Follow TV Tropes

Following

Context Literature / AllYesterdays

Go To

1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/All-Yesterdays-cover-Conway-Kosemen-Naish-Hartman-Dec-2012-Darren-Naish-Tetrapod-Zoology-350-px-tiny_4516.jpg]]
2[[caption-width-right:350:So who do we call? The Natural History Museum or the [[CatUpATree Fire Department]]?]]
3->''What if my bones were in a museum\
4Where aliens paid good money to see 'em?\
5And suppose that they'd put me together all wrong\
6Sticking bones on to bones where they didn't belong!''
7-->--[[ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes Bill Watterson]]
8
9''All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals'' is a 2012 book, written by paleontologist Darren Naish and artists John Conway and C. M. "Nemo Ramjet" Kosemen. The latter two also illustrated the book.
10
11The premise of the book is that, while we can be sure of some aspects of dinosaur anatomy and behavior, a significant amount of morphological and behavioral characteristics are forever lost to time. As such, artists seeking to reconstruct extinct animals should not be afraid to [[SpeculativeBiology speculate]], even speculate wildly, about certain aspects regarding the life appearance and behavior of extinct species. In the case of ''All Yesterdays'', the end results of this speculation are over 60 illustrations of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals looking and doing things that, while they may appear very unusual compared to how these animals are normally depicted, are fully in keeping with what is known about them, and what is known about modern animals as well. For example, the cover image depicts the dinosaur, ''Protoceratops'', climbing trees. ''Protoceratops'' does not have any anatomical specialties that suggest a tree climbing lifestyle. However, the same is also true of goats, but that [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gAReb8u5EQ doesn’t stop them from doing it anyway.]]
12
13After treating the viewer to many bizarre images of extinct animals, the book then indulges in a bit of fun speculation regarding living species. It imagines a scenario in which non-human, non-mammalian paleontologists of a distant future uncover the scrappy, fossilized remains of modern animals. These paleontologists then try to imagine what many familiar animals would look like when alive, using many of the same methodologies used by scientists and artists today. The result is a series of utterly weird, sometimes scary depictions of animals like [[http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/1879lxf52t8asjpg/original.jpg cats]], [[http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/1879lx9813lz6jpg/original.jpg cows]], [[http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/1879lx982yxmojpg/original.jpg baboons]] and [[https://twitter.com/JayAlver/status/952645783274381312 swans]].
14
15Overall, the book attempts to make the reader think about how and why we reconstruct extinct animals the way we do. It is a mix of what is known, what is unknown, and what can never be known (barring the unforeseen invention of time travel).
16
17A free digital sequel, ''All Your Yesterdays'', is [[http://irregularbooks.art/all-your-yesterdays-download available]], compiled from entries received by the authors as submissions for an ''All Yesterdays'' style contest they held in early 2013.
18
19[[SimilarlyNamedWorks Not to be confused]] with a novel ''Literature/AllOurYesterdays'', nor with the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS3E23AllOurYesterdays All Our Yesterdays]]" of ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries''.
20----
21!!This book provides examples of:
22* AnimalStereotypes: The book explains how artists unconsciously assign roles to certain species by depicting them a certain way. It then goes on to subvert these roles. For example, ''Hypsilophodon'', normally portrayed as an innocent herbivore, is shown eating a millipede.
23* AnimalJingoism: Deconstructed. ''Allosaurus'' and ''Camptosaurus'' are shown standing right next to each other with no animosity whatsoever.
24* AnimalsLackAttributes: Averted. In keeping with the reality of some species, both ''Stegosaurus'' and ''Citipati'' are depicted with gigantic genitalia.
25* AquaticSauropods: Discussed and tentatively reconstructed. The book points out how most palaeo art has very hard in the opposite direction from this trope... but there's no reason sauropods ''couldn't'' take a dip now and then, and argues that they would be perfectly adept swimmers.
26* ArtisticLicensePaleontology: Played with. On one hand, one of the authors is a paleontologist, and every reconstruction is consistent with all the known evidence about the animals in question. On the other hand, the reconstructions are all incredibly and unashamedly speculative regarding both life appearance and behavior. As the authors point out, these speculations are based on widespread characteristics of real animals that wouldn't/couldn't leave any fossil evidence. You could argue that the book is supposed to make the paleontologists of today cry, but also to inspire the paleontologists of tomorrow.
27-->'''[[http://blogs.plos.org/paleo/2012/12/28/book-review-all-yesterdays/ Andrew Farke]]''': One second I’d be thinking “What? There’s not evidence for that!” The next I’d be thinking, “Hmm... it’s not in the fossil record, but it’s certainly plausible.” Both of these thoughts on the same illustration, of course! I haven’t had this much fun reading a paleontology book in years.
28* AscendedToCarnivorism: The above mentioned case where the herbivorous ''Hypsilophodon'' munches on a millipede.
29* BigCreepyCrawlies: A centipede catches an anurognathid pterosaur, inspired by giant modern centipedes that prey on bats.
30* BlackComedyRape: The ''Stegosaurus'' illustration, showing a frustrated male ''Stegosaurus'' trying to mount a very unwilling (and very baffled) ''Haplocanthosaurus''.
31* BladeBelowTheShoulder: A biological variation; swans are shown as featherless hunters that catch their prey by stabbing them with their long and pointy forearms.
32* ChameleonCamouflage: The ''Majungasaurus'' and plesiosaur are both depicted with excellent camouflage abilities.
33* CreepyCentipedes: The aforementioned image of a giant centipede eating a small pterosaur.
34* EntertaininglyWrong: Some of the hypothetical future reconstructions of modern animals have descriptions that dismiss how they actually look. The iguana has fur because they assumed all rat-sized vertebrates did; they say there's no evidence for elephants having long facial extensions; and they assume all python fossils are incomplete because they don't have legs.
35* FutureImperfect: The future paleontologists' speculations tend to be... a little wide of the mark. Every single one has no body fat, being tight muscles over bones and often so thin you can count their ribs, none of them have fur, feathers, or any organs that wouldn't be preserved in skeletons (except, ironically, the iguana), and every interpretation of their lifestyle makes them out to be brutal predators. Cats hunted humans with their deadly switchblade claws, swans used their pointed arms to impale prey, baboons had grooves in their teeth to inject venom...
36* IAmBigBoned: For the ''Ouranosaurus'' with the fatty hump instead of a sail, the title reads, "''Ouranosaurus''...is not fat - it's the sail!"
37* InterspeciesRomance: In the section on sexual oddities, the authors describe the fateful meeting of a very, uh, frustrated ''Stegosaurus'' and a very surprised ''Haplocanthosaurus''.
38* ManiacMonkeys: How spider monkeys and baboons are interpreted by hypothetical future paleontologists. (Technically, they interpret monkeys as species of humans.)
39* MistakenForBadass: Many of the restorations of modern animals. House cats are interpreted as being predators of humans (due to their fossils being commonly found in human dwellings), hummingbirds suck blood, spider monkeys are stealthy predators, baboons are venomous, hippos eat cars (which the future paleontologists apparently think are a kind of animal) and bowhead whales specialize in prey their own size.
40* PrehistoricMonster: The book sets out to deconstruct the concept of the prehistoric monster and demystify the past. It decries the image of predators depicted in unending death struggles perpetually shrieking, and instead tries to portray them as actual animals with all the unusual anatomy and behavior that that entails. The "future paleontology" segment at the end parodies this trope, with modern animals reconstructed as prehistoric monsters, completed with lurid descriptions.
41* RaptorAttack:
42** Averted. One of the most infamous memes in paleoart is to see the herbivore, ''Tenontosaurus'', being attacked by a pack of usually-featherless raptor dinosaurs - ''Deinonychus''. The meme is so pervasive that it soon feels like ''Tenontosaurus'' exists for no other reason than to be ripped apart by the vicious raptors. The book averts this by showing a ''Tenontosaurus'' walking alone without a single ''Deinonychus'' in sight, explaining in the text why it's important for artists to be aware of cliches like this.
43** Another aversion is the naturalistic depiction of ''Microraptor'', rather than the strange draconic lizard-bird hybrid creature it is often shown as.
44** Spoofed in the section on hypothetical future reconstructions, where housecats are said to have been vicious, pack-hunting predators that preyed on humans and had five switchblade claws on each forefoot.
45* RidiculouslyCuteCritter:
46** [[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vcoBhVWcAXs/ULGkMMfVlwI/AAAAAAAAATI/zZtP51ptxho/s400/ay_leaellynasaura.jpg These]] poofy ''Leaellynasaura'' are much cuter than [[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Leaellynasaura_BW.jpg the traditional depiction.]] The beautifully bird-like ''Microraptors'' too.
47** Any maniraptoran chick, but especially the duckling-inspired baby ''Australoraptor''.
48* ShoutOut:
49** The speculative elephant reconstruction brings to mind [[https://web.archive.org/web/20140821124139/http://www.moneyandshit.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/if_elephants_had_no_trunks_and_ears.jpg this]] online comic.
50** The ''Opisthocoelicaudia'' in a swamp is done in a similar style and atmosphere to Rudolph Zallinger's work, particularly his mural at the Peabody Museum of Natural History.
51** The title itself is a ShoutOut to Kosemen's earlier work, ''Literature/AllTomorrows'', a speculative history of evolution of mankind in the future.
52* ShownTheirWork: Not surprising, considering that one of the authors is Darren Naish, who is not only the author of ''Blog/TetrapodZoology'', but would eventually get to work on ''Series/PrehistoricPlanet''. The skeletal reconstructions are done by the very talented Scott Hartman.
53* SpeculativeDocumentary: No matter how rigorous the science is, any book/movie/TV show/etc. that attempts to reconstruct extinct animals is this on some level. ''All Yesterdays'' is unique in the fact that, instead of shying away from this fact, it runs wild with it, diverging wildly from many traditional depictions of extinct creatures while remaining as accurate as possible.
54* StarfishAliens: The future paleontologists. We don't know what they look like, but they're not mammals and given how shaky their grasp of skeletal structure is, they're probably not even chordates.
55* StockAnimalBehavior: This book sets out to avert this. On the other hand, it also points out that certain stock behaviors now thought to be unlikely can still be made plausible under particular circumstances. Just because sauropods in general were not adapted to living in swamps, for instance, doesn't mean no sauropod ever hung around in swamps at least some of the time, and one illustration depicts the sauropod ''Opisthocoelicaudia'' wandering in a swamp reminiscent of a Rudolph Zallinger painting to make this point.
56* TakeThat:
57** A lot of the restorations can be interpreted as {{Take That}}s to paleoart memes and unrealistic portrayals of prehistoric animals.

Top