Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Reign of the Reptiles

Graham Rosewarne was an artist whose work greatly elevated my beloved Dinosaurs! magazine (published by Orbis in the 1990s), alongside that by the likes of Jim Robins and Steve White. Unfortunately, books featuring work of his that isn’t just recycled from Dinosaurs! can be a little difficult to come by. I was therefore quite pleased to happen upon The Reign of the Reptiles in The Warehouse Antiques & Collectables while over in Norfolk (a shop we definitely didn’t just visit because it’s adjoined to a supermarket named Beers of Europe). Written by Dr Michael ‘MJ’ Benton and published by Quarto in 1990, it mostly concerns reptiles that aren’t dinosaurs…thus showing that, once again, I will stick absolutely anything under the ‘Vintage Dinosaur Art’ banner. (Although at least a few dinosaurs do feature. Honest.)

The cover makes the non-dinosaur focus of the book evident from the very start, featuring as it does an assemblage of plesiosaurs, pterosaurs and, er, Dimetrodon. The main star is a pliosaur, breaching dramatically in front of a dramatic rock formation while dramatically puffin-beaked pterosaurs (Dimorphodon, probably) fly past. How dramatic. It does its job of attracting passers by in the bookshop very well, while also being a remarkably forward-thinking and accurate reconstruction for the time that opts for a realistic approach over emphasising the animal’s reptilian ferocity. It’s also instantly recognisable as a Rosewarne piece. I’m happy to report that all of the life reconstructions in this book are by Rosewarne, although other artists do get in on the action in other contexts (more on which later).

The book starts by describing the origins of reptiles in the deepest, darkest swamps of the Carboniferous. Actually, that’s not quite true; it goes as far back as the Big Bang. Actually, that’s not quite true either; the book’s introduction starts with the following from Benton:

Reptiles of today – animals such as turtles, crocodiles, lizards and snakes – may not seem very impressive or diverse.

…A statement so flagrantly outrageous that it caused a spit-take of coffee the likes of which I’ll be trying to clean from the carpet for weeks. But after a preamble, we do get to the Carboniferous, as shown in the above scene by Rosewarne. In Dinosaurs!, Rosewarne pretty much only ever illustrated ‘spotter’s guide’ depictions of dinosaurs against extremely minimal backgrounds (if any), so it’s interesting to see him tackle complete landscapes like this. Doug Henderson he ain’t (who is?), but there’s a definite charm to the simplified detailing and careful layering of these scenes. Such backdrops also serve to emphasise the animals that are the book’s real stars. Here, we have Dendrepeton (the big guy in the water), some unnamed “microsaurs”, and Hylonomus, which is presumably the fellow clinging to the treefern trunk over on the right. All of which have beautifully painted patterns, but aren’t that visually interesting simply due to the type of animals that they are…

…unlike the above lot, who represent the Late Permian scene. Here, the dominance of the animals in the composition helps emphasise their increased importance within the ecosystem as well as the fact that, duh, they were quite literally much bigger. The big grey guys are obviously Moschops, who are being eyed up by Lycaenops and Titanosuchus, the latter possessing a name that makes it seem laughable to those more familiar with dinosaurs (or, indeed, crocodylomorphs). Coelurosauravus glides by, while Dicynodon and Youngina (the lizardy-looking one on the tree) complete the scene. I look forward to the comments pointing out how many of these reconstructions actually represent specimens that were subsequently split off into different genera. The most Rosewarne-looking beasts here are probably the Lycaenops, with one individual clearly sporting the skin fold along the torso that was obvious on many of his dinosaurs. All are superbly painted and, again, beautifully patterned, with the exception of Moschops which must be elephantine grey by law.

But wait…aren’t a lot of these synapsids? What are they doing in a book about reptiles? Well, it’s 1990 and although phylogenetics is certainly explored, we’ll be referring to stem-mammals as ‘mammal-like reptiles’ and sticking them under the ‘reptile’ umbrella, if you please. For what is a reptile, anyway? It’s just a common word, mate. And so we’re treated to many pages on Permian and Triassic synapsids (hence the Dimetrodon on the cover) alongside animals that would fit within a monophyletic Sauropsida. It’s semantics, innit. Look, epically long blog posts have been written in the past about this, I shan’t be discussing it any further. We have a lot more, er, amniotes to discuss.

On to the Late Triassic and the coolest creature yet, mostly because it bears a passing resemblance to a big theropod; the mighty Rauisuchus, now largely ignored in popular media in favour of Postosuchus. You’ll note the rather Greg Paul-like scaly detailing on the face, particularly the feature scales around the orbit, which were another staple of Rosewarne’s theropods (the aforementioned skin fold is present here, too). It’s shown gorily devouring a carcass for extra cool factor. The smaller animals in the foreground are Traversodon (left) and Belesodon (right…I think), which has been sunk into Chiniquodon, while Dinodontosaurus serves as a banquet, and a pair of Scaphonyx keep a safe distance. The careful attention to anatomical detail is enhanced by the use of markedly different colour patterns on animals that might otherwise have looked quite similar (the little guys in the foreground).

Uh, but you will be featuring some dinosaurs in your Vintage Dinosaur Art, right? Of course! There’s a Staurikosaurus lurking in the background of the above scene. There you go!

As the Mesozoic continues, so we’re treated to a very typical scene featuring an variety of Jurassic pterosaurs, including the instantly recognisable Rhamphorhynchus, a ’90s-style Pterodactylus that quite strikingly resembles a ’90s-style Quetzalcoatlus that appears a few pages later, and Anurognathus, an animal that seldom featured in books at the time. Again, Rosewarne resists the temptation to emphasise the reptilian freakishness of these creatures, opting for a strictly naturalistic approach that results in much more visually appealing and realistic-looking animals, even if we’d reconstruct some of them quite differently nowadays. You’ll note the universal application of pterosaur-fuzz, too. While the surrounding environment is light on other fauna, a swimming…thing (metriorynchid?) and grasshopper help flesh out the scene somewhat. Oh, and Archaeopteryx appears too, depicted flying lower than the pterosaurs as it so often is, the better to emphasise how flying dinosaurs were yet to rise to prominence and pterosaurs still Ruled The Skies.

Of course, we’re all left wondering if there’ll be a puffin Dimorphodon. I’m happy to confirm that there is, indeed, a puffin Dimorphodon, complete with a stripy beak filled with belemnites a la a puffin gathering fish to feed its chicks. That’s not to say that this is a copy & paste of puffin colouration (it certainly isn’t, thankfully), but the inspiration is obvious. It’s a lovely artwork regardless, and the sheen on the green and blue fuzz is beautifully done. There are actually many such isolated life reconstructions by Rosewarne in this book, and if anyone actually reads this far and wants any more, I’ll certainly consider a follow-up.

Oh, and yes, the legs are completely free of the wings and/or any membranes, and the backward-pointing toe looks a bit awkward. It was 1990, we all dressed badly at the time. (I know I did – I was 2 years old.)

Where one finds Jurassic pterosaurs, marine reptiles are sure to follow. And so here they are. The big beast is Liopleurodon, described as being “12 metres (almost 40 feet) in length”. A tad too large, perhaps, but at least it hadn’t yet reached Walking With Dinosaurs-style kaiju proportions. The other plesiosaur is Cryptoclidus, while the ichthyosaur is good ol’ Ichthyosaurus itself, and the metriornychid is, er, good ol’ Metriorynchus itself. Rosewarne’s rather good at shafts of light, dappled patterns on animals’ backs and streams of bubbles, although I do wonder what’s going on with Liopleurodon‘s teeth; either a lot of them are missing, or it’s depicted with more oral soft tissue than usual. Whatever the case, this illustration has certainly aged much better than many similar pieces from the time, much to Rosewarne’s credit.

Because Benton really doesn’t want to concern himself too much with dinosaurs in this book, the biggest, grandest, bestest reptiles don’t even get a double-page illustration to themselves. Instead, a series of reconstructions serve to illustrate the key dinosaur clades within Saurischia and Ornithischia. For as Benton notes, dinosaurs “are by no means the only fossil reptiles known, nor indeed are they necessarily the most spectacular,” a statement so obviously false (they are very much the most spectacular, so there) that one starts to suspect that Benton was fed up of writing popular books about dinosaurs even in 1990.

Regardless, Rosewarne turns in a number of serviceable illustrations of our dinosaurian friends. These include at least one (the Protoceratops) that would later appear in Dinosaurs!, along with others that clearly informed illustrations that appeared in Dinosaurs! (I’m sure the Tyrannosaurus ripping into a carcass was turned into Carnotaurus), and one that’s an obvious Sibbick copy (Ouranosaurus). It’s a bit of a shame to see Rosewarne produce a Sibbick copy, but then references were very hard to come by back then. All of the dinosaurs are very in keeping with the Dino Renaissance aesthetic, with even the Ouranosaurus being made noticeably trimmer and more muscular than the Sibbick original.

And finally…while Rosewarne handled all the life reconstructions, this book features a wide range of really rather lovely skeletal illustrations as well, by none other than Jim Robins! The above piece, depicting the classic dromaeosaur-Archaeopteryx-pigeon comparison, is but one example, and even if there were details that we would change today, this is still a wonderfully illustrated set of skeletals. If only Jim had been given a few life reconstructions to do, as well. What a pairing that would have been.