New visions: Dinosaur book that seeks to dispel myths about their appearance

By James Cutmore

Published: Thursday, 11 November 2021 at 12:00 am

Ask anyone to think of a dinosaur and they will likely imagine a T. rex. It’ll be large, dull-coloured and scaly.

And it’s wrong.

In Dinosaurs: New Visions of a Lost World, expert palaeobiologist Michael J Benton at the University of Bristol and world renowned paleoartist Bob Nicholls will change everything you thought you knew about what dinosaurs looked like and how they lived.

The book brings to life the long-extinct creatures with insight into their behaviour, adaptations and appearance by drawing on the latest science and cutting-edge research.

No longer heavy footed, slow and drab, Dinosaurs will show their true colours at last. The following gallery, featuring images from the book, show the increasingly sophisticated ways dinosaurs have been represented over time.

Richard Owen’s early dinosaur drawings

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View of the relocated Crystal Palace exhibition with Victorian palaeontologist Richard Owen’s fantastical dinosaur reconstructions in the foreground, by the London printer George Baxter. Photo by Wellcome Collection

An early pterosaurs drawing

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The first attempt to understand what Pterosaurs might have looked like is demonstrated in a lively drawing by Edward Newman published in 1843. At the time, Newman thought they were some kind of flying marsupial, but at least the idea that they were covered with insulating fur had already been established. Photo by Natural History Museum

Dryptosaurus

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Charles Knight painted this dynamic scene called Leaping Laelaps in 1897. It depicts two fighting Dryptosaurus dinosaurs, one of the earliest theropod species known to science. Knight’s careful study of the anatomy and behaviour of living animals enlivened his sketches of extinct species. Photo by American Museum of Natural History

Psittacosaurus

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Psittacosaurus was a herbivore dinosaur from the Ceratopsia group, with a strong hard beak that lived between 126 and 101 million years ago. It is one of the most well-known species of dinosaurs, due to many complete skeletons and fossils being discovered. Painting by Bob Nicholls

Edmontosaurus

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A reconstruction of an Edmontosaurus, a duck-billed hadrosaurid that lived over 66 million years ago, alongside Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex. It is named after Edmonton in Canada, where the first fossils of this species were discovered. Painting by Bob Nicholls

Sinosauropteryx

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Sinosauropteryx snatches lizard Dalinghosaurus from a small pool and shakes it. Dinosaurs did not chew their food, so he grabs the prey animal, twists it round so it faces head-first and gulps it down. This image shows the ginger-and-white striped tail, the countershading along the side, and the bandit mask. Painting by Bob Nicholls

Dinosaurs, now in colour:

Archaeopteryx

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Archaeopteryx, a species of bird-like dinosaur, lived in the the late Jurassic period around 150 million years ago. Painting by Bob Nicholls

More images from Science Focus Magazine:

Anurognathid

"Anurognathid
Anurognathid was a small, short-tailed member of the pterosaurs group, and lived in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods between 201 and 66 million years ago. Painting by Bob Nicholls

Dinosaurs: New Visions of a Lost World by Michael J Benton and Bob Nicholls is out now (£25, Thames & Hudson).

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