We’re back for one last look at Tim Bradley’s JP Institute dinosaurs. If you missed the last parts, go check them out (here and here) before you read this one! Today, we’ll be taking a look at some of the ornithischians featured on the site. There’s quite a lot of ground to cover, so let’s get started.

The JP Institute Dinopedia, in its aim to be totally comprehensive, was crawling with little ornithischians like this Abrictosaurus! Dinosaurs like these tend to get overlooked since they’re fairly samey and lack any crests, talons, horns, or other stereotypically “dinosaurian” features. Tim’s dynamic poses and eye-popping colour schemes easily make up for the anatomical plainness. You get a real sense of speed and intensity in the movement here, befitting a tiny little dinosaur like Abrictosaurus. The long, gangly feet and shiny eyes inject a sense of birdiness that sells this as a real animal. This was a very influential image to me, one that helped shape my early childhood conception of tiny herbivorous dinosaurs as real animals.

Tim’s Dryosaurus is a perfect example of how anatomically sound the Dinopedia illustrations were. It’s easy to imagine small ornithischians as interchangeable, but the extremely short arms, lengthy tail, and almost torpedo-shaped body are as different from the Abrictosaurus as a Carnotaurus is from Baryonyx. You’d never know that from most reconstructions from this time. There’s something about this illustration that makes me thing of wallabies and kangaroos, though I can’t quite place it.

The English iguanodontian Callovosaurus looks quite burly here, with a hugely muscled back and deep tail. This is another great example of Tim’s eye for anatomy. Brian Engh’s Camptosaurus Challenge sought to draw attention to just how rotund dinosaurs like these really were, and I think Tim’s Callovosaurus would have fit right in amongst those submissions! The long, almost horse-like snout evokes Stegosaurus and hadrosaurs, and it’s easy to imagine it sticking between the fronds of a cycad to chew up the fleshy cones. All in all, a very competent and convincing reconstruction of a rarely depicted dinosaur.

The Dinopedia illustrations came not too long after Walking with Dinosaurs aired, and Muttaburrasaurus was still in the public eye. This reconstruction is looking a little too “Iguanodon-ish” by modern standards, but it’s still a pretty good effort for the time! The elongated skull and deep chin are making me think of horses again, which is a comparison enhanced by those strapping neck muscles! Much like the Callovosaurus, this is a surprisingly beefy dinosaur.

Onto the hadrosaurs! Corythosaurus is looking very elegant with its slender neck and swan-like facial pattern. Of all dinosaurs, I think Tim’s colour choices and patterns look best on them. There’s something very pleasing about the way those blue speckles dance over the body. Despite the gracility, there’s also a clear sense of scale. This is a big, scary animal that could squish you like Play-Doh if it so chose. There’s even a hint of malice in the vivid red eye, which calls to mind the eyes of loons. That little touch of birdiness really pulls this piece together; this is easily one of my favourites.

Tim’s Parasaurolophus is downright scary! The rippling muscles, deep build, and sailed neck all come together to create an absolute wall of a hadrosaur that probably bullies tyrannosaurs and takes their lunch money. The penguin-like pattern is an inspired choice that looks positively gorgeous. I always love a sailed Parasaurolophus, and despite looking nothing like the film versions, this design feels stylistically appropriate for a Jurassic Park tie-in. Little details like the folds in the sail and weathered creases and tears elevates this to more than just a lateral view illustration. It’s a real animal with a lived life, complete with little imperfections missing in a lot of dinosaur art.

Oddly, this Shantungosaurus doesn’t immediately strike me as huge. It’s still a lovely reconstruction but it feels puny next to that Parasaurolophus. Tim has masterfully captured the facial proportions of this biggest of hadrosaurs, with the characteristically squared off jaw and nearly flat head immediately identifying this as Shantungosaurus even amongst a bunch of broadly similar hadrosaurs. For the sake of brevity, this is the only saurolophine I’ll be sharing but believe me when I say Tim managed to give each and every one their own characteristic flavour.

Another eye-popping pattern decorates Leptoceratops, similar to that of the Abrictosaurus we saw earlier. I love the jet black head, which draws in the eye but would also serve to hide it in the shadows of a Cretaceous forest. Leptoceratops is a dinosaur that’s undergone some visual overhauls since these illustrations were done, but this is a top-tier exemplar of how it was commonly envisioned back in the 2000s. These leggy proportions and slender build complete with a full frill felt like a definitive dinosaur bauplan and a perfect horned dinosaur prototype. The picture of ceratopsian diversity and evolution has become much more complex since then, and even though Leptoceratops looked quite different than this, other early ceratopsians such as Koreaceratops and Graciliceratops still basically fit this template.

Why if it isn’t Chasmosaurus! Or rather, it WAS Chasmosaurus. To my eye, this looks like the animal formerly known as Chasmosaurus russelli. As of this March, it’s been reassigned to the new genus Cryptarcus! Love in the Time of Cryptarcus just doesn’t sound right, but old reliable Chasmosaurus belli isn’t going anywhere so no change needed. Despite being a fairly small ceratopsid, Tim still gives it a physique that would make a bodybuilder jealous. I think that’s the right move. It may look small beside a goliath like Triceratops, but it was still about as big as a rhinoceros! The subtle eye-like markings on the frill and the black horns work together to make very fierce looking dinosaur, every bit the match for the Daspletosaurus we saw in the last Jurassic Park Institute article.

I suspect that the regal looking roan antelope inspired the striking pattern on this Anchiceratops. Tim’s artwork is often bombastic and packed with bright colours, but it’s the high-contrast patterns that feels like his signature look. I’m a sucker for black facial markings on just about any animal. They’re just so cool! For the anatomically inclined, take note of the correct number of fingers and hooves on the hands! That remains a rarity even today, so it’s especially exciting to see it on work that’s approaching thirty years old.

Pachyrhinosaurus hadn’t quite achieved celebrity status yet in the 2000s, though it was starting to pop up here and there in dinosaur media. Tim’s choice of blue tones feels just right on an animal of high latitudes. Maybe it didn’t live in a perpetual snowscape as sometimes shown, but this was a dinosaur that would have known long winters occasionally touched by frost and snowfall. Imagine this bruiser trudging through bitter cold winds and icy sleet! The scalloped edges of the frill are a highlight here, looking very distinct compared to the chasmosaurines seen above. The long, trailing epoccipital horns are another intriguing choice that, combined with the little inward curvature at the frill’s midline, make me think this is probably meant to be the type species P. canadensis. That species seems to have fallen by the wayside in favour of P. perotorum and P. lakustai for whatever reason, so if I’m right, it’s a nice change of pace to see it here!

The other famous “pachy-saurus” was included in the Dinopedia, to the surprise of exactly no one. Pachycephalosaurus played a very memorable role in the second JP film, and it had a great design that has rightfully become one of the most iconic in the entire franchise. Tim’s Pachycephalosaurus is better proportioned than the film’s version, having the short arms and slightly elongated thorax that are pachycephalosaur hallmarks. The butter-yellow tones of the dome work are surprisingly subdued, as are the grey-blue tones of the rest of the body. High contrast is at play here again which makes my eyes still shoot straight to the domes despite them being a colour I’d hardly consider vibrant. This is a great artistic representation of the then-novel flank butting model of pachycephalosaur combat, which briefly supplanted the dome-clashing hypothesis that dominated our understanding of pachycephalosaur combat since the early years of their study. These days, the picture is looking less binary. Pachycephalosaurus was just as likely to go head-to-head as it was to whack a rival side-first into a dry riverbed. Go check out Prehistoric Planet’s second season for a living, breathing reconstruction of a scene very much like this illustration!

Stepping away from marginocephalians and into the world of thyreophorans: it’s Dravidosaurus! This controversial Indian maybe-stegosaur-maybe-plesiosaur was in a weird place back in the early 2000s. I sadly can’t access the informational side of the Dinopedia to see what comments were made about its classification, but I’m glad we got this stegosaurian reconstruction even if it might not have been the “best” choice for the science of its time. Dravidosaurus is shown as a fairly conventional stegosaur complete with an erect, slenderly built neck and dewlap, which makes it look far more modern than many illustrations of similar age. There’s a very Greg Paul-esque flavour in the way the head is held high! Cotton candy blue plates and thagomizer spines are a bold and brilliant choice, and there’s really no reason why such a colour couldn’t work as a warning in place of the more conventional yellows or reds. Again, super high contrast, super eye-catching, and super cool!

Tim’s Tuojiangosaurus sports the standard issue stegosaurian livery: spotty green with a mix of black and warm tones on the plates. It’s interesting to see a more conventional colour scheme amongst the Dinopedia dinosaurs, but it’s a popular pairing of colours for a good reason. The perspective is brilliantly executed here. Nothing is harder to draw from a birds-eye view than a stegosaur, but Tim nailed it! The theropod, likely Sinraptor or Yangchuanosaurus, is similarly well-observed. Properly supinated wrists and beefy arms with sensibly reptilian muscles are another way to know Tim really knows his stuff. None of those creepy humanoid forelimbs you so often see in dinosaur artwork here! This image would need very little tweaking to pass as modern piece. The posing of the two animals tells a great story. The tension between the two is palpable, with both animals straddling the line between offensive and defensive. One wrong move on either’s part and it would all be over! This is what a real fight between such deadly animals looks like. Long, drawn out stillness interspersed by brief, horrible violence that is over as soon as it began. Excellent stuff.

A bipedal Polacanthus! I initially thought it was meant to be rearing up, but the positioning of the limbs makes me thing it’s actually walking. I’m certain I’ve never seen an ankylosaur restored in this way, but it’s a wonderfully striking visual. Robert Bakker was intimately involved in the production of these illustrations, and I’m inclined to believe this might have been done with his urging. Bakker famously suggested that Stegosaurus was well-suited for bipedal locomotion, but it’s easy to imagine him suggesting it for a more heavily armoured dinosaur too. Maybe I’m off base, and if so, I’d love to know!

As expected, this is a fantastic reconstruction that perfectly sells the bulk and danger of the animal. The huge scutes lining the neck, shoulders, and tail are wicked. Woe betide the unlucky creature that draws its ire! I’ve only just noticed the little nodule at the tip of the tail. I’m curious what the thinking was there!

We’ll wrap things up with the most famous of all armoured dinosaurs: Ankylosaurus. The motion blur on the tail combined with that stripey yellow patterning draws in the eye brilliantly. It’s a simple touch, but one used to great effect! This is another piece that shows off Tim’s skill at drawing dinosaurs at all sorts of intriguing angles. Ankylosaurs aren’t easy to depict even in simple diagrammatic views, but one that requires drawing all the scutes and spikes from so many angles while preserving the complex shapes of the underlying skeleton is bordering on tortuous. Take note of the muscles in the tail, and the surprising length of the neck. This is an Ankylosaurus for the 2000s. The once inescapable lousy little armadillo-lookalikes of the 20th century were firmly being left in the dust, and reconstructions like Tim’s Ankylosaurus sought to clobber them right out of the way.

Three whole articles and 39 species but we’ve barely scratched the surface of what the JP Institute Dinopedia had to offer. This staggering collection of work surely represents one of the most expansive and exhaustive libraries of dinosaur illustrations ever produced, and its influence on the generation that grew up with it can’t be understated. Thanks again to Tim for sharing these high-resolution files with me and being kind enough to allow us to host some of them here! Be sure to check out his other work on his website and socials and be sure to listen to Episode 51 of the podcast to hear our interview where we talk to him about the Dinopedia and so much more!

I’ll be back shortly after Halloween to share something really spooky. Be prepared, because it’s nearly time for DINOSAURS ATTACK!