Mesozoic Art II, Palaeoart Portfolio for the 2020s

Among the most successful of books I’ve been involved in are those devoted to palaeoart. In particular, I’m thinking here of 2022’s Mesozoic Art, edited by Steve White and myself and published by Bloomsbury UK…

Well received critically and commercially, Mesozoic Art has done, and still does, a good job of showcasing modern palaeoart (White & Naish 2022). Maybe it always was inevitable that a second volume would appear, one bigger and (arguably) better than the first.

Caption: our cover image is by Anthony Hutchings, this one depicting a social interaction between two psittacosaurs. At right, social media avatars of your two humble author-editors (mine is by Ethan Kocak).

This week sees the publication (in the UK!) of just such a successor, namely Mesozoic Art II (MAII from hereon), again edited by Steve and myself, again published by Bloomsbury (White & Naish 2025). Here, we take a quick look at this lavish, riotously colourful, spectacular volume that showcases the state of modern palaeoart, one that we hope audiences will enjoy. For all its size and quality, MAII is also highly affordable: please buy it here. Its size means that shipping costs will add substantially to the cost, alas, but we hope that our friends and colleagues around the world will be able to obtain it.

Mesozoic Art II, the contents. MAII is large (31 x 28 cm), and includes a foreword kindly provided by conservationist, TV presenter, photographer and author Chris Packham in addition to an introduction penned by Steve and myself (White & Naish 2025). MAII is, however, very much devoted to its 25 separate artist portfolios. One of the main tasks that Steve and I (and the Bloomsbury team) face in compiling these volumes is selecting artists who both produce the sort of art we want and have a working portfolio.

Caption: contents page from MAII, showing thumbnails for our 25 amazing artists.

Included among these for MAII are established professionals whose work is well known due to its inclusion in books and museum exhibitions, Andrey Atuchin, Brian Engh, Beth Zaiken and Bob Nicholls among them. We also feature the work of technically qualified palaeontologists who also produce incredible art, like Henry Sharpe and Natalia Jagielska. Then there are artists who’ve come to us from outside of conventional palaeoart, like concept artist Gaëlle Seguillon and comic artist Lewis Larosa. And notable too is our inclusion of portfolios by people who are getting big-time exposure in print for perhaps the first time, among them DJ Washington, Haider Jaffri, Ramón M. González and Mattia Yuri Messina. We’re talking 256 pages of large-format, high standard, full-colour palaeoart excellence.

Caption: producing captions for these books is quite the challenge, since a delicate balance has to be found. How much technical content do we share about the organisms in the art, how much do we say about the actual art and its backstory, and are we pitching this for a lay-audience or a more technical one? We reach a compromise but there’s still room for improvement. Image: Ramón M. González, from White & Naish (2025).

What do we mean by ‘Mesozoic Art’ anyway? As I’ve stated several times (including in both MA and MAII), the term ‘Mesozoic Art’ doesn’t relate specifically to our inclusion of art showing organisms and environments from the Mesozoic (the section of geological time that extended from 252 to 66 million years ago and includes the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods).

Caption: here, I’m going to repeat the caption I used back in 2022 when I published an article on Mesozoic Art, the first book. Animals of today are animals of the past when imagined or seen in the right way; similarly, the animals of the past can often be transposed to the present if environments and conditions are right. I know I’m not the only one who looks at animals and environments in this way. Images: Darren Naish.

Rather, it relates to the idea that many of us use a sort of ‘prehistoric gaze’ when viewing scenes of any age. If I look at a deer in a meadow, am I experiencing a vista that also existed 20 million years ago? What if it was 100 million years ago, in which case the animal sure wasn’t a deer? What was similar, what was different? The term ‘Mesozoic Art’ is our best effort to capture that idea. While it’s true that Mesozoic dinosaurs and their contemporaries dominate the book, we also include portfolios where mammals are very much on show (Beth Zaiken) and where Cenozoic birds are overwhelmingly obvious (Simone Giovanardi).

As you’d expect, the quality of the work we feature is staggering. It would be wrong to describe a work featuring 25 artists as a ‘who’s who’; nevertheless, MAII can be described as representing a good overview of the state and health of palaeoart in 2025.

Caption: sample pages from the jaw-dropping Brian Engh section, showing Late Jurassic and Late Cretaceous scenes and an outstandingly complex marine image depicting Late Cretaceous Western Interior Sea life. Images: Brian Engh, from White & Naish (2025).

Caption: sample pages from the section showing Edyta Felcyn-Kowalska’s work. Some incredible stuff here; I especially like that juxtaposing Mesozoic archosaurs belonging to highly disparate lineages. Images: Edyta Felcyn-Kowalska, from White & Naish (2025).

This leads me to another point. It’s standard for palaeoart to involve a style that (in talks) I’ve been terming technical hyper-realism; for most people (palaeontologists among them) palaeoart is ‘meant’ to be like this. As such, it’s generally not always that ‘arty’, functioning instead as scientific reconstruction work that might decorate the pages of a technical academic paper more than a gallery wall.

But a topic very relevant to MAII concerns diversity, both with respect to our increasingly global cadre of contributing artists and the styles and forms of palaeoart we showcase. Volumes devoted to palaeoart – whatever we mean by that term (and that itself is a topic for discussion) – have generally been very ‘European’, focusing very much on English and North American artists. That’s still true to a degree, but it’s also true that there’s a more global feel to the work that’s visible. Palaeoartists of multiple nations worldwide have, of course, been contributing to the canon for decades, but it’s increasingly the case that this work is visible from afar. MAII, we hope, goes some way in terms of highlighting the global nature of the field.

Caption: there’s a lot of good palaeoart out there online, much of it highly similar in quality to that we regard as professional. For a time recently, I gathered the work of (mostly) unpublished palaeoartists and shared it via a social media ‘artboost’ project. These screengrabs show just a few of these. I had to give up due to other demands on my time. What’s clear is that there is tons of great work by great people that we have yet to see shared in print.

Yes, we do need cubist dinosaurs. Of similar interest is that we’re moving to a world where art styles very different from technical hyper-realism are increasingly evident. Back in 2012 – when John Conway, Memo Kösemen and I were promoting the then-new All Yesterdays (Conway et al. 2012) – John drew attention to palaeoart-themed commentary from an academic where the statement “after all, there’s no need for a cubist dinosaur” appeared in print. John’s response was: oh yeah, who says?

Caption: this article isn’t about All Yesterdays, but here are images relevant to the 2012 publication of that book (including a scene from the launch event; from left to right, John Conway, Memo Kösemen, Darren Naish).

Fact is, someone denying potential interest in a cubist dinosaur is promoting disinterest in the idea that extinct dinosaurs might be depicted in artistically novel, non-standard ways. If you’re interested in extinct dinosaurs, or other fossil animals, for visual, aesthetic reasons – as many of us are – why shouldn’t we have cubist dinosaurs? We’re not just interested in extinct animals, or animals of any sort, for dry, academic reasons.

With that in mind, a notion floated at the 2012 publication of All Yesterdays was that we need more artistic experimentation in palaeoart. With MAII, an argument can be made that things are going well on that front, and exhibits A and B are the portfolios of Natalia Jagielska and DJ Washington (White & Naish 2025). Both are creating wonderful pieces of art that tick many boxes in terms of technical accuracy, but many others in terms of artful style. I predict that we’re going to see much more work of this sort, and indeed my impression from the art on show and on sale at DinoCon 2025 – the giant dinosaur-themed meeting I and others recently hosted in Exeter, UK – is that work like this is increasing in popularity.

Caption: select images from the Natalia Jagielska and DJ Washington pages included in MAII. Our sections on these two artists have proved stand-out favourites among at least some people who’ve looked at the book. Images: Natalia Jagielska, DJ Washington, from White & Naish (2025).

For now, that will do. We hope that people like Mesozoic Art II and buy it. Steve and I (working with various of the contributing artists where possible) are hoping to do various additional promotional events (we’ve done a few already); pay attention to what we say on social media, and watch also for announcements at my website. And huge thanks to everyone who helped this milestone book come together, not least of those being our 25 amazing contributing artists! As we say in the intro… here’s to Mesozoic Art III!

For previous TetZoo articles on other palaeoart books, see

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Refs - -

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

White, S. & Naish, D. 2022. Mesozoic Art: Dinosaurs and Other Ancient Animals in Art. Bloomsbury Wildlife, London.

White, S. & Naish, D. 2025. Mesozoic Art II: Dinosaurs and Other Ancient Animals in Art. Bloomsbury Wildlife, London.