Best dinosaur books - seeking reccomendations

[swords]

Hey folks I'm starting to feel that urge to sculpt again, I'm looking to do some dinosaur sculptures (not life size obviously). It's been who knows how long since I had any dinosaur books as a grade schooler but recently I picked up:

Dinosaurs a Global View - it has some skeletal diagrams which is some of what I was looking for

The Complete Book of Dinosaurs -great drawings and measurements in a visual encyclopedia style of many dozens species

But being the book geek that I am, I'm always looking for that ultimate book on any given topic, in this case it would be a book with both skeletal diagrams and well rendered drawings of each species in different positions (front and side views).

Anyone got any dino books which they could reccomend I scout for?




"ROOOAAARR! I'm a Tyrannosaurus!"

 

[Pyro]

If you can find it I think you will like 'Predatory Dinosaurs of the World' by Gregory S. Paul. He has lots of "life-like" illustrations plus muscle on bone type as well.

I have a dozen others sitting around at home whose titles escape me but I'll browse them over the weekend and see if any would fit your bill.

 

[rattler]

you going to do hadrosaurs?

 

[swords]

Thanks for the book reccomendation Pyro - I'm hitting the used book shop today so we'll see if I can locate a copy.

Looking for an Anatotian or Edmontosaurus from your neck of the woods Rattler? I'd ideally like to do a little of everything. Including some of the half lizard half bird Dromaeosaurids - looking kind of like feathered dragons.

It's weird to me that dinos don't have double latin names - with the exception of "T. rex" - anybody know why?

 

[rattler]

yeah they have double Latin.........but other than the more technical works its rarely used.....

as to my hadrosaur question, was just going bring up if your serious about doing them as correct as possible, in light of the "mummified" dinosaur finds made over the last few years i would have to say 99.9% of books have their builds slightly off........their is much more "meat" on the tails than originally thought......unsure where it puts others groups but


edited to add this link to show binomial latin names

 

[Pyro]

No worries for the recommendation. You should like it for the Dromaeosaurids. It also has the Ornithnomimids even though some people do not consider them "predatory"...

Also, Re: your comment about feathers. Just recently heard this but there is some evidence that a great number of the predators had feathers. Even T-Rex (which is slightly disturbing to picture, an 8-tonne killer "chicken")

I'll echo Rattler's comment on the hadrosaurs. If you can find Bakker's 'The Dinosaur Heresies' he has a couple good depictions of them but even those may be out of date by now (the book was published 20+ years ago I think). Wish I still had mine come to think of it...

 

[rattler]

i found a copy of "Dinosaur Heresies" at a used book store a few months ago......read it cover to cover for the first time in 10 years...very good read, most the info i think still applies to today though.........if you are interested in doing a Montanoceratops i might could be interested in purchasing it depending........ive got a picture drawn by Robert Bakker of this species from when i attended one of his talks a few years back.......wouldnt mind a sculpture to go with it :grin:

 

[joossa]

Swords, have you been watching too much "Walking with Dinosaurs"? Just kidding, I think making dino sculptures (or dino anything for that matter) is awesome.


Come on guys... It's all about Ankylosauria! ......or Plesiosauria.

 

[bianchi914]

Ummm it's all about tyranosaurs lol thats the only one i know

 

[Finch]

It's weird to me that dinos don't have double latin names - with the exception of "T. rex" - anybody know why?

I believe in most cases genus names are used to describe the dinosaur usually. Tyrannosaurus is the genus name... Stegosaurus is a genus name that includes several species, but when we speak of Stegosaurus we mean S. stenops unless otherwise specified.

 

[swords]

Thanks for the link to the latin bi-nomials Rattler! I assumed they would have them but as Finch said, most books only state the genus name. That confuses me more than the two word name - just cos I'm used to seeing two names in other books I guess. It'll make looking stuff up online much easier as well - thanks!!

Here's a nice link given to me by a dino sculptor at the sculpting board today, it's a good sized catalog of skeletal diagrams if anyone is interested . http://www.skeletaldrawing.com/index.htm

Yep, you got it Joosa - I was watching the updated version of Walking... on discovery last weekend and thought "I like dinos - I should sculpt some"! I have never done one, I started a dragon once but froze at the end when I was facing the thought of doing all the scales. Now I've learned the dark secret I needed to know to do scales/reptile textures without loosing my mind (the same guy also taught me how to do sculpt lifelike chainmail recently) so now It's dino time! I've kinda burned out on superheroes, warriors and the other typical subjects for me at the moment so I think it will be invigorating to change subjects for a while.

Now I have to decide on a scale before I start cutting armature wire, if I end up doing more than one species I'll want them to fit together in a series. I suppose the idea is just pick the largest size of the largest species I might possibly do and scale down from there.

 

[Pyro]

Sorry it took so long for me to get these, ended up having to go into the attic to find my books...

These three might be of interest for you. Not much skeletal/musculature stuff in them and they are all fairly old but the art work could be pretty inspiring:

Dinosaurs: A Global View by S & S Czerkas
The Dinosaurs by William Stout
Illustrated Encyclopedia of Prehistoric Flying Reptiles by Dr. Peter Wellnhofer