Ancient Sea Reptiles, Beginning of the End! (Patreon)
Content
OK, the pictures are - essentially - in place and the captions have mostly been finished. Only final editing and proofing, the cover and end-pages, and some tweaking of the illustrations... and Ancient Sea Reptiles (ASR) is done! It's due to be published early next year (Feb' 2023) by the Natural History Museum. Here are screen-grabs of various of the pages, as seen at proof stage (and thus not showing final formatting or final captions or images). This is all strictly FYEO!
I think it's obvious that is a heavily illustrated and lavish book, with new diagrams and colour photos on virtually every page. I'm pretty happy with it: the first comprehensive look at Mesozoic (and Permian!) marine reptiles since Williston's Water Reptiles of Past and Present of 1902 (yes, there are other books that cover the animals, but they don't go through them in well-illustrated, group-by-group fashion; I suppose Richard Ellis's Sea Dragons comes closest).
Also hopefully obvious is that ASR covers Triassic marine reptiles at length and features phylogeny, life appearance and thoughts on behaviour and lifestyle. This is a similar combination of subjects to what I provide at TetZoo, and something that other authors tend not to cover in the same way.
That's about it for now. I have one illustration left to (an updated image of the Triassic Helveticosaurus): my next 'spare time' job then being the accursed Eotyrannus monograph! Thanks as always for support and I hope you enjoyed this secret 'first look'.