Atlas of Dinosaurs, The Return

Our sole criterion for a book to qualify for the blog's Vintage Dinosaur Art series is that it is 20 years old. (And yes, because of that, I am very guilty of stretching the definition of 'vintage' to breaking point.) Atlas of Dinosaurs is rather newer than that, but as was plainly seen last week, it might as well be straight out of the 1980s. Following the panoramic illustrations in the previous post, I'd like to dedicate this one to depictions of individual animals. Warning: levels of plagiarism and the positions of eye sockets may vary.

For all the blatant copycatting, there are a few neat ideas here. Behold, tree-climbing Deinonychus! Well, why not? Although I'd be interested to know what the text says, taken in isolation, this is an intriguingly different take on the beast, laudibly free of blood, guts, roaring, and Bakker imitating. (You ever seen a Deinonychus with a huge beard and cowboy hat? They look ridiculous.) All the same, there are some serious problems. For one, it's completely unfeathered (far less acceptable in the late '90s-early '00s than in the early '90s). For another, its eyes have migrated forwards and now sit in the wrong holes. Oops.

It couldn't have been that long ago when I noted that Mononykus, along with Avimimus, was one of the very few non-avian theropods to be almost ubiquitously depicted with feathers since the 1980s, if not even earlier. (Proper feathers, that is - not just a few half-hearted quills on the head and a sandwich board reading 'MISSING LINK!!!!!') Unhappily, there are always exceptions. Behold, the full horror of lizardy, figure-skating Mononkyus! Are those feathers on its arms, or weird flaps of flabby excess skin? Why does it just have that single line of bristly things on its head? Why does its neck articulate with its jaw? Why? Why? WHY? Wah!

Mononykus might appear rather undignified, but at least it doesn't have testicles hanging from its chin - like the fellow above-left. This creature is Shuvosaurus, and is likely based on the original interpretation of the animal as a Triassic ornithomimosaur (it's now recognised as a non-dinosaur archosaur closely related to Effigia). At the bottom we have an even more problematic animal - Protoavis, here depicted, very unusually, without feathers. Beloved of BANDits, it's been described as a bird more 'advanced' than Archaeopteryx, but living in the Late Triassic. In reality, it's a handful of badly damaged bits and pieces that have proven very difficult to conclusively identify. Whatever the case, this version looks more like a 1980s troodontid, but given those animals' close relationship with birds, that's probably not so surprising.

Strangely, better-known animals often take on a more retro appearance than those only recently discovered, or known from scrappy material. This probably has something to do with the fact that a lot of decades-old artwork depicting these creatures was more readily to hand. Take the Sexy Rexy duo - while the foreground animal has a comparatively 'modern' stance (weirdly directed left foot aside), the background one appears to be based on Burian's famous Tarbosaurus. Both are made to look more 'reptilian' by having the upper tooth row extend under the eye socket, contrary to the animal's actual skull.

At the bottom, we have a mosasaur with that good ol' Knightian crest. Sometimes, I almost start to miss 'em. On the other hand, modern mosasaur restorations are much cooler-looking.

Furthering the retro-'80s theme, here we have a copy of Sibbick's unduly chunky Dilophosaurus from the Normanpedia. Sibbick's isn't the only historic example of Dilophosaurus drawn as a Big Generic Theropod, Now With Crests!, but like so many of his creations, it's the one that tends to get around. Sichkarya's version faithfully reproduces the Normanpedia pose, but manages to make it look even more, er, 'robust', like it's just swallowed a comedic money-grubbing computer programmer whole. Meanwhile, Dimorphodon actually looks less silly than the real thing. Go home Dimorphodon, etc.

In the end though, while the Dilophosaurus might harken back to the days of leg warmers and big hair, this Polacanthus is so retrograde that it's lost its favourite pipe and slippers and is very suspicious of those well-dressed men who've moved in together across the street. Having said that, it's not dragging its tail along, so that's something.

The brachiosaur on the above page is also quite retro, and the Compsognathus is quite Sibbickian. But of course, you aren't looking at those. Your eyes have been drawn to the white and pink Pteranodon, head retracted back to its body, pelican-stylee. It does look a bit barmy, and has its share of anatomical problems. Still, it somehow seems preferable to yet another boring, brown, Burian-style Pteranodon. At the very least, it's an inventive take. Which brings me to...

...The exact opposite. A Sibbick copy so unashamed, even the colour scheme is the same. Same red head. Same backward-facing skull nubbin. Same everything. If only some people were making a stand for originality in palaeoart - for quality, for accuracy, and against plagiarism. Why, it just so happens (TOPICAL!) that they are! I realise that I've linked to Mark, Darren and John's article on Facebook already, but if you haven't checked it out already then I must insist that you do; it's an indictment of all the ill-practice in palaeoart that I've spent the last few years whinging about.

But I digress. Thanks again to Vladimir Nikolov for all his trouble, and I hope this sojourn into the world of Russian books has proven to be entertaining. (If it hasn't, may I suggest sending crates of the finest Belgian beers to my address in order to improve future post quality.) Coming up next: the return of regular Vintage Dinosaur Art! Will it feature Sibbick rip-offs? Probably. Poor John Sibbick.

Further adventures in Russian: Atlas of Dinosaurs, part 1

Following last week's 'Russian interlude', palaeoartist and (I'm very happy to say) LITC reader Vladimir Nikolov has offered up another slice of Russian-language non-quite-vintage dinosaur art. Behold, one and all, the glorious Atlas of Dinosaurs and other Fossil Animals. It's a far more recent book than you might think...or hope.

This second edition dates from 2001, but you might be surprised to learn that the first edition was published as recently as 1998. While the cover is dominated by a dirty great mammoth (boo!), that hadrosaur in the top left is conspicuously Burianesque for a book from the '90s. Based on the cover, one could reasonably expect illustrator A N Sichkarya's work inside the book to be similarly old-fashioned, but the truth is far more wonderfully complicated than that.

Given that the book slogs through the entirety of the history of animal life on Earth, I asked Vladimir to just scan the Mesozoic bits - it's them what we's interested in. Sichkarya illustrates a series of panoramas, each depicting a packed assembly of fauna typical of a given time period. Predictably, the Early-Middle Triassic scene (above) is one of the emptiest, and actually looks a lot more natural as a result. The animals could be worse; the Lystrosaurus look rather familiar, but I do like the birdlike sit-standing posture of the Staurikosaurus (number 6). It's also nice to see Mastodonsaurus, with its freaky jaw-piercing tusks, make an appearance...although the tusks aren't really shown here.

Early-Middle Triassic scenes are always a bit dull, though, and thankfully there's a bit more action afoot in the Late Triassic. Two plateosaurs (4) are threatened by an Herrerasaurus that seems to be running like Scooby Doo, Coelophysis pops in to make its contractually obliged appearance at bottom left, and a phytosaur is threatened by two...what are those, exactly? As it happens, they're supposed to be rauisuchians. Now, while rauisuchians did resemble large theropod dinosaurs in some respects, this illustration may be taking things a bit too far. I mean...they've got legs up to here. While not labelled as such, one can't help but wonder if they're based on outdated depictions of the rauisuchian Teratosaurus, which was once thought to be a primitive 'carnosaur'.

On to the Early-Middle Jurassic now, and a herd of Barapasaurus ambling away from a lush forest and into a featureless wasteland for some reason. These tail-dragging beasts definitely owe a debt to much earlier palaeoart, as does the nondescript 'carnosaur' directly below them. Interestingly, a group of 'protosuchians' here fill in for the more usual heterodontosaurs or Lesothosaurus in the 'small to medium reptile' category. [EDIT: Oops - they're actually Scutellosaurus, the basal thyreophoran dinosaur. Thanks to Mark Robinson for pointing this out, and apologies to Vladimir, who did label them correctly for me! Point still stands about the unusual choice, though...ish.]

Now this is more like it. So many 'big name' dinosaurs lived together in the Late Jurassic - Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, etc. - that artists often have trouble cramming them all into 'panorama'-type scenes. In this case, Sichkarya has seemingly thrown perspective out of the window, his Burianesque plesiosaurs apparently able to scramble their way up sheer cliff faces. The horribly confusing jumble isn't helped by the fact that a lot of the animals are copied from an assortment of other artists' work. At the back, there's a weirdly ribbon-necked Hallett-style Diplodocus (marked "Seismosaurus"), its body contorting like it's trying to get into the back seat of a small three-door hatchback. At the front, we have a rather Sibbick (circa Normanpedia)-like Diplodocus, contrastingly retro, tail-dragging and hunch-backed. To the left, we have a Gurney Giganotosaurus repurposed as an Allosaurus, its skull and jaw going in different directions as it chases hoppity-hopping Ornitholestes and a very blue Archaeopteryx-like bird. And smack in the middle, there's a bipedal Stegosaurus saying "huh?" and a sauropod chilling in the ocean with Jaws and a show-off ichthyosaur. It's baffling.

By comparison, the Early-Middle Cretaceous scene seems quite peaceful and uncomplicated. With the exception of Iguanodon (top right), which is seemingly here because, hey, you've got to have Iguanodon, these are all Asian beasties; the big animal is Probactrosaurus, with Psittacosaurus at bottom left and the pterosaur Noripterus overhead. While the Probactrosaurus definitely looks familiar, I can't quite place the original artist - any help would, as always, be much appreciated (it has a rather Jim Robins air about it, I think). Noripterus, aka "Phobetor", was a dsungaripterid pterosaur, so it's a little odd that it's here been restored as a chubby, dumpy version of Sibbick's Quetzalcoatlus. Cute, though. Oh, and non-specific champsosaurs to add some colour. Hooray.

And finally...it's the Late Cretaceous! As easily deduced by the appearance of Sexy Rexy's not quite so sexy relative, Tarbosaurus. Having said that, this Tarbosaurus is definitely based on Mark Hallett's '70s and '80s depictions of The King�, complete with angry triangular horns and dashing dorsal spines. As with the previous scene, this piece predominantly depicts Asian (in fact, Mongolian) animals, with Saurolophus filling in the back (in a very 1960s tripodal guise) and Velociraptor and Oviraptor also making an appearance. While the ill-proportioned Oviraptor is a little harder to place, the 'I'm hard, me' arm-dangling Velociraptor is directly based on Sibbick's highly reptilian Normanpedia take on the beast. With the ankylosaur being (of course) Saichania, and the crocodile being Shamosuchus, this just leaves the mystery birds in the middle. As it happens, they're intended to represent Presbyornis, which lived in the, er, Eocene. Although they could just as well be a Presbyornis-like bird, I guess.

And finally...in addition to the 'panorama' spreads, the book also contains a large number of freaky-deaky 'profile' images of dinosaurs, many of which make them look suspiciously lizard-like by sticking the eye in the wrong hole in the skull. Easy mistake, I suppose. Somehow, this is all the more troubling in the case of typically cute-as-buttons Hypsilophodon than with magical floaty Megalosaurus. But more on them next time!