Vintage Dinosaur Art: Rourke's Tyrannosaurus

This is a Rourke title I've been looking forward to covering here for a long time, and what a pipin' hot slab of coelurosaur meat it is. It's Tyrannosaurus rex, the favorite dinosaur you're too good to admit is your favorite. You feign interest in ornithopods, act like you like your theropods small and feathery, pretend that basal sauropodomorphs warrant more than a cursory glance. All the while, the itty bitty T. rex on your shoulder whispers in your ear: "You're mine, and you know it."



This is the seventh Rourke Publishing title we've covered in this series, so by this point, I reckon you've got the gist of what they're about. Tyrannosaurus dates to 1981, and was written by Angela Sheehan. This is the first of these posts to feature the work of George Thompson, an illustrator who suffers from the problem of sharing a name with a currently working, younger George Thompson, rendering him nigh-ungoogleable. So, on to the illustrations themselves. They're... eccentric.

For instance, our title character has a little of that stuff that drives country music superstar Trace Adkins wild.



When not proudly displaying that sumptuous derriere, Tyrannosaurus is searching for food, scaring every living thing in the vicinity away.



Except, of course for Triceratops. At this point, the two are contractually obligated to exchange blows whenever in each other's vicinity; like two aging wrestlers, they don the spandex and work up a passable substitute for the intensity of their classic battles. Don't be fooled by the wound Tyrannosaurus sports for the rest of the book: it's stage blood.



Poor, hungry Rexy also tries for a bit of hadrosaur flesh... only to find these early ancestors of the Water Horse instead, a pity. There's some pretty strange choices made here; yes, the Parasaurolophus are, like the menace lurking in the background, rendered in classic man-in-suit posture. Their snouts are bulbous instead of that distinctive wedge shape. But oddest of all are those creepy human-like hands. There's also the minor point of Parasaurolophus being known from strata several million years older than T. rex, but... those hands. Those horrifying hands.



Suddenly skinny, our hero comes across a Struthiomimus raiding a nest - also bearing a bizarre set of hands - and when it flees... the rex doesn't eat the free meal of eggs left behind. Ours is a choosy tyrant.



Luckily, a more suitable meal for the king arrives: the titanosaur Alamosaurus, as noted in the last Rourke post, also displaced from its time. As usual, the predator goes straight for the sauropod's neck, but this one seems a bit more freaked out by this turn of events than some previous appearances of the meme.



Most amazingly... he finishes the whole thing! That entire sauropod is in Rex's belly. Though the Rourke titles tend to adhere to the more reasonable, evidence-based views of the young Dinosaur Renaissance, this take on T. rex is clearly based on the old "ancient monster" mode, with a capacity for gluttony unmatched in the animal kingdom. "When he woke he might be hungry again." Really?



In the book's closing section, we get a nice heaping helping of obsolescence. These sections of Rourke books usually put the book's story into scientific context, based on the latest research. Thirty years on, it shows its age.



Tyrannosaurus as a carnosaur, not a coelurosaur! Gwangi-esque Allosaurus! Naeve Parker style skulking Megalosaurus! Best of all, the inanity of "The flying reptiles, the pterosaurs, could not really fly." Brilliant.

Previous Rourke books featured here:
Ankylosaurus (Bernard Long)
Brontosaurus (Colin Newman)
Iguanodon (Bernard Long)
Triceratops (John Francis)
Pteranodon (Doreen Edwards)
Allosaurus (Doreen Edwards)

Funny story: I scanned this book in and stitched the spreads together... because I'd missed that Terry Thielen had already added them to the Vintage Dinosaur Art Flickr group last year. C'est la vie.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Rourke's Deinonychus

There's that smell in the air... it's time to dip back into the paleoartistic publications of Rourke publishing. It's hard to believe that it's been three months since the last visit to the series: those were the halcyon days before Marc blew our minds with an explosion of Sibbick-itude heretofore unseen on the web, then followed it up with an equally epic exploration of Zdeněk Burian.

Now, we'll come back down to Earth and the muddlings of work-a-day illustrators with a 1984 publication devoted to the poster-child of the Dinosaur Renaissance, Deinonychus, the theropod who so ably served as the world's favorite dromaeosaur until that greedy little usurper wrought by Crichton and Spielberg pounced onto the scene. These scans were kindly provided for our pleasure by Terry Thielen. Even without the publication date provided, we'd have a rough idea of where we are; the first spread is a clear depiction of pronated, ready-to-dribble-a-basketball theropod hands, of the sort that makes the modern, discerning dinosaur fan cringe.



Illustrator Roger Payne is middle-of-the-road among the Rourke stable; nothing too daring here, with bright colors and de rigeur plain green color schemes for his dinosaurs. Feathers are absent, naturally. But Deinonychus is an active predator, chasing after his prey, as with this hapless Psittacosaurus, and in this he fits squarely within the renaissance ideal of a warm-blooded, speedy killer. The animals were roughly contemporaneous, though they hail from North America and Asia, respectively.



Attention to paleoecology is a hallmark of these titles, as anachronisms tend to be fairly minor. Here, the titular theropod does his business in an environment that suitably passes for a hot, tropical floodplain. There are some distant mesas as well, because, well, what in the heck else are you going to stick on the horizon? (Note: check comments for some discrepancies noted my Mike Keesey, which I did not bother with or pay attention to in my haste to finish up this post).



Rourke titles tend to end one of two ways: in death or slumber. Fearsome Deinonychus gets the latter. It's actually sort of notable: besides a fellow who goes by the initials GSP, there were not many images of theropods at rest in the paleoart canon at this point. Here, those pronated hands rest atop one another in the manner of a sleeping dog; poor thing lacks a proper coat of feathery integument and hands arms that fold up in the fashion of the animal's extant relatives, the better to tuck a cold nose into.



As always, browse the Flickr Vintage Dinosaur Art group for much more saurian goodness.

Previous Rourke books featured here:
Tyrannosaurus (George Sheehan)
Ankylosaurus (Bernard Long)
Brontosaurus (Colin Newman)
Iguanodon (Bernard Long)
Triceratops (John Francis)
Pteranodon (Doreen Edwards)
Allosaurus (Doreen Edwards)

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Rourke's Ankylosaurus

Yes, it's time once again to wander into the Mesozoic as rendered by Rourke Publishing. This will be the sixth go-around in Rourkeland for LITC, and it's always a treat. These books, which tell stories about prehistoric animals set in environments built on the latest paleontological understanding, generally provide an excellent snapshot of pop-paleontology in the eighties. More often than not, they feature excellent illustrations as well. Bernard Long's work in the Ankylosaurus title is another good example of the quality titles Rourke released.



One thing which dates the title, as is usual, are the bunny-handed theropods, devoid of the fuzzy and feathery coverings which have become de rigeur these days. The book opens with the titular character waking up to see a Troodon - here called Stenonchysaurus - trotting by with something furry for breakfast. The Troodon is clearly based on the Ron Seguin sculpture (the one almost always seen with the dinosauroid), which I will admit is always going to be the first thing that pops into my head when I hear or read the name. It was the most striking image in my old Doring-Kindersley visual dictionary; something about those big lantern-eyes and smooth, slick skin captured my imagination. It's nice to see my obsolete pal make an appearance here.



A pachycephalosaur makes a cameo as well, in the form of Gravitholus, and the text refers to the well-accepted idea of courtship battles between the "boneheads," which made an appearance here last week.



Our protagonist also meets some hadrosaurs, in the form of Parasaurolophus. I particularly enjoy the look of the one in the foreground. She looks like she's asking to bum a smoke off of Ankylosaurus, though the text says that she's "uttering fierce noises." The reason, of course, is that Ankylosaurus has wandered too closely to the Parasaurolophus nesting grounds, clearly a reference to the then-recent revelations into nesting provided by Jack Horner and his work on Maiasaura.



The next encounters with other dinosaurs is a bit more eventful. The ankylosaur runs across a couple of roughneck Tyrannosaurus rex, immediately going into "stop, drop, and swing" posture. This doesn't stop one of the tyrannosaurs from performing the indignity of jumping up and down on her back, which seems like as good of a method of taking down an ankylosaur as any.



Luckily for Ankylosaurus, an Alamosaurus distracts the giant theropods and they run off for another chance at lunch. Last week's post by Marc also featured T. rex and Alamosaurus, and Hadiaz mentioned in the comments that the Rourke Tyrannosaurus title also features this pairing. I'll be posting about that one soon. It's a bit of a fudge to include Alamosaurus here, as it doesn't occur in the Hell Creek or the Lance formations with Ankylosaurus, coming instead from the Southwest US, either from the Kirtland or Ojo Alamo Formation.



After this long, eventful day, our hero finds some supper and settles in for a well-deserved slumber. but not before watching a slightly anachronistic hunt in which Saurornitholestes slaughters the ornithopod Parksosaurus. The day ends as it began. Nothing like a little dinner theater.



As usual, this Rourke book ends with a great section giving the scientific background so the story we've just read, and this one features a little illustration of the all-but-abandoned Palaeoscincus, a grumpy little guy.



As I said, this is another good example of what a fine job Rourke did with their line of dinosaur storybooks. Ankylosaurus herself is pretty respectable for an 80's reconstruction; Bernard Long avoids the old neckless sluggard look of mid-century depictions as Palaeoscincus above demonstrates, imagining the famous "tank-dinosaur" as a dynamic animal. The plates are a bit armadillo-ish, but on the bright side, Long doesn't slavishly repeat mid-century tropes and the osteoderms and spikes are not too far off of the newer ideas of what Ankylosaurus looked like - see Kenneth Carpenter's recent redescription, for example (PDF). Well done, Mr. Long.

Previous Rourke books featured here:
Brontosaurus (Colin Newman)
Iguanodon (Bernard Long)
Triceratops (John Francis)
Pteranodon (Doreen Edwards)
Allosaurus (Doreen Edwards)

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Brontosaurus by Rourke

Well, look who's stomping through our house again, dragging with it heavy baggage of paleontological history, taxonomic confusion, and philosophical hoo-ha. It's ol' Brontosaurus, who in 1981 received the Rourke Publishing treatment in a storybook written by Angela Sheehan and illustrated by Colin Newman. Mr. Newman unfortunately joins the majority of Vintage Dinosaur Art subjects in being fairly obscure; searches are complicated by a contemporary artist of the same name. A Goodreads listing of Newman's publishing credits shows him to have been busy in his day, favoring wildlife titles.



Colin Newman's illustrations are far removed from those of Bernard Long, whose Rourke Iguanodon work was featured here a couple weeks ago. Newman's work is less dynamic, moodier in color, and he seems to prefer wide views that place the titular sauropod within Jurassic panoramas. It would translate nicely to a pop-up book.





As is generally the case for Rourke titles, the flora and fauna are admirably accurate for their time period, in this case the famed Late Jurassic Morrison of North America. You may have heard dim rumors of the controversy surrounding Brontosaurus; this book was published several years before the name's taxonomic obsolecence was popularized by the US Postal Service's use of it on a stamp (a contemporaneous essay on the flap is the cornerstone of Stephen Jay Gould's collection Bully for Brontosaurus). Yes, the head of Camarasaurus had been placed on the original, headless specimen of "Brontosaurus" excelsus, but the real sticker was that eighty years before the publication of today's title, Elmer Riggs of the Field Museum had sunk the animal into the genus Apatosaurus. The public was simply slow to be informed and ultimately unwilling or unable to let go of Brontosaurus. The mistaken head issue seems to have caught on as a preferred explanation for the nomenclatural issue; I believed it up until recently. I imagine this has to do with the public's love of scientific schadenfreude. "Bumbling scientists can't even get the right head on the animal, and that means I have to stop using Brontosaurus? Bah!"



As for the dinosaurs themselves, the artwork is inspired much more by Zallinger, Knight, and Burian than the work of the early Dinosaur Renaissance. Take the title off of the cover, and it would be difficult to correctly ID the sauropod. Compare it to what may be the most accessible and quick primer on Apatosaurus, Matt Wedel's recent review of the Sideshow maquette at SV-POW. It would be nice to see something more accurate, but it's an awful lot to ask of a children's book that came out just as the dinosaur dark ages were mercifully being put to death.



As for the story, well, there are only so many ways a plot for a wildlife book can go that avoid egregious anthropomorphism. Like other Rourke books, the story of Brontosaurus is pretty simple, working paleontological knowledge into a basic story structure. In this case, there's a drought, the dinosaurs have a tough time, blood is shed, the rains come, and the future welfare of the Brontosaurus is insured by the appearance of a glorious rainbow. We all love a happy ending. I wonder how many Brontosaurus die-hards still hope for a happy ending of their story, either by an over turning of Riggs' work or some completely left-field pronouncement of the nomenclatural powers that be? Gould argued for a "common sense" approach to nomenclature in Bully, one that avoids both anarchy and overly strict interpretations of the rules, but Brontosaurus has been so long dead that to bring it back would create a thunder lizard sized mess in the literature. Best to let it lie, a linguistic fossil in its own right.



Previous Rourke books featured here:
Iguanodon (Bernard Long)
Triceratops (John Francis)
Pteranodon (Doreen Edwards)
Allosaurus (Doreen Edwards)

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Iguanodon by Rourke

A large share of my to-scan stack is taken up by titles from the Rourke Publishing series of storybooks featuring prehistoric animals. Today, we'll look at their 1984 Iguanodon title, written by Rupert Oliver with illustrations by Bernard Long, a British illustrator who unfortunately lacks much of a web presence. But his national heritage is fitting, as this title takes place in Early Cretaceous England, which we know from the geological feature called the Wealden Supergroup.



First, I am delighted to report the return of the tongue-lolling Iguanodon, which appeared in a recent VDA post by Marc. Here, it accompanies text explaining that the Iguanodon could smell an approaching storm, so I suppose that it's meant to be a scent organ.


When megalosaurs attack, out comes Iguanodon's tongue again.


Ditto for when, in a scene perhaps inspired by Fellowship of the Ring, the Iguanodon escapes the megalosaurs thanks to a flash flood. If only Long had the cheek to shape the surging water into enraged ornithopods.



In other news, those megalosaurs are of the hunchback persuasion.



With that bit of meme-spotting out of the way, we can proceed to the work in general. While the illustrations may not be up to the level of anatomical accuracy of Greg Paul or Doug Henderson, to pick two eighties dinosaur artists out of a hat, they're excellent quality for a children's storybook. And writer Rupert Oliver and the folks at Rourke deserve a mighty tip of the hat for considering the setting in which their prehistoric characters would live. The text describes "a vast green carpet of cycads, horsetails, and rushes," and Long mixes these in with conifers rather than simply slapping green-plant like things and anachronisitic grasses in the background.


The fauna are appropriate, for the most part, including ubiquitous rhamphorynchids buzzing about in the skies (reminiscent of the great flocks of crows now making themselves a noisy part of my town's milieu) and beasts like the nodosaurid Polacanthus.



Its presence here is fitting, as the first fossils of the genus come from the Wealden strata of the Isle of Wight. If written today, this title would be more appropriately called Mantellisaurus, which is the currently accepted name for the former I. atherfieldensis since 2007, when Greg Paul renamed the animal as part of a larger trend of bringing some sense to the traditional wastebasket-taxon status of Iguanodon.

Out of place in the early Cretaceous is Megalosaurus, which will probably always be part of a matched set with Iguanodon thanks to their status as founding members of the dinosauria. Problem is, it's a middle Jurassic beast. The book could be updated to include any of a number of scrappy theropods from the Wealden, perhaps Eotyrannus (I should note that a field guide to the Wealden was recently released, reviewed last month by Darren Naish).

Rourke titles close with brief sections on the scientific background of the story, describing the history of the relevant taxon's fossil discoveries and its place on the dinosaur family tree. Here, Ouranosaurus gets a rare cameo.



Overall, a respectable effort that sets its self apart from the glut of slapped-together dinosaur titles of the eighties. Plus, it gives us this majestic sight: the Iguanodon conga line.



Superb.

Previous Rourke books featured here:
Triceratops (John Francis)
Pteranodon (Doreen Edwards)
Allosaurus (Doreen Edwards)

Book Review: Tales of Prehistoric Life by Daniel Loxton

This spring, Daniel Loxton published his third and final children's book in the Tales of Prehistoric Life series: Plesiosaur Peril, the story of the dangerous life of a young Cryptoclidus in the Jurassic. It was proceeded by Ankylosaur Attack (2011) and Pterosaur Trouble (2013). Today I'll cover all three. The TL;DR version: they're great.



Daniel Loxton's name is probably recognizable to the portion of our readers who also follow skeptical media. He cowrote Abominable Science with Donald Prothero as well as writing and illustrating the children's book Evolution: How We And All Living Things Came to Be. Loxton is also well-known for his work editing the Junior Skeptic section of Skeptic Magazine. Illustrator Jim WW Smith, who has also worked for Junior Skeptic, provides work on the models for the Tales of Prehistoric Life series. Loxton provides the finishing textures and colors, as well as photographing environments.

I especially appreciate Loxton's series for taking up the mantle of the Rourke titles we've covered so many times during the Vintage Dinosaur Art series. Like the Rourke collection, each Tales of Prehistoric Life book is a narrative story, detailing interactions between temporally and geographically appropriate animals. I love this approach. When grounded in modern paleontological understanding of the life and times of the animals involved, it's both engaging and educational. Like the Rourke titles of yesteryear, each book in this series also wraps up with a brief explanation of the scientific grounding of the story.

The Cryptoclidus family swims through a teeming Jurassic sea. © Daniel Loxton.

The animal interactions are firmly in the realm of plausibility. There are moments that seem a bit of a stretch, such as a veritable army of Saurornitholestes laying seige to the Quetzalcoatlus hero of Pterosaur Trouble. However, there's nothing more outlandish than Dinosaur Revolution's more slapstick moments. Since I'm on the record of admiring much of what that series did, you can predict my reaction here. When the Quetzalcoatus quad-launches to escape his attackers, one of them inadvertently hitches a ride before being flung onto the head shield of a Triceratops, and I couldn't help but crack a smile.

3D dinosaur art is too often only mentioned when picking out the worst offenders, so it's easy to forget that it is often done very well, and Loxton's work here is a prime example. For the most part, the animals are integrated into their photographic environments very smoothly, and interact with them believably - there is a sense of weight and heft to the animals as they walk on sand, browse vegetation, or fall into water. The experience is an immersive one, with illustrations filling entire spreads. The point of view is often right in the middle of the action. Loxton's attention to detail rewards free exploration of the environments and their inhabitants. Feathers float on the air in the midst of combat. Age and experience are obvious, as in an old ankylosaur with battle-damaged armor or a pycnofibre-covered pterosaur.


Quetzalcoatlus soars over the late Cretaceous world. © Daniel Loxton.


An Ankylosaurus couple browses in the forest. © Daniel Loxton.

Coloration is handled conservatively. There are no Rey-style color schemes. Proto-birds and dromaeosaurs are given the most colorful integument. I particularly liked the ruddy tones of Saurornitholestes, reminiscent of the Brown Thrashers who inhabit a similar woodland habitat in my neck of the... er, woods. I also enjoyed touches like subtle sexually dimorphic coloring on the Triceratops, and a seaweedy-green on the Cryptoclidus family at the heart of the most recent book. The tyrannosaurs who appear in Ankylosaur Attack and Pterosaur Trouble could do with some plumage and a splash of color (as well as some more neck musculature, which to my eye looked a little skinny). On the other hand, it's refreshing for the tyrant king to step out of the spotlight.


A Saurornitholestes pack smells something big and tasty on the wind. © Daniel Loxton.

Loxton's choices in depicting behavior are the strongest aspect of the stories, as pains are taken to focus on details of Mesozoic life lent us by recent paleontological research. Quetzalcoatlus falls prey to small dromaeosaurs because of tooth marks found on actual fossils of the great azhdarchid. It bears repeating that the pterosaur is depicted performing a quad-launch, too (a touch which pleased Mark Witton greatly). The family unit in Plesiosaur Peril is based on evidence that these marine reptiles were viviparous. It's a stretch to lump Loxton's book series in with the All Yesterdays Movement. But it is certainly complimentary in its dedication to anatomical fidelity and reasonable inference, while offering views of prehistoric life which reflects the way extant animals act rather than what Hollywood dinosaurs are asked to perform for the masses. There's no need to layer on excessive personification or spectacle after spectacle. Loxton's adherence to this is the main reason the books succeed.

The Cryptoclidus family feeds on belemnites. © Daniel Loxton.

My only major critique is that a more readable typeface for the body copy of the books could have been chosen, but that's a small quibble in the big scheme of things. This is as good as prehistoric fiction gets. The life restorations are exactly the kind that the new generation of paleontology fans should have access to: contemporary, not stuck in decades-old knowledge. All books in the series are available at major booksellers or via Skeptic.

Around the web: Check out Loxton's post about Plesiosaur Peril at SkepticBlog. Darren Naish wrote a detailed post about the book at TetZoo - fitting since he served as technical consultant for the whole series. Adam Stuart Smith reviewed Plesiosaur Peril at Plesiosauria.com. Dispersal of Darwin's Michael Barton reviewed Plesiosaur Peril in March (and reviewed the other titles in the series previously). Ankylosaur Attack recieved positive reviews from Quill and Quire, Kirkus, and SkepticDad.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: John Francis

I think it's only proper to put the spotlight on a ceratopsid this week. These illustrations of the most famous of all,Triceratops, come from a 1981 title in the Rourke Publishing series of dinosaur books. Like the Janet Riehecky series from which last week's Baryonyx title came from, each book focuses on one dinosaur. Rather than presenting a series of facts or conjectures as in the Riehecky books, the Rourke books tell stories. This title is written by Angela Sheehan, but the google machine tells me that there were a number of authors who participated in the series.

The illustrator is John Francis, who has a long record of quality work, and a special interest in natural history.



The story begins with a female trike laying her eggs and leaving them. The nest is plundered by an Ornithomimus - an activity I doubt one would engage in - but Sheehan depicts Triceratops as a disinterested mother. She's exhausted from the egg-laying and chills out in some ferns. At one point, a T. rex rouses her ire and she takes a swing at him. Then, after watching some Stegoceras engage in some ritual head-butting, she dozes off.



Francis doesn't go for photorealism or strict anatomical accuracy; the design of his dinosaurs reflect older ideas in paleoart that Gregory S. Paul would effectively put an end to later in the decade. But I like these illustrations for their vibrant, punchy quality, and the way they're embellished with details like the spider spinning its web in the last image. So many children's books on dinosaurs are quickly and sloppily put together, and it's nice to see illustrations done with care. You can check out more of Francis' dinosaurs at his site's gallery.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Pteranodon by Doreen Edwards

Swooping into the Vintage Dinosaur Art spotlight this week is Pteranodon, another book in the Rourke dinosaur series. It’s a sneaky move, since pterosaurs aren’t dinosaurs of course, but they were their neighbors and an important part of Mesozoic menagerie. So we’ll allow it. Written by Ron Wilson, the title’s illustrations were provided by Doreen Edwards, who drew many of the books in the series.


One thing I like about Rourke’s dinosaur library is that it depicts prehistoric animals as animals, not monsters. Edwards does quite a nice job at accurately depicting our old ornithocheirid friend. As shown below, she makes sure to adorn them with plenty of fuzz, and stays away from the fallacious “bat wing” configuration that sometimes pops up in old books. The only bony support Pteranodon’s wing has here is its incredibly long fourth finger.


Nor does she make the common mistake of outfitting Pteranodon with teeth.


It’s almost purely Pteranodon action in this title, though a trio of Triceratops pop up momentarily.


I do have one little bone to pick, and it concerns the following page. Looking at the drawing, it looks like a big Pteranodon scolding a smaller one.


Based on the text, it’s actually a depiction of one Pteranodon sneaking about while his comrades are sleeping. The second Pteranodon isn’t smaller, it’s on a lower level of the cliff. The image is the first thing I took in when I turned to the page, and it threw me for a loop. It’s probably just me.

Finally, here’s a jolly drawing of our hero soaring through the night sky.


More from this book, and many others, at the Vintage Dinosaur Art flickr pool. If this post whetted your appetite for pterosaurs, be a peach and visit Pterosaur.net.