I think I might get into the habit of posting short articles here: putting longer pieces together takes a while and is often difficult to do in view of other work (hint goddam hint). Let me know what you think about this. Anyway...
Phil Currie's The Flying Dinosaurs (Currie 1991). The artwork is innovative and often really interesting, even though the coelurosaurian dinosaurs are mostly shown as un-feathered. The book includes pterosaurs... which is weird but in keeping with the 'evolution of flight' subtitle. Image: Darren Naish
I used to write a lot of letters. I mean: physical, printed letters, on paper. Some of them resulted in interesting things, and others didn't. During the mid-1990s, I obtained and read Philip Currie's 1991 book The Flying Dinosaurs, richly illustrated by Jan Sovak and showing many animals brand-new at the time. And it has some weird stuff in it that had me curious (I won't start discussing that "weird stuff", as it will take me a while to find it in the book, explain it, and put it into context). I managed to obtain Dr Currie's postal address, and wrote to him. And I was thrilled to get a response! Here it is...
Please understand that I am not, in any way, sharing this to shame Dr Currie - heavens, no. I merely opted to share it because it's (for me) an interesting piece of personal history. And it also shows what the situation was - and/or is - like for many busy academics. Today, I know this pain all too well. Modern correspondence, of course, has mostly changed from paper letters to emails. I'm not as famous as Dr Currie, but even I get so much correspondence that I either have to deliberately ignore some of it, or put it to one side such that I can 'deal with it later', only for 'later' to become 'never' as other things destroy those various other plans. I would like to remind others of this when they start sending reminder messages about the responses they'd like. Sorry: there comes a point in life when it is IMPOSSIBLE to keep up with correspondence.
Anyway, I was later to meet Phil Currie on one or two occasions and talk with him about a whole bunch of stuff. Here he is (standing) at a London-based conference that happened in May 2008...
Image: Darren Naish.
Seated at the table, we see Darren Tanke (left, near Phil), Carmen Naranjo-Marquez (far left), Luis Rey (far right) and C. M. Kosemen (closest to us, right).
Next: probably more dinosaur-themed book reviews...
Ref - -
Currie, P. J. 1991. The Flying Dinosaurs. Red Deer College Press, Red Deer, Alberta.
