Re: Treasures in the Freebie Pile

[Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com>]

2009/7/27 Richard W. Travsky <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>:
>
> Our local public library had a nice surprise in the freebie pile: "Dinosaurs
> and Other Prehistoric Reptiles" a "Giant Golden Book", filled with Zallinger
> illustrations.
>
> Nice!

Very nice!  A while back I made a high-resolution scan of the
double-page Brachiosaurus restoration in this book (pages 20-21) --
you can see it here:
        
http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/tmp/goodies/Zallinger1966-giant-golden-brachiosaurus.jpeg
It's instructive to compare it to the same artist's much better known
Brontosaurus from the YPM mural, which I conveniently also have here:
        
http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/tmp/goodies/Zallinger1947-mural-brontosaurus.jpeg
The composition is strikingly familiar in both cases: both show an
animal in right anterolateral view in the foreground, up to its chest
in water, and another in the background, in left lateral, out of water
on the far back (although in the YPM mural, I believe the background
individual is supposed to Diplodocus).  And in both, a small red
rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur is flying across the front of the elevated
neck of the foreground individual.  It's in tribute to this that we
asked Mark Witton to place a similar pterosaur in the Diplodocus
reconstruction that he did for our recent neck posture, which you can
see here:
        
http://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/markwitton-diplodocus-scene.jpeg

An in-joke for the palaeo-art aware -)