Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs (The Open Gate Library)

As you might imagine (and as I'm sure I've repeatedly said over the last three or so years), it's become increasingly difficult to find truly old books to use in Vintage Dinosaur Art posts. In recent months, all of my best eBay purchases seem to be from a single store, the aptly titled 'World of Rare Books'. When one does have the opportunity to cover a decades-old, illustration-heavy publication, it's typically full of tiresome Charles Knight rip-offs loitering around remarkably sparse backdrops, typically with all the vibrant colour of an original Game Boy screen. And I won't lie - this is pretty much one of those. However, there are just enough amusing quirks in here to make it worthwhile. Just check out that gnarly Ceratosaurus...

The functionally titled Dinosaurs, part of the Open Gate Library series, was first published in 1959 in the US, with a UK edition arriving in 1963. This particular edition dates to 1967. Aimed at young children, it's light on text and dominated by double-page black and white (and green) illustrations by Robert Gartland, whose work also featured in Animals of the Past Stamps. Only the cover is more colourful, and the funky giraffe-like pattern on the neck of the more horizontal animal is surprisingly daring for the time. Inside, everything is rather more plain, because giant lizards.

Or sometimes, it transpires, not-so-giant. The book follows a peculiar trend of the time in refusing to refer to animals by their scientific names in the text (in spite of the fact that children just love learning dinosaur names, mainly to annoy their parents and teachers). Instead, each animal is given a nickname that is sometimes related to the generic name, but not always. So, Ornitholestes is predictably referred to as 'bird robber', but Compsognathus becomes 'smallest lizard'. Perhaps it's because 'delicate jaw' doesn't really sum up the animal. Regardless, we're treated to the usual Knight-copying, bird-grabbing Ornitholestes, except here it's being watched by both Compsognathus and the Great Time-Travelling Chicken. All hail the Great Time-Travelling Chicken! Did you know he once starred in his own Saturday-morning cartoon series? Or he should have done.

The wee theropods are followed by these brontosaurssszzzzzz. Hey look, footprints!

As previously indicated by the Great Time-Travelling Chicken, the book is keen on comparing dinosaurs with modern-day animals and objects. So, Brachiosaurus (or 'Largest Lizard'....gah) poses next to some charmingly old-fashioned "motor coaches" in one illustration, and precisely matches the weight of a herd of elephants crowded onto a pair of improbably gigantic scales in another.

Even better is this illustration, where Allosaurus has been fooled by a wily estate agent. Not only is the door on the property far too small to accommodate a dinosaur of his considerable stature, someone's gone and stolen his lunch from the roof. (With apologies for repeating a joke I already made on Facebook.) No wonder he looks so...disappointed.

As ever, mildly perturbed Allosaurus is just the warm-up act for furious Rexy, seen here grasping for something just out of reach. This Rexy notably sports a reversed first toe on each foot, like a perching bird. This anatomical anomaly does have a tendency to appear in illustrations of this vintage, but quite why is a little mysterious. Although it would be handy for preventing toy tyrannosaurs from toppling over, it looks really silly.

Once Rexy has appeared, every other animal is inevitably pulled into his superstar orbit. So, this Knightian, rather long-tailed Triceratops is described as the only animal willing to confront Rexy. Old Three-Horned-Face looks rather shiny and smooth in true retro fashion - a world away from today's gnarlier, nobblier, altogether more interesting versions.

Ankylosaurus, meanwhile, is the animal that hunkers down when Rexy draws near. Apart from being typically round, short-tailed, and incongruously small, this might be the only illustration I've seen where Ankylosaurus takes on what appears to be a Permian synapsid.

Desmatosuchus was another dinosaur that evolved armour plates to defend itself against tyrannosaurs. Wait, what!?!

Meanwhile, other animals took to the water to escape the jaws of the tottering tyrant lizards. Among these was the sausage-limbed, web-handed duckbill, Parasaurolophus, an animal that "kept air stored in its 'horn'" to facilitate long dives. God, I love 1960s dinosaur books.

I'm not sure I can bring myself to love this thing, though. Quack quack.

And finally...what I like to think of as a little wry social commentary. He might not have changed his barbarous habits much, but at least he's managed to stay clean shaven.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Animals of the Past Stamps - Part 2

Having had a look at the dinosaurs in Animals of the Past Stamps (1954), I asked our lovely readers if they'd be at all interested in seeing some of the stinkin' Cenozoic mammals. A handful of people were, so here we are. Unfortunately, I don't know half as much about prehistoric mammals as I do dinosaurs (in spite of being a descendant of some of them), so you'll have to forgive me when I fail to spot the bleedin' obvious. I mean, more so than usual. In any case, let's start at the Palaeogene beginning!

That the NA dinosaurs were killed off in some sort of cataclysm is taken for granted these days, so it's easy to forget that the concept is relatively recent. Of course, the asteroid idea was yet to be mooted in the pre-Renaissance days, but in addition the dinosaurs were long considered to be simply obsolete by the end of the Cretaceous. After all, their frills, spines and tiny arms matched with giant heads were just examples of evolutionary silliness, and they were surely doomed to be replaced by animals that were smaller, leaner, faster, and could actually maintain their body temperature. This book is typical in asking nothing of where all the dinosaurs went - they just, y'know, died out. Whatever. I'm not sure what this fairly generic Early Mammal is based on, but it looks a bit like a fossa with a weird wombat head. Lovely stripes on the stamp illustration, though.

Of course, the dinosaurs do get their last hurrah as 'kings of the beasts' at the start of the Cenozoic section of any book like this, normally in the form of Gastornis aka 'Diatryma'. Long depicted as an active predator of small mammals (and thus contributing to an evocative 'upside down world' that the plucky underdog mammals would come to dominate), more recent research has painted a rather different picture of this admittedly very fearsome-looking bird. In the line drawing here, it appears to be chasing the fossa-thing from the previous page. Or possibly a housecat. Meanwhile, the stamp depiction features an interesting glistening red streak on the neck. Which I quite like.

There's also the matter of The Uinta Beast, which sounds like it belongs in the cryptozoological literature, and its tiny, tiny brain. "The brute must have been very stupid." Yeah, but I'm sure its unsightly facial protuberances helped it get by.

Given that this is a book from 1954, one can forgive the overly simplistic view of equine evolution. However, it's always interesting to see a meme like this explained and illustrated through the decades. The Middle Horse illustration is especially good, with varied terrain and vegetation adding interest, but still not detracting from the subject matter. (Now just watch someone turn up and point out how it's been shamelessly copied from Charles Knight or someone.) The Dawn and Middle horses share a page with Brontotherium, which is just standing around looking pretty. Hello, dear brontothere.

Naturally, a line drawing is provided that illustrates how as horses evolved, they became bigger and lost/fused digits until they became much better at being modern horses, running around fields and pleasing posh people and the like. Which isn't quite right, or how evolution works, but I've already mentioned that. The animals in the illustration above would make a lovely sculpture, although the incongruously gigantic grass implies that they've had a run in with Rick Moranis in the 1980s.

Sooner or later, you just know that a gigantic hornless rhinoceros is going to turn up and hog all the attention. This particular creature is infamously the largest land mammal of all time (which would still have been dwarfed by the largest dinosaurs. Take that, synapsids!). It has also gone by any number of different generic names over the years, possibly to avoid being tracked down by Interpol. When I were a lad, this animal seemed to be consistently referred to as Indricotherium, whereas here it's Baluchitherium, and these days it's Paraceratherium, or the near-horned-beast (as this book would probably put it). While convincingly bulky, I'm not sure if the necks in these illustrations are a little too chunky by modern standards. Do let me know in the comments, should you be into this sort of thing. Weirdo.

(Incidentally, I searched for Paraceratherium in Google Images, just of curiosity, and 'v T. rex' inevitably appeared. Which is so very Carnivora Forum and awesomebro that I'd just love for someone to illustrate it properly.)

Occasionally, a mammal is simply too far-removed from any modern lineages for it to be referred to by anything other than its scientific name. So here is an Apostrophe (sorry, astrapothere, namely Astrapotherium), depicted inhabiting a fetchingly primordial landscape of vivid red-and-yellow sunsets straight from Jurassic Park toy packaging. (Which is by no means an insult or even backhanded compliment - I loved the JP toy boxes.) I'm quite tempted to take some brightly coloured felt tips to the illustration below, if only to cheer up the cross-looking animal depicted in it.

There's also a three-horned creature depicted in what appears to be a lovely site for picnicking (if it weren't for all the pesky prehistoric mammals roaming about the place). First person to remind me of the damn thing's name gets a shout out. UPDATE: Synthetoceras it is. Connor Ross wins.

Furthermore, if anyone would like to tell me exactly what the 'bear-like dogs' were, I'd be very grateful. Handsome portraits are fine, but scientific names would be very useful. Thankfully, I knows me a gomphothere when I see one. Wonderful use of perspective to emphasise the animal's sheer strageness - like an elephant in a funhouse mirror.

And finally...a Smilodon, striking a suitably Knightian pose as it menaces one of those pesky three-horned things, trapped in what is ostensibly a tar pit but which more closely resembles, as Rob Evans put it on Facebook, "bedsheets". Yeah, but it's just so the kids can colour it in, preferably in custard yellow. The stamp image is just as reminiscent of Knight, but I do think that bison is very handsome. It seems that depictions of herbivores in this book are often more interesting than those of carnivores...which is quite welcome.

Next time: I've finally bought a book from the 1980s with a bunch of feathered dinosaurs and annoying idiosyncratic taxonomy in it. You can probably guess which one.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Animals of the Past Stamps

Now here's another properly old one (at long last) - a compendium of extinct animal 'stamps' from the Cold War world of 1954. Why put 'stamps' in fright quotes? Well, they're more like stickers, given that you wouldn't be able to send an angry letter to the palaeontological establishment of the day with any of them. This would, therefore, be a sticker album. But 'tis mere semantics - we're here to see a variety of prehistoric creatures presented in sub-technicolour retro stylee, and The Golden Play Book of Animals of the Past Stamps doesn't disappoint.

At least...not too much. The most significant letdown when picking up any dinosaur (andotherprehistoricanimal) book from this period is that, unless you find one illustrated by one of the Old Masters (Burian, Zallinger et al), you know it's going to be filled with art slavishly copying said Masters. (One could argue that this is still the case, but hey, at least we now have copious books filled with entirely original CG abominations to choose from.) Such is the case here for the most part. The stamps were illustrated by Matthew Kalmenoff, and are really quite attractive, even if he sticks to all the usual tropes. The line drawings (to colour in, kids!) were provided by Robert Gartland, but more on them later.

The album spans the entire history of animal life on Earth, and contrary to what you'd likely see in such a book today, prehistoric mammals occupy more pages than the dinosaurs - 15 pages to the archosaurs' piffling 5. This appears to simply be a reflection of contemporary attitudes towards both groups' relative importance, whereas today we know better, and no-one would dream of putting smelly synapsids on a pedestal. No way. In any case, I'll only be looking at Mesozoic animals here, but if you're interested in seeing some of the Cenozoic mammals (as seen on the back cover, above), then please let me know.

For whatever reason, the dinosaurs' brief appearance in this book begins with a look at a 'bird-like dinosaur', presumably an ornithomimosaur. Oddly, this animal isn't explained beyond 'this was a dinosaur' (and surely it's pronounced 'dah-no-sour'?). Tellingly, the stamp (with its lovely impressionistic plants) depicts the theropod with its tail held clear of the ground, while in the line drawing it's rather limp. Ornithomimosaurs tended to be the one theropod group that, back in the day, were depicted as being more active than usual - there's just no escaping those leggy proportions.

Of course, there's no danger of Bronto the Thunder Dinosaur being depicted as anything other than a glacially slow flesh mountain with all the quick wit of the owner of a Donald Trump bumper sticker. On the other hand, and in spite of the fact that the text does mention that the animal "was so heavy that it stayed in the water most of the time," Bronto is depicted standing on more-or-less dry land not only in the line drawing, but in the stamp as well. Although in the latter case the renegade beast is surrounded by more watery compatriots, all slurping mushy plants in suitably Zallingerian style.

And speaking of Zallinger - that Allosaurus (or should that be 'Laelaps'?) looks awfully familiar.

Happily, the Other Leaping Lizard is soon seen taking on Stegosaurus, whose bodily proportions differ conspicuously between the line drawing and the stamp (which is clearly based on a Burian piece). Stegosaurus looks understandably quite cross, while Allosaurus appears simply to want to calm the situation down. Some hope.

Strangely, Protoceratops is the next dinosaur to be ticked off the list. It's referred to as the 'horn-faced dinosaur', which prompted a few remarks over on the Facebook page that it's rather lacking in the horn department. Ah, but you see,

"This creature had no real horn, but just a bony knob on its nose. Yet it became the ancestor of later dinosaurs that had real horns on their faces."

So there. Quiet, pedants. The illustration depicts Protoceratops in classically sprawling guise, overlooking a clutch of someone else's eggs in a desert environment.  The book then skips along to marine reptiles, starting with ichthyosaurs, or 'fish-like reptiles' (fair enough). This illustration must be one of the pieces that has aged most gracefully, probably because ichthyosaurs were already very well known from near-complete specimens at the time. I like its glossiness and swishing motion.

Rather more dated  is this plesiosaur page, featuring a line drawing of a sinisterly grinning beast no doubt heavily inspired by Charles Knight's none-more-influential restoration of Elasmosaurus. That evil fish looks like a difficult prey item, mind you. The stamp appears to show two individuals going after a hesperornithine bird, which lends further credence to my idea that Kalmenoff had more of an idea of what he was doing and/or better access to reference material.

And yes..."It came from a line of dinosaurs that left the land and became animals of the sea." Someone inform Palaeofail.

After the inevitable Charles Knight mosasaur (now in the movies, baby!) comes the inevitable Burianesque Pteranodon (no Hendrix perm), one of only two pterosaurs known at the time. Seemingly. In fairness, Kalmenoff's illustration more riffs on Burian's work rather than directly copying it, and the sky is simply gorgeous. The line illustration, meanwhile, rather reminds me of those foam gliders one can buy (normally labelled 'FLYING DINOSAUR'). Only without the comedy teeth.

Here's that other pterosaur - no scientific name, but it's probably Rhamphorhynchus, based on the head and relatively short neck. Decent illustrations for the time, although one of the individuals in the line drawing appears to have gone splat against the cliff. And lost its tail. I have a feeling that the line drawing may be based on an illustration of different pterosaur genera (hence the tail), but I'm not sure. Feel free to drop me a comment.

As is typical of any dinosaur (andotherprehistoricanimals) book published prior to...well, let's face it, the late 1990s, Archaeopteryx is lumped in with the pterosaurs, 'cos it's a flying animal and that. This illustration more-or-less follows the 'magpie Archaeopteryx' meme, which might not actually be that wide of the mark, as it transpires. The stamp is nicely composed, with the foliage serving to emphasise the animal where it could easily have cluttered the scene and made a mess.

Unfortunately for the Ancient Bird, it must share this spread with another, much larger and uglier, theropod. Bafflingly drawn in the style of early Knight works that the artist himself later superseded, it's...

...Rexy! And his eternal enemy, Badly Drawn Lumpen Triceratops. Rexy notably sports a Disney-pleasing three-fingered hand, while his feet appear well adapted to perching on top of passing alamosaurs. Poor old Triceratops, meanwhile, has once again been drawn with horns erupting from behind its eyes. Ferchrissake.

Happily, the stamps are much better - Triceratops sports far more convincing horns and, er, limbs, while Rexy is the subject of a handsome, if very dated, portrait. (Why's the ear there? We'll never know.) Rexy's look pretty much follows the standard lizardy Knightian mould (all wrinkly neck and zipper teeth), but the Triceratops is more intriguing. The unusual frill is reminiscent of the skeleton on display in the NHM (London) which, believe it or not, is entirely sculpted. All of it. Which is why it's so damn weird. This was itself apparently based on an earlier model developed for the Pan-American Expo in 1904. For more information on all of this, I implore you to read an especially superb post over at Extinct Monsters if you haven't already. In any case, this Triceratops' exposed teeth are also very unusual. It also makes it look as if the animal is giving us a sly grin, which I definitely approve of.

And now for something completely different.

LATE DAVE HONE NEWS! 

Dave Hone (for it is he) is hosting the launch of his new book, The Tyrannosaur Chronicles, in London on April 22 at the Queen Mary University of London. You can get free tickets for the event on the official website. Unfortunately I can't make it, but Niroot should be there. Look out for much more on The Tyrannosaur Chronicles here in the near future! It looks set to be an important and very readable addition to the popular literature on those most notorious of fluffy coelurosaurian moviestar carnivores.