Scaly Spotted Feathered Frilled: How Do We Know What Dinosaurs Really Looked Like? by Catherine Thimmesh (review)

Six paleoartists are featured here as they make informed decisions how to portray, in illustration and in three-dimensional art, what may be unknowable—what dinosaurs exactly looked like. Readers learn that all the artists, no matter how diverse the final outcome of their work, begin with at the same starting place—the most up-to-date research on dinosaur bones. As more fossils are discovered and better identifications made, the artists are then able to extrapolate from the skeletons to the musculature. The fossil record also yields clues to portions of skin texture and feathering and in some cases has even begun to give up hints to pigmentation. This is the kind of information that can lure in readers beyond the usual dino hounds, so casual museumgoers and kids with an interest in forensic reconstructions should find the topic of interest too. However, specialized vocabulary can be challenging for general readers (even the glossary and index aren’t much help if you don’t know what a dino frill is, or that Paul Sereno is something of a big deal) and terms such as “ginormous,” “colossal,” and “gigantic” are too imprecise to be useful. At their best the illustrations offer wonderful comparisons of dino reconstruction past and present, but too frequently pages must be flipped to locate the referenced images. Enthusiasts who are just stepping into longer works on their favorite subject can probably compensate for these glitches, however, and enjoy the renderings—until, inevitably, even newer information necessitates their revision as well.