Mesozoic Art: Dinosaurs and Other Ancient Animals in Art

Product Information

Ashby, J. 2022. Platypus Matters: the Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Fanti, F., Cau, A., Martinelli, A. & Contessi, M. 2014. Integrating palaeoecology and morphology in theropod diversity estimation: a case from the Aptian-Albian of Tunisia. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 410, 39-57. Naish, D. & Barrett, P. M. 2016. Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved. The Natural History Museum, London.

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 LifeCharig, A. J. & Milner, A. C. 1997. Baryonyx walkeri, a fish-eating dinosaur from the Wealden of Surrey. Bulletin of the Natural History Museum 53, 11-70. Hutt, S. & Newbery, P. 2004. An exceptional theropod vertebra from the Wessex Formation (Lower Cretaceous) Isle of Wight, England. Proceedings of the Isle of Wight Natural History & Archaeology Society 20, 61-76. 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). A widespread assumption has been that all of these remains can be assigned to Baryonyx, if not specifically to Baryonyx walkeri. While, in cases, this might be correct, there are reasons for thinking that it might very well be incorrect in some other cases. Some of these fossils are more than 10 million years older than the type specimen of Baryonyx walkeri. The rest of the Mesozoic record shows us that dinosaur species and genera generally lasted, at most, for one or two million years. Ergo, at least some of these animals almost certainly represent new taxa: not Baryonyx walkeri, and likely not Baryonyx at all. In addition, quite a few of these baryonychine fossils come from sedimentary settings and geographical locations distinct from the Upper Weald Clay Formation, with distinct dinosaur assemblages. I’ve therefore argued that baryonychine remains reported from outside the Upper Weald Clay Formation should be identified as cf. Baryonyx, Baryonyx sp. or Baryonyx cf. walkeri (Naish & Martill 2007, Naish 2011) (all of these designations mean slightly different things; let me know if you want elaboration). Furthermore, many of these fossils differ in detail from the remains of B. walkeri: many isolated teeth from the Wealden – including those labelled Suchosaurus – have flattened longitudinal strips on both of their sides, instead of just the lingual (inner) side, as is typical of the B. walkeri holotype.

At the outset of the Mesozoic, all of Earth’s continents were joined together into the supercontinent of Pangea ( see the map of the Early Triassic). By the close of the era, Pangea had fragmented into multiple landmasses. The fragmentation began with continental rifting during the Late Triassic. This separated Pangea into the continents of Laurasia and Gondwana. By the Middle Jurassic these landmasses had begun further fragmentation. At that time much of Pangea lay between 60° N and 60° S, and at the Equator the widening Tethys Sea cut between Gondwana and Laurasia. When rifting had sufficiently progressed, oceanic spreading centres formed between the landmasses. During the Middle Jurassic, North America began pulling apart from Eurasia and Gondwana. By the Late Jurassic, Africa had started to split off from South America, and Australia and Antarctica had separated from India ( see the map of the Late Jurassic). Near the close of the Cretaceous, Madagascar separated from Africa, and South America drifted northwestward ( see the map of the Late Cretaceous). 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? Geister, J. 1998. Lebensspuren made by marine reptiles and their prey in the Middle Jurassic (Callovian) of Liesberg, Switzerland. Facies 39, 105-124. 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.

Reviews

Alberti, M., Fürsich, F. T. & Andersen, N. 2019. First steps in reconstructing Early Jurassic sea water temperatures in the Andean Basin of northern Chile based on stable isotope analyses of oyster and brachiopod shells. Journal of Palaeogeography 8: 33. Concavenator: an incredible allosauroid with a weird sail (or hump)... and proto-feathers?, September 2010