Vintage Dinosaur Art: Giant Dinosaurs of the Jurassic – Part 1

As regular readers will hopefully be aware, our sole criterion for Vintage Dinosaur Art is that the art in question must be at least 20 years old. (We’re also aware that ‘vintage’ is not synonymous with ‘old’, but you don’t mess with the brand.) Now that we are – rather frighteningly – well into the 2020s, that means works from the 2000s now fall within our purview. Unfortunately, the era immediately after Walking With Dinosaurs saw many publishers demanding ‘photo real’ CG models of prehistoric beasts for their books, with mostly very questionable results. Who will be there to save us from all the smeary-textured polygonal crud? Enter Gregory Wenzel!

Giant Dinosaurs of the Jurassic was published in 2004 by Charlesbridge of Watertown, Massachusetts, USA, and was both written and illustrated by Wenzel. It was sent to me from the US by Herman Diaz (thank you again Herman!). No CG here – Wenzel employs good old fashioned acrylics on paper, with absolutely stunning results. The Apatosaurus on the cover would be striking enough in isolation, but it’s really sold as a giant by the excellent use of smaller animals and vegetation to provide a sense of scale (a theme repeated often inside). While these reconstructions would likely attract criticism for being rather on the lean side these days, they represent the apotheosis of the Dinosaur Renaissance, Paulian way of doing things. They’re all extremely well researched and hang together very convincingly.

The book essentially tells the story of various animals from the Morrison Formation as they go about their day. This includes not just the titular giant dinosaurs, but smaller species and even the non-dinosaurian fauna; for example, the mammal-like creature in the above piece is described as a “docodont” (possibly intended to be Docodon itself; the text capitalises and italicises the term ‘docodont’, which might be a typo). However, I’m going to focus on the theropods in this post, ‘cos they’re the best dinosaurs innit. The blue fellow in the above piece is quite distinctively Ornitholestes, and there’s a notable emphasis on its birdlike nature – it even sports some fuzz, which really ought to have been very normal by 2004, but younger readers can be assured that it most certainly wasn’t. It also sports that famously erroneous nose horn/crest, but y’know, thems were the times. I am very fond of the red on the head that then continues in a ‘streak’ down the neck, and the impressively realistic dessication on that sauropod carcass.

Moving up the food chain, and Ceratosaurus naturally puts in an appearance, successfully hunting down a Camptosaurus. The vivid blue-and-yellow colour scheme of the latter instantly reminded me of the famous Battat toy dinosaurs of the 1990s, which isn’t too surprising as Wenzel sculpted a number of them. Again, while there are certainly details of these reconstructions that one would do differently 22 years on, their execution is nigh-on about as good as one could expect at the time. Here, the Ceratosaurus is impressive for being depicted from an unusual perspective, highlighting Wenzel’s grasp of the body plan of large theropods. (Some people give the carnivorous species wide hips to this day…)

While theropods are obviously the best dinosaurs, I am occasionally forced to concede that sauropods are, nevertheless, really very awesome. The ‘flock of pterosaurs following a sauropod herd’ trope has rarely been employed as well as in the above piece, depicting a group of Apatosaurus crossing a fern prairie to find better feeding grounds, while a nearby Allosaurus elects to stay “clear of the adults’ lashing, multi-ton tails” – a neat reminder that sauropod tails were so massive, they would have been incredibly dangerous with or without whip-like tips. This spread and the accompanying text effectively convey the scale, majesty, dangerousness, and (for human eyes) quite alien-looking forms of these creatures, which dwarf an animal that’s so often the archetypal ‘big Jurassic carnivore’ in children’s books.

The scale shifts dramatically as Allosaurus encounters Mymoorapelta, an animal that rarely seems to make it into Morrison formation scenes and yet was described all the way back in 1994. Come to think of it, Gargoyleosaurus doesn’t seem to show up in palaeoart very much, either – we can probably blame that one charismatic plated thyreophoran with the spiked tail and legendarily minuscule brain for hogging all the attention. Mymoorapelta was a rather small animal, and so to emphasise the allosaur’s rather intimidating stature by comparison, the viewer takes on an ankylosaur’s-eye-view. Although much larger and sporting some very dandy yellow stripes, the Allosaurus thinks it can do better than a morsel that tastes like rock-hard bony plates and pain, and so moves on…

…passing some Barosaurus on the way to its ultimate destination, which are contractually required to re-enact the famous AMNH lobby mount. Although an obvious tip o’ the hat, Wenzel does add a third Barosaurus and completely changes the Allosaurus‘ pose and overall mien, whereas other artists have been content to just depict the famous mount more directly. Those trees in the background are just marvellous, by the way – apart from providing a reminder that even giant dinosaurs could still be dwarfed by the biggest plants, they make me desperately want to be able to run my fingers over the texture of the paint. (But if you ever let me have a close look at any of your originals, I promise I won’t do that. Honest.)

It turns out that Allosaurus was zeroing in on the Ceratosaurus‘ kill, which it promptly proceeds to bully the smaller carnivore away from. A slight criticism of Wenzel’s work in this book could be directed at the tendency to depict animals in a somewhat diagrammatical lateral view,  with this Ceratosaurus being a good example, although the Allosaurus is notably not shown that way here. Probably better to adhere to the few decent references that were available, though, rather than going all freestyle and crazy like. The Ceratosaurus above also very much reflects the contemporary tendency to under-muscle dinosaurs’ tails, in particular, although Wenzel can hardly be blamed for that – everyone was doing it. I will say that the patterning on the Ceratosaurus is really beautiful.

Isn’t it starting to look like rain out here? Well…

…That’s because the rainy season is about to start, and in a big way. This meets the approval of a Diplodocus that’s wandered into the scene. The animal luxuriates in a double-page spread, the better to emphasise how absurdly lo-o-ong its neck is. Beautifully done, and I approve the inclusion of a cute turtle among the smattering of fauna.

And finally (for now): the aforementioned large, charismatic, plated, spike-tailed, pin-headed thyreophoran, the puncturer of allosaurs and denizen of toy shops throughout the world. This reconstruction, very happily, clearly depicts the plates as having a keratin sheath; indeed, the text does describe them as being “covered with smooth, shiny, hard keratin, like a turtle’s shell”. It also has a totally rad yellow and purpley-blue colour scheme going on, which one might well argue isn’t strictly realistic, but is marvellously striking and fitting of an animal that was, after all, a pretty out-there take on the well-worn idea of ‘reptile with scutes for protection’.

Next time: more, more, more! We haven’t even talked about the little supplementary illustrations yet…