History Literature / TheNewDinosaursAnAlternativeEvolution

* AustralianWildlife: The lifeforms of Australia (and the rest of Oceania) are weird, even by this world's standards. They include pelican dinosaurs, kangaroo dinosaurs, flamingo dinosaurs, koala dinosaurs (you can probably see where we're going with this), and highly venomous, lizard-like dinosaurs.

* AlternateHistory

** The book's pterosaurs are among the '''worst''' to ever appear anywhere (even for their time, they were bad), it seems that Dougal basically just said "[[TheyJustDidntCare screw it]]" and gave the pterosaurs any features he thought were [[RuleOfCool cool]], but couldn't be given to dinosaurs. American paleontologist Greg Paul [[http://gspauldino.com/Tertiary.pdf even called him out on this]].

* KrakenAndLeviathan: The [[http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Dixon_2/09_en.htm Kraken]] is portrayed as a gigantic-sized descendant of Ammonites with a large shell that is usually seen from the water surface, often serving as a perching spot for bird and pterosaurs. While it doesn't target human ships, it's still a free-drifting predator that uses its long, skinny tentacles as a trap for anything it can eat, from microscopic food particles to fishes and even plesiosaurs.

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Similar to Dougal's other work, Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture.

A 1988 book, written by Scottish geologist Creator/DougalDixon about what life on world [[AlternateHistory would be like if]] the meteor that killed the dinosaurs didn't hit the Earth. The book is a SpiritualSuccessor to Dougal's previous Speculative Biology book, Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture, and is presented in a very similar way. However, similar to his previous book, it suffers badly from [[ScienceMarchesOn the progress of science]]; its dinosaurs and other creatures more [[ArtisticLicensePaleontology fanciful than realistic]] nowadays (even back in the day they weren't the most accurate dinosaurs). Even so, its illustrations and descriptions are very good, depicting these nonexistent animals as if they were real.

* ScienceMarchesOn:
** Even at the time, some of the depictions of dinosaurs were sketchy at best, but nowadays they are all completely outdated.
** There's also the issue of [[http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Dixon_2/01/p0012.jpg Dixon's]] [[http://www.sivatherium.narod.ru/library/Dixon_2/01/p0014.jpg cladograms]] being rather out of date, even for their time (things like the coelurosaur-carnosaur dichotomy of theropod classification and pachycephalosaurs as ornithopods had been disproven by then).
** Dixon mentions the stegosaur family as casualties of the most recent Ice Age; in reality stegosaurs are now believed to have died off in the Early Cretaceous, well before the end of the Mesozoic era, and the supposed Late Cretaceous stegosaurs have been discredited.
** On the bright side it was one of the first media to depict dinosaurs with filamentous integumentary structures (because at the time adding covering to dinosaurs was highly controversial, but being speculative, this book didn't need to worry about such things), unfortunately they call it fur.
** Oddly enough, some of the concepts originally thought to be implausible or ridiculous at the time of the book's publication have been partially supported by later paleontological finds- including long-legged running pterosaurs, insularly dwarfed dinosaurs, and even brightly-coloured tree-climbing theropods.

** Dixon mentions the stegosaur family as casualties of the most recent Ice Age; in reality stegosaurs are believed to have died off in the Early Cretaceous, well before the end of the Mesozoic era.

** Pterosaurs were on the decline toward the end of the Late Cretaceous;even if the K/T extinction hadn't had happened, they probably wouldn't have survived into the modern era.

A 1988 book, written by Scottish geologist DougalDixon about what life on world [[AlternateHistory would be like if]] the meteor that killed the dinosaurs didn't hit the Earth. The book is a SpiritualSuccessor to Dougal's previous Speculative Biology book, Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture, and is presented in a very similar way. However, similar to his previous book, it suffers badly from [[ScienceMarchesOn the progress of science]]; its dinosaurs and other creatures more [[ArtisticLicensePaleontology fanciful than realistic]] nowadays (even back in the day they weren't the most accurate dinosaurs). Even so, its illustrations and descriptions are very good, depicting these nonexistent animals as if they were real.

** On the bright side it was one of the first media to depict dinosaurs with integumentary structures (because at the time adding covering to dinosaurs was highly controversial, but being speculative, this book didn't need to worry about such things), unfortunately they call it fur.

** For some reason, there are ''Megalosaurus'' in the present day. In [[MisplacedWildlife Africa]] (''Megalosaurus'' went extinct in the Middle Jurassic, - of Europe - long before the dinosaurs died out).

A 1988 book, written by Scottish geologist DougalDixon about what life on world [[AlternateHistory would be like if]] the meteor that killed the dinosaurs didn't hit the Earth. The book is a SpiritualSuccessor to Dougal's previous Speculative Biology book, Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture, and is presented in a very similar way. However, similar to his previous book, it suffers badly from [[ScienceMarchesOn the progress of science]]; its dinosaurs and other creatures more [[SomewhereAPalaeontologistIsCrying fanciful than realistic]] nowadays (even back in the day they weren't the most accurate dinosaurs). Even so, its illustrations and descriptions are very good, depicting these nonexistent animals as if they were real.

** The book's pterosaurs are among the '''worst''' to ever appear anywhere (even for their time, they were bad), it seems that Dougal basically just said "[[TheyJustDidntCare screw it]]" and gave the pterosaurs any features he thought were [[RuleOfCool cool]], but couldn't be given to dinosaurs.

* AnachronismStew: For some reason, there are ''Megalosaurus'' in the present day. In [[MisplacedWildlife Africa]] (''Megalosaurus'' went extinct in the Middle Jurassic, - of Europe - long before the dinosaurs died out).

* PteroSoarer: The book's pterosaurs are among the '''worst''' to ever appear anywhere (even for their time, they were bad), it seems that Dougal basically just said "[[TheyJustDidntCare screw it]]" and gave the pterosaurs any features he thought were [[RuleOfCool cool]], but couldn't be given to dinosaurs.

* ScienceMarchesOn: Even at the time, some of the depictions of dinosaurs were sketchy at best, but nowadays they are all completely outdated.

* PteroSoarer: The book's pterosaurs are among the '''worst''' to ever appear anywhere(even for their time, they were bad), it seems that Dougal basically just said "[[TheyJustDidntCare screw it]]" and gave the pterosaurs any features he thought were [[RuleOfCool cool]], but couldn't be given to dinosaurs.

* ScienceMarchesOn: Even at the time, some of the depictions of dinosaurs were sketchy at best, but nowadays they are completely outdated.

** On the bright side it was one of the first media to depict dinosaurs with integumentary structures (because at the time adding covering to dinosaurs was highly controversial, but being speculative, this book didn't need to worry about such things), unfortunately they call it fur.

* AustralianWildlife: The lifeforms of Australia (and the rest of Oceania) are weird, even by this world's standards. They include pelican dinosaurs, kangaroo dinosaurs, flamingo dinosaurs, koala dinosaurs (you can probably see where we're going with this), and highly venomous, lizard-like dinosaurs.

* AustralianWildlife: The lifeforms of Australia (and the rest of Oceania) are weird, even by this world's standards.

A 1988 book, written by Scottish geologist DougalDixon about what life on world [[AlternateHistory would be like if]] the meteor that killed the dinosaurs didn't hit the Earth. The book is a SpiritualSuccessor to Dougal's previous Speculative Biology book, Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture, and is presented in a very similar way. However, similar to his previous book, it suffers badly from [[ScienceMarchesOn the progress of science]]; its dinosaurs and other creatures more [[SomewhereAPalaeontologistIsCrying fanciful than realistic]] nowadays.

A 1988 book, written by Scottish geologist DougalDixon about what life on world [[AlternateHistory would be like if]] the meteor that killed the dinosaurs didn't hit the Earth. The book is a SpiritualSuccessor to Dougal's previous Speculative Biology book, Literature/AfterManAZoologyOfTheFuture.

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