THE OTHER ZALLINGER

["Darren Naish" <dwn194@soton.ac.uk>]

Over the weekend I got hold of my copy of Peter Dodson's new book, _An Alphabet
of Dinosaurs_ (1997, Collins Childrens Books ISBN 0-00-197903-5). It's a kid's
book with only brief snippets of text designed for the 8-12s, but it features
26 full colour pieces by Wayne D. Barlowe. One dinosaur for each letter. 

Barlowe seems fond of putting the dinosaurs into superb background settings.
Blue nighttime iguanodonts walk away from a low-gradient fiery eruption, pink
fighting deinonychi are backlit by an enormous red ash cloud, lit by a sunset,
and two adult _Janeschia_, high in the shady mountains with their just-hatching
brood, contrast with the rainbow in the sunny valley beneath. He is also good
at juxtaposing the dinosaurs with other animals (a _Lesothosaurus_ peers at a
giant black scorpion, a baby _Leptoceratops_ meets its first trionychid turtle
at a woodland glade). My favourite piece is a lucky green and yellow surf-side
_Xenotarsosaurus_ who has chanced upon the bloated carcass of a beached
elasmosaur. Yummy. The xenotarsosaur has been given little mononykid-like
forelimbs! Ahh, giant marine reptiles and ceratosaurs - what more could I ask
for? (my mate Steve White did a giant beached ichthyosaur being scavenged by a
_Dilophosaurus_ pair and a bunch of little coelophysids).

Get hold of this book if you are a dino-art fan, I really do recommend it.
Anyway, I find that some of Barlowe's work reminds of paintings I have seen
long, long ago in a library far, far away: I don't remember who the book was by,
or what it was called, but the art was by a Zallinger. Not, of course, the great
Rudolph Zallinger, whose work we all know from the Peabody murals. This other
Zallinger's dinosaurs were svelte and slim with long, spindly legs. They were
mostly patterned in green and yellow. I recall pages on pterosaurs (with
rhamphorhynchoids flying right at you, jaws agape [faithfully copied in Dorling
Kindersley's _Dinosaur Atlas_]), Cretaceous birds (_Hesperornis_ and
_Ichthyornis_) and Recent/extant flightless birds. Does anyone know anything
about this book, and, if so, the relevant details. Thanks in advance for any
help.

I thought The Relic was great. Maybe inspired by a gorgonopsian? 

"What's for today?"
"_Rhinoceros megarhinus_"
"You're making rhino soup?"

There is, of course, no such thing as a _Rhinoceros megarhinus_. Or a _Panthera
tigris brazilae_ needless to say.

DARREN NAISH