Vintage Dinosaur Art: The Famous Dinosaurs Playing Cards

Themed playing card sets are a dime a dozen, offering a fun spin on the standard deck that we’ve all seen thousands of times. As we at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs know, there’s no better theme than dinosaurs! The Heritage Playing Card Company, purveyor of innumerable themed decks, clearly knew this and released a set of dinosaur-themed cards back in 2002. This was a time of Jurassic Park sequels, Walking with Dinosaurs, and so much more iconic dinosaur media, a golden era for all sorts of weird and wacky dinosaur merchandise, and a wonderful time to be a young dinosaur nerd like myself. I didn’t own these cards, but I do have a childhood memory of playing War with them at a schoolmate’s roller rink birthday party. They’ve existed in a half-remembered haze in my mind since then, but I was lucky enough to stumble upon them online about a month ago and finally added them to my collection!

The box does a great job drawing you in, with just a taste of the dinosaurs you’ll see in the full deck. Cecilia Fitzsimons illustrated this set and does a pretty commendable job for an artist that isn’t a dinosaur specialist. There isn’t much in the way of copying or artistic tropes like you might expect from a jobbing illustrator. Fitzsimons’ history with children’s nonfiction nature books gave her experience illustrating living animals, and those skills make for some interesting and (mostly) original dinosaurs! Let’s take a look at some highlights.

Coelophysis, an essential Triassic dinosaur, is as good a start as any. The slim anatomy, heron-like neck, and spotty-stripy pattern make for a very pretty theropod. I suspect that Walking with Dinosaurs influenced the look of Fitzsimons’ Coelophysis, but this is no half-hearted copy. There’s something a little fishy (literally) about that face, but I think it’s just a consequence of her style. The anatomy is sensible, if a bit off, with little bulges of muscle here and there. It’s a shame we only get to see one of each animal, because a flock of these little predators would have been adorable.

Carnotaurus is another 2000s must-have, and it looks suitably ferocious! The pose is exciting and unorthodox, you have to appreciate the choice to go for a tough perspective like this. Choices like that keep things interesting when illustrating so many dinosaurs. The brown/cream patterning is deceptively complex despite the restricted colour palette and I adore the results. Missing hallux and weedy jaw muscles aside, this is a pretty good reconstruction of a dinosaur that was still being shown as “T.rex with horns” by other artists. Something about it reminds me of Jan Sovák’s theropods, though again, it doesn’t seem to be a copy.

Next up is another 2000s favourite; Suchomimus! Stephen Czerkas’ model was the basis for Fitzsimon’s reconstruction, but she completely changes up the pose and patterning. This alligator-like blueish tone is very pleasing to the eyes and I always like seeing it used for dinosaurs. She gives the crocodile mimic a vicious expression, complete with flexing claws and a posture suggesting that it might charge forward at any second! This is one of the coolest looking dinosaurs in the set, particularly when one considers that Suchomimus was often presented as a “biggest theropod” contender when these cards were first released.

Allosaurus is given the illustrious position as an Ace, beating out T.rex in what was surely an upset for plenty of children. This is another tough perspective accomplished with good looking results, though the head looks a little bit fudged. It perfectly suits the “lion of the Jurassic” persona that Allosaurus was given during the 2000s. This is another one with a really cool skin pattern; it blends big cat and monitor lizard into something that looks just right on a big theropod!

An inevitable consequence of coming out so soon after Walking with Dinosaurs is the presence of Utahraptor complete with yellow and black spots. Still, Fitzsimon’s makes it her own with beefier limbs and even a subtle hint of hair-like filaments down the neck and back! The properly oriented wrists is another surprising improvement, though it’s hard to say why she chose this when the other theropods all have bunny hands. It’s a cliche but I do love the slit pupils on a dromaeosaurid in this style. Few things are quite so nostalgic to a child of the 90s!

It’s the big three: Spinosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, and Giganotosaurus! You have to take these three as a trio, especially since the early 2000s were when they were ALWAYS being pitted against each other for the role of biggest, baddest predator to ever grace our planet. The Spinosaurus isn’t quite carnosaur-headed but it certainly isn’t spinosaur-headed either and I’m very curious what was being referenced, if anything, when it was painted. It comes off as a bit wimpy to me; there’s some power in the limbs but the whole animal has a dorkiness that isn’t helped by the awkward perspective on the neck. T.rex is a direct Walking with Dinosaurs copy. Disappointing, but it’s far too common for otherwise competent artists to screw up T.rex for some reason. The blueish hues with black stripes are a novel choice, at the very least. Giganotosaurus is the highlight of the three, for me. The spines decorating the neck are a fun touch which could easily have been gaudy if they weren’t so subtle. I’m not really sure why, but the head shape feels right even if none of the details match up. This is exactly how I imagined it as a kid, though I wasn’t too happy that it was given the King card over T.rex. That’s just silly!

We’ll only take a brief look at the sauropods, since they are mostly a uniformly boring grey or brown with dumpy proportions (which was the style at the time) and don’t have much of note to comment on. This is apparently Superposeidon, probably best taken to mean Sauroposeidon which was described a mere two years prior. This same error shows up in a handful of early 2000s dinosaur books and there’s probably a trail that can be followed to a simple mistake in a single source, but that’s a topic for another time. As for the dinosaur itself: boring, grey, and dumpy. The only thing that made me want to include this one is the nose balloon, which is a pretty neat addition and not too dissimilar from some modern interpretations of the cavernous noses of macronarian sauropods.

Hey, look! It’s our old friend diplodocid Mamenchisaurus! This erroneous look stuck around in artwork long after it was rendered scientifically obsolete, with Mamenchisaurus now understood to belong to an entirely different, more basal lineage of sauropods that weren’t quite so elongated as Diplodocus and kin. Of Fitzsimmons’ sauropods, I think this one looks best. There’s a real sense of grace and majesty to the sinuous pose which is a hallmark of all good sauropod reconstructions, and the inexplicable ridge down the back is a fun trope common to lots of non-specialist dinosaur art.

Another unmistakable sign of this set’s age is the, ahem, horn of Tsintaosaurus. Every joke that can be made about this look has been made already, so I’ll just leave it at that. There’s something familiar about this one that I can’t quite place, but it might just be the influence of John Sibbick’s endlessly copied version from the Normanpedia. Comment below if you know a better match!

Hadrosaurs and near-hadrosaurs are some of the prettiest dinosaurs in the deck, with this Ouranosaurus sporting a striking two-toned hide that feels naturalistic and original! The sail isn’t as exaggerated as it was in the real animal but it’s still a pretty good reconstruction of a relatively obscure dinosaur. That’s a benefit of doing a different dinosaur on every card: you have to dip into the unfamiliar!

Sadly, this beautiful Parasaurolophus is a near-direct copy of a similarly pretty Lambeosaurus by James McKinnon, as seen here. It’s a shame that Fitzsimmons resorted to copying in this case, because the changes she did make are genuinely lovely. The okapi-meets-oryx colouration is one of the best patterns I’ve ever seen on a hadrosaur and there’s a subtle but excellently executed personality just in eye alone. I wish it were an original!

Thankfully, the copying is limited to only a very small selection of cards. The Iguanodon is another great example of a simple pattern used to great effect. Despite being mostly green-grey, the simple addition of that black patch on the head elevates it beyond the boring to something rather eye-catching! The right arm is a casualty of the perspective but we can forgive that because everything else looks pretty good! The late Jurassic age is an odd mistake, but the listed locations hint at Iguanodon‘s infamous history as a wastebasket for just about any big, non-hadrosaur ornithopod. I wish we saw Iguanodon in art as frequently as we used to: it feels like it’s fallen by the wayside in recent decades.

What’s big, stands totally erect, and drags its tail when everyone else had the good sense to stop doing that decades ago? Why, Pachycephalosaurus, of course! I blame John Sibbick for this one. His tail-dragging bonehead and its imitators were inescapable until the early 2010s, with very few deviating from the template it set. Besides Luis Rey, Mark Hallett, and The Lost World: Jurassic Park, you basically never saw Pachycephalosaurus any other way.

Styracosaurus is served very well here, with a great sense of heft and texture. The sprawling forelimbs are absolutely packed with muscle and the legs are similarly beefy. The head suffers a little from the perspective, but it isn’t bad by any means! Take note of the properly spaced fingers. No elephant hands here! Much like Iguanodon, I feel like Styracosaurus isn’t as popular as it used to be. Authors and artists, consider giving Styracosaurus a starring role. It deserves it!

As with the Styracosaurus, the perspective is wonky on the Triceratops. Still, not a bad take on this dinosaurian celebrity and head and shoulders above a lot of other published attempts. I can’t get over how muscular those arms are. They’re positively Schwarzeneggerian, somehow bigger and scarier than the head! Try to imagine Fitzsimon’s Tyrannosaurus hunting this Triceratops. Good luck with that, buddy!

From one well-armed herbivore to another, here’s Stegosaurus. There’s nothing especially notable about it, but it’s a serviceable take on a dinosaur that isn’t easy to draw even from a lateral perspective. I’m interested in the thinking behind the little nodules all over the face and neck. Maybe they’re an attempt at the gular armour known from a handful of specimens? It’s a cool look, regardless!

Wuerhosaurus is significantly more interesting than the Stegosaurus, with another oryx-like pattern that just looks awesome. How often do you see stegosaurians with such striking patterns? Not often! The squared plates are another historical novelty that can be found in almost all art of this animal. The known plates show just such a shape, but later study suggested that this was a result of breakage. The true shape remains unknown, but assuming a more conventional stegosaurian shape seems sensible in lieu of evidence otherwise. The thagomizer is looking wicked here: woe betide any theropod that dares threaten it.

We’ll wrap up with one more thyreophoran; the English nodosaur Polacanthus. Another Walking with Dinosaurs Star, one has to assume it was chosen to cash in on its short-lived stardom. The dark, scaly hide isn’t too dissimilar from how it looked in WWD but isn’t a copy either. The brown of the armour pops against this dark background, drawing attention to the fearsome spines that adorn its chunky body. The way its little snout is buried in greenery is too cute!

While it doesn’t get a card to itself, Archaeopteryx gets to decorate the back of every card! It’s an unremarkable reconstruction and the details are lost on the golden fuzziness of the printing, but pretty in spite of it.

The artwork here might not be influential or even widely seen, but it’s a beloved piece of personal nostalgia that I’ll always treasure. They’re a time capsule of the simple, carefree days of childhood when I didn’t have problems any bigger than those fools at the Heritage Playing Card Company daring to relegate T.rex to the third-ranking card in its suit. There’s a ton of cards I didn’t share here, so I could probably get another article out of them if interest is there. Sound off in the comments, if so! Heritage still sells this deck from their webstore so consider picking up a deck for yourself too!