a graphic novel series by Ricardo Delgado
Published by Dark Horse Comics, Age of Reptiles began as a regular partwork comic series in 1993, before being reprinted as graphic novels, most or all of which seem to be still in print, or easily available at second-hand. I won’t go into the plots in detail as Wikipedia already does so, but just talk about the general style of the books.
They are what are called “pantomime comics” – that is, without text of any kind. The stories are told entirely in pictures, following the lives and deaths and struggles of groups of various species of non-avian dinosaur and of pterosaur.
They are not 100% accurate – the non-avian dinos are less feathery than we now think at least the small ones were, and Delgado sometimes mingles species who probably never met in real life, for dramatic effect. But the artwork is nevertheless absolutely stunning, and conveys a real impression of its subjects as not just specimens in a glass case but actual persons, once-living individuals, dealing with the same kinds of problems as confront the animals in a modern wildlife documentary. Although there’s no text, you could easily imagine the plot being narrated by David Attenborough in a reverent, slightly breathy voice.
Be warned that the stories are often extremely violent, with a lot of emphasis on its characters as both prey and predator, and pretty-much everybody ends up gruesomely dead, on camera. But even when the characters are killing each other, or being overwhelmed by a catastrophic flood, both the animals and their environment are gorgeously drawn, and well worth the time of any dinosaur enthusiast – even if all the bloodshed eventually becomes a bit wearing.
The different series are as follows:
Tribal Warfare: a pack of Deinonychus try to destroy the nest of a Tyrannosaurus who stole their kill.
The Hunt: multi-generation warfare between an Allosaurus and a pack of Ceratosaurus, and between two different species of pterosaur, as cliffs collapse and flood-water pours down around them.
The Journey: harried by predators, a mixed-species group of large herbivorous dinosaurs set out on a long annual migration.
These three, above, were reprinted in a compilation called Age of Reptiles Omnibus, Volume I.
Ancient Egyptians: a Spinosaurus seeks a mate while avoiding the bloody struggles of predator and prey going on around him.
There are also two short stories that go with the series.
Baby Turtles, published in Dark Horse Presents #3: the hatchlings struggle to cross the beach and reach the sea as predators pick them off.
The Body, published in Dark Horse Presents #4: a medium-sized herbivore, Tenontosaurus, is brought down by predators, and then various scavengers squabble over what little the predators have left.