Dinosaur Appearance. Interesting Book.

[Koss1959]

http://io9.com/5965389/a-book-that-will-make-you-question-everything-you-know-about-dinosaurs

I would quite enjoy this book I think. I like how they took modern animals and drew them as we would draw dinosaurs. To the shape of their skeletons. So much is based on assumption and what looks good. Not to say it's not credible, I believe using modern animals as a guide is probably one of the best ways you can tell what prehistoric creatures looked like. Hopefully soon we'll be able to tell for certain what they looked like.

[hashemdbouk]

that's a really interesting way of looking at it!

[siteseer]

Yes, that book might be interesting. I thought the cat reconstruction was too contrived, though. A paleontologist of the future would easily identify a cat as a mammal from its skeleton and therefore more than likely covered with hair like other terrestrial mammals (there are mammal fossils that indicate the presence of hair even as far back in time as the Jurassic). The cat skull was drawn a little too long and the plated look of the zygomatic arch and the spikes on the back of the head have no basis in the anatomy. I can appreciate speculative works in the vein of "After Man" by Dougall Dixon or "The Future is Wild," especially Dixon's work because he took the apparent evolutionary directions of various lineages and projected them into the distant future. However, if the art strays too far into the fanciful, it becomes less science-related. Charles R. Knight based his art solely on the science of the time and his experience as a wildlife artist.

http://io9.com/5965389/a-book-that-will-make-you-question-everything-you-know-about-dinosaurs

I would quite enjoy this book I think. I like how they took modern animals and drew them as we would draw dinosaurs. To the shape of their skeletons. So much is based on assumption and what looks good. Not to say it's not credible, I believe using modern animals as a guide is probably one of the best ways you can tell what prehistoric creatures looked like. Hopefully soon we'll be able to tell for certain what they looked like.

[RyanNREMTP]

Ok, baboons scare me more now than they did before I read that article.