Mesozoic Art: Dinosaurs and Other Ancient Animals in Art

Product Information

Naish, D. & Martill, D. M. 2007. Dinosaurs of Great Britain and the role of the Geological Society of London in their discovery: basal Dinosauria and Saurischia. Journal of the Geological Society, London 164, 493-510. Geister, J. 1998. Lebensspuren made by marine reptiles and their prey in the Middle Jurassic (Callovian) of Liesberg, Switzerland. Facies 39, 105-124.

But when it comes to social behaviour, reproductive behaviour and so on, we have but brief snippets. A few fossils provide possible evidence for intraspecific combat in such groups as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, and limited evidence for social behaviour and maybe even group-living also exists for some (e.g., O’Keefe & Chiappe 2011).

Korte, C., Hesselbo, S. P., Ullmann, C. V., Dietl, G., Ruhl, M., Schweigert, G. & Thibault, N. 2015. Jurassic climate mode governed by ocean gateway. Nature Communications 6: 10015.

The gorgeous paintings are accompanied by thought-provoking notes designed to attract artists and scientists alike…Arts and prehistoric science library collections alike must place Mesozoic Art on their lists of important, key acquisitions.” — Donovan's Recommended Reading The other spinosaurids. What of other spinosaurids, and what of the larger picture? In general, we found support for the idea that Spinosauridae contains the two clades Baryonychinae and Spinosaurinae. Like a few other authors, however, we didn’t always get this result, since baryonychines were sometimes recovered as a paraphyletic grade to spinosaurines. Other authors have reported this result in the past ( Evers et al. 2015, Sales & Schultze 2017). Among other interesting things, we recovered Vallibonavenatrix from Spain – described as a spinosaurine – as either a baryonychine or as outside the baryonychine + spinosaurine clade, while Camarillasaurus from Spain was found to be a spinosaurine ( Barker et al. 2021). The Brazilian Irritator jumped around within Spinosaurinae, suggesting that data is needed on its postcranial skeleton (we coded only for the holotype skull) before we can better pin it down.Liu, S., Smith, A. S., Gu, Y., Tan, J., Liu, C. K. &Turk, G. 2015. Computer simulations imply forelimb-dominated underwater flight in plesiosaurs. PLoS Computational Biology 11, e1004 .

On Eurocentricism and going beyond it. For all this talk of newness and paradigm shifts, one aspect of Mesozoic marine reptile research that makes the subject both eternally frustrating and fascinating is the historical 17th to 19th century angle that ties the topic to the geological locations of western Europe. Will we ever stop talking about the Dorset coast and Mary Anning, the Solnhofen Limestone, Monte San Giorgio in Switzerland, the German Posidonia Shale, Holzmaden and the Oxford Clay of the English midlands?Ruiz-Omeñaca, J. I., Canudo, J. I., Cruzado-Caballero, P., Infante, P. & Moreno-Azanza, M. 2005. Baryonychine teeth (Theropoda: Spinosauridae) from the Lower Cretaceous of La Cantalera (Josa, NE Spain). Kaupia 14, 59-63. As artist Terryl Whitlach also highlights in her foreword, it is heartening to see that illustrators aim to depict extinct life not as monsters, but as living, breathing creatures adapted to their natural environment. Artists seem to have internalised the lessons and encouragement from, amongst others, Witton's The Palaeoartist's Handbook regarding soft-tissue anatomy and depicted behaviours. Gone are the days of shrink-wrapped dinosaurs; instead we get to see well-rounded creatures with muscles, bulges, lips, and plenty of feathers or other integumentary coverings. Particularly noteworthy in this context is Jed Taylor's series of four Dromaeosaurid portraits. Gone, too, are the wide-mouthed carnivores chomping down on hapless herbivores. Only a few artists depict bloody predator-prey interactions, in keeping with the fact that animals are doing something else most of the time. Thus we get a sunbathing Therizinosaurus (Midiaou Diallo), a Scutellosaurus rolling in a muddy pool (Conway), and a very memorable closed-mouth vocalisation by T. rex (Witton) which would look fantastic in a frame. Motani, R. 2002. Scaling effects in caudal fin propulsion and the speed of ichthyosaurs. Nature 415, 309-312. Evers, S. W., Rauhut, O. W., Milner, A. C., McFeeters, B. & Allain, R. 2015. A reappraisal of the morphology and systematic position of the theropod dinosaur Sigilmassasaurus from the “middle” Cretaceous of Morocco. PeerJ 3, e1323. This is an ambitious collection of some of the most breath-catching depictions not only of our world in the past, but our world at any time. Sometimes weird, but often startlingly natural, Mesozoic Art helps us see life in the past not as science fiction, but living, breathing fact.” — Dr Elsa Panciroli, palaeontologist, author of Beasts Before Us and The Earth: A Biography of Life