Souvenir postcards and a “mural” reproduction showing Rudolph Zallinger’s Tyrannosaurus painting from Yale University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History.
During the 1950s and through the early ’60s, Rudolph Zallinger’s Tyrannosaurus design, due to its exposure in Life magazine’s “The World We Live In” series, more or less became the standard for this dinosaur’s image — copies (sometimes slightly altered) appearing again and again as book illustrations, comic-book art, advertisements, toys (most notably, those made by the Miller and Marx companies), even movie monsters, and on and on…a small number of examples shown here.
Illustrations from Boy’s Life magazine (ca. 1954).
From the “Little Golden Book” From Then to Now (1954), drawn by Tibor Gergely.
Panel from the comic book Turok, Son of Stone number 3 (1956). While the artwork in this title was usually excellent, the artists inexplicably seemed compelled to copy the well-known works of famous paleoartists — usually Charles R. Knight, Rudolph Zallinger and Zdnek Burian — for their prehistoric animals, often “swiping” the same image numerous times within a single issue, even in one panel to the next.
Issue number 15 (1963), cover artwork by Steve Ditko.
Imagined three-quarter view of Zallinger’s Tyrannosaurus (1956).
A dinosaur costume (below, worn by Tom Smyth) made for a 1957 movie.
Tyrannosaurus by Peter Zallinger, Rudolph’s son, made for Dinosaurs (1977), a children’s book authored and illustrated by Peter. See any resemblance to his dad’s original?
