WHAT'S WRONG? IN DINOSAUR TIMES

An invitation to pick out
anachronistic (or downright daffy) details in nine Mesozoic scenes.

Spotting the odd hat or potted
plant, roller skates, skis, and other zingers that Solis slips into his
moderately crowded cartoon scenes won’t be much of a challenge for most young
dinophiles, as there are only five per spread, two of which are virtually
pointed out with heavy hints delivered by a pair of human tour guides, and
there is a visual key at the end. Perhaps to compensate for setting the bar so
low, the author and illustrator repeatedly don’t play fair—designating the rainbow-crested
Guaibasaurus specimen bogus,
for instance, for the weak reason that “scientists don’t think [its crest] was rainbow
colored,” and slipping a chicken and a duck in among such similarly feathered
predecessors as Bambiraptor, which is even described as “look[ing] like a purple duck or chicken.”
Just to muddy the waters a bit more, each picture also includes an unlikely
element that is actually correct (“Omeisaurus had a neck which was four
times longer than its body”), and the introductory comments include a claim
that “Earth was a scorching hot, dry desert when dinosaurs first appeared,” which
is both overly general about our planet’s land masses and ignores the oceans.
One of the tour guides presents Asian and the other white.