Vintage Dinosaur Art: Jurassic Park Institute – Part 2

Last time, we took a look at some of the many theropods illustrated by Tim Bradley for the now-defunct Jurassic Park Institute Dinopedia. Let’s check out a few more of those before moving on to the sauropods. Thanks again to Tim for providing these illustrations, it’s a real pleasure to be able to see them again after all these years!

I foolishly neglected to include a tyrannosaur last time, so here’s Daspletosaurus to make up for it. The intensity of the blue, birdy eyes is novel and dramatic, drawing the eye even more than that toothy maw. I love how Tim uses colour in unexpected ways, something that was surely necessary to keep all these dinosaurs from becoming samey. Chocolatey brown, caramel, and blue look surprisingly nice together! The charging pose is fun, and a further testament to Tim’s talent at drawing dinosaurs from all sorts of interesting angles.

Struthiomimus is one of several ornithimimosaurs illustrated for the Dinopedia, shown in classic scaly guise with taut muscles and a sleek Dinosaur Renaissance style. It wouldn’t be long before feathers became the default in reconstructions of these animals, and it’s easy to see why! Still, Tim’s Struthiomimus has a lovely sense of motion and a very pretty pattern that feels naturalistic and sensible for the animal. The flexion in the foot shows a careful observation of bird movement, much like that of an emu or cassowary.

Hilariously, the one ornithomimosaur that was given feathers is Shuvosaurus, which turned out to be a pseudosuchian! Taken as it was understood at the time, this is a great reconstruction of an ostrich dinosaur as we understood them back in the early 2000s. It’s hard to believe that a simple pelt of filaments like this was shocking just a few decades ago. Things really have come a long way in a very short time, and even this fluffy little guy feels naked by modern standards!

One more theropod before we move on: the legendary Saurophaganax, or should that be Allosaurus anax? Of all the theropods Tim illustrated for the Dinopedia, this has got to be the most imposing. The low build, hulking musculature, striking facial pattern, and colossal claws make for one seriously terrifiying dinosaur. This is a real monster, easily imagined wrestling some unlucky sauropod to the ground and tearing its throat out before delivering an ear-splitting roar. The Daspletosaurus seen earlier looks tame by comparison.

On the opposite side of the dinosaur size spectrum, we have Thecodontosaurus! Early sauropodomorphs rarely get to be so dynamic in artwork so this bounding pose is a refreshing change of pace. These dinosaurs are often reconstructed in a way that makes them look stiff and inflexible, and I’d love to see some newer work exploring more exciting poses and situations. The three-toned green pattern is simple but pretty, and adds a fun reptilian character. One of my favourites of the whole Dinopedia library!

The Dinopedia covered both the famous and the obscure, so in addition to classics like Apatosaurus and Diplodocus, there are oddballs like Amygdalodon! This is a fairly poorly known early sauropod from Argentina, rarely depicted in art of any kind. The big-nosed skull is a sensible choice for an early sauropod and has a lot of character. The choice to depict it preparing to bite down on a theropod is a bold one! Many sauropods had chunky skulls with thick, pencil-like teeth that could have made potent weapons, and I like to think they wouldn’t hesitate to bite a predator if they needed to! The theropod is pretty cool looking too, sort of allosaurian without looking like any particular taxon.

Apatosaurus made an appearance in the JP Institute Dinopedia LONG before its dubiously honourable debut in the Jurassic World films, and the two designs couldn’t be more different. The Jurassic World Apatosaurus is grey, wrinkly, lumpen and generally unpleasant. Tim’s is vibrant, powerful, and downright intimidating! One is regressive and generic, one emblematic of the Dinosaur Renaissance ideas that made Jurassic Park so wonderful. Even the hands and feet are anatomically correct! Fantastic stuff.

Speaking of relics from the past, how about this Mamenchisaurus? The 2000s was an interesting time for these sauropods as we stepped away from earlier, diplodocid-inspired reconstructions to the more unique anatomy we imagine them with today. The Dinopedia Mamenchisaurus is proportionally closer to the modern conception, but the slender limbs, gracile skull, and low posture still echo with diplodocid influence. It’s a gorgeous looking animal and the snazzy cream and black patterning only elevates the elegance. It might be my very favourite of Tim’s dinosaurs! It’s just so pretty!

Another animal firmly placing the Dinopedia in the late 90s-early 2000s wave of dinosaur media is the presence of the mythical “Ultrasauros“. Imagined as a jumbo-sized brachiosaurid, Ultrasauros turned out to be a chimaera of Supersaurus and Brachiosaurus bones and not the remains of a blue whale sized supersauropod. This is one of the only Dinopedia pieces with a background to accompany the animal, but it definitely makes you think BIG. The pterosaurs accentuate the sense of scale, being a tried and true tool of dinosaur artists in need of a quick and easy way to give viewers a frame of reference. I can’t think of many other artists that have tried depicting sauropods from this angle, it makes for an eye-catching composition!

One of the most fun sauropods in the Dinopedia has to be Agustinia, which was a very recent discovery at the time this art was created! Early interpretations of the fragmentary remains resulted in spiky, armoured reconstructions that looked like a sauropod/ankylosaur hybrid. I’m guessing Tim felt much the same way, as his Agustinia sports the same colour scheme as his hybrid Amargospinus design from the Jurassic Park: Chaos Effect toyline. His slick, comic-bookish style looks especially good on a creature like this. It’s a shame the real animal probably didn’t look much like this!

We’ll wrap this article up with the most jaw-dropping sauropod illustration in the entire Dinopedia. This is Seismosaurus, as it was once known, beating the snot out of each other. What an absolutely stunning visual. This is another piece where Robert Bakker’s influence is plainly visible in the best way possible. These two dueling giants would look right at home on the pages of The Dinosaur Heresies! Mainstream dinosaur media is only just starting to catch up with depicting sauropods as this lively, and we can only hope some future dinosaur documentary can give us diplodocids as exciting as these!

Next time, Marc will return with another look at Gregory Wenzel’s Giant Dinosaurs of the Jurassic. After that, we’ll return to the JP Institute to see some ornithischians!