Vintage Creationist Dinosaur Art: The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible (Part 2)

     And we're back with more of The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible! I apologize for taking so long to put part two up; some rather more important life events have been taking up my time. We pick up where we left on in part one of this book, having just finished looking at the artistic depictions of dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden and in Noah's Flood. At this point the book takes a different tack, one common to many creationist works. The book suggests ancient dragon legends represent cultural memories of living dinosaurs, which would support the idea that dinosaurs did not live so long ago as commonly believed. Though an interesting idea, I think the author stretches it a bit when he attempts to connect specific legends to specific dinosaurs. One can easily see in this image, for example, that the dragon on the left has nothing to do with Ornitholestes. I could maybe see a possible connection between the middle dragon and Saurolophus, although the Saurolophus illustration they provide looks absolutely terrible. In my mind, the images on the right match best to each other, though a bit of a problem emerges. Though St. George's dragon as depicted here certainly looks a lot like the illustrated prehistoric crocodylian Rutiodon, it begs the question why it couldn't simply represent a modern crocodile instead (apologies for the cut-off image: I couldn't fit the book in my scanner properly).

A bit of a reach, overall.

     This picture portrays the ancient Babylonian hero Gilgamesh in battle with the monster of the cedar forest, depicted here by a somewhat chimeric sauropod (never mind that the monster was originally a lion). It appears to have the head of a Brachiosaurus and the body of an Apatosaurus, both very different varieties of long-necks. Also of note, sauropods had much more rake-like teeth rather than the crushing molars depicted here. Contrary to many depictions, sauropods did not chew, but stripped leaves off branches to swallow them whole. The feet should look a bit like elephant feet, and would not have the great beastly claws this creature possesses, but as this feature did not commonly make it into artistic depictions of dinosaurs at the time, we can give them a pass on this one.

"THIS IS BABYLON!!!!"

     Not much to say about this one, other than Tanystropheus necks do not bend like that. I'm not even referring to the dragon fresco; I mean the more "accurate" painting below. Tanystropheus had one of the most ridiculously inflexible necks in the history of the planet. Seriously, go look at the skeleton: it only has ten neck vertebrae! I like that the artist gave it webbed feet though. This fits with the presumed aquatic nature of this reptile.

*SNAP*

     This one makes me nearly as angry as the dinosaur hip debacle from the first book I reviewed. That is NOT in any way whatsoever what Edmontosaurus looked like. At all. It's one thing to gather supporting evidence for your arguments; it's quite another to start shoehorning in made-up nonsense. Edmontosaurus is best known as the generic duck-billed dinosaur, not a T-rex-handed prosauropod mimicking a meerkat. In fact, why on earth didn't the artist go with a prosauropod, like Plateosaurus? It's a much better fit, and won't make people think you're intentionally misrepresenting the facts to them when you get called out on stuff like this. This is the kind of half-brained foolishness that drives people away, guys.

UGH. Moving on.

     Here we have a decent-looking Triceratops which the text informs us portrays a dragon that was killed near Nerluc, France. I find this a highly dubious connection. I assume the text is referencing the story of the dragon Tarasque, which in traditional depictions looks more like Appa the Air Bison in a Koopa shell. I can't shake the feeling that the author did not want to draw attention to this fact, as he mentions the town of Nerluc changed its named in honor of the dragon, but neglects to mention either the dragon's or the town's modern name (Tarascon). The fact that Triceratops and its relatives are only found in North America and East Asia also deprives this connection of some credibility.

Not a terrible picture, though.

     I'm assuming this two-limbed creature is meant to represent a Tanystropheus, though who knows what it's doing so far from water. I'm guessing the illustrator was hoping the perspective would hide its lack of hindlimbs. The book lifts this picture from a (barely) animated scene in the accompanying film, hence the cardboard cutout appearance of the figure in this scene.

Egad!

     This scene has always stuck with me, I guess because I just found it to be sort of cool. I suppose there's a hint of Dinotopia in the idea of Chinese nobles using "dragons" (or dinosaurs) to pull their carriages. I'm not entirely sure what dinosaurs these are meant to be. Based on the body shape and skin texture, my first instinct is to say Scelidosaurus, but those spikes suggest otherwise. Possibly a Polocanthus pair? The anatomy seems a little mix-and-match, so it's hard to say.

Another chimerical sacrifice in the name of coolness.

     Here we have a rather pleasant image of a Rhamphorynchus flying near the pyramids. It's tastefully calm and peaceful, and the Rhamphorynchus is allowed to remain a part of its environment, rather than getting shoved up in your face. Overall, this feels like the sort of piece John Conway or maybe Douglas Henderson would produce if they were Young Earth Creationists (very high praise, if you don't know who they are. Check out their websites! You're in for a treat!).

That Rhamphorynchus looks reasonably accurate, to boot.

     Here we have a close-up of a Brachiosaurus heaed. It seems pretty decent: soft tissue seems to mitigate the extreme domed appearance of the skull, just as paleontologists believe it would have in life, though the nostrils fail to appear in their proper place in said tissue. We can give them a pass on this one, since again, paleoart conventions at this time usually placed the nostrils of Brachiosaurus directly on top of the dome. I'm not sure what's going on with its mouth; technically its lips seem to obscure the teeth, but there's a suggestion of large grinding molars rather than peg-like rakes.

I'm really nit-picking at this point, though.

     Here we have a very bored-looking Kronosaurus about to lazily munch down on a hapless plesiosaur. Not too much wrong with it, though perhaps the plesiosaur's head could use a little streamlining, and the Kronosaur's teeth should not go so far back down it jawline. The text refers to Kronosaurus as the possible identity of the Biblical Leviathan, which to my mind fits the bill much more closely than that flame-throwing Parasaurolophus from our last feature. This image had an inordinately strong impact on me as a child, given that it today seems rather bland and unexciting to me. However, back when this was my first introduction to the monster that was Kronosaurus, I simply gazed at this illustration in awe.

Not terrible, but not as good as it could be.

     That has to be the happiest little Saltopus ever! The beaming mother gladly receives a loving neck rub from... wait a minute, is that Nicholas Cage?!? I really think it might be. Was he a big deal at all when this book came out? He's got clothes on, so I don't think he's supposed to represent Adam... weird. Anyway, not much to say about Saltopus, other than it shows the age of this book (Saltopus was very common in 70's and 80's children's books, but has since receded from the limelight). I have no idea however what's going on with that... thing in the background there. It looks like the illustrator couldn't commit to drawing either a Plateosaurus or a... I don't know, Tsintaosaurus, maybe? In any case, it's yet another chimera, in this case of a prosauropod and some kind of hadrosaur, as best as I can tell.

Who Cage'd my dinosaur book?

     Okay, somebody must have a serious obsession with Disney, here. This exact image appears in no less than two places in the forgotten recesses of the Walt Disney Company (four, depending on how you look at it). First we have the Rite of Spring segment from Fantasia (1940). The overall segment represents a superb portrayal of dinosaurs as they were imagined at the time, but the limited scope of our interest at this point concerns the 4:53 mark in this clip. In the space of about 20 seconds we see two separate pairs of sauropods attempt to steal food from each other's mouths. Disney revisited this particular meme again in the dinosaur segment of "Ford's Magic Skyway", one of the four pavilions produced by Disney for the 1964 World's Fair. The animatronics used in this attraction were later re-used in the Primeval World show building on the Disneyland Railroad, and were reproduced for the Universe of Energy pavilion at Epcot. Ahem. So....... yeah. This artist totally copied Disney, is what I'm saying.

I think I may have read to much into this. Maybe I'M the one with the Disney obsession...

     Anyway, returning to more common dino-memes, here we have that old classic of the 70's and 80's, the Chunk-o-saurus Dilophosaurus! Dilophosaurus is best remembered as the spitter from Jurassic Park, and though there's no evidence of a fleshy neck frill, it was otherwise reasonably accurate, from a physical point of view. Now compare that svelte creature with these tubby lards, and you see the issue here. Nobody quite knows why this was such a common practice in older paleoart, but it probably represents the lazy attitude taken by many artists of the mid-twentieth century. And yes, they are eating plants, despite the fact that they are known to have been carnivores. This image intends to demonstrate how carnivorous animals were all originally peaceful herbivores in the Garden of Eden.

Don't even get me started on the one on the left...

     For our final dinosaur image from this book, we have that perennial favorite, Triceratops! It is here depicted using its horns to lift up a log to provide better foraging, rather than using them to gore the nearest Tyrannosaurus. A Rhinoceros Beetle, which uses its horn for similar purposes, helpfully stands nearby to further drive the point home (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!?). I heartily approve of this portrayal. All apologizes to the Awesome-Bro fanboys out there, the natural world, present or past, does not consist of constant cage-fights to the death between evenly matched opponents. Even when carnivores go a-hunting, they tend to steer clear of well-armed opponents and pick on small, weak individuals that have little means of fighting back. Consequently, one finds that "defensive weapons" in the natural world usually serve multiple purposes other than simply fighting off enemies. Use as display structures in courtship represents one of the most common alternate uses, but foraging tools represent a perfectly reasonable utility for these features as well.

A Triceratops, depicted in the act of *GASP!* peacefully enjoying itself!!!

     Well, that all for now. The book had a few more images in it, but as they did not contain any prehistoric beasts, I felt they did not fall within the scope of our little examination here. Thanks for reading along, and for putting up with my ridiculous nit-picking!