Paleoart: Bringing the Past to Life

📸 Paleoart by Rudolph Zallinger.

📸 Lithograph of Duria Antiquior (1830)

What do you see when you imagine a dinosaur? A scaly monster from Jurassic Park? A feathered creature like those in Apple TV's Prehistoric Planet? Whatever image springs to mind owes itself to the work of paleoartists, those that depict what extinct life looked like millions of years ago. Paleoimagery, a hybrid field that marries art and science, has a long history that runs parallel to the discoveries of dinosaurs and other ancient life forms. Through these works, artistic-minded paleontologists can span the gulf of time between our present and the ancient past, filling in the gaps between what can be known from mere fossils and how these creatures actually lived.

Paleoart as a term is a recent coinage from 1987, but depictions of extinct animals can be found across ancient cultures, inspiring stories of mythological creatures. The first scientifically-minded paleoart is usually said to be Henry De la Beche’s Duria Antiquior, a more ancient Dorset (1830), a depiction of a marine ecosystem during the Jurassic period, based on fossils found by Mary Anning. Unfortunately, De la Beche’s somewhat cartoonish style hampered the picture’s acceptance as a serious scientific work. Maybe it was a mistake to include a plesiosaur voiding its bowels as an icthyosaur chomps its head off.

📸 Country of the Iguanodon (1838)

Duria Antiquior is notable for anticipating later conventions of paleoart: striking action scenes showing dinosaurs as they lived. Georges Cuvier (a pivotal figure in the beginnings of paleontology) and Gideon Mantell (who formalized the study of dinosaurs) both made drawings based on their finds, but these images were simple reproductions of fossils or speculative anatomical sketchings. In its infancy, paleoart lacked the flourish that would truly make these creatures come alive, it would need a real artist to take these scientific finds and vividly recreate them.

Of particular note in the history of paleoart are the paintings by John Martin. Best known for his Biblical scenes, Martin brought the cataclysmic mayhem of the Genesis flood or the Exodus from Egypt to his paleoart. Country of the Iguanodon (1838) depicts a kill-or-be-killed world of three iguanodons fighting to the death. Like other religious men, Martin believed fossils were remnants of the antediluvian (pre-flood) world, and his paintings reflect his understanding of prehistory as an unenlightened time.

📸 The crystal palace dinosaurs today.

Paleoimagery is hardly limited to pictorial representations—the most famous reconstruction of this era is inarguably the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs in London, built by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins in conjunction with Sir Richard Owen. These life-size sculptures represented the best understanding of dinosaurs at the time, but they have not stood the test of time. The park’s iguanodons and megalosaurus look far more like over-sized iguanas now. Still, Hawkins was celebrated at the time. There were plans to open a similar exhibition in Central Park, but these sculptures were destroyed by goons working for Boss Tweed after a dispute between him and the city.

Hawkin’s work reflected the understanding of dinosaurs at the time: slow, lumbering, stupid creatures that died out because they were unable to adapt. This image held for quite some time, until two important events: the discovery that many dinosaurs were warm-blooded, and the uncovering of the K/Pg extinction line. This showed that dinosaurs were active, vigorous animals that did not die out because they were evolutionary dead-ends, but because they were killed in a massive global extinction. Thus began the Dinosaur Renaissance, which brought with it striking paleoart of lively dinosaurs.

📸 Behind the scenes on Jurassic Park (Source: Universal)

Today, the most famous work of paleoart is certainly Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. The movie is not just an entertaining ride, it made use of the lastest understandings in dinosaur research. The park’s cloned dinosaurs are not Hawkins' slow-witted monsters, but the quick and intelligent animals of the Dinosaur renaissance. Jurassic Park was a sea change event in the public’s understanding of how these creatures lived, further elevated by the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs documentary which premiered six years later.

Unfortunately, works like Jurassic Park are double edged swords—they can bring new scientific insights to the public, but these ideas then cement and are resistant to new discoveries. We know now that many dinosaurs were feathered, but the popular image remains how they were depicted in Jurassic Park and similar media. Just as in the nineteenth century dinosaurs were reduced to monstrous antediluvian creatures, dinosaurs today are stuck in the past, resistant to new discoveries.

📸 Contemporary Paleoart by julius csotonyi.

Paleoart remains an active field, always adapting to the latest advancements in paleontology. Modern depictions favor more feathered dinosaurs, with a greater variety of skin pigmentation inferred from fossilized feathers. The advent of the digital age has opened up the field, with the past decade especially seeing more speculative works. A 2012 book, All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals has become something of a manifesto for the growing paleoart community. The book's thesis holds that paleoimagery to this point has been conservative, and that paleoart should depict a greater variety of dinosaur behaviors, based on living animal life.