Dinosaurs are Collectible: Digging for Dinosaurs: the Art, the Science

by Thijs Demeulemeester, Koen Stein

A fascinating exploration of the art of collecting dinosaur-related prints and objects
These days, collectors are in the grip of a fossil-collecting frenzy. Dinosaur skeletons, eggs, bones and other fossils are selling fast on the art market. How do you start a fossil collection? Why are dinosaur finds so popular? And why does a T. rex cost as much as a Picasso?
In Dinosaurs Are Collectible, we dig up stories about the most sensational dinosaur finds. You'll also read about a dandy fur-coated fossil hunter, Charles Dickens's dinosaur novels, and stylish dining in an Iguanodon.
Dinosaur mania has fired the fancy of film directors and artists, too, bringing dinosaurs back to life on screen and canvas. But could the Jurassic Park scenario ever really happen? Could we reincarnate prehistoric monsters using dinosaur DNA?
Dinosaurs Are Collectible explores it, to the bone.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science

176 pages, Hardcover

Published July 12, 2022

Reviews

[Frederike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dinosaurs are collectible, anders dan je misschien zou vermoeden als je kijkt naar de boek- en hoofdstuktitels, is een Nederlandstalig boek over alles dino, in korte subsubhoofdstukjes en met veel beeldmateriaal wat het onderhoudend en toegankelijk maakt, maar weinig memorabel

[Yoeri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decided to finish this.
Will be counted in my reading challenge but it's more a collection of small facts and some history so I don't fully agree.
Anyway.
Some facts, some history and some interesting pictures/paleoart make this book a nice introduction for people ignorant about the subject.
For me it's more a collectible because I like how it looks and feels.

[Daniel Farrelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good but could be better. I enjoyed it. I kind of wish that, instead of one book, each chapter had been made into its own book with more detailed information. Stuff is given a really basic overview when I would have liked it explored more. But I did enjoy it, and got a few more book recommendations from it.

Chapter 1 - collecting dinosaurs
Best chapter, tho kind of an odd place to start. Lots of cool info on recent dinosaur auctions from within the last couple years, like from 2021. Really enjoyed it, tho I noticed some weird typos/phrasing that made a couple paragraphs really hard to understand.

Chapter 2 - digging for dinosaurs
Starts off bad and then gets better. It should have been the first. It takes a step back to explain what a dinosaur is, how taxonomy works, really basic stuff that should have all been cut out. It transitions to a history of dinosaur discoveries and palaeontology which I really enjoyed.

Chapter 3 - finding dinosaurs.
Complete nothing burger of a chapter. It's like 15 pages long with like 10 pages of photos.

Chapter 4 - dinosaurs & art
Was really looking forward to this chapter in particular. It was mostly really good, but a few times they described art pieces without having a picture of them? Or they'd refer to a book with really vague terms ("harper Collins published a great book about paleo art in 2015". Ok, what's the fucking title so I can look up that book).

Chapter 5 - dinosaurs of the future
Mostly just a bunch of fluff about Jurassic park and reviving dinosaurs. But it gets better as it goes. I wish it went into even more detail about 3d printing and stuff, but what was here was good.

[Brandy Cross · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was actually quite a bit disappointed by this book because it advertises itself as research into the industry of modern (private) collectors who flood auction houses and somehow manage to keep a constant stream of museum-quality fossils on sites like catawiki and eBay. Instead it's primarily a (somewhat lazy) rehashing of the history of paleontology with some other information thrown on top - which for the most part you'd be better off getting from one of the many actual paleontologist authors who have done their own histories of paleontology (Michael J. Benton's When Life Nearly Died comes to mind as one of the better that I've read). However, there is quite a bit interesting here about pop culture and indeed some of what I bought the book for, it's just by no means the focus of the book.

[Kass · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short read due to the numerous photographs and paintings in the book. It was very interesting to read about who discovered the first fossils, how the naming process came to be, and how the methods used to excavate fossils have remained mostly unchanged for the past 150 years.

The book also touches upon the ethics of fossil collecting, and how to hunt for dinosaurs yourself.

There is also a mention of dinosaurs in popular fiction, and how our views have changed as we learn more about their real life counterparts.

At the end of the book is a recommended reading list, which I will be checking out.

[nDurlie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ik had meer anekdoten verwacht rond de dinomanie, de concurentiestrijd en ook meer hun weergave in de popcultuur, film, series, (kinder)boeken, ...

Het boek bevat mooie afbeeldingen en zit erg mooi in elkaar, toch is het jammer dat dit boek toch ook veel foto's, skeleten en kunstwerken omschrijft, zonder ze in beeld te brengen. Ik lees boeken net om even niét voor een scherm te moeten zitten. Ik had het gevoel dat ik er steeds mijn gsm moest bijnemen om een afbeelding te zoeken van het kunstwerk dat bij de tekst in het boek hoorde. Heb ik niet gedaan, maar ben er bij die pagina's niet echt wijs uit geraakt.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like the idea of the book and I read the English translation. I think a lot was lost in translation but overall the red string was missing either way.
I was missing a lot of the quirkier fun facts especially since the book was written by palaeontologist.
The biggest no goes was naming reptiles like Pterodactyls or Ichtyosaurs dinosaurs, again they're dinosaurs, and featuring ex-professors that have been convicted for sexual abuse is INSANE.
Let's just leave it as that