The Stratigraphy of Palaeo-Media

While humans have been digging up fossils of prehistoric life (not just dinosaurs alone) and interpreting them for literally thousands of years and interpreting them, it's only been relatively recently in the 1800's onwards that human societies have understood them for what they are, and have created works centred on them, known as Palaeo-Media, from art of them, to literature, to film and television, to video games. In the last 20 years it could be argued there have been more of them made then in the last 100 years combined.

It is here I propose a list of the periods of palaeo-media has seen so far and how each of them relates to the social values and events of their era.

Worth noting is that the stratigraphy presented here isn't understood in the way clearly (more or less) defined layers of rocks or periods of time are, but rather as boxes within one another a la cladistic charts (hence the lack of specific dates), and previous periods can still last decades if not centuries after their period of relevancy due to cultural inertia. Just think about how many scaly dromaeosaurs you've seen straight out of the 70's and 90's when all the scientific evidence points to them being feathered just like their relatives the birds, so keep that the dates given are their period when they were up to date, more or less.

Finally, I can understand if you disagree with the specific structure and definitions of what I've wrote here, and for all I know maybe one period listed here is merely a stage of another. Feel free to debate what you think how it goes.

Proto-Palaeo-Media - Pre-1800's

• Examples: Mythology and Folklore and all associated mediums (e.g. literature and art), Pleistocene and Early Holocene cave and rock painting art

Make no mistake, all of human history before the 1800's is quite a vast time to say the least, so I won't go into too much detail here. Hell, one could make the case the very first palaeomedia were when ancient cultures were interacting with the megafauna of the era and making art of them!

The case has been made by many that the first kinds of palaeo-media were people interpreting fossil bones they found as giant monsters. In Europe for instance (particularly Germany), fossil rhinos and bears were interpreted as being slain dragons, while in indigenous North America, mastodons and extinct marine reptiles were giant water monsters; hell even among Northeastern Woodland tribes the Mastodon would live on well into through the myth of the monster known as the Yakwawiak. Meanwhile, in China, bones of fossil mammals were similarly interpreted as dragons (Witton 2021).

The beginning of Palaeo-media would begin proper in the late 1700's and early 1800's with the birth palaeontology as we know it. Major players include Georges Cuvier, who has be called the "founding father of palaeontology", hence being the namesake, and the topic are extinct mammals like mammoths emerging out of the Siberian permafrost and American countryside, ground sloths in Argentina, and fossil marine reptiles on Britain's southern coast and in the Low Countries' mines, sparking debate on why these creatures weren't found alive and leading to the theory of extinction of species and the age of the earth. It would all culminate in the first descriptions of non-avian dinosaurs in 1820's England by Gideon Mantell and the Rev. William Buckland of both Megalosaurus and Iguanodon, where giant reptiles like nothing seen before came into prominence.

Primordial Era

Hawkinsian period - Mid-1800's

• Key Figures: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, Richard Owen, Gideon Mantell, Édouard Riou
• Characteristics: Quadrupedal lizard-like dinosaurs, serpentine marine reptiles, sense of primitiveness
• Examples: Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, Journey to the Centre of the Earth
• Corresponds to: European Imperialism, the later stages of the Industrial Revolution

This is perhaps the first true period of Palaeo-media. Its major defining aspects of it are naturally the quadrupedal, elephantine lizard-like depictions of dinosaurs or serpentine and bendy sea monsters for the marine reptiles; the former coming from mere scraps and the latter coming from skeletons without soft tissue. Either way, these creatures were all treated as primitive, cold-blooded crawlers. Meanwhile mammals of the Cenozoic also had their fair share of attention, albeit a bit more positive.

No matter what, the palaeo-media of the time was mostly palaeoart. There is also literature, like the illustrations of Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Édouard Riou, who himself would also make several instances of palaeoart that fits the bill. However, the definite representative work of the time is the series was from the Crystal Palace in London of sculptures by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. You know what I mean even without a link to them.

It's not lost on me that these depictions served as a kind of subtle propaganda, where in contrast to how the white european people who were making it presented themselves as the pinnacle of civilisation and the warm-blooded mammals, prehistory was a savage and primitive place where life (and nature as a whole) was slow, sluggish, cold-blooded, and deserving of extinction, often to justify their exploitation of other countries and nature.

The Hawkinsian period would start to end in the 1860's with new fossil finds from within England, Belgium and eastern US that would disprove the main idea, like ornithopods and theropods being lizard-like quadrupeds. In the grey area between the period and the next, many depictions were just lizards standing upright.

Knightian period - Late 1800's and early to mid-1900's

• Key Figures: Charles R. Knight, Rudolph Zallinger, Willis O'Brien
• Characteristics: Upright ornithopods and theropods, tail-dragging quadrupeds, swampy environments and lifeforms, sense of slow primitiveness
• Examples: Art of Charles. R. Knight, Edgar Rice Burroughs' work, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, Willis O'Brien through Lost World (1925) and King Kong, Fantasia
• Corresponds to: European and American Imperialism, economic turmoil, the World Wars

The Knightian period is easily where dinosaurs we'd all but know them were born, though if admittedly more by modifying the tropes of the previous period. Coming right during the time fossil discoveries of ornithopods and theropods in Belgium and America were showing they were upright bipeds and the Bone Wars were digging up pretty much every iconic prehistoric lifeform we know of, all illustrated by the likes of Charles R. Knight. The swamp-dwelling, tail-dragging, slow-bodied and minded dinosaurs of it (and plains/taiga-dwelling shaggy mammals) all but defined dinosaurs, and as a whole the image of prehistory as an alien, primordial land and time for many generations, even with outliers of legit active and swift theropods depending on where you are. The same was true even for humans. It did not help many used palaeontology to promote a racial hierarchy, like Henry Osborn, where life evolved towards perfection the form of white human males.

Meanwhile, the emerging media of cinema also helped spread palaeomedia, like the caveman movie Brute Force, the animated short Gertie the Dinosaur, and The Ghost of Slumber Mountain marking the debut for dinosaurs and borrowing heavily from Knight's paintings. At best these prehistoric creatures in vivid stop-motion or 2D animation. However, at worst filmmakers instead dressed reptiles up to portray them, no doubt from the belief dinosaurs were merely big lizards, following over from the Hawkinsian period's school of thought.

Perhaps the most seminary example was also the most seminary palaeo-media work of the period, Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Lost World and its 1925 film adaptation. They all but introduced the very concept of the Lost World trope, for when modern humans, usually upper class white British or Americans keep in mind, end up in remote islands where life and even people who live there are more primitive and thus bad.. In turn, pulp literature and Jungle movies like King Kong would borrow these ideas and popularise it.

Burianian period - 1950's to 1980's

• Key Figures: Zdeněk Burian, Ray Harryhausen, Eiji Tsuburaya
• Characteristics: Catastrophic tone, dry setting, rough textures
• Examples: Zdeněk Burian's art (obviously), Valley of Gwangi, One Million Years BC, The Land Before Time, many of the Godzilla films, The Flintstones
• Corresponds to: Cold War and an era of nuclear threat

While at first glance the Burianian period would be much the same as the Knightian (and I won't fault you if you think so) in the general look and feel, but there are differences. There's a more rough, gritty feel, such as in the textures of skin and surrounding earth, and the setting of the most definitive works is not the murky swamps and forests of Knight and Zallinger's work, but more often dry deserts or volcanic  wastelands. There's also a more pessimistic edge to it with extinction and downfall more prominent, perhaps as reflected from the risk of nuclear Armageddon at the time that could cause a K-Pg or even Permian-level extinction.

Contentwise, you have films the same techniques as the Knightian period's but also joined by people in costumes to portray them, most notably Godzilla and The Land that Time Forgot. You also have the TV medium bringing prehistory to the small screen, from Land of the Lost to the Flintstones. Comics and books also make up a good majority of it. The last major stretch of it was in the 1980's with Don Bluth's Land Before Time, which borrows a lot from it enough to qualify as it.

Interest in palaeo-media petered out however, as public interest begun to go away from the likes of the past and towards the future through science fiction. 

In the same timeframe however, a new era of palaeo-media would segue in as palaeontology would re-evaluate the lifestyle of prehistory. This brings us to the...

Renaissance Era

This is the era where there is a noted change in many depictions of prehistoric life as a while, let alone dinosaurs, to more more positive and accurate to life depictions. In many regards it can be considered a golden age of palaeo-media.

Dinosaur Renaissance/Paulian period - 1970's to 1990's and early 2000's

copyright Mark Hallett

• Key Figures: Robert T. Bakker, Gregory S. Paul, John Ostrom, John Gurche, David Koepp
• Characteristics: More slender, lithe designs with tails above the ground (ex. dromaeosaurs), prehistory as a successful time and place
• Examples: Dinosaur (1985), Jurassic Park and The Lost World, Disney Dinosaur
• Corresponds to: Tail-end of the Cold War, social reforms in the western world

This can be considered the one of the most important eras of palaeo-media, where new fossil finds and studies helped changed depictions of dinosaurs. Here, they're were fast, lithe, and successful, and even had feathers and gave rise to birds. It's no surprise this came with a wave of social reforms that continue to this day, such as the white male-centric society being phased out for a more inclusive one, like the counterculture and Civil Rights movements of the 60's. In addition, the field of palaeontology sees creatures from more just North America and Europe enter the fray, like much of North Africa, South America, and even Australia as palaeontologists focused on them more.

While it would start in the 1970's with the writings of John Ostrom on Deinonychus, the Dinosaur Renaissance was popularised by both Robert T. Bakker and namesake Gregory S. Paul, through books written by them and their art, as well as their technical consulting on other projects.

Key figures and artists of it were Robert T. Bakker and the namesake Gregory Paul. This can be considered the golden age of palaeo-media, especially in the 1990's thanks to a certain film series Bakker, Paul, and also Jack Horner were consulted for, one that would actually tackle humans' inaccurate perception of prehistory, nature, and past, and bring computer animation and animatronics to the forefront of the era. Every medium got in on featuring dinosaurs andotherprehistoriclife, from film, to TV, to tabletop and the new genre of video games, and while this wasn't always the case, they generally followed the Paulian route.

Beebian* - late 1990's to early 2000's

Copyright Discovery Channel

* May represent stage within Paulian period

• Key Figures: Tim Haines, Pierre de Lespinois, Luis V. Rey
• Characteristics: Feathers, naturalistic depictions and behaviours
• Examples: BBC's The Trilogies of Life, Discovery Channel's When Dinosaurs Roamed America and Dinosaur Planet, rest of Meteor Studios' output, The Lost World and Jurassic Park 3, art of Luis V. Rey
• Corresponds to: Discovery of feathered dinosaurs in China, the Clinton era

In the wake of Jurassic Park's pop cultural relevance in the 90's and the environmentalist movements of the decade, the BBC (affectionately referred to as the Beeb, hence the name) would produce the seminal miniseries Walking with Dinosaurs and the franchise The Trilogies of Life, which took the format of a BBC Natural History doc and applied it to dinosaurs and eventually other prehistoric life, no humans in sight (unless your name is Nigel Marvin), and let natural behaviours play out.

While I'm well aware some would consider the Beebian a part of the Paulian period, I would say there are a few key differences between them to be separate the two. The content of the Beebian are more naturalistic and focused on dinosaurs as animals living their lives, as seen with the many documentaries of the time; this is a golden age for them. You also see the rise of feathered dinosaurs into palaeomedia as discoveries out of China's Liaoning province and Mongolia, and some experiment with wilder speculations and depictions. Even Jurassic Park got on it, as in the sequels, we saw instances of dinosaurs acting like well, fairly normal animals who just need to be left alone from us prying humans.

It was a good time for palaeo-media, and it would be highly influential over the years, but it wouldn't last.

Awesomebro period - 1990's to Mid-late 2000's into early 2010's

• Key Figures: The internet, Todd Marshall
• Characteristics: Violence and fighting, scaly raptors, excusive spikes and armour, aversion to feathers and scientific accuracy
• Examples: Jurassic Fight Club, Monsters Resurrected, Dino Squad, Primeval, most DTV B-movie schlockfests, pivot animations, Nu Metal tribute AMVs.
• Corresponds to: Bush presidency, Middle Eastern Wars, and Internet and social media becoming widespread

The Awesomebro period can be considered a dark age of Palaeo-media, While it started in the 90's, it was at its height in the mid to late 2000's, and still remains strong for the next two decades. As dinosaur/prehistory mainstream appeal waned away in the 2000's, the internet's pop cultural dominance and its reliance on garbled accounts brought an era of hyper-violent, awesomebro depictions of dinosaurs, more as monsters physically and behaviourally and a general lack of scientific rigour. In the former, there a conspicuous lack of feathers and a bevy of spikes, spines, and croc-like armour, under the assumption feathers make dinosaurs look soft and wimpy and thus bad, and in behaviour, there are a lot of fights. The crowning example would have to be the sequel to the Jurassic Park trilogy, Jurassic World, which disregarded years of science and feathered dinosaurs just to pander to the masses who still think dinosaurs were scaly monsters and didn't want to look in the wrong. Not even documentaries were spared, with many turning to sensationalist rhetoric to attract viewers. Sure enough, many who would grow up with these depictions would grow addicted to them and assume this is always the case, forming the awesomebro community that plagues everywhere from comment sections to social media.

In many regards, the Awesomebro period represents a return to and and copying older periods in their ideals, like the aggression of the Knightian period and the cynical feel of the Burianian, perhaps a result of the generations that grew up with them creating the awesomebro media that would spread this.

Meanwhile, in many ways, the Awesomebro community denouncing of accuracy in favour of the aggressive, scaly monsters can be seen as being linked to the toxic masculinity and its stream of politics, where violence and confrontation are championed through the depictions of dinosaurs as such while passive behaviour is treated as weak and bad, much like in social darwinism of yesteryear. 

However, at the same time, palaeontology still continues to make tracks. Books, meanwhile fare generally better in accuracy and quality, with Todd Marshall for example doing a lot of the design principles of it right, most notably the spikes. Some works that go awesomebro do manage to succeed to be good in spite of doing so, like the British sci-fi series Primeval. And I admit this included my introduction to dinosaurs growing up, as with many other Gen Z people.

Naishian period - early 2010's to present day

• Key Figures: Darren Naish, John Conway, Mark Witton, Brian Engh, David Krentz
• Characteristics: More outlandish if not speculative behaviour and designs
• Examples: All Yesterdays, works of Brian Engh, Primitive War, Dinosaur Revolution, Terra Nova, Prehistoric Kingdom
• Corresponds to: The political polarisation of the mid and late 2010's

The beginning of the Naishian in the 2010's sees a regrowth in dinosaur interest, such as with several documentaries, like Planet Dinosaur and Dinosaur Revolution, and TV shows, which do experiment with previous depictions, and move away from the really awesomebro depictions of the previous period. However, it was solidified with the 2013 book All Yesterdays by Darren Naish and John Conway, a trend against the conservative depictions of dinosaurs since the later stages of the Paulian and the Awesomebro and a lack of anatomical rigour causing what's called shrinkwrapping emerges in books and on Deviantart, prompting many unusual depictions of prehistoric life both fascinating and inane. Most infamously, the idea of feathered tyrannosaurs, prompted by the discovery of Yutyrannus and spread by the perpetually in-development game Saurian, which prompted lots of discourse from an uninformed public on whether these depictions were making dinosaurs uncool (answer? Nope); point is, feathered dinosaurs are slowly but surely being accepted by the public, even with the toxic whining of the awesomebro community. The Paleonerd community emerges as a force for (mostly) good, creating lots of up-to-date palaeoart and promotes the science, of which I am a proud member (even if we can get a little zealous in promoting accuracy). However, the awesomebro community continues on with spreading inaccuracies, getting into fight after fight between the two. It does not help this was just one of the many rift of the internet as left-wing and right-wing factions tore each other apart in the Culture Wars of the overall decade.

We also see a bit of a dry spell in palaeo-media as the decade goes on: not many major palaeo-documentaries in the latter half; the japanese NHK is the lone outlier. Fiction are either oneoff things or failures (like Terra Nova) beyond a few outliers, and the vast majority are aimed at kids. Movies are confined solely to Jurassic World. Meanwhile, the Awesomebro period still thrives online and in DTV films put out by the likes of The Asylum and in cheap touring exhibits of animatronics. However, we do see an uptick in video games of varying quality, arguably becoming the dominant form of palaeo-media in the time, and books deliver plenty of promising stories that strive for both accuracy and good stories that can please palaeo-lovers and monster fans. And it could be argued the uptick was in response to Jurassic World's overly safe and staid depictions.

Conclusion

Overall, the history of prehistoric life media reflects human history and its relation to nature too, from the age of white eurocentric imperialism that treated the natural world as a commodity at best and something to fight against at worst to the generally multicultural and more liberal societies of the 21st century that's studying and trying to heal nature. This relates to palaeomedia in how we've gone from depicting the past as alien and savage to animals deserving of our own respect.

As for what the current period is, I don't know what to call it, but it started in the late 2010's around 2018, and almost all the eras are co-existing with one another depending on what you're watching/reading/playing; palaeoart is a bit more reserved then the wild speculation of the Naishian. As of this year 2022 is including quite a lot of palaeo-media, from games to the last Jurassic World movie and new documentaries, so its definitely gonna be a good one I love and look forward to.

And that's done. One last time, feel to agree and disagree on the order of periods I presented and listed, and you may also list what other palaeomedia works could fit in each time. And I'd appreciate if anyone could share this, might I add.

References

• Miller, Ben H. (July 1, 2013). The Osborn Problem. Extinct Monsters.
• Witton, Mark (Friday 28, 2018). Unicorns, dragons, monsters and giants: palaeoart before palaeontology. Mark P. Witton's Blog.
• Witton, Mark (March 26, 2021). Dinosaur fossils and Chinese dragons: ancient association or modern wishful thinking?.
• http://www.native-languages.org/stifflegged.htm