Review of Prehistoric Times (Issue 96)

Our copy of Prehistoric Times arrived yesterday, a chance for us to catch up on all things related to prehistoric animal models and palaeontology, plus it reminded us to forward on to the editor some new pictures of the Papo “Dinosaures” releases for 2011.

Prehistoric Times

The front cover of the latest edition of Prehistoric Times features the bizarre, gigantic South American extinct rodent Josephoartigasia as painted by James Gurney.   Described as a cross between a “pig and a rhinoceros”, the author and illustrator of the Dinotopia series comments in a brief article, how he went about creating this artwork.  In another section, James outlines how he went about creating a prehistoric scene showing Titanoboa (the largest snake known to science) constricting a large crocodile.

The Front Cover of Prehistoric Times (Winter 2011)

Picture credit: Mike Fredericks

There is a special feature on those cursorial ornithomimosaurs with lots of artwork and illustrations submitted by readers and it is great to see an extensive and highly informative article on that often over looked group of animals the prehistoric giraffes (no pun intended, as if you could literally overlook a giraffe).

A very handy, double page spread written by the excellent Steve Brusatte of the American Museum of Natural History/Columbia University which highlights some of the most important palaeontological news stories of the last year, plus an informative report on the exhibits to be found at the Field Museum (Chicago) can be found in this edition.

Wonderful to read the article about dinosaur colouring books and how they have changed over the last twenty-five years and we were excited to see that there is going to be a re-issue of that amazing Tyrannosaurus rex 1:13 scale model produced originally by Aurora models back in the 1970s.  One of our team members has this kit somewhere, perhaps we should rebuild it, complete with its glow in the dark teeth and set it up in our boardroom.

Once again, a jam-packed edition and a credit to all the writers and illustrators concerned.

To visit Prehistoric Times website: Prehistoric Times.