Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Let's Read More of the _Prehistoric World_ Series!
Last autumn, I shared a few of the books from the oftentimes very odd Prehistoric World series of dinosaur books. I mentioned my local library had more of this series, so here come a few of the rest. As with the first batch of books, these books were all written by Virginia Schomp and published between 2003-2006 by the Marshall Cavendish Corporation. Once again, and unfortunately, the individual artists are not credited. The Ceratosaurus book is meaty enough to have a whole post of it's own, so let's start with this amusing illustration from 2003's Triceratops and Other Horned Plant-Eaters, along with the very obvious joke:
Why the long face, Pentaceratops?
Moving on to Stegosaurus and Other Plate-Backed Plant-Eaters from 2004, we have a disconcertingly old-fashioned illustration of Stegosaurus.
Perhaps that Stego feels down because he isn't part of the "Awesome Shoulder-Spikes" club.
And finally from Stegosaurus, the almost-obligatory plate function theories collection. This one seems oddly sparse. Just once I'd like one of these children's books to acknowledge that gliding stegosaurs were once a thing.
On to 2004's Pachycephalosaurus and Other Bone-Headed Plant-Eaters. Go home, Dracorex. You drunk. Also, possibly an invalid taxon. Maybe.
We'll end with this odd image of a mother Stegoceras charging at another bizarre-looking ceratopsian. The eye-watering perspective aside, this is a pretty neat depiction of speculative behavior.
Next time, we meet up with an old friend yet again...
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Sketch of the Day! Have yet another study of my very favorite model.