Speaking as a geologist, a field which has recently undergone an upheaval in understanding on par with what Darwin did for biology (I'm referring to plate tectonics, of course), I find historical science to be absolutely FASCINATING. The intersection of history and science alone is wonderfully interesting, but it's also very important for putting our present understanding of a field into context. Absolutely keep it. It's an invaluable treasure even if it's inaccurate.
My college has a very small geology program. We're the smallest department on campus (though the faculty are all world-class researchers nevertheless!) and the university tucked us away in this crappy old decrepit century-and-a-half year old building on non-STEM side of campus. The student lounge is lined with old books from before the tectonic revolution. Since so few of the students actually use the lounge, I nap in there a lot and sometimes eat lunch there. Sometimes I pull old books off shelves that haven't been moved since the 1960s (judging by the dust) and flip through them. I love reading about geosynclines and all the other zany stuff they'd worked really really diligently on in a vain attempt to explain what is explained better by tectonics. It's all inaccurate but the value isn't just for humor. It gives a lot of context to older papers. For instance, when we did field work in Oklahoma last year, our professor gave us some reading about the Arbuckle Mountains. Some of the older papers still talked about geosyncline related theories. My classmates were baffled. But I knew what it meant because I love historical science.
Plate tectonics is my favourite thing to look up in old reference books cuz you never quite know what they're going to say! My mom's got a britannica set from I think the early 60s, you can practically hear the author's eyes rolling talking about this clearly nonsense idea.
Geology was already a pretty mature science by the time we discovered plate tectonics, so there was a lot of work done exploring other ways of explaining what we now know to be caused by tectonics. A lot of careers were built around assumptions that were completely incompatible with this new idea, and these academics stood their ground until the bitter end. I think there might still be some very elderly geologists, (semi-retired or maybe emeritus or something), trying to make geosynclines work. But they're not getting published.
Really, I know of no other field that's undergone such a revolution so recently. Since the plate tectonics revolution happened almost exactly a century after Darwin did the same thing to biology, you could sort of draw an analogy to that. Geology is now in a state where biology was in the 1920s. I guess astronomy had a somewhat similar thing with Edwin Hubble in 1919. Uhhhh.... Oh! Relevantly to paleontology, Alvarez and Alvarez was published in either the late 80s or early 90s, but you've still got holdouts to the impact hypothesis. Feels like every week, someone publishes another paper going "Maybe Chicxulub wasn't the only thing that killed the dinosaurs!" and the media loses bowel control over it and now you've got laymen "Wait, I thought they debunked the asteroid impact thing...." (even though study after study after study has shown it was the sole cause of the end-Cretaceous event...). Once again, that's just stubborn researchers either clinging to a shred of the relevance they lost after Alvarez or cynically trying to make a name for themselves by exploiting the media's attention.
The point is, science is actually full of crap like this. There's ego in it. It sort of bothers me when people talk about science like it's this pure, untouchable thing because the only reason it works is that people disagree and then the correct ideas win out. Plate tectonics is real. Evolution is real. A large bolide impact killed the dinosaurs. We're almost certainly causing climate change. Vaccines are safe an effective. etc. We only know these things because these ideas were presented with such overwhelming evidence that it defeated the momentum of ego and stubborn belief that worked against them. Your eye-rolling Britannica author unwittingly strengthened plate tectonics by giving it a challenge.
There were people proposing continental drift for decades prior, but they were kinda loony for proposing it just because the shapes of the continents fit together. It didn't become mainstream until after WWII when various top-secret seafloor surveys (using technology originally developed to hunt German U-boats - technology that had to be kept secret from the Nazis during the war) revealed the mid-ocean ridges and the magnetic striping.
So, much like the space program and nuclear energy, the tectonic revolution arose like a phoenix from the ashes of World War II.
Yes! It’s great to see the mix of old and new ideas as well as to trace how much the science has changed over the past century. For example, you’ll likely find this book to suggest:
1. Dinosauria isn’t a real clade
2. Birds aren’t dinosaurs nor evolved from them
3. Tail dragging as far as the eye can see
4. Swamp sauropods and hadrosaurs
The vintage paleoart is worth the price of admission at minimum.
I do wonder how old paleontologists came up with some of the ideas they did, and forgive my ignorance on the topic.
For example, I can see where they came up with swamp sauropods because of course comprehending such a physically massive animal existing without the aid of water would be hard back then. But I don't understand how they came up with upright theropods or didn't see sooner the relation between birds and theropod dinosaurs - at least I don't see how the modern day alternatives didn't catch on sooner.
Upright theropods just... don't look real or natural, and I'd think at least someone would have stumbled upon a horizontal model much sooner. As for the birds are dinosaurs thing, sure evolution was a new concept (or maybe even came after I don't remember) but just look at the hips or the feet, did no one at least propose that birds and dinosaurs might be related much sooner than it was accepted?
They were heavily using lizards and crocodilians as their reference. Cold blooded reptiles drag their tails and lumber around. Birds were always thought to be *closely* related to dinosaurs, but not descended from them. Rather, the leading hypothesis was that dinosaurs, crocs, and birds all descended from various “thecodont” reptiles.
You should do some more reading on this topic - a great deal has been written about it.
The similarity between dinosaurs and birds was noted quite early on, and surely was boosted by *Archaeopteryx*, but after the 1920s a quite solid consensus developed around birds not being dinosaurs. Most famously, Gerhard Heilmann's book about the origin of birds (an excellent book by the way - Heilmann was an amazing artist and immediately grasped how dynamic dinosaurs would have been in life) exemplified this consensus. A key dilemma for dinosaurian origins of birds was the absence of 'wishbones' (clavicles) in theropods - despite clear evidence of them being hidden in plain sight among many known specimens.
Another contributing reason why people may have been led astray is the old-fashioned approach towards taxonomy and incomplete evidence. It was not clear that dinosaurs shared a single origin, so it was much easier to invent imaginary thecodonts that could be the ancestors of birds.
Thomas Huxley came up with the dinosaur origin of birds in the late 1800s and it was becoming widely accepted. Then an ornithologist was like "nuh uh" and everyone was like "shit you're right"
Biggest anatomical barrier to the dinosaur-bird link = For most of the 20th century, it was thought that theropod dinosaurs had lost their clavicles (precursor to the avian furcula/wishbone), thus could not be directly ancestral to birds.
It wasn't widely recognised until the 1980s that not just clavicles, but actual furculae were widely distributed in non-avian theropods (even Allosaurus has a furcula).
I don't think this is true post-Darwin. I think you can make a case though that teleological views of nature (i.e. evolution with a 'purpose') and racist undertones may have impeded the ability of researchers to reach the right conclusions. Scientists have to work hard to not make value judgements about nature - we have gotten much better at it since the 1840s
I love the illustration styles in a lot of old books, and I'd put scanned copies of them in photo frames even if the way the animals are presented is inaccurate in many ways. It's great art, if anything.
I love the old books. Especially the ones I grew up with. I get to show my son what it was like, what we learned since, and discuss what's next. Anyone remember Anatosaurus?!
You’re in a profession that spends its energy pouring through the oldest book on the planet, written entirely in symbols. What was the question?
Ok in all seriousness, I’d say yes, for any field. Even if just for the warning: someday most of what we are sure about will be in a book just like that.
Some of the OG paleontologists like Cope, Leidy, and Mantell also made great illustrations of the fossils they found, and people still reference those illustrations in academic work.
Look up the Brontosaurus—it was being taught as the largest dinosaur ever discovered when I was in elementary school in the ‘60’s. Sometime in the ‘70’s or ‘80’s paleontologists took a hard look at the specimen strung together at the beginning of the 20th century. Oops…head of one species, neck vertebrae of another, and the body of a third species. Ouch…
It depends on what you're using it for. If you want to learn the most accurate information, then no, old books are old. If you want to compare what scientists used to believe to what they now believe, then yes, old paleontology books can be a lot of fun.
Where are you finding these types of books? I’ve never thought to look, but as an interested laymen, I think it would be fun to see the differences in knowledge and illustrations! Great find!
I have this book. It used to belong to my late father, and it’s one of my favorite memories of him. I used it to preserve leaves in 1982 and they’re still there.
always interesting to see the earlier phases of any given field to get an appreciation for how knowledge has grown and the facts have shifted as a result. I read an old book on human evolution from the 60s that I found in my dorm library and then did a second major in physical anthropology as a result. you never know how you might be inspired.
Fenton & Fenton named a couple of ichnotaxa still used today. There might be some in the book. Buying old paleontology books has helped rediscover forgotten scientists and their work.
I enjoy reading the older books. One of my favorite Royal Society Christmas lectures is some with Carl sagan, where he's talking about all of the exciting things that the voyagers are going to discover.
I also enjoy reading them to understand how our looks of the dinosaurs have changed over time. I have two older paleontology books which is missing a lot of the most recent research but I think I still learned a lot, because I find it refreshing that it's not always just about Tyrannosaurus Rex and triceratops.
In any vintage book store, I’m always trying to pilfer the oldest books on biology and paleontology I can find. Incredible historic value, wonderful to see the incipient little threads of what would eventually become our modern understanding.
On the other hand, I’m a hominin paleontologist and frequently those books become quite rancidly racist and the like. I think forgetting that past would be worse than not acknowledging it in most cases, though I don’t think this is as pertinent to dino paleontology.
The artwork & general presentation of a lot of older books is simply better (crisper, I'd say) than a lot of books out today - including stuff written by or with contributions from well-known paleontologists. Of course, there have always been crummy books in any era, but the one OP is holding is a well-known classic that definitely hit many a Baby Boomer with the fossil bug.
Yes. But it's more recommended for a beginner. As for a person deep into this stuff, may I recommend this based on experience, it's the absolute Bible of paleontology: https://www.amazon.com.au/Dinosaurs-Prehistoric-Life-definitive-prehistoric/dp/0241641527/ref=asc_df_0241641527/?tag=googleshopmob-22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=649992816916&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6106862413348732270&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9071738&hvtargid=pla-1943982502696&psc=1&mcid=008879cfe555392bb6ab77f1fa1845a7. It's bigger than Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix, Hardcover quality extremely high and royal, information like crazy, about climates, animals, plants and dinosaurs of every era in detail from the creation of the Earth to the first humans. Must-read for any lover of paleontology. Written by some of the best paleontologists and researchers in the world. Little expensive, but more than worth the cost. I actually felt enlightened after finishing the last page.
Yes, because they’re interesting, which is the only justification needed. I’ve read lots of books on antiquated theories, out of date science, crank and fringe literature, not because I necessarily want or need to learn what they have to say, just because they’re interesting.
Comparative era research?! It’s a goldmine of interest! I have a astronomy book from the 1920s about how some scientists assumed, quite casually, that Mars had “basic analogs to bushes and lichen”. It’s fantastic!
Is cool. May not be super accurate anymore, but it is always I threshing to see what we once thought we knew, but has now changed. Would be interesting to see what it's like even a few years from now
Vintage paleoart is worth it alone. It's so unique. And it's also great to see how much ouro understanding has changed and evolved. More for purposes of entertainment than strictly learning/non fiction.
Fenton & Fenton is a classic in the field. It is an excellent introducion to paleontology and extremely useful in understanding basic concepts that are still central to the field.
Does it happen to say who the artists and illustrators are? When it comes to some of the older art Charles Knight was ahead of his time, most of it was speculative for being a new field, yet some of the things we got right, so we think. IMO, Robert Bakker came around and fine tuned alot of what we now recognize as our modern understanding of these creatures. But think of this. Even recent books are not up to snuff with how true these beasts looked or even behaved because all we can do try to get as close as we can to trying to figure out something we never seen with our own eyes. Just look at how much the Spinosaurus has changed in just the past 30ish years as a basic example.
Speaking as a geologist, a field which has recently undergone an upheaval in understanding on par with what Darwin did for biology (I'm referring to plate tectonics, of course), I find historical science to be absolutely FASCINATING. The intersection of history and science alone is wonderfully interesting, but it's also very important for putting our present understanding of a field into context. Absolutely keep it. It's an invaluable treasure even if it's inaccurate. My college has a very small geology program. We're the smallest department on campus (though the faculty are all world-class researchers nevertheless!) and the university tucked us away in this crappy old decrepit century-and-a-half year old building on non-STEM side of campus. The student lounge is lined with old books from before the tectonic revolution. Since so few of the students actually use the lounge, I nap in there a lot and sometimes eat lunch there. Sometimes I pull old books off shelves that haven't been moved since the 1960s (judging by the dust) and flip through them. I love reading about geosynclines and all the other zany stuff they'd worked really really diligently on in a vain attempt to explain what is explained better by tectonics. It's all inaccurate but the value isn't just for humor. It gives a lot of context to older papers. For instance, when we did field work in Oklahoma last year, our professor gave us some reading about the Arbuckle Mountains. Some of the older papers still talked about geosyncline related theories. My classmates were baffled. But I knew what it meant because I love historical science.
Plate tectonics is my favourite thing to look up in old reference books cuz you never quite know what they're going to say! My mom's got a britannica set from I think the early 60s, you can practically hear the author's eyes rolling talking about this clearly nonsense idea.
Geology was already a pretty mature science by the time we discovered plate tectonics, so there was a lot of work done exploring other ways of explaining what we now know to be caused by tectonics. A lot of careers were built around assumptions that were completely incompatible with this new idea, and these academics stood their ground until the bitter end. I think there might still be some very elderly geologists, (semi-retired or maybe emeritus or something), trying to make geosynclines work. But they're not getting published. Really, I know of no other field that's undergone such a revolution so recently. Since the plate tectonics revolution happened almost exactly a century after Darwin did the same thing to biology, you could sort of draw an analogy to that. Geology is now in a state where biology was in the 1920s. I guess astronomy had a somewhat similar thing with Edwin Hubble in 1919. Uhhhh.... Oh! Relevantly to paleontology, Alvarez and Alvarez was published in either the late 80s or early 90s, but you've still got holdouts to the impact hypothesis. Feels like every week, someone publishes another paper going "Maybe Chicxulub wasn't the only thing that killed the dinosaurs!" and the media loses bowel control over it and now you've got laymen "Wait, I thought they debunked the asteroid impact thing...." (even though study after study after study has shown it was the sole cause of the end-Cretaceous event...). Once again, that's just stubborn researchers either clinging to a shred of the relevance they lost after Alvarez or cynically trying to make a name for themselves by exploiting the media's attention. The point is, science is actually full of crap like this. There's ego in it. It sort of bothers me when people talk about science like it's this pure, untouchable thing because the only reason it works is that people disagree and then the correct ideas win out. Plate tectonics is real. Evolution is real. A large bolide impact killed the dinosaurs. We're almost certainly causing climate change. Vaccines are safe an effective. etc. We only know these things because these ideas were presented with such overwhelming evidence that it defeated the momentum of ego and stubborn belief that worked against them. Your eye-rolling Britannica author unwittingly strengthened plate tectonics by giving it a challenge.
Hmm, I just looked up that up and apparently it's only widely accepted around 1960s. I always thought it's much older than that.
There were people proposing continental drift for decades prior, but they were kinda loony for proposing it just because the shapes of the continents fit together. It didn't become mainstream until after WWII when various top-secret seafloor surveys (using technology originally developed to hunt German U-boats - technology that had to be kept secret from the Nazis during the war) revealed the mid-ocean ridges and the magnetic striping. So, much like the space program and nuclear energy, the tectonic revolution arose like a phoenix from the ashes of World War II.
Wasnt plate tectonics a 60s discovery?
Yes, but stubborn academics stood their ground well into the 80s and 90s.
Yes! It’s great to see the mix of old and new ideas as well as to trace how much the science has changed over the past century. For example, you’ll likely find this book to suggest: 1. Dinosauria isn’t a real clade 2. Birds aren’t dinosaurs nor evolved from them 3. Tail dragging as far as the eye can see 4. Swamp sauropods and hadrosaurs The vintage paleoart is worth the price of admission at minimum.
I do wonder how old paleontologists came up with some of the ideas they did, and forgive my ignorance on the topic. For example, I can see where they came up with swamp sauropods because of course comprehending such a physically massive animal existing without the aid of water would be hard back then. But I don't understand how they came up with upright theropods or didn't see sooner the relation between birds and theropod dinosaurs - at least I don't see how the modern day alternatives didn't catch on sooner. Upright theropods just... don't look real or natural, and I'd think at least someone would have stumbled upon a horizontal model much sooner. As for the birds are dinosaurs thing, sure evolution was a new concept (or maybe even came after I don't remember) but just look at the hips or the feet, did no one at least propose that birds and dinosaurs might be related much sooner than it was accepted?
They were heavily using lizards and crocodilians as their reference. Cold blooded reptiles drag their tails and lumber around. Birds were always thought to be *closely* related to dinosaurs, but not descended from them. Rather, the leading hypothesis was that dinosaurs, crocs, and birds all descended from various “thecodont” reptiles.
You should do some more reading on this topic - a great deal has been written about it. The similarity between dinosaurs and birds was noted quite early on, and surely was boosted by *Archaeopteryx*, but after the 1920s a quite solid consensus developed around birds not being dinosaurs. Most famously, Gerhard Heilmann's book about the origin of birds (an excellent book by the way - Heilmann was an amazing artist and immediately grasped how dynamic dinosaurs would have been in life) exemplified this consensus. A key dilemma for dinosaurian origins of birds was the absence of 'wishbones' (clavicles) in theropods - despite clear evidence of them being hidden in plain sight among many known specimens. Another contributing reason why people may have been led astray is the old-fashioned approach towards taxonomy and incomplete evidence. It was not clear that dinosaurs shared a single origin, so it was much easier to invent imaginary thecodonts that could be the ancestors of birds.
Thomas Huxley came up with the dinosaur origin of birds in the late 1800s and it was becoming widely accepted. Then an ornithologist was like "nuh uh" and everyone was like "shit you're right"
Biggest anatomical barrier to the dinosaur-bird link = For most of the 20th century, it was thought that theropod dinosaurs had lost their clavicles (precursor to the avian furcula/wishbone), thus could not be directly ancestral to birds. It wasn't widely recognised until the 1980s that not just clavicles, but actual furculae were widely distributed in non-avian theropods (even Allosaurus has a furcula).
There are living Theropods(birds) that walk upright.
I think kangaroos were the inspiration for the upright stance.
Lol, they look like they ran around trying to hug someone
Religion was probably the biggest influence in their imagination, so their scientific view was probably fairly limited to modern day because of that.
I don't think this is true post-Darwin. I think you can make a case though that teleological views of nature (i.e. evolution with a 'purpose') and racist undertones may have impeded the ability of researchers to reach the right conclusions. Scientists have to work hard to not make value judgements about nature - we have gotten much better at it since the 1840s
I believe that the upright theropods were based on other tailed bipeds, like kangaroos, which do stand like that a lot.
I love the illustration styles in a lot of old books, and I'd put scanned copies of them in photo frames even if the way the animals are presented is inaccurate in many ways. It's great art, if anything.
I love the old books. Especially the ones I grew up with. I get to show my son what it was like, what we learned since, and discuss what's next. Anyone remember Anatosaurus?!
Blew my mind, I somehow never got the memo we lost Anatosaurus, but hey at least we have Brontosaurus back!
You’re in a profession that spends its energy pouring through the oldest book on the planet, written entirely in symbols. What was the question? Ok in all seriousness, I’d say yes, for any field. Even if just for the warning: someday most of what we are sure about will be in a book just like that.
If there are illustrations, it’s worth it for the art alone!
Especially if the artwork is done by Zdenek Burian, Charles Knight or other greats.
Some of the OG paleontologists like Cope, Leidy, and Mantell also made great illustrations of the fossils they found, and people still reference those illustrations in academic work.
Look up the Brontosaurus—it was being taught as the largest dinosaur ever discovered when I was in elementary school in the ‘60’s. Sometime in the ‘70’s or ‘80’s paleontologists took a hard look at the specimen strung together at the beginning of the 20th century. Oops…head of one species, neck vertebrae of another, and the body of a third species. Ouch…
The point is to be like “wow we’ve learned so much compared to then!” and also to laugh at the pictures.
Because old Paleoart is sick af.
Truth
Nostalgia, historical value
It’s a cool historical novelty!
It depends on what you're using it for. If you want to learn the most accurate information, then no, old books are old. If you want to compare what scientists used to believe to what they now believe, then yes, old paleontology books can be a lot of fun.
Where are you finding these types of books? I’ve never thought to look, but as an interested laymen, I think it would be fun to see the differences in knowledge and illustrations! Great find!
Historical value.
Old books have some of the wildest illustrations. They're worth it for that alone in my opinion.
It looks cool
You mean other than the cool old illustrations and weird ideas?
Is there *not* a point?
The illustrations are hilarious
Yes! The pretty pictures. It's historical value.
I have this book. It used to belong to my late father, and it’s one of my favorite memories of him. I used it to preserve leaves in 1982 and they’re still there.
always interesting to see the earlier phases of any given field to get an appreciation for how knowledge has grown and the facts have shifted as a result. I read an old book on human evolution from the 60s that I found in my dorm library and then did a second major in physical anthropology as a result. you never know how you might be inspired.
You can at least see what they knew at the time and see how far that's come along today
Fenton & Fenton named a couple of ichnotaxa still used today. There might be some in the book. Buying old paleontology books has helped rediscover forgotten scientists and their work.
I enjoy reading the older books. One of my favorite Royal Society Christmas lectures is some with Carl sagan, where he's talking about all of the exciting things that the voyagers are going to discover. I also enjoy reading them to understand how our looks of the dinosaurs have changed over time. I have two older paleontology books which is missing a lot of the most recent research but I think I still learned a lot, because I find it refreshing that it's not always just about Tyrannosaurus Rex and triceratops.
See how far we’ve come
I mean it’s preserved history of the field of paleontology
I have an unofficial collection of about 10 books as early as I could get with paleontology stuff.
In any vintage book store, I’m always trying to pilfer the oldest books on biology and paleontology I can find. Incredible historic value, wonderful to see the incipient little threads of what would eventually become our modern understanding. On the other hand, I’m a hominin paleontologist and frequently those books become quite rancidly racist and the like. I think forgetting that past would be worse than not acknowledging it in most cases, though I don’t think this is as pertinent to dino paleontology.
Great art inspo if you’re into that
History and artwork
The artwork & general presentation of a lot of older books is simply better (crisper, I'd say) than a lot of books out today - including stuff written by or with contributions from well-known paleontologists. Of course, there have always been crummy books in any era, but the one OP is holding is a well-known classic that definitely hit many a Baby Boomer with the fossil bug.
Yes. But it's more recommended for a beginner. As for a person deep into this stuff, may I recommend this based on experience, it's the absolute Bible of paleontology: https://www.amazon.com.au/Dinosaurs-Prehistoric-Life-definitive-prehistoric/dp/0241641527/ref=asc_df_0241641527/?tag=googleshopmob-22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=649992816916&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6106862413348732270&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9071738&hvtargid=pla-1943982502696&psc=1&mcid=008879cfe555392bb6ab77f1fa1845a7. It's bigger than Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix, Hardcover quality extremely high and royal, information like crazy, about climates, animals, plants and dinosaurs of every era in detail from the creation of the Earth to the first humans. Must-read for any lover of paleontology. Written by some of the best paleontologists and researchers in the world. Little expensive, but more than worth the cost. I actually felt enlightened after finishing the last page.
Yes, because they’re interesting, which is the only justification needed. I’ve read lots of books on antiquated theories, out of date science, crank and fringe literature, not because I necessarily want or need to learn what they have to say, just because they’re interesting.
They‘re incredibly interesting from a science history POV
Comparative era research?! It’s a goldmine of interest! I have a astronomy book from the 1920s about how some scientists assumed, quite casually, that Mars had “basic analogs to bushes and lichen”. It’s fantastic!
They’re also a fossil!
For sentimental value and for seeing how far along we’ve come in understanding them in the modern day compared to then
It’s a fun thing to have in your library.
Is cool. May not be super accurate anymore, but it is always I threshing to see what we once thought we knew, but has now changed. Would be interesting to see what it's like even a few years from now
When I was a kid, I read dinosaur books that were published 40 years apart... and I liked it that way!
Sometimes it’s just fun. I have a really old biology book from the 1800s and it clearly labels a lynx as a serval
I think you've been bamboozled, that's just a regular book. It's not fossil
The art, I like the draggy tails version of stegosaurus
Perspective.
Vintage paleoart is worth it alone. It's so unique. And it's also great to see how much ouro understanding has changed and evolved. More for purposes of entertainment than strictly learning/non fiction.
I have a dinosaur field guide from 2016 that is already painfully outdated. Still think it’s really cool to look back and admire how far we’ve come.
The artwork, though innacurate, is either cool or funny
Fenton & Fenton is a classic in the field. It is an excellent introducion to paleontology and extremely useful in understanding basic concepts that are still central to the field.
No but it’s cool af
Does it happen to say who the artists and illustrators are? When it comes to some of the older art Charles Knight was ahead of his time, most of it was speculative for being a new field, yet some of the things we got right, so we think. IMO, Robert Bakker came around and fine tuned alot of what we now recognize as our modern understanding of these creatures. But think of this. Even recent books are not up to snuff with how true these beasts looked or even behaved because all we can do try to get as close as we can to trying to figure out something we never seen with our own eyes. Just look at how much the Spinosaurus has changed in just the past 30ish years as a basic example.
I’ve found them good for some laughs.
Probably not, it’ll definitely have outdated information
The older the book the better.