All Yesterdays

A lovely little art book depicting dinosaurs, and living animals as you've never seen them before. All the work is based on scientifically plausible possibilities, even though much of it can never be proved or disproved. Every illustration comes with accompanying text and at least one reference to the relevant scientific evidence.

The first two thirds or so of the book is the dinosaur part. Some of them are pictures of dinosaurs doing things that nobody ever draws them doing, despite the fact that they must have done, or at least that similar modern animals also do. Others are more speculative, building on what we don't know about their soft anatomy. It's hard to pick out favourites, but the therizinosaurs and Laellynasaura are a couple that stand out for me.

The remaining third covers modern, living animals. The twist here is that they are reconstructed from their skeletons alone, using the same techniques that we use today for dinosaurs, and accompanied by appropriate text. Much of it is hilarious: “A solitary manatee, grazing in its mountain home. We only know the skull of this enigmatic herbivore”. And much of it, of course, is cautionary...

A fascinating, and beautifully illustrated guide to what might have been, or that we can't prove wasn't. And, implicitly, an important challenge to today's palaeoartists. Palaeoart has evolved before, and perhaps its time for it shake off old assumptions, and do so again.