I have had the pleasure to receive an amazing book this Christmas, named 'All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals'. This book features amazing artwork and great new ideas by John Conway, C.M. Kosemen, and Darren Naish. With the danger of revealing too much of what is in this wonderful new book, here is a bit of a review.
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| The cover of 'All Yesterdays' with its beautiful, tree climbing ceratopsians |
What I love about this book is that it combines beautiful "paleoart" with bizarre, yet totally possible, ideas about the look and lifestyle of dinosaurs (and other prehistoric animals such as plesiosaurs and even a giant pterosaur eating centipede)! The authors often reconstruct their dinosaurs with seemingly odd or unlikely behaviors, yet fully support their ideas with evidence from the modern world! They do the same with the anatomy and integument of some of their dinosaurs, and point out that modern animals aren't always sleek and often have body parts hidden by layers of fatty skin or integument. Accompanying text helps us understand why the authors reconstructed the dinosaur (or other prehistoric animal) on that page in the way they did, and a skeletal drawing is also present!
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| As a warm blooded predator, a Tyrannosaurus would actually spend a large amount of time sleeping while digesting a meal! |
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A Majungasaurus with a stunning display, spreading its arms out "in a manner completely unlike that of other large predatory dinosaurs".
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One of my favorite aspects of the paleoart in this book is that the authors put plenty of interesting integument on their dinosaurs. These included Therizinosaurus that have bodies hidden by feathers, Triceratops with huge spiky spines, and Heterodontosaurus that are covered in bristly "hairs" and huge porcupine like quills! Interestingly, we are learning that such speculation is quite true! Not only do the feathered theropods have body integument, but we are now learning that many small ornithiscians had fuzzy bristles!
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| The authors of 'All Yesterdays' don't reconstruct their Leaellynasaura as naked lizard like animals..... |
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| But rather, they reconstruct Leaellynasaura as being perfectly adapted to a polar life with a fluffy integument. Brilliant! |
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| These Therizinosaurus are literally elephant sized mounds of feathers (with gigantic claws)! |
To help enforce their claim that it is perfectly reasonable to reconstruct dinosaurs with bizarre behaviors or anatomy, the authors also dedicated a chapter to reconstructing modern animals as a future paleontologist might if they only had fossilized remains to go off of. Some of the results were a terrifying looking hairless spider monkey, a very skinny cow, and birds with membranes instead of feathers on their wings. This chapter truly impacted me and justified the paleoart of the artists. Perhaps many dinosaurs were much thicker and had more muscle and fat, or had bountiful integument. This book has the ability to excite its viewers and to make them realize that dinosaurs were probably a lot more interestingly bizarre looking and acting than we often see them depicted as!
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| A reconstruction of a modern cat that is "shrink wrapped" and represents how modern paleontologists often wrongly depict dinosaurs as very slim, with every bone feature visible through the skin. |
'All Yesterdays' is a truly amazing book, which I would fully recommend to anyone interested in dinosaurs. The art inside is not only beautiful, but rejuvenating for the animals depicted. Hopefully, 'All Yesterdays' will help end the era of paleoart depicting leathery skinned and slim dinosaurs and will bring forth reconstructions of dinosaurs with the fuzzy integument and fatty skin that real animals have. In my mind, 'All Yesterdays' depicts dinosaurs accurately for the reason that they recognized the bizarre habits and looks that animals have and brought them to life in dinosaurs. This book makes the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park look bland; 'All Yesterdays' depicts Triceratops with huge protective spines, although, the famed Tyrannosaurus Rex would be boring as it actually would be sleeping throughout the movie after consuming the goat and lawyer.
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| A spiny Triceratops from 'All Yesterdays' |
I seriously can't say enough about 'All Yesterdays', and I emphatically hope that you buy it and read this fabulous book. If you have an open mind and even a slim interest in dinosaurs, this book will change your mind about the way they looked and acted for the better.
I Like it!
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