, Mark Witton is well known for generating large-scale artworks like this one - depicting the sauropod Diplodocus, and produced to accompanying the NHM’s Dippy specimen as it tours the UK - in addition to work done to accompany press releases. Image: (c) Mark Witton.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Dr Mark P. Witton is, right now, one of the world’s best known and most visible of palaeoartists; his articles and artwork are abundant online, and his work appears in many contemporary published works on prehistoric life, and in various museum installations and other displays. Combine this with the fact that he’s published a long-sought holy grail of the palaeoart canon – a palaeoart handbook – and we surely have one of the most important and worthy palaeoart-themed volumes of all time. Right? Does it deliver?

I refer to 2018’s The Palaeoartist’s Handbook, a slick, extremely affordable softback of 224 pages and extremely high production values. In response to my question above: yes, this book does deliver, and functions extremely well as a ‘handbook’ for those interested in producing palaeoart. Buy it right now if you haven’t done so already. Even those not needing or interested in Dr Witton’s advice should obtain it if they’re interested in palaeoart, since it contains stacks of invaluable review and commentary, does a great job of stating where we are with respect to what we think we know about the appearance of ancient animals, and is really well designed and densely illustrated. It’s probably the most important volume yet published on palaeoart*, and that remains true even if you dislike or disagree with the author’s contentions.

* ‘Importance’ is subjective, but the volume vies – I predict – with 2012’s All Yesterdays and volumes I and II of Dinosaurs Past and Present.

Caption: there aren’t many ‘crucial’/’must have’ volumes on palaeoart, but the Dinosaurs Past and Present volumes are among them, volume II in particular because of Greg Paul’s article (Paul 1987). Images: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County/University of Washington Press.

A disclaimer I should mention upfront is that Mark and I are long-standing friends and colleagues. I lectured to Mark when he was an undergrad, we’ve been on fieldwork together, and we’ve published several works together on pterosaurs (Witton & Naish 2008, 2015, Dyke et al. 2014, Vremir et al. 2015, Naish & Witton 2017) and palaeoart (Witton et al. 2014). These things might, in theory, mean that I’m positively biased towards his work, but in reality I think they help make me more neutral, since our good relationship means that I can say negative things (where fair and appropriate) and not be worried about being offensive. But let’s see.

Witton (2018) is extremely well designed and very attractive. It’s glossy, full colour throughout, and absolutely packed full of diagrams, photos and art. The art is not just by Mark Witton but also features images by Raven Amos, Rebecca Groom, Johan Egerkrans, Bob Nicholls, John Conway, Emily Willoughby, Julius Csotonyi and Scott Hartman. Holy crap, it’s a virtual who’s who of Early 21st Century palaeoart.

Caption: Witton (2018) includes artwork by several artists, sometimes included to depict diverse styles, compositions and approaches. This is ‘Nemegt Sunrise’ by the amazing Raven Amos (website here), and depicts the oviraptorosaur Conchoraptor with a hermit crab. Image: (c) R. Amos.

What sort of book is this? A ‘palaeoart book’ can be one of several things. It could be a compendium of historical images (like Zoë Lescaze’s gigantic, deeply idiosyncratic but invaluable 2017 Paleoart: Visions of the Prehistoric Past), it could be a bunch of new, daring stuff that makes a point of some sort (cf All Yesterdays), it could be an artist’s porfoilio or a series of portfolios (like the Dinosaur Art volumes, or The Paleoart of Julius Csotonyi), or it could be a technical volume that provides some theoretical or technical background to the field… I’m sure we’re all still waiting for ‘The Grand Handbook to Illustrating Prehistoric Life, a Rigorous How-To Guide’, hint hint.

Caption: the number of books devoted to palaeoart is growing. I think I’ve managed to keep up so far. Image: Darren Naish.

Witton (2018) is partly all of these things: the volume is fundamentally devoted to the techniques, practices and scientific processes and conventions behind the creation of palaeoart, and the case studies and targeted discussions mean that we effectively see much of Witton’s work showcased. But there’s more.

Witton (2018) begins with introductory sections on what palaeoart is and on its history. The historical chapter is quite complete and inclusive, and I’m a big fan of Witton’s take on the work of Cuvier, Hawkins at Crystal Palace and other early efforts. He’s also fair to the artists who produced work during what he terms ‘The Reformation’, some of whom (Greg Paul in particular) have had a major, lasting impact on how we imagine ancient life. The ‘palaeoart meme’ story that I’ve drawn attention to through my own research and the All Yesterdays movement bring a close to this section alongside comments on some of the amazing, exciting new developments being made in the world of soft tissues and palaeo-colour.

Caption: the Crystal Palace animals remain among the most accurate renditions of prehistoric life ever made (like all palaeoartistic reconstructions, they have to be seen as being of their time), and Mark Witton’s take on them is one I absolutely agree with. This photo of the Iguanodon pair was taken in September 2018. Image: Darren Naish.

The meat and potatoes. We then move on to the ‘meat and potatoes’ of the book: a group of chapters that discuss in great detail the process of creating palaeoart. Sections here cover how research is important and how a worker might go about doing it, how knowledge of phylogeny is integral to understanding an organism, and how artists should at least be aware of tropes and stereotypes. This book is fundamentally not a ‘rigorous how-to guide’ to all the prehistoric animals (every time I use this term I’m riffing on the title Greg Paul gave his seminal 1987 article on archosaur reconstruction), but this middle section of the book does include copious discussion of anatomy, the shapes of animals in 3D and cross-section, of musculature and posture, the importance of integument, fat and other external tissue, and so on. I should add that Chapter 9 (‘The Life Appearance of Some Fossil Animal Groups) is devoted to the probable life appearances of key tetrapod groups. Ha, take that fishes.

Caption: in many cases, the favoured, traditional look for a given prehistoric animal is not necessarily the one we might favour. Here’s an example: Mark has argued that a new look for the proboscidean Deinotherium - shown here - should be considered. Image: (c) Mark Witton/Witton (2018).

These central chapters are probably the most important part of the book and will be those used most by the largest number of people. There’s a ton of information and discussion, and Mark describes in detail how he’s arrived at the conclusions he has. Readers of Mark’s blog will be familiar with some of the arguments here and might also know that much of it has never been properly published (as in, in technical papers or articles). The book is therefore especially significant as a source of primary data, though I know that efforts are underway to get at least some of it into the primary literature.

Caption: extensive sections of Witton (2018) discuss osteological correlates for external texture and other features. In some cases - like ceratopsian dinosaurs - there are many such correlates. Image: (c) Mark Witton/Witton (2018).

How confident can we be that Mark is ‘right’ when it comes to his arguments about lips, cornified facial tissue, scalation or fuzziness on the body and so on? I think that a strong response would be that he has at least described, explained and illustrated his reasoning and it’s difficult to think that he’s ‘wrong’, two caveats being that there is – as Mark states quite clearly – still some considerable slop as goes determining the relative size of keratinous coverings (like the pads, scales and sheaths covering horns, claws and so on), and that the vagaries of taphonomy might still be cheating us out of valuable information on which archosaurs had filaments, fuzz or feathers. Yes, I still think that big tyrannosaurs could have been fuzzy and that we aren’t picking this up because the fossils concerned aren’t preserved in the ideal sedimentological regimes.

Speculation and the All Yesterdays Movement. The main message here is that while some speculation always has to be included in palaeoartistic reconstructions, there’s a lot of stuff that’s knowable, or potentially knowable, and informed by actual anatomical data. This is increasingly the case even for colour and pattern (caveat: we still only have data on some infinitesimally tiny percentage of extinct animals). The door is not open for any possibility, and artists who wish to be seen as doing work that’s scientifically credible have to take into account data derived from fossils as well as ‘rules’ (or guidelines) gleaned from living animals. However…

Caption: Conway et al.’s 2012 All Yesterdays has changed the way many people approach palaeoart… but is this for better, or for worse? Image: Conway et al. (2012).

A valid, controversial and timely point concerns just how much speculation is permissible in palaeoart. This is something I feel especially connected to given the impact of my 2012 book – co-authored with John Conway and C. M. Kosemen – All Yesterdays (Conway et al. 2012) and the subsequent ‘All Yesterdays Movement’, which is hated by some but loved by others. Mark’s take on what happened post-AY is that a lot of AY-inspired artwork has failed to appreciate the nuance of the original work, and that AY was (wrongly) taken by some as a green light to go nuts and do whatever, the results being misguided and likely wrong.

Caption: Mark has indulged in some speculation himself (here: shaggy-coated pachyrhinosaurs), and it’s down to opinion as to whether this is as extreme as anything depicted in All Yesterdays. Image: Mark Witton/Witton (2018).

Caption: it would be wrong to avoid bringing attention to Franco Tempesta’s woolly, cold-adapted pachyrhinosaur, very obviously inspired by Mark Witton’s, and appearing in the 2016 Usborne book Build Your Own DInosaurs Sticker Book. I was consultant, but I’m sure that that’s coincidental. Image: (c) Franco Tempesta/Usborne.

I agree… if we’re talking about artworks that aim to reflect possible realities. A nuance to the nuance of AY is that there exists a small contradiction in the aims of its creators. Yes, we argued that there are many potentially valid, scientifically defensible possibilities that hadn’t or haven’t been sufficiently explored in pre-AY palaeoart, but we did also promote the idea that people might explore other possibilities – even those weird or dumb or wrong – purely for the sake of artistic expression. That this view is canonical in the AYverse is demonstrated by the inclusion in the sequential All Your Yesterdays of retrosaurs that are absolutely contradicted by data but still fun from an artistic take. In other words, not all AY-inspired art is meant to be scientifically defensible. The takehome – post-AY – is that people need to say what they’re aiming to depict: a random fancy or a serious proposal?

Caption: not all AY-inspired art is meant to be scientifically responsible and potentially realistic, some of it is deliberately whimsical and fanciful. Exhibit A: the wonder that is Spinofaaras vulgaris, a creature that now has an internet life of its own. Image: (c) Chris Masna (original here).

Anyway, returning to the contents of Witton (2018), this main section wraps up with some thoughts on how landscapes are created, and how composition and mood can be formed. Discussing environments and landscapes involves science – geology, geomorphology and palaeoclimate, among other things – and this is Witton’s main strength, but I also found his take on composition, stylistic choices and other matters of artistic style compelling…. speaking as someone who lacks artistic training and expertise, that is. The volume ends with a chapter on the professional side of palaeoart.

Caption: feedback and criticism is crucial, but it can be difficult to know what to say to artists when you aren’t one yourself. In this section of the book, Mark provides advice, using his 2008 azhdarchid image as a piece that might benefit from constructive criticism. This piece accompanied the Witton & Naish (2008) PLoS paper on azhdarchids. Image: (c) Mark Witton/Witton (2018).

On the negative side of things… I find the editing sloppy in places and think that the prose could have been tightened here and there. There are also a few turns of phrase that I found awkward, weird or (sorry) terrible, top of the list being the reference to “palaeontologists with the mightiest beards” (p. 38). On technical aspects, I’m a bit confused by Mark’s use of ‘reptile’ in the old, paraphyletic sense (in a volume otherwise using modern phylogenetic nomenclature, wouldn’t it make sense to use Reptilia for the lizard + turtle + croc clade, and not to use it for a paraphyletic assemblage that excludes birds?). Panoplosaurus is wrongly called an ankylosaurid (p. 125), and isn’t Deinotherium a deinotheriid, not a deinotherid? These are minor, piffling, trivial things that I only state here because I have nowhere else to put them.

Caption: the book is just full of spectacular imagery like this, much of which hasn’t appeared in print before. This image depicts the azhdarchoid pterosaur Thalassodromeus. Image: (c) Mark Witton/Witton (2018).

All in all, The Palaeoartist’s Handbook is an excellent, beautifully produced, well crafted book which contains a wealth of information on the life appearance of extinct animals and how we might imagine them as living things, and it’s phenomenally good on the workings of palaeoart more generally. It should have broader appeal than to the palaeoart fraternity alone, and I think that anyone seriously interested in prehistoric animals or even in the history of art or the way people have imagined the past should obtain it too. For now, Witton (2018) is – mission fulfilled – THE palaeoartist’s handbook indeed.

Mark P. Witton. 2018. The Palaeoartist’s Handbook: Recreating Prehistoric Animals in Art. The Crowood Press, Marlborough (UK), 224 pp, softback, index, refs, ISBN 978-1-78500-461-2. Here on amazon. Here on amazon.co.uk.

For previous TetZoo articles on palaeoart and Wittoniana (the ver 2 and ver 3 ones have been ruined by removal of images), see…

• The Great Dinosaur Art Event of 2012, November 2012 (but all images now missing)

• All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals - the book and the launch event, December 2012 (but all images now missing)

• Artistic Depictions of Dinosaurs Have Undergone Two Revolutions, September 2014 (but all images now missing)

• The Dinosaurs of Crystal Palace: Among the Most Accurate Renditions of Prehistoric Life Ever Made, August 2016

• The Natural History Museum at South Kensington, November 2016

• Naish and Barrett's Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved, November 2016

• 25 Years after Jurassic Park, Part 1, June 2018

• 25 Years after Jurassic Park, Part 2, June 2018

• 25 Years after Jurassic Park, Part 3, June 2018

• Dinosaurs in the Wild: An Inside View, July 2018

• Recollections of Dinosaurs Past and Present, the 1980s Exhibition, February 2019

 Refs - -

Conway, J., Kosemen, C.M. and Naish, D. 2012. All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals. Irregular Books.

Dyke, G. J., Vremir, M., Brusatte, S., Bever, G., Buffetaut, E., Chapman, S., Csiki-Sava, Z., Kellner, A. W. A., Martin, E., Naish, D., Norell, M., Ősi, A., Pinheiro, F. L., Prondvai, E., Rabi, M., Rodrigues, T., Steel, L., Tong, H., Vila Nova, B. C. & Witton, M. 2014. Thalassodromeus sebesensis – a new name for an old turtle. Comment on “Thalassodromeus sebesensis, an out of place and out of time Gondwanan tapejarid pterosaur”, Grellet-Tinner and Codrea. Gondwana Research 27, 1680-1682.

Naish, D. & Witton, M. P. 2017. Neck biomechanics indicate that giant Transylvanian azhdarchid pterosaurs were short-necked arch predators. PeerJ 5: e2908.

Paul, G. S. 1987. The science and art of restoring the life appearance of dinosaurs and their relatives - a rigorous how-to guide. In Czerkas, S. J. & Olson, E. C. (eds) Dinosaurs Past and Present Vol. II. Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County/University of Washington Press (Seattle and London), pp. 4-49.

Vremir, M., Witton, M., Naish, D., Dyke, G., Brusatte, S. L., Norell, M. & Totoianu, R. 2015. A medium-sized robust-necked azhdarchid pterosaur (Pterodactyloidea: Azhdarchidae) from the Maastrichtian of Pui (Haţeg Basin, Transylvania, Romania). American Museum Novitates 3827, 1-16.

Witton, M. P. & Naish, D. 2008. A reappraisal of azhdarchid pterosaur functional morphology and paleoecology. PLoS ONE 3 (5): e2271. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002271

Witton, M. P. & Naish, D. 2015. Azhdarchid pterosaurs: water-trawling pelican mimics or “terrestrial stalkers”? Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 60, 651-660.

Witton, M. P., Naish, D. & Conway, J. 2014. State of the Palaeoart. Palaeontologia Electronica 17, Issue 3; 5E: 10p.