Description:
The dinosaurs are dead; long live the dinosaurs. Extinct for 65 million years, dinosaurs have never been more popular. They have been riding a wave of public interest as their image changes from slow-moving monsters doomed to extinction to fascinating, frightening relatives of birds. In the Presence of Dinosaurs proclaims itself "the culmination of this paleontological paradigm shift"--and it is certainly a stunning sight. Larry Felder's dinosaur paintings have near-photographic realism. The lighting and angles of view are those of the wildlife photographer, not the static diorama. When a Hydrotherosaurus (a close double for the Loch Ness Monster) catches a coelacanth, the line of sight is up the huge neck and apparently through a water-dotted lens. James Gurney, author of Dinotopia, reports: "When I saw the Pterandon courtship picture, I said, 'Yes, of course!'" Parasaurolophus bellowing at sunset, Coelophysis snaring prey as they run from a wildfire, Tricerotops at a waterhole; all the pictures are grippingly realistic and beautiful. The text, by Felder's high school teacher John Colagrande, is also exceptionally vivid. It reads like a naturalist's exploration of a living world, not the catalogue of a museum: "Just as the wet season is winding down, and the rivers are at their highest, female phytosaurs take over the portions of the riverbank closest to the scrub cover of the flood plains as nesting areas." This is indeed "not an account of extinct animals so much as a celebration of life. It is a wildlife book whose subjects include dinosaurs." --Mary Ellen Curtin
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