Vintage Dinosaur Art: The World’s Wonderful Creatures

When looking at books from the years BT (Before T’internet), we must of course always bear in mind that decent reference material was rather difficult to come by, especially for your average jobbing illustrator without privileged access to museums and/or scientists. (And even then, the scientists sometimes just didn’t give a toss.) This explains the proliferation of Knight, Burian, and Zallinger clones – what else were the poor artists supposed to do, if not take inspiration from the greats? Nevertheless, this does make a lot of older books rather samey.

Thank goodness, then, for those brave souls who produced not only illustrations, but accompanying texts based on a dinosaur book that they had once glanced at in between their frequent absinthe binges. Our Vintage Dinosaur Art experience is all the richer for them (your definition of ‘vintage’ may vary).

The subject of today’s post is The World’s Wonderful Creatures, as submitted for my consideration by Andrew Plant (himself a natural history illustrator who’s done dinosaurs!). It’s a rather obscure book that dates from the 1950s and was published by W H Allen; beyond that, not a lot of information is available. If you’d like a look at the cover (and oh my, what a period piece), check out its listing on Morgan’s Rare Books, for as long as that lasts. The book as a whole is fairly bonkers (and, naturally, quite racist) by modern standards, but its short section on prehistoric life really takes the cake.

Yes, this is supposed to be a factual book for children. A book in which cavemen happily coexist with Neave Parker’s Styracosaurus, a stegosaur-sauropod hybrid, and an actual dragon (which, based on the text, might be intended to represent Tyrannosaurus).  Said cavemen are fond of poking these hallucinogenic creations with sticks, although this is often to no avail, as is explained in the caption for, er, “Dimtrodon”. A “lizard” only 6.5 feet long, and yet somehow much larger than a man. At least both it and the accompanying mammoth somewhat resemble the animals they’re intended to portray, which is more than can be said of most of the creations here.

For example: how might one draw Dunkleosteus in the style of a 1930s cartoon? Surely, it would look something like the creation on the left (the one on the right is just another dragon). Ah, but don’t you mean “dinzeththis” (an amphibian)? Someone was definitely very, very drunk.

The fun continues with a fight between Stegosaurus and Ceratosaurus. Well – I suppose one of them has plates. It also has raptorial talons, though, while the other creature resembles a sauropodomorph, and isn’t so well armed. It’s anyone’s guess as to which is which. At least the animal on the right is clearly Protoceratops, although the humble hog-sized ceratopsian is here described as a carnivore “as big as one of the largest elephants”, with a “beak resembling that of a bird of prey” and “needle-sharp teeth”.

It’s worth mentioning that the illustrator was clearly very competent, even if they had absolutely no idea what they were doing when it came to Mesozoic animals (or orangutans, apparently). Given the nature of the book, there’s every chance that more than a little of the wild exaggeration is deliberate. Even so, I’m not quite prepared to forgive the bizarre feather arrangement on that Archaeopteryx – ain’t no shortage of references for bird wings. The bad pterosaurs are more understandable. And then we have the bat-squirrel-thing with its purple wing membranes and bad attitude, which appears apropos of nothing.

I’ve saved the best for last, though. Behold:

The “Parlisaurus”, a flailing, stumpy-limbed, big-nosed, frilly-backed excuse for a giant “lizard”. One can imagine a scene in which the author of this book, clutching a stiff drink and standing unsteadily on his feet, was dictating the text, and the artist was taking notes:

“And then there wash this one that wash…it had this, this pointy thing, on its head….”

“Pointing forwards or backwards?”

“I don’t bloody well know, do I…could be either…and it wash, I think it walked on itsh back…back legs. Like a kangaroo. But it didn’t hop. Or maybe it did. Nah, wash too big…”

“What was it called?”

“Parash…Parlash…Parlishaur…Parlisaurus!”

Thanks again to Andrew for sending me this one! Normal, rather less quirky service will resume shortly.