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)

An oddball Iguanodon

Here's a curiosity from my local, small town museum. East Grinstead (a town I live but a couple of miles away from) is located on a ridge in the Weald, a large area in the South East of England where Cretaceous formations have been exposed. A number of important dinosaur fossils have been unearthed here, including Mantell's "Iguanodon anglicus", the original Iguanodon type species (the type is now the Belgian Iguanodon bernissartensis) and Baryonyx walkeri.

It's only natural for any local museum to trumpet dinosaur discoveries made in the vicinity (even if they were, in fact, made some miles away), which the museum have done by putting the cast of what they claim is an Iguanodon footprint on show. Of course, there's no way of telling if an Iguanodon species really did make the footprint, but given its age it's pretty safe to say that an iguanodont did. In any case, they also have a weird, weird Iguanodon statue on show that as far as I'm aware is completely unique. Check it out.



One of my favourite features of this statue is the little man included for scale, wearing as he does a double-breasted jacket, waistcoat, flat cap and handsome moustache (although he could do with a dusting).



Exactly how old it is I don't know, but judging by the attire of the tiny man and the dinosaur's bizarre anatomy it must date back at least 50 or 60 years. Perhaps the strangest part is the head, with its crazy-looking, bulging eyeballs and what appear to be tiny, fleshy ears.



Strange stuff, but a lovely little bit of vintage art all the same. The photo below shows the statue in the context of the museum's display, with the footprint cast alongside. Also worthy of note is that "Iggy" (yeah, really) is the museum's mascot. If you ever visit the town for whatever reason (which is pretty unlikely, granted, unless you live nearby or are a...shudder...Scientologist) entry to the museum is free, but do check the opening hours!

A Mantellisaurus Rampant, or Coo-Coo for Kukufeldia

On Thursday of last week, I wrote about the coat of arms for Maidstone, the small town in Kent where a quarry owned by W.H Bensted yielded important Iguanodon bones in 1834.


The Maidstone Slab. From wikimedia commons.

In the comments, Matt Martyniuk questioned whether those bones would still be considered Iguanodon. It was a good question, because Iguanodon happens to be one of those genera that is a taxonomic cluster... well, you know what I'm getting at. Check out the Iguanodon page at Wikipedia for a daunting list of putative Iguanodon species later reassigned to other genera and others currently considered dubious.

A paper published in the latest Zootaxa is another attempt at resolving the mess, reaching far back to teeth described by the father of Iguanodon, Gideon Algernon Mantell, in 1848. Andrew McDonald of the University of Pennsylvania with Paul Barrett and Sandra Chapman from the Natural History Museum in London have erected a new genus, Kukufeldia tilgatensis, after analyzing a collection of teeth assigned to Iguanodon by Mantell in 1848. The authors justify the new genera on the grounds that the teeth are sufficiently different from any other Iguanodon teeth (incidentally, Mantell never assigned his teeth to a species, only working on the level of the genus - that was how he rolled).

This naturally leads to the question: With the genus such a mess, what's the basis for comparison? Well, we're really lucky to have the three dozen Iguanodons discovered at the mine at Bernissart, Belgium in 1878; the skeletons provide a solid mark by which to measure other Iguanodons. Because of the quality of these specimens, Iguanodon bernissartensis was named the type species for the genus in 2000.

The teeth studied by McDonald et al originated from the same geological formation as the original teeth discovered by Mantell, and it's possible that those belonged to their Kukufeldia as well. There's so little to go on, they may never be positively tied to a valid species. However, Kukufeldia may be disputed in the near future. It comes from a geological formation called the Wealden supergroup, which was the subject of a recent overview by veteran Iguanodon researcher David Norman, also published in Zootaxa. Norman maintains that there are only two iguanodontians that can be named with any certainty from the Wealden's Upper Cretaceous deposits: Iguanodon bernissartensis and Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis, which was named by Greg Paul a few years ago. At the end of the abstract, Norman promises more work to come on providing further clarity to the genus.

So, you see why I called Matt a "sick, sick man" in response to his comment. Taxonomy would be a good candidate for an episode of "Dirty Jobs." I bet it would break Mike Rowe's spirit.

What of the Maidstone coat of arms? It's up in the air, but I'll hazard a guess. In the early nineties, David Norman reevaluated the Maidstone slab and noted that the dinosaur it most resembled was Iguanodon atherfieldensis (see page 234 of this volume). That species was the one which Greg Paul renamed Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis. As Norman supports Mantellisaurus in his latest writings, this looks to be a decent candidate for Maidstone's patron dinosaur. To revise the title of my original Maidstone post, the coat of arms features a Mantellisaurus rampant. I'm sure the fair citizens of Maidstone would find that most agreeable.

UPDATE: Check out Darren Naish's three-part series on Iguanodon at the SciAm Guest Blog. Part one is here.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Iguanodon Juan

The famous Waterhouse Hawkins Iguanodon at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham. By Willm23, via Flickr.

Yesterday's post dealt with the small town of Maidstone in Kent, whose civic coat of arms bears an Iguanodon. The first of the herbivorous dinosaurs known to science, a specimen discovered in Maidstone in 1834 was a boon to the young science of paleontology. For today's Vintage Dinosaur Art post, I figured I'd share some of the earliest Iguanodon restorations.

Dr. Gideon Mantell, a physician, natural historian, and the first truly dedicated dinosaur paleontologist, published his Wonders of Geology in 1838, which included a full description of the Maidstone beast. It also included an incredible illustration by John Martin, depicting Iguanodon in Mantell's conception of its natural environment.


John Martin's frontispiece for Mantell's Wonders of Geology, 1938. From the Linda Hall Library's Paper Dinosaurs online exhibition. Click to Megalosize.

The Megalosaurus preying on poor, wailing Iguanodon is quite the striking figure, blessed with bulging goggle-eyes and a cleft cranium. I can't help but be reminded of "Uncle Scrotor" from This Island Earth. Clearly, Iguanodon just should have hugged the guy, and he wouldn't be in such a sticky situation. At this time, I should also point you toward Mantell's own go at restoring Iguanodon, which is a true classic.

Here's a similar illustration, published in 1863 in french scientist Louis Figuier's The World Before the Deluge. The artist is Édouard Riou, whose Megalosaurus is decidedly unlike Scrotor. In this depiction, Iguanodon is a bit pluckier, deciding that if he's going down, it won't be without a morsel of sweet Megalosaurus meat.

Édouard Riou's Iguanodon and Megalosaurus, from El Bibliomata, via Flickr.

So when did these early conceptions of Iguanodon taste the bitter fruits of obsolescence? They would be served by Louis Dollo, a Belgian paleontologist who oversaw the excavation of Iguanodon skeletons discovered in 1878 in a mine in his home country. It was Dollo who proposed the upright, bipedal posture that would come to dominate depictions of ornithopods for the next century or so. A notable exception is the work of Gerhard Heilmann, who in the 20's drew ornithopods in a posture more or less like the modern bipedal/ horizontal-backbone/ stiff tail image the scientific evidence has constructed.

More: The banner at the site Paleoartistry features a nice line-up of Iguanodon's evolving image, and the rest of the site is well worth a thorough browsing, including incisive criticism of many paleoartists' work. Strange Science is also an invaluable resource for learning about the evolution of paleoart. A Vintage Dinosaur Art post from last May features John R. Jones' representation of Iquanodon's changing posture.