Cretaceous snow killed T. rex? Well… at least it adds some festive decoration on my very modern late-Cretaceous garden! A very weather mild end of the world indeed… The famous “Home’s Garden” scene from a previous post has been finally snowed… in the meantime I will have some extra good news in my next post. The wait is almost over!
This is the year that finally we are going to see the release of our long awaited Bakker./Rey collaboration with Random House… before the final sprint (that I’m currently working on) here’s something that I have also been working on these days. Please bear in mind…It is just a wok in progress!
It is a fact that global warming is affecting everybody (and in many more harm ways than any good ones). Paradoxically, while many people in Britain were affected by terrible floods, here in London we have been having a very unseasonal mild winter that has allowed me to work a little in my cold, damp back-yard workshop without fearing hypothermia…. the results can be seen in this clay sculpture. 
I have always loved the Aztec “eagle and serpent on top of a cactus” symbol (A myth that enticed them to build Tenochtitlan, the capital of their empire). If the Mayans “got it wrong” these days well, the Aztecs got it right then and built an incredible floating city over a lake… that is the power of the myth over the human mind… for good or bad! Unfortunately the Spaniards had a lot less imagination and destroyed that marvel of the ancient world.
This emblematic image has also been emblazoned in the Mexican flag… obviously being me, I was not going to do a simple recreation of the famous image… so I decided to make the whole scene some 90-70 million years before… hopefully an inspiration to all Mexican palaeontologists, now you can see Deinonychus (instead of the eagle) wrestling a relative of Eupodophis, the primitive snake with vestigial hind limbs… talk about tongue in cheek exercises! The style pretends to be reasonably based on Aztec art… although we can imagine they would be very surprised to see the scene this way!
And yes it seems there were primitive cacti in the Cretaceous… the shape and form in my piece may be questionable though!
Needless to say, the job is only half finished… I will apply colour accordingly when it dries out completely (maybe even inspired by the fabulous colour treatments of Carlos Soteno). Watch this space for the final piece in the near future. Happy New Year.
This is dedicated to everybody supporting this blog (and more)… thank you for making it a success and hey… you may love dinosaurs enough to become vegetarian this end of the year… fine by me! After all, who really wants to cut the throat of a lovely descendant of Deinonychus (here in my own trademark turkey attire… one of the protagonists of the soon to be released Bakker/Rey project)… even if it tastes good!
On an even more humorous side: well… we know… it didn’t end after all… the latest Mayan end-of-the-world hysteria was not right either! Not that we humans are not capable of destroying the world, but we look certainly stupid trying to mystically predict its end… and we keep at it every number of years!… The intentions of the prophets have always been grandiose scare mongering for their own purposes… at best they were bad or ignorant calculations and at worst (I’d say, as usual) simple financial or power gain…let’s stop the silliness of it all!
Let’s enjoy while we can…All the best!
A modified version of a gigantic pliosaur attack on Elasmosaurus… Archelon, the gigantic marine turtle in in the far background …
I noticed that I have neglected the inclusion of any marine stuff.. it is a subject that is not as popular as dinosaurs, but just as fascinating. These depictions range from the 350 million year massive fish Dunklosteus (here in classical pursuit of Cladoselachus) about to exercise what was probably the most powerful bite of any animal… ever!…
…to Triassic reptilian oddities like the absurdly long-nacked Tanystropheus (here in yet another extremely modified version from the Holtz/Rey encyclopaedia… couldn’t resist foreshortening that tiny head) . In the background: a primitive Triassic ichthyosaur and Keichosaurus . The second illustration is the sea cow-like reptile Placodus. It is interesting to note how evolution repeats patterns in such different animals like these reptiles and their mammal equivalents today: Placodus=dugong, ichtyosaurs=dolphins… their similar body plans resulting from what were originally terrestrial animals adapted to aquatic environments. The reconstruction of Placodus is based on museum mounts.
But the collection would not be complete without these mosasaur paintings… you may have noticed that I tend to concentrate in the anatomy (not the environments)… I’m an anatomist by heart! First one a couple of Tylosaurus have a try with Quetzalcoatlus (a different version from the cover of Prehistoric Monsters, the 2008 Random House release by Bakker/Rey)…
And second one, a mosasaur about to swallow a dsungaripterid whole!
Now that I’m getting towards the end of my new Random House/Robert Bakker new project, I decided to revisit some classics. My visit to Brussels early this year gave me ammunition to try and restore Iguanodon again… this time based on my own pictures of the dynamic Iguanodon displays there.
Behind the fleshed Iguanodons you see here there are fully articulated skeletons… I think the displays in Brussels show very clearly that the fully grown Iguanodon bernissartensis could not be anything else than a rather powerful quadruped (while the less bulky youngsters or even lighter species of iguanodontids might have been more facultative bipedal). In this scene these iguanodons are attacked by a pair of the allosaurid Neovenator … I opted for a more accurate predator that would fit time and location-wise, instead of having a predictable and inaccurate Megalosaurus, that we know whas not contemporary of Iguanodon.
Now, if we could get the museums in England to do the good job they have done in Brussels, that would be such a great thing! I’m tired of seeing that famous Iguanodon skeleton in that awful old kangaroo pose with it broken backbone dragging its tail to the ground … and let alone that: it is dragging its ischium to the ground!
Yes, it was that time of the year again: I have always found the Mexican student audiences to be the hungriest and keenest regrading new dinosaur research and on top of that, they have always liked my stuff. So what better than taking the opportunity this year again to give two mini-seminars? Thanks to my old friend and comrade of many SVP field trips in the past René Hernández Rivera (foremost palaeontologist in México and famous for his work in Saltillo discovering hadrosaurs and tyrannosaurs), I was invited again to use the time of one of his classes at the UNAM (Autonomous University of Mexico, a model university for the world to see… only its campus are a thrill to visit!) to make a full chronological account of my adventures as a paleoartist. The interest and expectation were so high, that the class started at 2:30 in the afternoon in the laboratory and had to be finished somewhere else around 7:30 in the evening (over a meal and beers, Mexican style!).
I have to thank René and Angel Ramírez Velasco (a brilliant soon-to-be Palaeontology graduate) for being such excellent hosts. Here they are together with my partner Carmen Naranjo.
The after hours meeting brought a lot of lively discussions and I was also able to meet Mexican paleoartists like Hector Munive and we has a general exchange of gifts, signatures and autographs. I had to sign a very well used Random House encyclopaedia! Here’s one of my prizes, thanks to Ricardo Servin Pichardo for his wonderful Daspletosaurus head (proudly hanging now on my studio wall.
But it was not just a matter of giving lessons in the Unversity. For years I have closely worked with the extended Soteno family (lead by Tiburcio, Carlos and Israel Soteno), world-famous clay artists from Metepec a newly awarded “magic” village close to Toluca (Edo. de Mexico). So it was also time to have another dinoclass in his house, where the kids in the neighbourhood have been gathering for years to see and discuss dinosaurs coming to life. I have seen generations of my unofficial “students” come year after year and I’m really proud of their dedication and achievements. Their attentive interest, curiosity and wonderment are very true and an inspiration for anyone.
Everything started with an extensive talk/interview/presentation at the Flett Theatre of the Natural History Museum in London on Friday 21st of September with several of the artists involved coached by editor Steve White and Scientific advisor Darren Naish. Here are the protagonists that night: from left to right, Darren Naish, myself, Rob Nicholls, John Conway, Steve White and John Sibbick.
The theatre was almost full and the audience was a knowledgeable crowd represented by all genders and ages (something that dispels the myth that dinosaurs in England are “just for children”!). We, the artists, felt completely at home with the great audience… and it was thrill to answer their questions and see their interest in our field of work… we could share our common passion for Dinosaur Art with complete abandon knowing that our efforts were appreciated. The session started with the new generation (John Conway and Rob Nicholls) and finished with the veterans: John Sibbick and myself). Darren and Steve did a perfect counter-balance act…Here are Rob Nicholls(in his marine isolation tank), John Conway (doing his best Nick Cave impersonation) and John Sibbick (finally facing the crowd) presentations.
And here are some snapshots of mine… Allosaurus was a struggle and Darren seems perplexed by the Chinese Revolution… but suddenly it was my time to a face to face final confrontation with a male Deinonychus!
Afterwards, we had a long signing session of the books (with some sketching of favourite dinosaurs included). From right, here’s John Sibbick, Rob Nicholls and your’s trulyWe were extensively consulted regarding the tricks of the trade…including the puzzling fact that we have tried to live from this all these years!
Next day was the signing at Forbidden Planet… and I wasn’t quite prepared for what was coming!
The attendance was more than 130 people according to the organisers. and we had to sign hundreds of copies for different retail outlets.
Quite a PR exercise!
And the protagonists that day were (from left to right) Barry Spiers (designer of the book), Steve White, John Conway, Rob Nicholls, myself and Darren Naish. I’m sparing you some other gruesome images when we tried to kill Rob for finishing his sketches late!
Needless to say, after all this hard work and two very successful days we had to celebrate at a nearby pub… and it seems that Georgia McLean-Henry, Mark Witton and Dr Jenny Taylor were having a great time with the 3-D version of “Dinosaurs In Your Face“!
When a year starts with an exciting visit to the -definitively- best dinosaur museum in Europe you can expect that things will get on the move very quickly. I got inspired by the extraordinary dinosaur displays in the Natural History Museum in Brussels, with those classic Iguanodonts that break out of their glass cage in a perfect walking pose, almost a full allegory of the whole Dinosaur Renaissance. I managed to continue the dinosaur trail with the opportunity to preach the Revolution in a successful talk (“Brining Dinosaurs Back To Life”) located in a very unlikely place: A conference called Design For Understanding (Curated by Max Gadney) at St Bride’s Library in the City of London . I think they got the message!
The unofficial tour of “Bringing Dinosaurs Back To Life” continued with a very fortunate visit to Aarhus in Denmark, where I was kindly invited by Christopher Jacob Ries and the university… Needless to say it was a total intellectual plug-in right from the start. Being with all my Danish friends was a thrill and a privilege…. and Aarhus is such a beautiful place!
But it wouldn’t stop there: I was invited by Pedro Viegas and Manabu Sakamoto from the Bristol Dinosaur Project to act as judge in an interesting art competition for different age groups. The challenge: reconstruct Thecodontosaurus. Bristol has always been one of my very favourite cities in England… and I didn’t realise I even had dinofans of my artwork there! Here’s to Charley and his mother Christine, both great -still not well known, but very talented- Paleoartists.
After the successful art competition, I was also invited to give the customary “Bringing Dinosaurs Back To Life” talk at the Wills Memorial building in Bristol… was a bit rusty myself, but got even Dr. Mike Benton hooked, although he was probably expecting a full art masterclass…. no a historical account of the development of the dinosaur image through the ages.
SVPCA in Oxford was an incomplete event for me this year, but even being just one day surrounded by friends was special. The Oxford Natural History museum is definitively the best in England and it was the perfect, sumptuous framework for a great meeting (second time in recent times). Here I am together with Emma Lawler and Richard Hing… and also with Luke Hauser, Georgia Mclean-Henry and Dave Hone.
A highlight of which was an exclusive tour of the vaults of the museum by non other than curator Malgosia Nowak-Kemp herself, who kindly showed us the only authentic remains of that famous recently extinct dinosaur called the Dodo over a glass of wine!
To be continued…
This famous landmark (at least in my home) that some of you may have seen before is a Velociraptor originally modelled by the famous dino-sculptor Charlie Mc Grady and that got a total makeover by yours truly (with his permission of course). I re-wowrked the model and customised it feather by feather turning it in my first 3-D “painting”… and 15 years ago he must have been the first ever colourful, fully feathered Velociraptor in existence. To celebrate that it is still very much with us I finally managed to get him a pair of very deserved wings… never dared to do it before. I just want to share with you the results… 
The subject has always been a spiny one…let alone the problem of size and the (sometimes) the spikes! Her are a couple of my solutions. The first one is this couple of T.rexes having fun and putting their puny forelimbs to some use (as hooks to grapple their partner)… here’s the sketch where the previous illustration was based:
But the really thorny issue is tackled in these next two unpublished sketches where I have tried t0o solve the very popular issue of how Stegosaurus had sex… my solution was pretty basic: there’s ONE obligatory point in their anatomy where the two animals had to meet at all costs (that is: the cloacas). I reconstructed the anatomical possibilities of the posture of the rest of the bodies around the united cloacas instead of going other ways around. Of course I had to take in consideration how flexible could have been the tail with all those big plates on top, holding it stiff… the tail could not flex down, but it could go up and down and sideways fairly easily!
I came with this solution (obviously there have been challenges to it and anyone is welcome to propose even more challenges!), There’s also the distinct possibility that they also had some sort of penis (and since penises don’t fossilise we don’t know how long that could have been). In any case, I thought it was a remarkable exercise for expanding and challenging anatomical knowledge. How do Stegosaurus had sex? very carefully!
I’d like to leave you with an old, famous image that only Ken Carpenter dared to publish in his book “Eggs, Nests and Baby Dinosaurs” by Indiana University Press. It is indeed the Joy of (Carnotaurus) Sex…!
Luis V. Rey Blog 
