During my childhood in the early 2000s, and possibly to this day (I really wouldn’t know), Jerry Pallotta’s animal alphabet and counting books were ubiquitous in the children’s sections of libraries and bookstores. I remember having ones for insects, fish and reptiles, but of course, it’s the dinosaur one I’m looking back on today. Why a 30-year old children’s alphabet book? Partially my own nostalgia, since I can remember checking it out from the library a few times, but also because I want to take a look at the art here. The artist is Ralph Masiello; this book was published in 1990, and was sort of on the forefront of popular dinosaur books really going hog-wild with the bright colors, frills and wattles, after a century of grey and green lizards. Of course, there’s also plenty that dates this book to its time, so that’ll also be worth remarking on.
I don’t know what to make of this Baryonyx. It looks like he’s rearing up to yell at god for giving him such tiny eyes. Fortunately, some of the art is better than this. I find the text interesting though. I wasn’t aware that there was lingering confusion up into the 90s about where Baryonyx’s thumb claw went. Of course, it makes some sense that they were assumed to go on the back feet since that’s where raptor’s hooked claws went.
Pallotta says here “If the giant claws were on its back feet, they would have bumped into its front legs when it walked”. This is because, when discovered in 1983, Baryonyx was originally reconstructed as a quadruped, owing to its long humeri and presumed crocodilian lifestyle. By the 90s, that portrayal had fallen out of fashion.
Not much to say about this Edmontosaurus, I just really like this visual of the dinosaur rearing up from the green swamp water, against the green and yellow sky. Weird colored skies are kind of a trope in paleoart- Wayne Barlowe and Jan Sovak also use them a lot, to name two examples. I’m not sure who’s responsible for codifying this trope, but I like the distinct flavor it lends to each drawing in this book.
I introduce you now to Freaky Frilled Fabrosaurus. All must bow in fear before FFF. He is the alpha and the omega, the Undying One, for whom 200 million years is a blink of the eye. None of you are safe!! But see, this is what I mean, saying that this book was a lot more adventurous than older paleoart. Unless somebody else drew a Fabrosaurs like this earlier?
In all seriousness, I actually quite like this book’s juxtaposition of more prosaically colored dinosaurs with these technicolor frilled ones. It’s a good way to teach kids that we have no real idea what the superficial appearances of most dinosaurs were. Today, Fabrosaurus is generally classed as Lesothosaurus. Several of the pages in this book offer different speculations on why the dinosaurs went extinct. It’s a reminder that there was a decently long gap in between Alvarez’s proposal of the Chicxulub-impact-theory and its general acceptance by the pop-science public.
Hadrosaur noir. You don’t see completely jet-black dinosaurs very often in paleoart, but given that there are plenty of extant reptiles and birds, small and large, with such a color scheme, it’s not really an unrealistic choice. Jaxartosaurus certainly isn’t a very well-known dinosaur, but then again, there aren’t really any iconic “J” dinosaurs out there.
Yeah, get outta here Kronosaurus!!! And take your lemon-lime flavored water with you!
After decades, Oviraptor is finally exonerated from the accusations of egg-theft. I like the suggestion here that dinosaurs were driven extinct by some egg-hyperpredator. It seems absurd, but then again, I guess mammals are currently eating billions of dinosaur eggs every year, so who’s to say they weren’t operating factory farms back then too? As far as the art itself goes, I’m a big fan of the turkey wattle here. This book is too old to show feathered maniraptorans, but the birdlike ornamentation is still cool, and was rarely found in the 90s.
Questrosaurus? I haven’t heard of...wait a second. Did these guys make up a dinosaur?
Yes, Questrosaurus, which appears to be some kind of Macronarian, does not exist. At the time of this book’s writing, there was one “Q” dinosaur named- Quaesitosaurus. But apparently, Pallotta and Masiello couldn’t find Quaesitosaurus in any reference books, so they decided to invent a “Q” dinosaur instead. I do like the visual demonstration of the fact that we don’t know what color the dinosaurs were. Unless they badly misspelled Quaesitosaurus, which I guess is possible. Like most older sauropod drawings, "Questrosaurus" is a tail-dragger.
Jerry just knows that you, dumbass that you are, were going to assume that he said Stegosaurus even though the picture isn’t of one. The picture is one of the book’s rare action-shots, showing it taking a leaping charge to smash its head into a therapod’s flank. This is a rare example of Pachycephalosaur art that properly shows how thick and barrel-chested they were. But what’s up with the feet? While Pachycephalosaurs would have had a small backward-pointing hallux, their feet were far more classically "herbivore" looking in construction. Here, they look like bird feet, with the hallux flexible and equally sized to the other toes. Very strange little detail.
Do you like horned dinosaurs? I do. I don’t have much commentary on this picture, I just think it looks nice. The horns actually curve a bit in this picture, which makes sense as they were keratin-sheathed, but is not often shown.
Christ almighty, what happened to you Velociraptor? As portrayed here, Velociraptor had a bizarre flat head with a curved pointy tongue, and it stood in this bent semi-kangaroo pose. This book is too old to have raptors that are accurate to our modern knowledge of them, with the feathers and all, but even so this is just...really not good.
Xiaosaurus is an ornithopod from China, which I’ve seen listed as a nomen dubium by some sources, but valid by others. At any rate, this picture of it is really strange, with a kangaroo-pose, tiny black eyes, and a sort of fleshy ridge along the upper back and head. It definitely has a certain melancholy though, with the sheer loneliness of the dinosaur pictured.
Yangchuansaurus was 30-some feet long, not 30-some feet tall. That's a minor distinction, but a crucial one. The art here is more conservative, in terms of how the animal looks. While the pose is accurate, rather than kangaroo-esque like many others in this book, the sort of bulbous lizardy head reminds me a lot of Charles Knight's therapods.
Well, that concludes our look at Masiello and Pallotta's Dinosaur Alphabet Book. I'd certainly enjoy looking at every entry, but there's no way copyright law would be in my favor. In any case though, I think this book captures a really interesting window of time within the history of paleontology. The dinosaurs are featherless, often posed awkwardly, sometimes just badly proportioned. But there's an adventurousness to the art that I just don't think I've seen in any pre-90s books. And as far as the prose goes, I really like the explorative tone- the way the book asks open ended questions about what dinosaurs looked like, how they went extinct, and what's still unknown. It's a good way to make kids want to research dinosaurs beyond just reading this one book. In a few short years after this book's publication, Jurassic Park would really shake up popular perception of dinosaurs, but for 1990, kangaroo-Velociraptor sufficed.
No comments:
Post a Comment