What's the use? It's only gonna sink down into the previous pages anyway. But, here goes! An attempt at a dinosaur thread! As well as an oportunity to shamelessly post my dinosaur art!
My first time really illustrating a hypothesis of my own. If it allready exists, I haven't seen it yet. Then again, speculation is never as widespread as one might think, as it is often delegated to Animal Planet and such, and not real science.
My speculation is based on the observation that South American dinosaur fauna was long dominated by an obscene ammount of so-called Titanosaur sauropods. Titanosaurs were, as the name suggests, titanic in size, but also a hugely varied group, so, it included sauropods of ALL sizes, even "mere" elephant sizes. They were plentiful, lived in huge flocks, and counted lots of individuals per species. All of them grew untill they died, and would eat tons of vegetation every day. This resulted in the trees having to grow in "waves", as the sauropods would completely devastate one end of the continent, and wander to the next, trees would have time to grow really fast - and really tall. To this day, the trees typical for that time - pines - are still extremely tall. Their "escape-the-sauropods"-genes are still active.
Together with the titanosaurs, lived so called Abelisaurs. They have weird anatomies, compared to typical theropods. Abelisaurus itself is only known from a head, and above I based the body on related Aucasaurus. Better known is Carnotaurus, which appeared in Disney's "Dinosaur", although with a much more "normalized" proportion. In reality, they had short stocky heads, elongated muscular necks, almost no arms, and long, powerfull hind limbs. All in all unusual.
Then I imagined - it is perfect for sprinting a large body into a flock of sauropods, nabbing a sauropod youngling by the neck, and taking off with it.
A megalosaurid, as in, a generic member of the Megalosauridae. Similar situation, except northern hemisphere. Megalosaurids, in my humble opinion, were sauropod-carcass-specialists. They have longer heads than most theropods, possibly for digging into sauropod carcasses littering the landscape. Closely related to megalosaurids are the better known Spinosaurids, such as Spinosaurus and Baryonyx. These had exceptionally long, slender skulls, and seemed specialized for fishing. Spinosaurus has been poorly known for the past nearly-a-century, with its only remains bombed to shit during WW2 (stored in Berlin), but a recent find shows that it had surprisingly stubby hind legs, making it a swimmer, rather than a runner. The megalosaurid above, could very well be an ancestral form to these weird swim-o-saurs.
Primitive sauropods of India. Or, since "primitive" sounds so wrong - the scientific community prefers "basal". Basal sauropods of India - the large one is Barapasaurus, and the small one Kotasaurus. Sauropods originated as very close relatives to the theropods. Basically, small theropods would dabble in omnivory from the very start of the dinosaur era, the middle Triassic, and allready, some were developing large bellies, for the feeding of nutrient-poor vegetation (compared to energy-rich meat, requiring small bellies)
Once this had begun, development was very rapid, and early sauropods excelled simply by eating all the untapped vegetation, and growing immense. By early Jurassic, they were allready the size of elephants, and while Kotasaurus still retained the elongated shape of a bipedal animal adapting to quadrupedal lifestyle, Barapasaurus was fully quadrupedal, with pillar-like legs, capable of carrying enormous weight. Barapasaurus was a giant of its time, some 20 metres from snout to tip of tail, but would be counted as "small-medium" compared to Sauropods that were to come. On India a thigh bone of the super-obscure Bruhathkayosaurus suggest an animal of 35-40 metres. Of similar, or even larger dimensions was the legendary, yet equally fragmentary Amphicoelias of USA, which could have reached 40-50 metres in length.
It is - however - perfectly possible that Amphicoelias (as well as Supersaurus) are just very mature individuals of Diplodocus, since - like I said before - these animals never stopped growing. Baffling differences in size are no indication of distinct species, something the scientific community is only recently beginning to realize.
A "hypsilophodontid", or, if you ever read Jurassic Park - a "hypsie". In older classification, "hypsilophodontids" were considered a monophyletic group - as in - a branch of a dinosaur family, with a lot of similar dinosaurs in it. It is now understood to be paraphyletic, meaning, a series of little branches, leading on to something different - in this case, "hypsies" were small, varied intermediaries between primitive ornithopods - and advanced duck-billed dinosaurs and iguanodontids.
This in particular is a rather large one, being roughly pony-sized, and apart from being adept at running skittishly away from danger, it is possible that it used its strong stubby arms to dig for roots. Smaller species would dig as well, in order to burrow tunnels, that have indeed been found in fossil form.
Speaking of iguanodontids, this is a Muttaburrasaurus. You can tell by the name, that it's Strawlian. It's from deoun unda! For all we know, it used that inflatable nose, to play some real didgeridoo tunes. A close relative of Iguanodon itself, it aaalmost had a thumb-spike, well, more just a lil thumb with a pointy claw on it. It had the ability to get up on two legs to hurry, while drop back on all fours to chill and eat plants. Coloration is inspired by some antilope, and judging by the two only dinosaurs where any kind of color impression has been preserved (small, feathered theropods), the overall patterns are unsurprising. Stripy tails (they "break up" contours), as well as dark back, white belly, which break up shadows. These color patterns seem widespread in the entire animal kingdom, and would be typical among dinosaurs too.
Excuse the weird tree.
Not Tyrannosaurus eating, while not Tyrannosaurus comes stalking to harass and steal the food. Tyrannosaurus existed there and then - he was just busy stalking someone else. This is Albertosaurus - a small slender tyrannosaurid. Well, small by tyrannosaurid standards, "only" 7-9 metres in length. The stalker is a Daspletosaurus, "only" 10-11 metres, but robustly built, like a slightly smaller Tyrannosaurus, and a very close relative. I'm not "trying to say" that Tyrannosaurus was a scavenger here. If anything, I'm accusing poor Daspletosaurus of being a scavenger. What I am saying is that large predators don't give a fuck about our expectations of them, and will harass and bite and eat anything. If that Albertosaurus didn't fuck off, it would eat it too. I am also saying that horns and frills don't do shit, Chasmosaurus, laying dead on the ground. Deep bite-marks are found in the faces of horned ceratopsids, such as Triceratops, which was twice the size of Chasmosaurus. Most likely, horns and frills were for something as dull as sexual selection and mating rituals, while having a limited effect as a deterence against smaller predators. A grumpy Tyrannosaurus would simply not give a hoot.
Tyrannosaurus head profile, fully mature female, and juvenile, to scale. Undetailed, unfinished.
Oviraptor means "egg-thief", and was named so because the first oviraptorosaurid was found on top of a pile of eggs believed to belong to a Protoceratops, a pig-like, pig-sized, horn-less ceratopsid. Nearly a century later, identical eggs were found, with a brooding oviraptorid on top, and small oviraptorid embryos inside. Turned out, it never "stole eggs", but sacrificed its life to defend the eggs, even in the face of a sand-storm. Two adult skeletons have been dubbed "Romeo and Juliet", as they were found grasping each others hands, buried for eternity in the deadly sand. Oviraptorids were very diverse, and most of them had weird, rounded heads, often with strange crests, that might be sexual dimorphism at work. The only indication of diet, once the eggs are ruled out, was the small newborn "raptor" in one of their nests, an indication of couples feeding each others while brooding. The romance never ends with these guys!
Depicted above is an oviraptorid digging a nest.
A crested and/or male oviraptorid. Exact genus or species is unknown. A big problem with many exotic and particularily interesting dinosaurs is that they will be "poached", and sold on the black market, to very high bidders. Nicholas motherfucking Cage has illegally purchased exotic dinosaur fossils, that he is denying the scientific community to enjoy. That piece of shit!
This head is based on a privately owned skull, that nobody is allowed to research.
An Incisivosaurus(head) or Protarchaeopteryx(body), very likely one and the same animal, and a forefather to the above oviraptorids. Like many of the bird-like dinosaurs, they seem to evolve from very small - even more birdlike dinos, as a kind of "LOL!" from nature.
Evolution went sort of like this:
Dinosaurs->Tiny birdlike dinos->Back to bigger birdy dinos + small true birds.
Velociraptor itself likely evolved from small dino-birds that could even have been capable of flight, for then to lose it, going back to running on the ground.
It's not too strange though, once you think about flight-less birds today, such as the ostrich.
More recent re-depiction of a typical oviraptorid, with more fluffy body, and totally revamped wing-ideas. Why leave the "flight feathers" in animals who havent flown in millions of years - or ever? Elbow-wings make for good communicative flapping.
Elbow-wings also on Velociraptor. Note, this is purely speculative, but makes for good "different-ness", which should be expected with extinct animals that we tend to have very traditionalized images of.
Feel free to ask random-ass questions about dinosaurs, such as who would win in a fight (GROAAAN) and which one was THE BIGGEST (groaaaaaaaaaaaaaan)
My speculation is based on the observation that South American dinosaur fauna was long dominated by an obscene ammount of so-called Titanosaur sauropods. Titanosaurs were, as the name suggests, titanic in size, but also a hugely varied group, so, it included sauropods of ALL sizes, even "mere" elephant sizes. They were plentiful, lived in huge flocks, and counted lots of individuals per species. All of them grew untill they died, and would eat tons of vegetation every day. This resulted in the trees having to grow in "waves", as the sauropods would completely devastate one end of the continent, and wander to the next, trees would have time to grow really fast - and really tall. To this day, the trees typical for that time - pines - are still extremely tall. Their "escape-the-sauropods"-genes are still active.
Together with the titanosaurs, lived so called Abelisaurs. They have weird anatomies, compared to typical theropods. Abelisaurus itself is only known from a head, and above I based the body on related Aucasaurus. Better known is Carnotaurus, which appeared in Disney's "Dinosaur", although with a much more "normalized" proportion. In reality, they had short stocky heads, elongated muscular necks, almost no arms, and long, powerfull hind limbs. All in all unusual.
Then I imagined - it is perfect for sprinting a large body into a flock of sauropods, nabbing a sauropod youngling by the neck, and taking off with it.
Once this had begun, development was very rapid, and early sauropods excelled simply by eating all the untapped vegetation, and growing immense. By early Jurassic, they were allready the size of elephants, and while Kotasaurus still retained the elongated shape of a bipedal animal adapting to quadrupedal lifestyle, Barapasaurus was fully quadrupedal, with pillar-like legs, capable of carrying enormous weight. Barapasaurus was a giant of its time, some 20 metres from snout to tip of tail, but would be counted as "small-medium" compared to Sauropods that were to come. On India a thigh bone of the super-obscure Bruhathkayosaurus suggest an animal of 35-40 metres. Of similar, or even larger dimensions was the legendary, yet equally fragmentary Amphicoelias of USA, which could have reached 40-50 metres in length.
It is - however - perfectly possible that Amphicoelias (as well as Supersaurus) are just very mature individuals of Diplodocus, since - like I said before - these animals never stopped growing. Baffling differences in size are no indication of distinct species, something the scientific community is only recently beginning to realize.
This in particular is a rather large one, being roughly pony-sized, and apart from being adept at running skittishly away from danger, it is possible that it used its strong stubby arms to dig for roots. Smaller species would dig as well, in order to burrow tunnels, that have indeed been found in fossil form.
Excuse the weird tree.
Depicted above is an oviraptorid digging a nest.
This head is based on a privately owned skull, that nobody is allowed to research.
Evolution went sort of like this:
Dinosaurs->Tiny birdlike dinos->Back to bigger birdy dinos + small true birds.
Velociraptor itself likely evolved from small dino-birds that could even have been capable of flight, for then to lose it, going back to running on the ground.
It's not too strange though, once you think about flight-less birds today, such as the ostrich.
Feel free to ask random-ass questions about dinosaurs, such as who would win in a fight (GROAAAN) and which one was THE BIGGEST (groaaaaaaaaaaaaaan)
