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Description
This is going to be the first in a series of annual drawings commemorating the birth of American wildlife artist and paleoartist Charles R. Knight (1874-1953), who shaped the 20th century's image of prehistory with his paintings, mainly the ones at the Field Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History. His inspiration was incredible, as one can clearly see his influence in Ray Harryhausen's dinosaurs from One Million Years B.C. and The Valley of Gwangi, Walt Disney's "Rite of Spring" segment of Fantasia, and most famously, in Marcel Delgado's and Willis O'Brien's masterpieces King Kong and The Lost World.

Even after his passing in 1953, Knight's dinosaurs weren't unappreciated. Friend and taxidermist Louis Paul Jonas took it upon himself to make Knight's and his dream come true: to make a park filled with life-sized models of dinosaurs. At first Barnum Brown was the consulting paleontologist in this endeavor until his death in 1963, when Yale paleontologist (and describer of Deinonychus 6 years later!) John Ostrom took over. In that same year, the finished sculptures went on a barge from the Hudson River down to the 1964 World's Fair, and installed in an attraction called Sinclair Dinoland.

In this drawing, I have assembled 6 of Knight's most prominent dinosaurs that he illustrated for the American Museum of Natural History, between the years 1894-1934. From left to right, here are the subjects of this drawing:

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Charles R. Knight
Ornitholestes hermanni
Agathaumas sphenocerus (composite of many ceratopsians)
Brontosaurus excelsus
Laelaps aquilunguis (now Dryptosaurus aquilunguis)
Tyrannosaurus rex
Trachodon annectens (now a species of Edmontosaurus)

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Stay tuned for next year, for marine reptiles!

---Leo

Description
This is going to be the first in a series of annual drawings commemorating the birth of American wildlife artist and paleoartist Charles R. Knight (1874-1953), who shaped the 20th century's image of prehistory with his paintings, mainly the ones at the Field Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History. His inspiration was incredible, as one can clearly see his influence in Ray Harryhausen's dinosaurs from One Million Years B.C. and The Valley of Gwangi, Walt Disney's "Rite of Spring" segment of Fantasia, and most famously, in Marcel Delgado's and Willis O'Brien's masterpieces King Kong and The Lost World.

Even after his passing in 1953, Knight's dinosaurs weren't unappreciated. Friend and taxidermist Louis Paul Jonas took it upon himself to make Knight's and his dream come true: to make a park filled with life-sized models of dinosaurs. At first Barnum Brown was the consulting paleontologist in this endeavor until his death in 1963, when Yale paleontologist (and describer of Deinonychus 6 years later!) John Ostrom took over. In that same year, the finished sculptures went on a barge from the Hudson River down to the 1964 World's Fair, and installed in an attraction called Sinclair Dinoland.

In this drawing, I have assembled 6 of Knight's most prominent dinosaurs that he illustrated for the American Museum of Natural History, between the years 1894-1934. From left to right, here are the subjects of this drawing:

--------------------------------------------------
Charles R. Knight
Ornitholestes hermanni
Agathaumas sphenocerus (composite of many ceratopsians)
Brontosaurus excelsus
Laelaps aquilunguis (now Dryptosaurus aquilunguis)
Tyrannosaurus rex
Trachodon annectens (now a species of Edmontosaurus)

--------------------------------------------------

Stay tuned for next year, for marine reptiles!

---Leo