Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Prehistoric World – Part 2

Vintage Dinosaur Art

About a month ago now (I know! I’m slacking these days! I do have my reasons) we had a look at the dinosaurs in The Prehistoric World, a beautifully illustrated and often gloriously violent book first published in Italy in 1982. Such was the overwhelming clamour for me to feature pre- and post-Mesozoic life from the book (at least two comments!), here we go again – this time, with creatures of the Palaeozoic. It’s freaky, surreal and often unsettling, and therefore perfect for this spookiest of months.

Mixopterus by P Cozzaglio

By way of example, here’s a stunning and quietly disturbing image of the eurypterid (sea scorpion) Mixopterus hunting some primitive vertebrate thingies. There’s something uniquely unnerving in imagining this primordial world, in which giant scorpion-like arthropods snared and devoured animals that must have included our own ancestors, and this illustration is fittingly atmospheric and evocative. (It probably doesn’t help that the “primitive chordate” being ensnared looks almost like it’s screaming in terror.) I might have over-brightened it a little here – on the page, this piece is rather moodier and murkier, but no less dynamic-looking. This one’s by P Cozzaglio, who also produced the Diplodocus Allosaurus piece seen last time. A real talent for churning waters, there.

Should Astraspis be there? Perhaps not. You tell me.

Hemicyclapsis by A Fedini

Speaking of evocative scenes and dynamism and churning waters and all that, here’s a gorgeous-looking illustration of the Devonian jawless fish Hemicyclapsis by A Fedini. I can’t say I’m too familiar with the body of palaeoart depicting these animals, but what I have seen typically depicts them from above, as if we’re looking down upon an animal in a shallow pool; therefore, this attempt at an unusual perspective is surely to be commended. It also helps place the viewer deep within the animal’s world, and gives us an immediate idea of what their feeding habits must have been like. More than that, it’s just a beautifully detailed piece.

Dunkleosteus

Sooner or later, you’ve got to have a Dunk – in a book featuring Devonian sea life, not featuring Dunkleosteus would be like leaving T. rex out of your generalised dinosaur book. It’s simply unthinkable. Here, then, is the giant fishy terror with the nightmarish crushing maw and (inevitably) permanently madly staring beady eye. And, yes, I know Dinichthys is a perfectly valid genus, but my understanding is that this is almost certainly based on the related and better-known Dunk. As the image notes, it’s never been exactly clear what the majority of its body looked like, beyond that armoured pseudo-toothy portion – it’s like trying to reconstruct David Norman based solely on his sexy headshot on the back of Dinosaurs!.

Sadly, this is the one image that I was unable to find a credit for. As far as Dunkleosteus reconstructions go, it notably blends the armoured and unarmoured portions of the body quite smoothly, rather than having a jarring transition from one to the other. If you happen to know much at all about arthrodires, do let me know what you think.

Anthracosaurus by C Di Ciancio

Now here’s a very atmospheric one – a steaming Carboniferous swamp scene, as depicted by C Di Ciancio. Early tetrapods and stem-tetrapods hunt each other through the misty, murky swamps, surrounded by towering, beguilingly alien flora. Earthy browns and greens dominate the palette. I’m sure it’s dated now (that Dolichosoma does look suspiciously snake-like), but I’ve always found palaeoart depicting the Carboniferous (at any stage) to be among the most intriguing, perhaps because (when it’s done correctly) the plantlife seems superficially familiar-looking, yet on closer inspection, so very alien.

Dimetrodon by A Fedini

Now we’re in more familiar territory – here’s an animal well-established in the ranks of infamous prehistoric creatures, known to every disinterested parent as ‘actually, that’s not a dinosaur’. As befits a book that seems quite retro in its outlook overall, A Fedini’s Dimetrodon is sprawling and very reptilian at first glance, but it’s also clearly very mobile, seemingly pushing itself into the water with its hindlimbs to hunt some unseen aquatic prey. The bubbles around the animal’s forelimbs are beautifully done, and I like the spots of vibrant colour on an otherwise swampy grey-green-brown body. Unusually, the creature in this illustration is labelled specifically as D. incisivus, rather than just Dimetrodon or one of the grander species like, er, D. grandis. (I think D. incisivus may have been synonymised – Dimetrodon has a crazy number of species for anyone used to Mesozoic dinosaurs.)

In the background sits Edaphosaurus, which is also identified to specific level – namely, E. pogonias. Which is the type species, and still stands. Phew. It’s a shame that it’s almost the same colour as Dimetrodon – rendering it, one again, as the less interesting ‘herbivorous Dimetrodon‘ when it really has much more going for it than that. I mean, those horizontal protrusions from the neural spines look proper weird when you see them on a mounted skeleton.

Lycaenops by P Cataneo

In the previous post I described a piece by P Cataneo as “a bit more painterly than usual,” and I’m quite sure one could say the same about the above. The way the lush, impressionistic foliage blends into the hills in the background is quite lovely, and there’s more fine detail packed into this piece than might first meet the eye. That said, it’s also rather static – the Lycaenops seem to be rather impassively biting the Dicynodon, and although one of the latter is down on its back, it doesn’t appear to be struggling all that much. Cataneo seems to excel at landscapes far more than gory rip-‘n’-tear action. I do enjoy that the Lycaenops have a prey item each, rather than mobbing the same poor individual. There’s plenty to go around!

Anteosaurus by Andrea and Luciano Corbella

Onward through the Permian, and here’s an animal described in the text (by author Giorgio P Panini, via an English translation) as “almost lion-like” – an idea that credited artists Andrea and Luciano Corbella have really taken to heart. Their Anteosaurus essentially is a lion, albeit with a reptilian noggin that resembles that of a Zallingerian theropod dinosaur. A beautifully detailed illustration of a particularly freakish lion, but probably not what Anteosaurus looked like.

We get the point, though – some Permian synapsids lived in cold environments and might even have been properly furry. And the “pristerognathid” fares better, looking like less of an obvious facsimile of a modern mammal (although clearly still drawn with one very much in mind). Why isn’t it just referred to as Pristerognathus? You tell me.

Mesosaurus by C Di Ciancio

And finally…here’s an animal that we don’t see very often in popular books – Mesosaurus. Although superficially crocodile-like, Mesosaurus (and relatives) lived in the Permian and actually had nothing to do with them. Little is said about the animal in this book, beyond them being ‘fierce aquatic predators’ that probably hunted fish and crustaceans, which is a shame as I’m quite sure that this is my own introduction to these creatures (there’s a good chance that I’ve seen them before somewhere and forgotten after a few rounds of delicious liquid poison). Having consulted Professor Wiki, it seems that their evolutionary affinities are somewhat uncertain, which is especially interesting. Leave a comment if you happen to know a lot about Mesosaurus! Please, please leave a comment. Please. I just want so desperately to be loved.

Anyway, this seems like a perfectly lovely illustration by C Di Ciancio, with a nice sense of movement and a couple of different perspectives on the animal, which gives us a decent idea of its form. Coming up next time: the Cenozoic!

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14 Comments

  • Reply
    Benjamin Hillier
    October 13, 2021 at 2:44 pm

    I counted 3 comments 🙂

    But I was one of them, so many thanks, as always.

    I might keep an eye out for this one!

  • Reply
    Claudio Borsato
    October 13, 2021 at 3:25 pm

    Hi!
    I have an 2002 edition (reprint I think) on this book with a slight different title (Il grande libro della preistoria, translated is The big prehistory book). The author is still Giorgio P. Panini.
    I noticed some pictures were removed (probably because of the book size, as it is a brossure of 16cmx22cm).
    Also an interesting fact that stroke me at the time was a little paragraph of birds, were it was written the undoubtedly birds are dinosaur. I hadn’t found anything about this in any other books I had at the time (or at least it was only speculated with a lot of precaution).
    Can I ask you if also in the 1982 edition this paragraph was present? In my edition is on page 144 / 145 with a big Diatryma steini picture on top of it.
    Thanks for your response!

    • Reply
      Benjamin Hillier
      October 14, 2021 at 3:31 am

      I have “Evolution and Ecology of the Dinosaurs” by Halstead from 1975, which point-blank states several times that dinosaurs evolved into birds.

    • Reply
      Marc Vincent
      October 17, 2021 at 4:37 pm

      Hello, sorry for the late response. I must admit, I haven’t read it cover to cover, but my edition seems to avoid saying outright that ‘birds are dinosaurs’. That said, there is a diagram on pages 100-101 that appears to indicate that they evolved from theropods specifically, and not some vague archosaur or ‘thecodont’ ancestor.

  • Reply
    Grant Harding
    October 14, 2021 at 10:17 am

    I really love that Anteosaurus illustration. It has a sort of eerie “After Man” quality, where at first glance you think you’re looking at a picture of some familiar modern animals, but then quickly realize that those are completely unfamiliar animals.

  • Reply
    Arthur Williams
    October 14, 2021 at 12:44 pm

    To be honest, I feel like I’ve seen Mesosaurus pop up quite often in books that discuss Prehistoric life in the Permian. They were one of the first true aquatic reptiles. In addition, they provided substantial evidence to support the theory of continental drift, as they’ve been found on both the Eastern coast of South America, and the Western coast of Africa.

    • Reply
      Caleb
      April 19, 2022 at 1:32 pm

      Agreed, Mesosaurus is definitely one of the more common non-dinosaur reptiles to show up in books, and I’ve encountered it quite a surprising number of times.

      • Reply
        Thomas
        April 19, 2022 at 2:10 pm

        That’s an understatement – it’s positively ubiquitous and has actually probably appeared in more textbooks than Tyrannosaurus rex.

  • Reply
    nathanparker11
    October 15, 2021 at 6:47 am

    I like the illustrations in this book a lot. Thanks for sharing it! Contemporary paleoart specialists may bring more anatomical rigor, but few of them have the artistic flair and paint-handling chops the old jobbing illustrators brought to these classic books.

    Last I heard, mesosaurids were generally considered part of Parareptilia, an assortment of mainly Permian oddballs like pareiasaurs, procolophonids, bolosaurids, and lanthanosuchids. Parareptiles probably went extinct in the Triassic, except for turtles (unless turtles are sauropterygians, or archosaurs, or something else entirely).

  • Reply
    Timur Sivgin
    October 16, 2021 at 8:02 pm

    I am certain that Anteosaurus illustration is based on the one from the 1975 Scientific American article on the Dinosaur Renaissance where Bakker also drew one with a mane (though also with body-proportions thankfully closer to the real animal).

    • Reply
      arctometatarsus
      October 18, 2021 at 9:14 pm

      Yes, @Timur Sivgin is 100% correct. The model for the Anteosaurus is directly from the (more accurate) one in Dinosaur Renaissance.

  • Reply
    Thomas
    November 1, 2021 at 1:06 am

    The Lycaenops up front seems to be cribbed from another illustration. Also the way the dicynodonts is depicted is bizarre.

  • Reply
    Thomas Diehl
    December 2, 2021 at 9:17 am

    Apparently, Dolichosoma is so outdated, the name has been both deligitimized for not being properly published and removed for having already been taken by a common small beetle in 1792. The creature got assigned to Phlegethontia, instead, which is a much lamer name, if you ask me.

    Funny detail: The type species of Phlegethontia is called P. linearis. The type species of the beetle that took Dolichosoma? D. lineare.

  • Reply
    Caleb
    April 19, 2022 at 1:02 pm

    I wonder who the aquatic amphibian friend in the Carboniferous piece is supposed to be?

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