STL Science Center

STL Science Center

20 September 2014

Old Art Like New Art

©Lancelot Speed 1905
The most recent illustrations of Anchisaurus resemble the 1905 interpretation of Marsh's line drawings alarmingly. Most dinosaurs have changed extensively in the past 100 years or so, but not so much Anchisaurus. The dinosaur has not been portrayed with feathering and the posture has not changed much at all from this illustration. Coloration of dinosaurs is always at the artist's discretion, so we cannot really critique the coloration too much. The hands of this illustration are markedly different from more modern illustrations, but this may also be an artifact of the lacking detail in the chest area of the dinosaur. It appears that the dinosaur is holding some sort of vegetation also, which obscures the hands even more. Probably the most disturbing thing about the old illustration aside from the little that has changed in modern renditions of the dinosaur is the snout on that crocodylomorph-like animal in the lower right-hand corner of the image.

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