 First Edition cover. The cover depicts the Cutlasstooth (Caedosaurus gladiadens), a coelurosaur apex predator from South America. | |
| Author | Dougal Dixon |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Speculative evolution |
| Publisher | Grafton (UK) Salem House (US) |
Publication date | 1988 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardback and paperback) |
| Pages | 120 |
| ISBN | 978-0881623017 |
The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution is a 1988 speculative evolution book written by Scottish geologist and palaeontologist Dougal Dixon and illustrated by several illustrators including Amanda Barlow, Peter Barrett, John Butler, Jeane Colville, Anthony Duke, Andy Farmer, Lee Gibbons, Steve Holden, Philip Hood, Martin Knowelden, Sean Milne, Denys Ovenden and Joyce Tuhill.[1] The book also features a foreword by Desmond Morris. The New Dinosaurs explores a hypothetical alternate Earth, complete with animals and ecosystems, where the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event never occurred, leaving non-avian dinosaurs and other Mesozoic animals an additional 65 million years to evolve and adapt over the course of the Cenozoic to the present day.
The New Dinosaurs is Dixon's second work on speculative evolution, following After Man (1981). Like After Man, The New Dinosaurs uses its own fictional setting and hypothetical wildlife to explain natural processes with fictitious examples, in this case the concept of zoogeography and biogeographic realms. It was followed by another speculative evolution work by Dixon in 1990, Man After Man.
Although criticised by some palaeontologists upon its release,[2] several of Dixon's hypothetical dinosaurs bear a coincidental resemblance in both appearance and behaviour to dinosaurs that were discovered after the book's publication. As a general example, many of the fictional dinosaurs are depicted with feathers, something that was not yet widely accepted when the book was written.[3][4]
- ^ Dixon, Dougal (1988). The New Dinosaurs. Salem House. ISBN 978-0881623017.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
:1was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Naish, Darren. "Of After Man, The New Dinosaurs and Greenworld: an interview with Dougal Dixon". Scientific American Blog Network. Archived from the original on 2018-07-28. Retrieved 2018-09-21.
- ^ Black, Riley (10 August 2011). ""Alternative Evolution" of Dinosaurs Foresaw Contemporary Paleo Finds [Slide Show]". Scientific American. Retrieved 2022-10-24.