Subscription Center
November 23, 2012
| 
28
Darren Naish is a science writer, technical editor and palaeozoologist (affiliated with the University of Southampton, UK). He mostly works on Cretaceous dinosaurs and pterosaurs but has an avid interest in all things tetrapod. His publications can be downloaded at darrennaish.wordpress.com. He has been blogging at Tetrapod Zoology since 2006. Check out the Tet Zoo podcast at tetzoo.com!
Darren Naish is a science writer, technical editor and palaeozoologist (affiliated with the University of Southampton, UK). He mostly works on Cretaceous dinosaurs and pterosaurs but has an avid interest in all things tetrapod. His publications can be downloaded at darrennaish.wordpress.com. He has been blogging at Tetrapod Zoology since 2006. Check out the Tet Zoo podcast at tetzoo.com!
Some of you will know already that John Conway, C. M. Kosemen and myself recently completed writing and illustrating our new book All Yesterdays, due out in early December (both in hardcopy, and as an e-book for Kindle, iBookstore, Nook, and Google Play). Skeletal reconstructions by the excellent Scott Hartman of SkeletalDrawing.com also feature in the volume.
All Yesterdays grew out of the idea that there are many things – anatomical, behavioural and ecological – that we’ll just never know about long-extinct animals. In view of this – and in view of the bizarre and often incredible anatomies, behaviours and ecological interactions present in the modern world – how far can we go in imagining things that are ridiculous, bizarre and outlandish yet still plausible? And, yes, it all started when John and Memo decided to start depicting fossil animals in freaky and counter-intuitive ways: long-time Tet Zoo readers might recall mention of some of the art concerned in meeting reports I’ve published over the years.
In due time, I’ll be discussing the book at length here on Tet Zoo. For now, I just want to advertise the launch event we’re hosting at Conway Hall (Red Lion Square, London) on Friday December 7th. Yeah yeah, Conway Hall; no coincidence. Kidding… it’s a coincidence. Doors open at 6.30pm and talks start at 7pm. We’ll be speaking about the book (and about palaeoart and the science and speculation involved), and selling and signing copies too. Tickets are £5.00 each (the price includes a drink) and can be booked online here. The online booking site gives the book title as All Yesterdays: Speculation & Science at the Frontiers of Reconstructing Extinct Animals, whereas the actual title we’ve gone for is All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals.
Anyway, please do come along if you can. I look forward to seeing some of you there!
If you like this sort of thing, be sure to check out…
About the Author: Darren Naish is a science writer, technical editor and palaeozoologist (affiliated with the University of Southampton, UK). He mostly works on Cretaceous dinosaurs and pterosaurs but has an avid interest in all things tetrapod. His publications can be downloaded at darrennaish.wordpress.com. He has been blogging at Tetrapod Zoology since 2006. Check out the Tet Zoo podcast at tetzoo.com!
Rights & Permissions
28 Comments
Add a Comment
You must sign in or register as a ScientificAmerican.com member to submit a comment.
Click one of the buttons below to register using an existing Social Account.
What's So Hard about Research?![Figure 1. Plot of the locations of the languages in the sample. Dark circles represent languages with ejectives, clear circles represent those without ejectives. Clusters of languages with ejectives are highlighted with white rectangles. For illustrative purposes only. Inset: Lat-long plot of polygons exceeding 1500 m in elevation. Adapted from Figure 4 in [8]. The six major inhabitable areas of high elevation are highlighted via ellipses: (1) North American cordillera (2) Andes (3) Southern African plateau (4) East African rift (5) Caucasus and Javakheti plateau (6) Tibetan plateau and adjacent regions. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0065275.g001](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/wp-content/blogs.dir/8/files/2013/06/journal.pone_.0065275.g0011.png "journal.pone.0065275.g001")
Can Geography Shape the Way We Speak?
Bush-crow diaries: The African night
More Than Honey: A New Documentary Offers Spectacular Close-Ups of Bees Mid-Flight and Perspective on the Worldwide Honey Bee Crisis
Gathering Emotional Intelligence: My Review of Animal Wise
Introducing: Sedeer el-Showk
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
Share
Email
Print
See what we're tweeting about
I’m curious as to how those of us overseas can obtain a signed copy!
Link to this“In due time, I’ll be discussing the book at length here on Tet Zoo.”
Looking forward to it. In the mean time, I was hoping you would answer the following 2 questions about it. Many thanks in advance.
Will the hardcopy be available on Amazon too? I’ve only seen the e-book listed on Amazon.
Will it be for casual readers or enthusiasts ( http://whenpigsfly-returns.blogspot.com/2008/04/paleo-reading-list.html )? I’ll get it either way, but I like to keep track of which books in my collection are which.
Link to thisJose D,
The book has a pretty accessible language and is very image-rich. If we are talking about little-known terms or animals, we always walk the reader through the concepts first.
I’d say both casual readers and enthusiasts can derive equal ammounts of pleasure from ir…
Link to thisTalking of coincidence (or not), isn’t the Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, where the dinosaur collector events used to be in the 1990′s?
Link to thisMark – yes, it is. I’ve actually been to numerous events (and given several talks) there over the years. Most recently, it’s where we held the CFI ‘sea monster’ day.
Darren
Link to thisI don’t like to simply add “oh, yeah” posts, as you noticed
But I also believe that many smaller herbivorous dinosaurs climbed trees, but their climbing adaptations are not obvious or overlooked.
Link to thisThis looks excellent! I’ve pondered the issue of outlandish soft anatomy many times.
Link to this…
*blink*
…The plagiosaur has become man. Too bad it lost its gill slits in the process.
how far can we go in imaging things that are ridiculous, bizarre and outlandish
Do you mean “imagining”? Or both?
Link to thisOops, typo. Thanks, David,
And that ain’t no plagiosaur… (nice guess though).
Darren
Link to thisI also wonder about this thing. H.floresiensis was supposed to have breasts so long as wrapping over the shoulder, but spiny breasts? Some amphibian tadpole? Or an unknown race of sapient labirynthodons (maybe related to Capek’s War with the Newts) which left no trace because of gaps in fossil record?
Link to thisAh well, I guess you’ll just have to buy the book
Darren
Link to this@ JoseD Yes there will be a physical version, which will be available before the launch date on Lulu, and at some time after that on Amazon (Amazon does not let you know how long these thing take, hence the eBook being out much earlier than we expected.)
Link to thisMany thanks to both Kosemen & Conway for getting back to me.
Link to thisJerzy: Any non-human civilization of the past would be very likely to be missing from the fossil record, because any truly intelligent beings would practice obligatory postmortem cannibalism to avoid wasting resources. And they would fully recycle all objects of their material culture, or make it biodegradable.
Link to thisI think this is human-toad hybrid which one sees in a vision after licking a poisonous toad
No, actually I read the review on Amazon and have an idea.
Link to thisI won’t spoil the beans entirely, but let me say it is supposed to be an amphibian that witnessed a catastrophic flood in the guise of a human and has been restored in that fashion. Also, its last name is German but it’s not its family name.
Link to this16 > Ah. Neat.
Link to this@BrianL
Link to thisAnd there is an obscenity in the name?
…wrong, I mixed my fossils.
Link to thisI won’t spoil the beans entirely, but let me say it is supposed to be an amphibian that witnessed a catastrophic flood in the guise of a human and has been restored in that fashion. Also, its last name is German but it’s not its family name.
That’s the other obvious option, but doesn’t it have too many osteoderms for that…?
Link to thisThey’re not osteoderms. They’re just soft tissue… things.
Darren
Link to thisPssst.. not to sound rude, but can I re-ask – will there be signed copies of the book made available after the talk? I’d really like one signed by the three of you.. but live in the Antipodes..
Link to thisAmazon’s preview does not have a table of contents and I am apt to purchase…
Link to thisFinback – I’m not sure how to work this out (since mailing books costs a fortune) but I’ll remind my co-authors and we’ll sort something out.
More info about the book as soon as I can find the time.
Darren
Link to thisWhen will a physical copy (either paper back or hard back) be available for purchase?
Link to thisDarren – my only suggestion offhand might be to just keep a few signed copies, and people could paypal you the shipping cost?
Link to thisHow many congratulations have you gotten for being chosen as one of National Public Radio’s top science fiction and fantasy books? That’s high praise indeed.
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/05/166480907/the-years-best-sci-fi-crosses-galaxies-and-genres
Link to thisThanks (smiley). You are the first.
More on the book, and the coverage it’s received, once I get the goddam launch event out of the way…
Darren
Link to this