Dinosaur Imagery: The Science of Lost Worlds and Jurassic Art: The Lanzendorf Collection

In 1985, a Chicago hair stylist named John Lanzendorf bought a sculpture of a Tyrannosaurus rex on a whim. Fifteen years later, he had added more than 420 pieces to that initial purchase, assembling a collection that, paleontologist Philip Currie writes, "is the envy of many museums," and that one day doubtless will form the core of a museum collection itself.

Cataloguing only a portion of Lanzendorf's holdings, Dinosaur Imagery joins works by painters, animators, and sculptors, such as John Gurche, Donna Braginetz, and Gary Staab, with extended captions by paleontologists such as Michael Brett-Surman (Smithsonian Institution) and Mark Norell (American Museum of Natural History). The works of art range from the rigorously representational to the occasionally playful (but, fortunately, seldom kitschy), and there are some wonderful finds among them. The texts are revealing; it will come as news to many readers that the ancestor of the aforementioned T. rex may well have sported feathers (its posture, recent anatomical studies suggest, also resembled that of a chicken), that theropods hunted in packs, that sauropods traveled in herds, and that "the extinction of dinosaurs, although scientific dogma for decades, is now recognized as taxonomic illusion."

This well-made book is manna for fans of dinosaurs and dinosauriana, and an ideal gift for budding paleontologists. --Gregory McNamee