James Gurney is the award winning Author and Artist of the Dinotopia seris of books which have sold more than 2 million copies world wide, and became the basis for a six part miniseries that aired on ABC Network.

Jim majored in Anthropology at the Univ of California at Berkeley and after graduating, pursued his interest in drawing and painting by studying at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He sketched outdoors at every opportunity. A cross-country trip on railroad boxcars led to a book that he co-wrote and illustrated with his friend Thomas Kinkade called The Artist's Guide to Sketching, (Watson-Guptill, 1982). He worked for a time in the movie industry, painting background scenes of jungles and volcanoes for the film Fire and Ice, (Bakshi/Frazetta, 1983). The sword and sorcery subject matter got him started with fantasy art, and he began working as an artist for science fiction and fantasy paperback covers.

His skills were honed at The National Geographic where he did the illustrations for several articles on lost cities and civilizations. These illustrations inspired Jim to create a lost city completely from his magination, which he called "e;Waterfall City"e;, followed by "e;Dinosaur Parade"e;. These two paintings led to the idea of an island populated by dinosaurs and people.

Dinotopia revived Gurney's boyhood interest in dinosaurs. He has enjoyed learning about the new science of dynamic dinosaurs from the experts themselves, including Jack Horner, Mike Brett-Surman, and Ralph Chapman, each of whom contributed to making Dinotopia as accurate as possible.

During the last couple of years, Gurney took on two assignments he couldn't refuse, The World of Dinosaurs stamps and an article in the December, 1997 issue of National Geographic on Patagonian dinosaurs. He lives in the Hudson Valley of New York with his wife, two sons and a canary.

Born in Chiswick, London, Dawson was the son and grandson of marine artists and he grew up to become perhaps the greatest marine artist of all time. Indeed, so successful was he that, at his peak, he was rumored to be one of the two best-paid artists in the world, second only to Picasso.

Early in his life he and his family moved to Smugglers House on Southampton Water and, naturally enough, the young boy was greatly influenced by the deeply nautical atmosphere of his surroundings. Although Dawson never went to art school, he inherited a flair for painting and in about 1910 joined a commercial art studio in London, where he worked on posters and illustrations.

At the outbreak of the First World War he joined the Royal Navy and it was during his service as a naval officer that he met Charles Napier Hemy, who was to have a profound effect on the young man's art. During the war, Dawson continued his artistic work by supplying the Sphere publication with illustrations. These were normally in monochrome. After the First World War he set up as a painter and illustrator, concentrating on historical subjects and portraits of deep water sailing ships, usually in a stiff breeze and a high sea. It was in the 1920s that he became contracted to Frost and Reed. With them he became "e;king of the clipper-ship school"e;.

From the early 1930s he lived at Milford-on-Sea in Hampshire and he exhibited occasionally at the Royal Academy between 1916 and 1936. In the Second World War he again worked for the Sphere, supplying them with pictures of events of the war. He exhibited regularly at the Society of Marine Artists' exhibitions between 1946 and 1964 and was an elected member. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Montague Dawson died in Sussex, Southern England on 21st May, 1973.