Iguanodon and megalosaurus Unknown artist

Forested landscape of the Cretaceous period with reconstructed flora and two dinosaurs in combat, the iguanodon and megalosaurus.

Plate 21 from the book The world before the deluge, by Louis Figuier, newly edited and revised by H. W. Bristow (Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, London, 1872).

Plate not signed. The image is numbered and captioned below: ‘XXI. – Ideal scene in the Lower Cretaceous Period, with Iguanodon and Megalosaurus.’

The accompanying text (p.297) states: ‘On the opposite page an ideal landscape of the period is represented (PLATE XXI.), in which the Iguanodon and Megalosaurus struggle for the mastery in the centre of the forest, which enables us also to convey some idea of the vegetation of the period. Here we note a vegetation at once exotic and temperate – a flora like that of the tropics, and also resembling our own. On the left we observe a group of trees, which resemble the dicotyledonous plants of our own forests. The elegant Credneria is there, whose botanical place is still doubtful, for its fruit has not been found, although it is believed to have belonged to plants with two seed-leaves, or dicotyledonous, and the arborescent Amentaceae. An entire group of trees, composed of Ferns and Zamites, are in the background; in the extreme distance are some Palms. We also recogniise in the picture the alder, the wych-elm, the maple, and the walnut-tree, or at least species analogous to these.’

Unknown artist, after Édouard Riou.