Category «Palaeoart»

Six more years of new plesiosaur toys (2018–2023)

I need to catch up on several more years of new plesiosaur models. The notable new company on the block is PNSO, the Peking Nature-Science Organisation, although having pushed out an impressively prolific catalogue of prehistoric animal models, to date they have produced only one commercially available plesiosaur figure, a Kronosaurus in 2021.

The Tyrannosaur’s Feathers book – coming soon!

Allow me to deviate from plesiosaurs for a moment to focus on a different kind of Mesozoic vertebrate – dinosaurs! I’m delighted to announce that my second children’s book, The Tyrannosaur’s Feathers, will be published later this year, and I’m also excited to reveal the front cover. It’s a ‘kind-of’ sequel to The Plesiosaur’s Neck (2021) and a continuation of my exciting collaboration with Jonathan Emmett, published again by UCLan Publishing.

The Plesiosaur’s Neck book – 1 month retrospective

A month has passed since my new book, The Plesiosaur’s Neck, was published. So, it’s a good time to reflect on some of the events and reactions that followed its release.

Firstly, it was exciting to see the book in the wild, particularly at the Heffers branch of Blackell’s in Oxford, where Adam Larkum was invited to decorate the windows with an array of creatures from the book.

Crystal Palace

The Crystal Palace plesiosaurs

The first ever life-size models of prehistoric animals were produced in the early 1850s by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. They were revealed to the world at Crystal Palace in London, 1854, and today they grace the grounds at Sydenham Hill, where they are classified as Grade 1 listed buildings.

Thaumatodracon – the Wonder Dragon

In 2012 I co-presented a poster at the SVP annual meeting on a new plesiosaur from Lyme Regis, UK (see my article about it here). The long awaited follow up paper was finally published this summer in the latest volume of Palaeontographica A (Smith and Araújo 2017) and the beast now has a name, Thaumatodracon wiedenrothi, meaning ‘Wiedenroth’s Wonder Dragon’.