Most of these animals represent surviving dinosaurs, pterosaurs and plesiosaurs, which Dixon discusses through biogeographic realms, divisions of the Earth's land surface based on distributional patterns of animals and other lifeforms. As in Dixon's previous work, After Man, ecology and evolutionary theory are applied to create believable creatures, all of which have their own binomial names and text describing their behaviour and interactions with other contemporary animals. The New Dinosaurs explores an imagined alternate version of the present-day Earth as Dixon imagines it would have been if the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event had never occurred. The New Dinosaurs utilizes the imagined present-day descendants of Cretaceous animals to explain biogeographic realms. As a general example, many of the fictional dinosaurs are depicted with feathers, something that was not yet widely accepted when the book was written. It was followed by another speculative evolution work by Dixon in 1990, Man After Man.Īlthough criticised by some palaeontologists upon its release, several of Dixon's hypothetical dinosaurs bear a coincidental resemblance in both appearance and behaviour to dinosaurs that were discovered after the book's publication. Like After Man, The New Dinosaurs uses its own fictional setting and hypothetical wildlife to explain natural processes with fictitious examples, in this case the concept of zoogeography and biogeographic realms. The New Dinosaurs is Dixon's second work on speculative evolution, following After Man (1981). The New Dinosaurs explores a hypothetical alternate Earth, complete with animals and ecosystems, where the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event never occurred, leaving non-avian dinosaurs and other Mesozoic animals an additional 65 million years to evolve and adapt over the course of the Cenozoic to the present day. The book also features a foreword by Desmond Morris.

The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution is a 1988 speculative evolution book written by Scottish geologist and palaeontologist Dougal Dixon and illustrated by several illustrators including Amanda Barlow, Peter Barrett, John Butler, Jeane Colville, Anthony Duke, Andy Farmer, Lee Gibbons, Steve Holden, Philip Hood, Martin Knowelden, Sean Milne, Denys Ovenden and Joyce Tuhill.

New dinosaurs dougal dixon