LIFESIZE DINOSAURS

A rare opportunity to go nose to nose with Diplodocus, measure a human shoe against the fossil footprint of Allosaurus, and like dino-encounters.

Following her up-close survey of modern creatures in Lifesize (2018), Henn goes prehistoric in the same 1-foot-square format. She alternates big, broadly brushed images of fossil or fleshed-out body parts (or a gathering of eggs on one spread) with pulled-back views of each creature in a broader setting accompanied by breathless commentary: “To be this completely GINORMOUS Diplodocus had to eat A LOT.” Said commentary is light on specific facts (though she does properly note that Pteranodon and Albertonectes were reptiles but not true dinosaurs), but she closes with a slightly more informative minigallery. A particularly sharp-looking Utahraptor claw (“OUCH!”) and multiple appearances or mentions of Allosaurus lead up to a climactic gander at the toothy grin of Tyrannosaurus rex—placed on a double gatefold and therefore a full 4 feet long. “Say cheese!” Although several of the creatures are depicted with feathers, Henn’s palette mostly hews to mud and moss colors, so despite the stunning close-up views, the book has an overall subdued look.

The sharply defined realism of Steve Jenkins’ Prehistoric Actual Size (2005) may be absent, but young dinophiles will still roar.