Shells and Pebbles

Byline: Ilja Nieuwland

  • Not so Jurassic a World as we might prefer

    Not so Jurassic a World as we might prefer

    A big-budget film about dinosaurs will always make the headlines, particularly if it is the follow-up of Steven Spielberg’s wildly successful Jurassic Park, from 1991. Dinosaurs, at least those visible to us on cinema and TV screens, were never the same after that. But not all is well in the land of blockbuster dinosaurs. Paleontologists,…

  • Boo! A peek into the iconography of the rearing dinosaur.

    By Ilja Nieuwland Parisians who visited a newsstand or book store in the spring of 1886 were confronted with the frightening prospect of a dinosaurian intrusion into their sixth-floor apartments. It was introduced to them by a poster that was part of the advertising campaign for French author Camille Flammarion’s new book (and newspaper serial)…

  • Headless chicken

    By Ilja Nieuwland Ever wondered about the picture above? It is a lithographical engraving from 1866 depicting Archaeopteryx – without the head. Initially, I thought that I saw a head there, but apparently there isn’t. You see, this was drawn only five years after the London Archaeopteryx was discovered – which (at least initially) lacked…

  • Newman’s flying bats

    By Ilja Nieuwland From: Edward Newman (1843), “Note on the Pterodactyle Tribe considered as Marsupial Bats”. The Zoologist 1, p. 129. Comment: “The upper figure represents Pterodactylus crassirostris, the lower, Pter. brevirostris”.

  • Amsterdam’s dinosaur population

    Amsterdam’s dinosaur population

    By Ilja Nieuwland Amsterdam may be known for a lot of things, but dinosaurs aren’t usually among them. However, take a walk along the central Plantage Middenlaan in Amsterdam’s Plantage (‘plantation’) district and you will be confronted by two unlikely-looking creatures in the city zoo’s gardens: one is instantly recognizable as Stegosaurus, the other is…

  • Manfred Reichel’s Archaeopteryxes and the origin of feathered dinosaurs

    Manfred Reichel’s Archaeopteryxes and the origin of feathered dinosaurs

    By Ilja Nieuwland While the rest of the world was dedicating way too much time and resources to exterminating one another, Switzerland remained a relatively tranquil spot in 1941 Europe. In that year, the micropaleontologist Manfred Reichel published an article outlining his views on the ‘first bird’, Archaeopteryx lithographica. Reichel’s text but particularly his illustrations…

  • New dinosaurs, old animals

    New dinosaurs, old animals

    Review of: John Conway, C.M. Kosemen & Darren Naish (2012). All Yesterdays. Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals. London: Irregular Books. Price: (Amazon Kindle E-book) or (Printed version via Lulu.com). By Ilja Nieuwland ‘Paleo-art’, or the art of restoring extinct life, has experienced a number of paradigmatic changes during its two-hundred-or-so-years…

  • The evolution of Gerhard Heilmann’s Iguanodons

    The evolution of Gerhard Heilmann’s Iguanodons

    By Ilja Nieuwland The Danish artist-cum-scientist Gerhard Heilmann, who became famous for his book The Origin of Birds, published a little-known, short piece about Iguanodon a few years later, in an issue of Othenio Abel’s journal Palaeobiologica, dedicated to the Belgian paleontologist Louis Dollo. In many ways, this Iguanodon is much more ‘old-fashioned’ than his…