Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs: Part 1

It's about time for something truly seminal. Even if you have never read David Norman's 1985 encyclopedia - and I hadn't, until last week - you will instantly recognise the majority of John Sibbick's illustrations. They are without a doubt among the most influential dinosaur illustrations of all time, inspiring countless knock-offs and derivative works that even ranged to toys and life-sized models. While the majority of them are now scientifically obsolete (with some groups of animals having aged better than others), they remain breathtakingly beautiful artistic achievements. When it comes to hyper-realism, Sibbick is the (computer-enhancement free) man.

Naturally, I plan on milking this sumptuous book for as many blog posts as possible, up to the point where I run out of content/receive a threatening letter from Sibbick's lawyer. I'll start with theropods, because they're the sexiest dinosaurs there are. They probably also constitute the most obviously dated restorations in the book, with the most shockingly strange - to modern eyes - undoubtedly being the dromaeosaurs. Sibbick's skill renders animals that are stunningly believable, but utterly alien by modern standards. Not to mention a little bit scary. Just look at the skull-like visage and rather humanoid arms on that Dromaeosaurus (foreground), or the nightmarish, probing middle finger of that saggy-necked Deinonychus. Eek! Noteworthy: the anachronistic assemblages of animals are entirely intentional.

In spite of their being closely related, the troodonts have aged somewhat better than the dromaeosaurs, even if they are naked. I love the startled, birdlike expression on the face of the Saurornithoides in the background here, and Sibbick seems particularly skilled at making the animals' claws appear suitably vicious. Of course, it being the 1980s, Norman deems it suitable to give over a considerable amount of space to the Lizard Men From Another Dimension. They loved that shit back then.

Send in the 'carnosaurs'! At the time, pretty much every large theropod was lumped into this now far more tightly defined group (the Carnosauria). To his eternal credit, Norman sticks the term 'carnosaur' in inverted commas wherever it appears in the book, noting that "we may...simply be grouping together animals which share the same design constraints, rather than those which are closely related in a genealogical sense". Nevertheless, Sibbick's illustration groups the very distantly related Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus and Dilophosaurus together in the same scene. This early Allosaurus by Sibbick is highly distinctive, making rip-offs - of which there were many - very easy to spot. It's worth contrasting with the far more dynamic and anatomically correct restorations in his later work (including a famous painting depicting one attacking a Diplodocus). This picture also demonstrates Sibbick's apparent fondness for billious dust clouds arising where his animals are moving around, which actually works very well in establishing their sheer size and weight.

OK, OK, this next one's just here because it's unfortunate. 1980s Spinosaurus ahoy! Looks like he's skipping home from school.

Tyrannosaurus now, looking very pleased with itself as it swings a huge hunk of dino-meat through the air. It's beautifully painted as ever, but the head always bothered me as a kid - it just didn't seem like a real T. rex skull would fit in there. Of course, again, Sibbick has sketched and painted many more Tyrannosaurus since then, all of which are huge improvements on this one. In particular, Sibbick has always been good at making giant theropods look suitably bulky and powerful where others have occasionally made them appear unduly skinny and puny. The upright posture here is a little odd too, but there is no suggestion that this would be 'normal' for the animal. And it was 1985.

Here we have Compsognathus and Coelophysis. The former is depicted with the classic, erroneous two-fingered hands, jutting its head out while it runs for some reason, and is probably based on a juvenile specimen. The Coelophysis is a Coelophysis. Not much to say about these, other than the brightly coloured back on the otherwise quite grey-brown Coelophysis is very Sibbick. Next!

Another reminder that 1985 was a long, long time ago and if you were alive then you're very old by now (yeah, you heard, gramps): scaly, egg-splattering Oviraptor. It's worth contrasting the highly reptilian characterisation of the Oviraptor - with its limp tail - against the strikingly agile, fast-moving Ornithomimus behind it. It's often possible in books from the 1980s and '90s to see images that are almost 'transitional' in themselves, representing the huge shift in the perception of dinosaurs that was still ongoing at the time.

And finally...the animals that never were! Actually, the creature in the foreground - Segisaurus - isn't too far removed from reality, probably because a decent enough portion of its skeleton is known (although not the head). The other two, however, represent early-ish attempts at restoring animals that were very poorly understood at the time. This restoration of the therizinosaur Segnosaurus as a web-footed piscivore looks especially bizarre given what is now known about those animals, but Sibbick has done a sterling job with the information available to him, and I love the colours. Of course, his 1980s Avimimus is just legendary, popping up in many other books (including Dinosaurs! magazine in the early '90s, which Norman was involved with). It's very, very wide of the mark - the real animal had a toothless beak and short forelimbs - but any feathered nonavian theropod in a 1980s book is always remarkable. Similar to the dust clouds, the splashes of water really help make the animal seem solidly real. It might sound daft, but such skill is too often lacking in commercial palaeoart, especially in the dire CG clag that stuffs so many books these days.

And...that's all for now. Come back next time for sauropod goodness! In the meantime, check out Dave Hone's interview with John. Some crazy Yank interviewed him too.