Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Warm-Blooded Dinosaurs

It's a rare entry in this series that lives at the bleeding edge of research. It's unheard of, frankly. Some books we feature seem to be tossed together affairs with art by illustrators who, for all of their talents, aren't given the time or budget to create faithful paleontographical reconstructions. Or they hearken back to the era when dinosaurs were seen as stupid, maladapted brutes. Today's title, The Warm-Blooded Dinosaurs, was published in 1979, just as the Dinosaur Revolution ushered in by Ostrom and Bakker was gaining a footing in the popular imagination. Lorence F. Bjorklund's illustrations of fleet-footed, furry dinosaurs are an anomaly in popular dinosaur books.


There are only a few images from the book online, but they offer a mighty tantalizing glimpse. Take this illustration from the title page in which more ornithomimosaurs are joined by what I presume to be hopping hypsilophodonts.

The book is a direct distillation of Bakker's ideas to young readers, well before the publication of The Dinosaur Heresies, brought the full force of his vision of endothermic, highly active dinosaurs to the public - as well as teaching the teenage me exciting words like "torpor." Here, an iguanodont illustrates the buzzkill that is a torpid state, slumped over on its side like my Cairn terrier, Gregory, after a long walk.

Trish Arnold's bestie, Syntarsus, makes an appearance as well. Inspired by Sarah Landry's restoration of the little theropod - which was likely a species of the Triassic Coelophysis, it's depicted here with the trademark coiffure.

Excellent stuff, and yet another book I'd love to get my mitts on. Once again, thanks to Terry Thielen for sharing these with the Vintage Dinosaur Art Flickr pool.