Welcome to a new feature on the CFZ Bloggo. Each week or so we are going to spotlight three of the books from CFZ Press, almost at random, in what could be seen as a cynical marketing ploy, or an attenpt by a tiny publishing house to give a little more exposure to their books. Remember that we are a non profit making organisation, and that any money we do make goes straight back in to fund our programme of research..There has never been a more popular time for dinosaurs and all things dinosaurian. From blockbuster films packed with breathtaking CGI effects, children's television and video cartoons, computer games, CD-ROMs, animatronic museum exhibitions, and theme parks, to countless books, magazines, toys large and small, ornaments, collectabilia, and even fun lines in confectionery and other edibles, prehistoric paraphernalia continues to scale new heights of desirability worldwide. But nowhere is this more apparent than within the philatelic world - where the issuing in recent years by an ever-increasing number of countries around the globe of handsome, highly-prized stamp sets depicting a spectacular array of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals is matched only by the corresponding increase of thematic collectors eager to amass an eyecatching, comprehensive menagerie of palaeontological monsters that the custodians of Jurassic Park could only dream about!
It all began in 1951, when India issued a red 2-anna stamp depicting a pair of prehistoric elephants known as stegodonts, to commemorate the Centenary of India's Geological Survey. This was the very first stamp to illustrate a prehistoric species of animal. The following year, Algeria included a red 15-franc ammonite stamp in its issue celebrating the 19th International Geological Convention, held in Algiers. And in 1958, a highly significant philatelic milestone was reached, with the issuing of the world's first dinosaur stamp, by China, depicting a Lufengosaurus. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, well over 500 sets of stamps portraying all manner of dinosaurs and a multifarious assemblage of other archaic animals have been issued, with a substantial proportion of these having appeared within the last decade alone - confirming the escalating interest among collectors in this exciting thematic subject.
And who can blame them? After all, where else but in the pages of a stamp album could stegosaurs and plesiosaurs, tyrannosaurs and sabre-tooth tigers, brachiosaurs, mammoths, belemnites, ground sloths, giant birds, and ichthyosaurs jostle for attention with velociraptors and trilobites, dimetrodonts and diplodocuses, mosasaurs, woolly rhinoceroses, Archaeopteryx, titanosaurs, iguanodontids, ammonites, giant sea scorpions, and innumerable other fascinating denizens of our planet's distant past?
Following the long-established tradition of thematic stamp catalogues that have been produced by a wide range of publishers down through the years, it is hoped that this latest catalogue – which provides an exhaustive , definitive listing of stamps depicting dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals issued by countries throughout the world - will encourage new thematic collectors to pursue their interest in dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures not only on screen, in books, or in museums but also via the ever-fascinating world of philately.
Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: CFZ Press (7 Nov 2008)
Language English
ISBN-10: 1905723342
ISBN-13: 978-1905723348
Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15.5 x 1.8 cm
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