"One thing must be made clear from the start: this is a work of fiction." Having gotten that admission out of the way at the very beginning of his text, paleontologist Gee, a senior editor at the prestigious journal Nature,
goes on to explain that picturing the outsides of dinosaurs known to us only by their bones is inherently an act of imagination, but one based on scientific realities. Did dinosaurs do mating dances? Nobody knows, but many animals do, so perhaps dinos did, too. And since dinosaurs are now believed by many to be the ancestors of birds, it makes sense to imagine them in as wide a range of colors as today's avian species. Each of 56 dinosaur species is presented here through black-and-white sketches of heads and claws and other body parts, and in full-color, full-body paintings that are indeed striking for the range of colors and textures: blues and greens and reds, with speckles and stripes, scales and feathers. Rey, a leading dinosaur artist, pictures his subjects in action, climbing trees, chasing prey, baring their fearsome fangs in habitats ranging from jungle to seaside. At the end of his introduction, Gee returns to the question of veracity—the dinosaurs probably didn't look as pictured here, he admits: "they were far, far stranger." But dinophiles will enjoy this excursion into a vividly illustrated possible past world. (Mar.)
