Mesozoic Art: Dinosaurs and Other Ancient Animals in Art

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Steve White previously edited Dinosaur Art and Dinosaur Art II, published by Titan Books. For reasons unknown to me, this collaboration has not continued. You would barely be able to tell from the cover, though, as the design and fonts are identical. I will leave a more in-depth comparison for the end of this review and first focus on the material at hand. Mind you, that’s surely a good sign – I was entranced by the work here, especially the fantastic pieces by the artists I was less familiar with (I must mention Emiliano Troco’s work again – just stunning). Darren and Steve’s captions also provide an effective, insightful commentary on what we’re looking at, so it’s not as if the reader is stranded in the Mesozoic (actual geological era may vary) without any context. Introducing ‘Unexpected Isle of Wight Air-Filled Hunter’, a New English Theropod Dinosaur, September 2020 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

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. 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? On that note, Mesozoic Art is available directly from Bloomsbury here (this is the best option if you’re in the UK) and from digital retailers as normal. It’s also available from standard retailers; ask for it at your local bookstore.

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). And 2021 isn’t over yet. Will more Wealden-themed dinosaur news appear before the year is through? Stay tuned….

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. 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. However, there are numerous other relevant groups as well, and I did my best to give them fair coverage too. Many of these were alive during the Triassic, including the long-tailed thalattosaurs, the very peculiar hupehsuchians, the (mostly) shellfish-eating placodonts, the fang-toothed helveticosaurs, the nothosaurs, the pistosaurs, and so on. Shared anatomical traits show that some of these groups are close cousins of plesiosaurs and belong with them in a large group termed Sauropterygia; hupehsuchians appear to be close kin of ichthyosaurs (Motani 1999, Motani et al. 2015). Entirely different groups whose affinities lie elsewhere evolved during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, including the marine pachyophiid snakes. O’Keefe, F. R. & Chiappe, L. M. 2011. Viviparity and K-selected life history in a Mesozoic marine plesiosaur (Reptilia, Sauropterygia). Science 333, 870-873.Bakker, R. T. 1993. Plesiosaur extinction cycles - events that mark the beginning, middle and end of the Cretaceous. In Caldwell, W. G. E. & Kauffman, E. G. (eds) Evolution of the Western Interior Basin. Geological Association of Canada, Special Paper 39, 641-664.