Paleoart thread - Post Disnosaurs and other prehistoric animal drawings.

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Here's some velociraptors deinonychuses from a 1981 children's book, nearly a decade before even the Jurassic Park novel... Christopher Santoro is the artist

150660c.jpg
 
We've had two pages of good paleoart so here is some bad paleoart appreciation:
Video is best watched between the hours of 1 and 3 am. Intoxication is recommeded but not required.

Some of my favorite overly speculative paleoart that wasn't included in the video:
Meathead_Triceratops_by_John_McLoughlin.jpg
Triceratops frill as an anchor for back and jaw muscles.
Gliding_Stegosaurus_by_W_H_Ballou.jpg
Stegosaurus using its plates to glide with all the grace of a falling rhinoceros.
Trunked_Sauropod_by_Bill_Munns.jpg
This guy's face says it all.
 
Thanks for the post, it's an interesting style, but why the JP reference?
I think it's interesting because JP is usually credited with introducing raptors/dromaeosaurs to popular culture, which isn't exactly wrong but they were already out there to a degree.

JP's "velociraptors" were based more on the deinonychus, but Michael Crichton thought "raptor" was a cooler name. iirc the deinonychus was a little larger than any velociraptor species known at the time, but otherwise they look pretty much the same (I think bigger raptors have been discovered since). If it were possible to do something like a Google trends search on old books, I think we'd see that "deinonychus" was mentioned more until JP came out, then "velociraptor" took over afterwards.
 
I myself love this old art from mid 19th century. Highly inaccurate by modern standards, but atmospheric as hell:
 

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JP's "velociraptors" were based more on the deinonychus, but Michael Crichton thought "raptor" was a cooler name.

It's generally believed but not confirmed somehow, IIRC that Michael Crichton based some of his research on Gregory S Paul's 1988 bleeding-edge book 'Predatory Dinosaurs of the World'. In that book, Paul does a lot of lumping of two or more genera into one. He used to consider Deinonychus and Velociraptor the same genus. Velociraptor had priority since it was officially named first, so Deinonychus antirrhopus became Velociraptor antirrhopus. As another example, he also lumped Tarbosaurus and Daspletosaurus under Tyrannosaurus.

No-one else in the palaeontological world paid much attention to most of these renamings, and they've mostly been discarded.

Greg Paul is a semi lolcow in his own right, a euphoric atheist, donut steel artist and all that. I'm still watching him kick off about his new, dubious Tyrannosaurus species on the dinosaur mailing list But for all his goofy ideas and childish behaviour over the years, he's still well regarded as an influential palaeontologist, ahead of the curve on the general 'warm blooded dinosaurs' thing and helped push it along. In that 1988 book he was already depicting small theropods with feathers, albeit short, sparse, furry feathers.

Velociraptor.jpg

Ornitholestes.jpg

Deinonychus.jpg

Coelophysis.jpg

(I think bigger raptors have been discovered since)

Utahraptor, Achillobator, Dakotaraptor, I can't remember if there are others.
 
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I've heard there can be quite a lot of drama in the paleo art community (mostly around feathers/proto feathers/skin texture), can anyone more in the know confirm?
I suppose there can be drama with artists who are a bit too liberal in their speculations. I know depictions of heavily feathered T. rex were very popular from 2012-2017, starting when Yutyrannus was discovered and ending when that paper was published describing abundant patches of scaly skin in T. rex and many close relatives, so the feather diehards ate a bit of crow there. Now the new hot "drama" is whether or not T. rex and other theropods had lips. Because there always has to be an argument about something I guess.

Dmitry Tokalchik:
FHm1fVpX0AMglMC.jpg

FW-IriFXEAE4TfX.jpg

Fb-R1rvXEAIu6Fb.jpg

E7s054gXEAA8CLx.jpg
 
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Here's some velociraptors deinonychuses from a 1981 children's book, nearly a decade before even the Jurassic Park novel... Christopher Santoro is the artist
Deinonychus was a very famous dinosaur from the moment it was discovered, at least in paleo circles. The kickstarter of the "dinosaur renaissance". Phil Tippett animated a wonderful scene of them for the 1985 documentary Dinosaurs!
 
Farms are back up and I saw that this thread was active again so i wanted to take this opportunity to show off another classic paleoartist, Zdenek Burian. I've always thought of him as the Eastern European version of Charles R. Knight. Where as Knight's work inspired incredibly influential films like Lost World, King Kong, One Million Years BC, Burian's work inspired low budget films in the 70s and Eastern European media like the Carnivores videogames.
Scutosaurus_&_Sauroctonus_by_Zdenek_Burian.JPG Scutosaurus_The_People_That_Time _Forgot.jpg
Styracosaurus_and_Gorgosaurus_by_Zdenek_Burian.jpg Styracosaurus_Cesta_do_Praveku_1955.jpg
Triceratops_by_Zdenek_Burian.jpg Triceratops_Carnivores.png
 
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