The Elephants Ancestor (Original)
Medium: Gouache on Board
Size: 10" x 14" (260mm x 360mm)
Date: 1982
Code: LongPlatybelodon
This is the unique original Gouache painting by Bernard Long.
Platybelodon was previously believed to have fed in the swampy areas of grassy savannas, using its teeth to shovel up aquatic and semi-aquatic vegetation.
However, wear patterns on the teeth suggest that it used its lower tusks to strip bark from trees, and may have used the sharp incisors that formed the edge of the "shovel" more like a modern-day scythe, grasping branches with its trunk and rubbing them against the lower teeth to cut it from a tree.
Published in the book Prehistoric Animals by Long and Rupert Oliver.
- Artist BiographyBernard Long (born 1926)
Bernard Long was an accomplished British book illustrator and comic book artist. Long was a contributor to Jack & Jill, drawing the light-hearted adventures of Fliptail the Otter in around 1970, and to the Jack & Jill and Teddy Bear annuals. He was an extraordinarily talented and reliable contributor to many Amalgamated Press/ Fleetway/ IPC titles and the Young Telegraph during the 1990s.
He was an exceptionally good nature artist and it seems very likely he contributed to various educational magazines as well as nursery comics. It is thought that he contributed to Look and Learn in the late 1960s and back page artwork for Fun-To-Do in later years, for which information I should thank David Slinn, who recalls that Long was "quietly efficient, very reliable and, as a result, somewhat taken for granted."
His extensive bibliography includes:
Prehistoric Animals, by Rupert Oliver (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1982 ISBN 0-340-27165-5)
Prehistoric Man, by Rupert Oliver (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1983 ISBN 0-340-28608-3)
Dinosaurs, by Rupert Oliver (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1983 ISBN 0-340-28609-1)
Strange and Curious Creatures, by Rupert Oliver (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1984 ISBN 0-340-34718-X)
Monster Mysteries, by Rupert Matthews (Hove, Wayland, 1988 ISBN 1-85210-354-X)
Lost Treasures, by John Wright (Hove, Wayland, 1989 ISBN 1-85210-357-4)
Victorian Children, by Anne Steel (Hove, Wayland, 1989 ISBN 1-85210-816-9)
Egyptian Farmers, by Jim Kerr (Hove, Wayland, 1990 ISBN 1-85210-906-8)
The First Settlements, by Rupert Matthews (Hove, Wayland, 1990 ISBN 1-85210-769-3)[1]
Greek Cities, by Barry Steel (Hove, Wayland, 1990 ISBN 1-85210-778-2)
Plague and Fire, by Rhoda Nottridge (Hove, Wayland, 1990 ISBN 0-7502-0048-0)
Forests, by Michael Chinery (London, Kingfisher, 1992 ISBN 0-86272-915-7)
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