Vintage Dinosaur Art: Prehistoric Life (In School and At Home) – Part 2

Following my first post on Usborne’s Children’s Encyclopedia of Prehistoric Life (aka Prehistoric Life, part of the In School and At Home series in Russia in the ’90s), at least four people wanted me to carry on and review some of the non-Mesozoic, non-dinosaurian illustrations. So here we go! Rather than start with the smelly mammals of the Cenozoic, I’d prefer it if we could first go back to a simpler, better time…the Permian, or possibly the early Triassic. (Who can tell?)

To be fair, most of the animals in the above scene were around in the early Triassic, with Sauroctonus being the exception (and there’s every chance I’m unaware of the history of the science surrounding that particular Russian gorgonopsid, so do feel free to enlighten me). While the Lystrosaurus appears very conventional, the Euparkeria is oddly sprawling and quadrupedal to my eyes; it might just be the result of Hersey attempting to squash the animal into the scene. Thrinaxodon is far more ferret-like than it probably has any right to be, while Sauroctonus has more hideous skin folds than a Shar-Pei, along with rows of very reptilian-looking nodules along its flanks. It’s quite the contrast with more recent, sleeker interpretations of gorgonopsids.

Hey, look, a dinosaur! I just can’t resist. In this case it’s Diatryma, aka Gastornis giganteus, aka Diatryma gigantea. It’s another Brontosaurus/Apatosaurus situation, except far fewer people remember the popular media in which the more beloved name appeared (and it hasn’t been fully resolved yet). In any case, this is a rather outdated Knightian interpreation with ratite-like plumage, but one could hardly expect anything different from an illustration produced in (at the latest) the early ’80s by a jobbing illustrator. I do remember more up-to-date (albeit still predatory) depictions from the ’90s, though, and now I’m wondering when the ratite-like plumage fell out of favour. Let me know! I’m curious but also quite lazy.

We should finally get to the Proper Mammals. My favourite episodes of Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age were those featuring southern hemisphere weirdos, and so I was delighted to see that this book featured a bunch of ’em. Perhaps the most unfortunate-looking is Thylacosmilus, where the illustration makes it quite clear that poor old Hersey really didn’t know what to do with the animal’s face (reference material being hard to come by back then). This reconstruction is probably rather too cat-like, which is understandable. Underneath we have a creature that I’m pretty sure featured in the Star Wars prequels. I do also remember it as the stock cannon fodder in Prehistoric Planet, forever being hunted down and chased by various other animals, which made me feel a little sorry for the poor dear. I don’t know a great deal about all these prehistoric mammals, but that trunk does look suspiciously elephant-like.

More creatures from South America feature on the opposite page, including Megatherium, Phorusrhacos buriani and Doedicurus, which here looks like a hamster crossed with a quaintly cobblestoned street. While the Phorusrhacos has a great deal of character in spite of its mildly plagiaristic appearance, by far my favourite feature on this page is the guide to creating your own Doedicurus from plasticine, dried peas or lentils and a bit of card. (You will also need a pencil for detail work.) Marvellous – I hope someone out there actually made one.

The Prehistoric Planet episode set in Straya was another stand-out, and so I was happy to see Diprotodon and Procoptodon appear here as well. The latter was a giant, short-faced kangaroo that definitely didn’t just resemble a scaled-up version of today’s red kangaroo, and so Hersey’s version is wide of the mark; again, it’s worth remembering that he probably had nothing to go on beyond ‘really big kangaroo’. The Diprotodon appears fairly conventional, although perhaps rather hairier than it likely was.

I love rhinos (andtheirnearrelatives), so I just had to share the book’s Paraceratherium, appearing here under what is now one of its junior synonyms, Balucitherium. It’s essentially a copy of Burian’s, although the legs here appear oddly slender and giraffe-like for such a massive animal. It’s still a decent Burian clone. That’s about all I have to say. Is there any La Brea tar pit action this book?

Ah, here we go. The Columbian mammoth here is pretty awesome and well detailed, the Smilodon aren’t half bad, and while I wasn’t sure about the dire wolves at first, their anatomy is pretty decent and they have an interesting coat (at least they aren’t white). This illustration might well be another Burian copy (it does look awfully familiar), but for a jobbing illustrator’s work in a kids’ encyclopedia, it’s good stuff. And look, there’s Teratornis.

Much as I’m normally all about Mesozoic dinosaurs (which is why I’m writing for Love In the Time of Chasmosaurs and not Love In the Time of Coelodonta), perhaps my favourite illustration in this whole book features a woolly rhino. Beautifully detailed and strikingly posed in a stark, snowy landscape, the above illustration is hugely evocative. While so many of the illustrations in this book are derivative or obviously intended to portray an unnatural-looking assemblage of animals for the sake of an encyclopedia, it really feels here as if one is encountering this animal out on the steppe, its positioning atop a snowdrift emphasising its awesome presence and intimidating, er, horn.

Or maybe I’m going soft in the head, again. If it’s another copy of someone else’s piece, please don’t tell me; I’m happier not knowing.

AND FINALLY…humans. Or whatever these are. I felt obliged to include these as the woolly rhino does, in fact, stand on one side of a double-page spread, with these primates over on the other side. Why do they look so wizened and wrinkly? It’s upsetting. I’m not sure if they’re Homo sapiens or H. neanderthalensis – all I know is, they have the same hairdresser. Their mum.