How a map led to the Dinotopia concept

The breakthrough idea for developing Dinotopia was creating this relief map, which is painted in oil.

As an illustrator for National Geographic, this sort of map came naturally to me. I made the island big enough to encompass a variety of landforms, such as deserts, jungles, and mountains. I tried various names: “Panmundia,” “Belterra,” and “Saurotopia,” until I thought of “Dinotopia,” a portmanteau of “dinosaur” and “utopia.”

What should the ground rules be for this society of humans and dinosaurs? I wanted to include only creatures that are known from the fossil record. I excluded modern animals living in our own world and I also left out any imaginary beings. Thus there might be tyrannosaurs and trilobites, but no dogs, horses, or mermaids.

I tried to portray the dinosaurs according to current scientific understanding, which at that time didn’t include feathers. Without greatly changing their appearance, I wanted to endow dinosaurs with not just sentience, but sapience, and to give them personalities and give them a limited ability to communicate—a few of them with human languages, and others with whale-like musical languages that people have to learn.

All four Dinotopia books are still in print, and you can get them signed here.