Mesozoic Art: Dinosaurs and Other Ancient Animals in Art

Product Information

Arranged by portfolio, this book brings this dramatic art to a wide, contemporary audience. The art is accompanied by text on the animals and their lives, written by palaeontologist Darren Naish. Palaeoart is dynamic, fluid and colourful, as were the beasts it portrays, which are displayed in this magnificent book.

Martineau, F., Mazin, J.-M. & Prieur, A. 2010. Regulation of body temperature by some Mesozoic marine reptiles. Science 328,1379-1382. 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. Robinson, J. A. 1975. The locomotion of plesiosaurs. Neues Jahrbuch fur Geologie und Paläontologie, Abhandlungen 149, 286-332. A French language book – La Mer au Temps des Dinosaures, by Nathalie Bardet, Alexandra Houssaye, Stéphane Jouve and Peggy Vincent – appeared while I was writing Ancient Sea Reptiles. I haven’t yet seen a copy and an unaware of how comprehensive it is.

About the contributors

Naish, D. 2011. Theropod dinosaurs. In Batten, D. J. (ed.) English Wealden Fossils. The Palaeontological Association (London), pp. 526-559. This book offers new, fresh, naturalistic and exciting depictions of our favourite creatures. Prehistoric Animals are not monsters and these young artists give them the respect they deserve. No doubt Mesozoic Art will inspire a whole new generation of Palaeoartists!” — David Krentz, palaeoartist, designer, concept artist, storyboard artist on Prehistoric Planet, Emmy award-winning concept artist on Primal

Jagielska, N., O’Sullivan, M., Funston, G. F., Butler, I. B., Challands, T. J., Clark, N. D. L., Fraser, N. C., Penny, A., Ross, D. A., Wilkinson, M. & Brusatte, S. L. 2022. A skeleton from the Middle Jurassic of Scotland illuminates an earlier origin of large pterosaurs. Current Biology 32, 1-8. Martill, D. M. & Hutt, S. 1996. Possible baryonychid dinosaur teeth from the Wessex Formation (Lower Cretaceous, Barremian) of the Isle of Wight, England. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 197, 81-84.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. Introducing ‘Unexpected Isle of Wight Air-Filled Hunter’, a New English Theropod Dinosaur, September 2020

Beautiful, Big, Bold Dinosaur Books: of Molina-Pérez and Larramendi’s Theropods, Rey’s Extreme Dinosaurs 2, and Parker et al.’s SaurianFleischle, C. V., Wintrich, T. & Sander, P. M. 2018. Quantitative histological models suggest endothermy in plesiosaurs. PeerJ 6: e4955. Muscutt, L. E., Dyke, G., Weymouth, G. D., Naish, D., Palmer, C. & Ganapathisubramani, B. 2017. The four-flipper swimming method of plesiosaurs enabled efficient and effective locomotion. Mesozoic Era, second of Earth’s three major geologic eras of Phanerozoic time. Its name is derived from the Greek term for “middle life.” The Mesozoic Era began 252.2 million years ago, following the conclusion of the Paleozoic Era, and ended 66 million years ago, at the dawn of the Cenozoic Era. ( See the geologic time scale.) The major divisions of the Mesozoic Era are, from oldest to youngest, the Triassic Period, the Jurassic Period, and the Cretaceous Period. The ancestors of major plant and animal groups that exist today first appeared during the Mesozoic, but this era is best known as the time of the dinosaurs.

Mesozoic Artshowcases twenty of the best artists working in this field, representing a broad spectrum of disciplines, from traditional painting to cutting-edge digital technology. Some provide the artwork for new scientific papers that demand high-end paleoart as part of their presentation to the world at large; they also work for the likes of National Geographicand provide art to museums around the world to illustrate their displays. Other artists are the new rising stars of paleoart in an ever-growing, ever-diversifying field. Finally, many people are fascinated by the inferred, imagined or reconstructed behaviour of fossil animals and want to hear more about it. The problem is that we never know anywhere near as much as we’d like. For ancient sea reptiles we know a fair bit about dietary preferences and inferred hunting behaviour, and we’ve also done a lot of work on locomotory behaviour (e.g., Godfrey 1984, Lingham-Soliar 2000, Motani 2002, 2005, Carpenter et al. 2010, Liu et al. 2015, Muscutt et al. 2017); this explains the unusual image at top right of the montage above: see this article on plesiosaur locomotion to have it explained. Grooves and other marks on preserved seafloor sediment suggests that some of these animals ploughed or dug in the mud (Geister 1998), and of course the idea that giant predatory species hunted along shores and grabbed terrestrial animals from the water’s edge is irresistible. The fact that this strategy is present in several groups of living aquatic predators make it likely – yes, likely – that this strategy was used by at least some species. A Review of Robert L. France’s Disentangled: Ethnozoology and Environmental Explanation of the Gloucester Sea Serpent 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. Baryonychines in sympatry? So… three baryonychine taxa in the Wealden? Well, why not? For starters, Baryonyx walkeri, Ceratosuchops inferodios and Riparovenator milnerae are not demonstrably sympatric. They might all be Barremian in age, but the Barremian was four million years long and none of these dinosaurs are demonstrably from the same horizon. In addition, Baryonyx is from a different sedimentary basin from the one that yields Riparovenator and Ceratosuchops ( Barker et al. 2021).I was entranced by the work here…Darren and Steve's captions also provide an effective, insightful commentary…this is obviously a must-have book for anyone interested in palaeoart…More than that, this feels like a definitive summation of where we're up to in the world of palaeoart, committed to print to be perused for decades to come.” — Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs Godfrey, S. J. 1984. Plesiosaur subaqueous locomotion, a reappraisal. Neues Jahrbuch fur Geologie und Paläontologie, Monatshefte 1984, 661-672. Books on the Loch Ness Monster 3: The Man Who Filmed Nessie: Tim Dinsdale and the Enigma of Loch Ness