Jurassic Art

Dinosaurs have captured our imaginations ever since we started digging up their bones. But translating the information from those bones into an accurate picture that includes muscles and skin takes a special type of creativity. At the end of the 19th century, the wildlife painter Charles R. Knight essentially invented the dinosaur as we know it. He created murals in America’s biggest natural history museums and ended up influencing the way dinosaurs were portrayed in pop culture from Jurassic Park to Barney.

When today's paleontologists make a discovery, their go-to artist is Julius Csotonyi. His work has appeared on the walls of museums and in special exhibits. His new book The Paleoart of Julius Csotonyi contains more than 150 renderings of long extinct life forms.

See a slideshow of his work below.

Csotonyi (born in Hungary, now living in Canada) holds degrees in ecology and environmental biology. When rendering bygone ecosystems, he often pulls elements from photos he's taken in remote corners of the cypress swamps of the southern United States and the coniferous forests of Canada’s Pacific coast — places where life hasn’t changed much since the dinosaur days. He creates his illustrations digitally, so that when new information arises, they may be altered more easily than traditional paintings or sketches (though he does those, too, which you can see here and here). Like our understanding of Jurassic life, Csotonyi's images are constantly evolving.

 

<em>Acheroraptor beats T. rex to a fresh carcass</em>
Acheroraptor beats T. rex to a fresh carcass

Acheroraptor (a bird-like dinosaur belonging to the dromaeosaur family) was discovered in Montana in the Hell Creek Formation, a fossil-rich division of rocks, in November 2013.

(Julius Csotonyi)
<em>Megalodon stalking Platybelodon</em>
Megalodon stalking Platybelodon

The Miocene epoch (23.03 to 5.332 million years ago) boasted a real life sea monster, Carcharocles megalodon. Although the giant shark mainly inhabited deeper waters, this image depicts a hypothetical encounter with a swimming Platybelodon, a prehistoric mammal related to the elephant. The bones of these elephantids sometimes show evidence of attack by sharks.

(Julius Csotonyi)
<em>Early Permian landscape</em>
Early Permian landscape

This image depicts the bizarre interval in Earth’s history when insects such as Meganeuropsis (a gigantic prehistoric griffinfly) outgrew reptiles such as Hylonomus. Swamps teemed with crocodile-like amphibians such as Eryops.

(Julius Csotonyi)
<em>Brachiosaurus at dawn</em>
Brachiosaurus at dawn

Brachiosaurus, the iconic sauropod ("lizard-footed") dinosaur from the Jurassic period, at dawn.

(Julius Csotonyi)
<em>Fisheye view of Rhamphorhynchus gleaning squid</em>
Fisheye view of Rhamphorhynchus gleaning squid

Rhamphorhynchus, a long-tailed pterosaur, feeding on squid.

(Julius Csotonyi)
<em>Utahraptor attacking Hippodraco</em>
Utahraptor attacking Hippodraco

This image reenacts a moment in the last few hours of life of a pack of Utahraptor (a theropod dino) and the Hippodraco (an iguanodontian dino) that lured them to their miry fate in a patch of Early Cretaceous Utah quicksand.

(Julius Csotonyi)
<em>Tianyulong, the "maned" ornithischian</em>
Tianyulong, the "maned" ornithischian

Although theropods are better known for their downy or feathery coverings, some ornithischians (an order of herbivorous dinos) like Tianyulong also sprouted filamentous structures.

(Julius Csotonyi)
<em>Ornithomimus</em>
Ornithomimus

Ornithomimus is the earliest known feathered non-avian dinosaur from the Western Hemisphere.

(Julius Csotonyi)
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