When done well, palaeoart represents one of the finest examples of science and art intersecting. As a genre, it continues to advance and reinvent itself, especially in its professionalism and scientific accuracy. Mesozoic Art might represent Bloomsbury’s entry into this market but the book has two experienced editors at the helm. Artist Steve White and palaeozoologist Darren Naish both have more than their fair share of producing and thinking about palaeoart. Featuring twenty artists, Mesozoic Art is a gorgeously produced, large-format portfolio that shows palaeoart at its current pinnacle. For lovers of dinosaur illustrations, this book is a no-brainer, and I imagine that many will have already gone ahead and purchased it. But just in case you still need convincing…

Mesozoic Art: Dinosaurs and Other Ancient Animals in Art, edited by Steve White and Darren Naish, published by Bloomsbury Publishing in October 2022 (hardback, 208 pages)

Steve White previously edited Dinosaur Art and Dinosaur Art II, published by Titan Books. For reasons unknown to me, this collaboration has not continued. You would barely be able to tell from the cover, though, as the design and fonts are identical. I will leave a more in-depth comparison for the end of this review and first focus on the material at hand.

For this portfolio, White and Naish run a tight ship: twenty artists are given ten pages each. Contributors hail predominantly from North America, South America, and Europe, with one Australian thrown into the mix. Looking at the list, there are a few old hands—John Conway featured in Dinosaur Art and Julio Lacerda and Mark Witton in Dinosaur Art II—but the focus is on a younger generation of palaeoartists rather than well-known veterans. I recognized Joschua Knüppe from his graphic novel Europasaurus, while Gabriel Ugueto has contributed illustrations to Ben Garrod’s Extinct series, but I admit not or only vaguely knowing most others. Since many have contributed art to books, magazines, scientific publications, and museum exhibits, it seems likely that I will have been exposed to some of their work in passing.

Given the power and versatility of today’s hardware and software, it should come as no surprise that most artists by now work mostly or exclusively with digital media. Notable exceptions are Joschua Knüppe predominantly using acrylic and gouache, Emiliano Troco working exclusively with oil on canvas (his artwork is simply stunning and recalls Zdenek Burian), and Greer Stothers using Risograph printing. Others occasionally use analogue media such as pencil, acrylic, and watercolour. But do not let this preponderance of digital illustrations fool you: Mesozoic Art showcases a wonderful diversity of styles from photorealistic 3D renders (Joanna Kobierska) to impressionistic paintings (Brennan Stokkermans), and cartoonish depictions (Ravon Amos) to abstract art (Conway, also check out his self-published A History of Painting to see how far this envelope can be pushed). It looks as if the palaeoart scene has come into its own, liberally exploring what is possible with a digital pen or paintbrush. I have to commend White & Naish for the order in which the different styles are presented as the book flows nicely.

As artist Terryl Whitlach also highlights in her foreword, it is heartening to see that illustrators aim to depict extinct life not as monsters, but as living, breathing creatures adapted to their natural environment. Artists seem to have internalised the lessons and encouragement from, amongst others, Witton’s The Palaeoartist’s Handbook regarding soft-tissue anatomy and depicted behaviours. Gone are the days of shrink-wrapped dinosaurs; instead we get to see well-rounded creatures with muscles, bulges, lips, and plenty of feathers or other integumentary coverings. Particularly noteworthy in this context is Jed Taylor’s series of four Dromaeosaurid portraits. Gone, too, are the wide-mouthed carnivores chomping down on hapless herbivores. Only a few artists depict bloody predator-prey interactions, in keeping with the fact that animals are doing something else most of the time. Thus we get a sunbathing Therizinosaurus (Midiaou Diallo), a Scutellosaurus rolling in a muddy pool (Conway), and a very memorable closed-mouth vocalisation by T. rex (Witton) which would look fantastic in a frame.

In their introduction, the editors admit that they have not been too strict in including artwork of animals from before or after the Mesozoic. As in the previous two portfolios, there are Eocene and Pleistocene mammals such as ground sloths, brontotheres, the hell pig Daeodon, and Onychonycteris, the oldest known bat. My impression is that there is an increasing interest in early mammals (e.g. Diallo’s cynodont Thrinaxodon and Lacerda’s dicynodont Inostrancevia) and in pseudosuchian archosaurs, showing the wonderful diversity of crocodile ancestors and relatives (e.g. Corbin Rainbolt’s Boverisuchus or Kobierska’s Stagonolepis).

Lastly, a word on some of the compositions. I already mentioned the remarkable portraits, but there are also some nice dead-on frontal views (e.g. Knüppe’s Edaphosaurus and Troco’s Estemmenosuchus), partial views that purposefully leave out heads and faces (e.g. sauropod illustrations by Conway and Lacerda), while yet others highlight the long, lithe shapes of some creatures by curving their bodies in a near-circular shape (e.g. Knüppe’s Wulong and Diallo’s Clidastes). There are some moody pieces of dinosaurs caught in the rain (especially by, appropriately enough, Rainbolt) while Stokkermans’s Bajadasaurus is almost all sky, showing that dinosaurs do not have to be the centrepiece to make impressive palaeoart.

To round up this review: how, then, does Mesozoic Art compare to the earlier portfolios from Titan Books? Next to the similar cover design, the book is also the same trim size (my OCD-self is very pleased: the three make a handsome collection on your shelf), and, as before, has illustrated endpapers and a nice cover illustration under the dustjacket. What it does not have are the large fold-out pages. Mesozoic Art is slightly thicker at 208 vs. 188 pages. The biggest difference is in the text. The first two portfolios contained extensive interviews and could thus only feature ten artists each. For Mesozoic Art, White & Naish have done away with this, providing only a compact biography for each artist and short captions with each illustration. While I miss the illustrators writing about their inspiration and methodology, the upshot is that the number of featured artists has doubled to twenty. Given the growth of the palaeoart scene and the many new talents out there, this seems appropriate. So, no, this is not quite Dinosaur Art III, but Mesozoic Art is very clearly intended as the spiritual successor that continues the mission of exhibiting the very best of current palaeoart.

Finally, flicking through the three portfolios, it is interesting to see the transitions over the years. I, for one, will not miss the photomontages of the past (they were never my thing) and welcome the greater diversity in artistic styles and in depicted subjects and behaviours. The animals may be dead, but the palaeoart community is alive and evolving. Given that these books have been published at five-year intervals, I am looking forward to (perhaps?) Mesozoic Art II in 2027 to see what worlds past look like then.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Mesozoic Art

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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When it comes to popular science books, some of the books I admire most are the smallest ones. It takes great skill to capture the essence of a subject into a short book, steer clear of well-trodden ground, and contribute something novel that will educate and enthuse your reader. Palaeontologist and science communicator Dean Lomax here collects ten short essays on dinosaurs, convincingly showing that good things come in small packages.

Dinosaurs – 10 Things You Should Know: 230 Million Years for People Short on Time, written by Dean R. Lomax, published by Seven Dials (an Orion Books imprint) in September 2021 (hardback, 120 pages)

This small hardback is part of the 10 Things You Should Know series by Seven Dials, a popular science series that has so far covered physics, astronomy, mathematics, and neurology. Entry-level popular science books on dinosaurs, especially those aimed at children, often fail to go beyond factoids such as who was the biggest or who had the strongest bite. Sure, “these are cool topics to study, but they are not necessarily at the top of the research list for palaeontologists. Some of the most important research areas to explore focus on the bigger pictures of evolution” (p. 114). Thus, Lomax here makes pop science subservient to his primary goal of covering some of the hottest and most relevant topics grabbing the attention of professional palaeontologists today—from food, sex, and death; to deep time, biogeography, and the limits of our knowledge. And though he discusses fossil evidence of behaviour, the subject of his previous book Locked in Time, he avoids the easy option of rehashing material from that book.

Some of these essays do an excellent job of using familiar tropes to explain an important concept. As the first essay clarifies, Tyrannosaurus rex and Stegosaurus never crossed paths. Lomax gently dispels the popular media portrayal of dinosaurs all existing simultaneously, in the process introducing you to deep time. Stegosaurus was already a fossil by the time T. rex evolved. And while early dinosaurs roamed the supercontinent of Pangaea, the drifting apart of the continents meant that later species evolved in separate environments. In making this observation, this essay introduces concepts such as plate tectonics, the supercontinent cycle, and biogeography.

“[…] what I appreciated most in this book: Lomax repeatedly stresses how science is a dynamic process, not a static monolith of knowledge.”

Lomax is also not shy of cracking open the door to reveal the complexities and subtleties once you delve deeper. Having discussed how you define a dinosaur and introduced the division between saurischians and ornithischians, he mentions the 2017 study that proposed shaking up the dinosaur family tree, and how this is being tested and debated. This is what I appreciated most in this book: Lomax repeatedly stresses how science is a dynamic process, not a static monolith of knowledge. Point in case are feathers in dinosaurs and the growing realisation that birds might be related to…; no, they might actually be the descendants of…; no, wait, they are dinosaurs. What I did not realise is that Thomas Henry Huxley already advocated this idea shortly after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, but that it was downplayed and ignored until John Ostrom revived it in the 1970s.

Another strong suit of this book is that it shows that you can be both brief and accurate in popular science. When introducing Darwin’s theory of natural selection he avoids that old chestnut of “survival of the fittest” and correctly characterises it as a stochastic process where “those animals with features better adapted to their environment have a higher chance of surviving and reproducing” (p. 98). And he acknowledges that Alfred Russel Wallace arrived at this idea around the same time as Darwin did. Thus, in just two sentences, he hits the nail on the head regarding two aspects of the theory of evolution that frequently get mischaracterised. Similarly, when discussing the idea of bringing back mammoths via a process known as de-extinction, he writes: “if this were to be successful, the resulting creation would never be an actual mammoth, but some oddball hybrid crossed with a modern elephant” (p. 116). And with that single sentence, he lays bare a major philosophical stumbling block of this controversial idea.

As befits a popular science book, there are plenty of interesting titbits (Why did Michael Crichton depict Velociraptor the way he did in Jurassic Park?), fascinating questions (Will we ever find all dinosaurs that ever existed?), and a healthy dose of humour. Entertaining and remarkably educational, this short book is perfect for both novice and seasoned palaeontology fans. Since we have entered December, I am going to earmark this book as a recommended stocking filler.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Dinosaurs – 10 Things You Should Know

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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Seven Dial’s 10 Things You Should Know series:

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Say “dinosaurs”, and most people imagine fossilised bones and spectacular museum displays. But body fossils are not the only remains we have with which to reconstruct dinosaur lives. Nor, and this might sound controversial, are they the most important. Or so argues palaeontologist, geologist, and ichnologist Anthony J. Martin. Ichnology is the study of animal traces, whether modern or fossilised. Most traces are ephemeral and disappear within hours or days, but occasionally some are buried and end up in the fossil record. With tongue firmly planted in cheek, and with more puns than you can shake a T. rex thigh bone at, Martin forays into the rich dinosaur trace fossil record: from footprints, burrows, and nests, to teeth marks and fossil faeces. For all the jokes, and despite having been published in 2014, he raises some really interesting points.

Dinosaurs Without Bones: Dinosaur Lives Revealed by Their Trace Fossils, written by Anthony J. Martin, published by Pegasus Books in April 2015 (paperback, 484 pages)

You might indeed ask, why review this book now? Way back in 2018 I reviewed Martin’s 2017 book The Evolution Underground on the evolutionary history of burrowing behaviour and was suitably impressed. I vowed to search out his previous book, though I did not intend to wait this long. Having just reviewed Lomax’s book Locked in Time, now was the right time to make up for that.

Animals of all sorts leave behind traces wherever they go and dinosaurs were no exception. Footprints are probably the first thing to come to mind and a logical place to start. From the US, to Europe, to South America, they have been found on every continent except Antarctica*. Martin discusses how the number of toes and their orientation can reveal what group of dinosaur left the footprint and how their size can be used to estimate its maker’s size. Where multiple footprints form a trackway, their distance can reveal gait and velocity, or whether dinosaurs moved alone or in (family) groups. And with technological advances, we can extract more information from footprints than ever before.

One interesting thing Martin reveals here that I was not aware of, is that most fossil tracks are probably undertracks. That is, the subsurface deformation of the substrate caused by the pressure of the foot. Most tracks likely soon weathered beyond recognition, so unless you find clear skin impressions, the prudent assumption is that you are dealing with undertracks. As he points out: “The decided preservational advantage of this phenomenon is that such tracks were already buried, protecting them from destruction” (p. 33).

“One interesting thing Martin reveals here […] is that most fossil tracks are probably undertracks. That is, the subsurface deformation of the substrate caused by the pressure of the foot […]”

But feet can do much more than just walking and Martin examines trace fossil evidence of dinosaur nests and fossil burrows. Beyond traces made by feet, bones can record tooth marks, though care is needed to distinguish attacks on living animals from post-mortem scavenging. In turn, food leaves tell-tale traces of microwear on a tooth’s surface. More exotic—and controversial—are gastroliths or stomach stones that can act as digestive aids, though likely not all were swallowed on purpose. And then there is that which comes out at the other end. You might have heard of coprolites (fossil dung), and Lomax introduced me to urolites (fossil traces of urination). But what of enterolites (fossil stomach contents) and cololites (fossil intestinal contents)? Or, my favourite, regurgitalites—which is what you think it is.

For some behaviours we do not have clear evidence, while others are highly unlikely to leave traces in the fossil record. But this does segue nicely into one of the most important themes of this book: search image. At several points, Martin encourages readers and researchers alike to ask themselves: what would the traces left by certain behaviours look like? Take sauropod footprints. Given their size you might think they are hard to miss and yet: “In the early days of dinosaur tracking probably more than one paleontologist or geologist walked by their footprints without a second glance, thinking they were some sort of large erosion-caused features. Once these footprints were correlated with the sizes and shapes of sauropod feet […] sauropod tracks magically appeared in the search images of paleontologists worldwide” (p. 22). An important point of reference, and one that Martin profiled for his home turf of Georgia in his previous book, are the traces left by animals alive today, specifically birds. Because, as he reminds you towards the end of the book by shortly recapping the evolution of birds, technically speaking birds are living, flying, feathered dinosaurs.

“[…] one of the most important themes of this book [is] search image. At several points, Martin encourages readers and researchers alike to ask themselves: what would the traces left by certain behaviours look like?”

The other thing to note is Martin’s writing style. All of the above is served up with a healthy dollop of frequently irreverent humour. Some of it borders on dad-jokes though, so let me give you some tasters. He frequently lampoons his own profession: “[…] even dinosaur-track experts have doubts about the identity of some three-toed dinosaur tracks, especially if a rival dinosaur-track expert identified them” (p. 22), and regarding peer review “[…] the scientists who review journal articles are doing it as unpaid volunteers, finding time to perform this important duty in between all of their other tasks such as teaching, grading, research, walking the dog, or (most heinous of all) sleeping” (p. 76). The rear part of a dinosaur “[…] is properly called an ischial callosity, and not the more appealing term “dinosaur butt”” (p. 39). On front teeth: “If a theropod’s potential food item, such as a small ornithopod, was still alive and having issues with a proposal that it should devote its life to feeding a theropod, then the front teeth were the most persuasive tools used by that theropod” (p. 181). And on urolites: “Paleontologists who do such research could be assured of making a big splash with it, while also going against the flow of others’ prejudices. Afterwards, they will be flushed with success, and their colleagues pissed off” (p. 247). If the above made you laugh, you will have a blast with this book. I certainly did.

Dinosaurs Without Bones is great popular science: fascinating, thought-provoking, and told with verve and wit. This is an excellent companion book to Lomax’s Locked in Time and a very nice introduction to trace fossils and ichnology. My only regret is that I waited so long before finally reading it.

* That was true when this book was published in 2014. When I followed up on this, I found one news item claiming the 2016 find of a dinosaur footprint on Antarctica. However, when reading the actual 2019 paper in the open-access journal Polar Research, the authors are a bit more circumspect, attributing this footprint to “a primitive amniote, procolophonid or therapsid“.

Dinosaurs without Bones

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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