We’ve blogged a lot of Bob Nicholls‘ art (here, here, and here) and we’ll probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future. We don’t have much choice: he keeps drawing awesome things and giving us permission to post them. Like this defiantly shaggy Apatosaurus , which was probably the star of the Morrison version of Duck Dynasty . Writes Bob: Well, I think it’s awesome.

I was at the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in March to look at their Apatosaurus material, so I got to see the newly-mounted baby apatosaur in the “Clash of the Titans” exhibit (more photos of that exhibit in this post). How much of this is real (i.e., cast from real bones, rather than sculpted)? Most of the vertebral centra, a few of the neural arches, some of the limb girdle bones, and most of the long bones of the limbs.

We’re just back from SVPCA 2013 in Edinburgh. The first part of the meeting was held at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, but on Friday we moved to the National Museums Scotland. Which is awesome. And free to the public.

Remember at the start of the year, Matt and I had a contest to design a cover for a random book in half an hour? I came up with this: Well, today I saw that my wife is reading Abraham Vergese’s novel Cutting for Stone (which, for what it’s worth, she says is very good). Here’s the cover: You can’t tell me that ‘s a coincidence.

In a paper for which we’re currently handling the revisions, I and Matt cite several pieces of artwork, including Knight’s classic Brontosaurus and Burian’s snorkelling Brachiosaurus . All we have for the references are: Knight CR (1897) Restoration of Brontosaurus . Burian Z (1941) Snorkelling Brachiosaurus . But a reviewer asked us: I don’t really have any idea what the right way is to cite artwork — does

Last Sunday I got to hang out with Brian Engh and some of his friends in LA. You may remember Brian from this, this, this, this, and, most notoriously, this. We got to drawing dinosaurs, naturally. Now, for me to try to draw dinosaurs next to Brian is more than a little intimidating. I really felt the need to bring my A-game. So this is what I came up with.

From The Dinosaur Heresies. Part 1.

Generally when we present specimen photos in papers, we cut out the backgrounds so that only the bone is visible — as in this photo of dorsal vertebrae A and B of NHM R5937 “The Archbishop”, an as-yet indeterminate Tendaguru brachiosaur, in right lateral view: But for some bones that can be rather misleading: they may be mounted in such a way that part of the bone is obscured by structure.

Magritte’s best known work by far is of course his drawing of a pipe with the text Ceci n’est pas une pipe . He made several versions over the years, but the work originated in 1928 or 1929. The title Magritte gave to this painting is La trahison des images — the treachery of images.

This post is just an excuse for me to show off Brian Engh’s entry for the All Yesterdays contest (book here, contest–now closed–here). The title is a reference to this post, by virtue of which I fancy myself at least a spear-carrier in what I will grandly refer to as the All Yesterdays Movement.