drawingwithdinosaurs

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Gonna get busy so have this sketch of Linheraptor foraging amongst some boulders

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Also if dinosaurs didn't include birds, there's no way whatever new word(s) was being used to describe dinosaurs minus birds would describe Saurischia and Ornithischia, so we'd have two new words for each group, plus a new name for specifically the types of theropods that became birds (if not all theropods suddenly just being 'birds' now, which would still make the birds aren't dinosaurs crowd mad)

Oh yeah, I didn't even begin to cover what would happen to the internal classification of bird-line dinosaurs.

Would theropods get the same treatment (i.e. birds aren't theropods either) and therefore need another new name for the clade of "theropods" + birds?

Or would we keep Theropoda as a clade but end up calling some of them "dinosaur theropods" and "bird theropods"??? Or having to say stuff like "birds aren't dinosaurs but theropods include birds and some dinosaurs"???

And then repeating that for all the other sequentially nested groups leading up to birds???

Nightmare world.

[drawingwithdinosaurs]

I think the whole "birds are dinosaurs" bit has been thoroughly covered this past couple weeks, but I have one thought to contribute, and that is if you really think about it, the alternative would be much, much, worse to deal with.

Like, can you imagine what the world would be like if scientists just threw their hands up and let birds be kept separate from "dinosaurs"?

The fact that birds are evolutionary nested within "dinosaurs" would still exist, of course, so scientists would have to come up with another name for that clade! That would be the name scientists use over "dinosaurs" most of the time, and I guarantee you it would be nowhere near as memorable, catchy, or punchy.

That would be sci-comm disaster.

Can you imagine how confusing that would end up being? Any literature remotely scientific would start using the new name over "dinosaurs". People would have to learn two words for what would basically the same thing!

Books, websites, and tv shows about dinosaurs would have to constantly explain the definitions of both "dinosaurs" and the new scientific name and why they're supposed to be different. People get confused enough over Saurischia and Ornithischia already, imagine this on top of it!

People complain that it's supposedly being pedantic and all "um actually" to state (the blunt fact) that birds are dinosaurs. Can you imagine the pedantry potential if we had two terms for effectively the same concept to split hairs over? Like when is it correct to use the new scientific name and when you should use "dinosaurs"?

Especially after people have been used to just saying "dinosaurs" for almost two centuries. The new scientific name would take a while to catch on, and many people would just keep using "dinosaurs" for the clade anyway. Imagine the amount of pedantic correcting that would be going on there.

And to top it off, it's not as if this would stop people from saying "birds are dinosaurs" anyway, the same way people say "we are all fish". Except now it would be layered on top of a slew of discourse surrounding the word "dinosaur" and whatever new scientific name was given to the clade.

That would be an objectively worse and more frustrating reality to deal with.

Birds being dinosaurs is the simpler concept, more congruent with describing the reality, frankly easier to explain, and just all around less confusing than the mess that would exist in this other reality where people refused to let birds be called "dinosaurs".

[drawingwithdinosaurs]

I haven’t posted any art in a bajillion years so have this WIP of the Turkana Grits giant abelisaur

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POV: you went diving at night and spotted Ordovician nautiloids feasting on a eurypterid carcass, after a while the commotion has attracted the giants, Endoceratids slowly creeping into view

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Kannemeyeriiformes are my babies, but for the title of weirdest I can't not give it to allokotosaurs.

For every other group on this list, you can at least tell that their members are related. Can't do that with allokotosaurs. Sure, they're united by a few details of the skeleton, but on surface they just refused to commit to a theme (beyond just being weird). It's even in the name, "strange reptiles"!

Retro-sauropod looking herbivore, with or without horns? Sure.

(Art: Matt Celeskey)

(Art: Gabriel Ugueto)

Climbing snub-faced lizard with a beak? Alright.

(From Spielmann et al. 2008)

The above but with its face stretched out like an anteater? Okay.

(From Sues, 2003)

And let's not start on what they did to their teeth.

(From Spielmann et al. 2008)

Including the ones on the roof of their mouths:

(From Flynn et al., 2010)

All those teeth on the roof of the mouth are shaped like the ones along the edge, btw. Try not to think about having those in your own mouth.

Oh yeah these might be allokotosaurs too. Go figure:

(Art: Nobu Tamura)

A Triassic Weirdo is any organism or group of organisms that first appeared in the Triassic and last appeared in the Triassic, with no descendants reaching the Jurassic. As this period was preceded by a major mass extinction, and followed by a major mass extinction, this leads to a *lot* of very unique organisms for the time period.

[drawingwithdinosaurs]

Gotta go for Ornithischia and Saurischia, because if there's one thing on this list that trips people up AND is given undue weight in both its literal translations and perceived taxonomic significance it's those two.

"Dinosaurs" is just perfect as is, couldn't give them a better sounding name if we tried, and I honestly don't mind the misnomers. Sinking "Dracorex hogwartsia" into the depths of synonymy feels just as is, and I don't really mind letting Dinosaurus go to a therapsid because we'd never agree on what dinosaur should have it. But things would be so much easier if we weren't stuck with Saurischia and Ornithischia.

Dinosauria doesn't have to be seen as divided into a clear dichotomy! The differences present at the beginning would have been extremely minor! The hip thing doesn't mean squat!

further explanation on the ammonite thing: there's an ethnic group FREQUENTLY mentioned in the Torah called the Ammonites and Max and I will never stop picturing them as just, floating-in-midair extaint sapient Ammonites that constantly get into conflict with the Israelites,

[drawingwithdinosaurs]

A portrait of a nesting female hesperornis waiting on her mate to return from hunting.

[drawingwithdinosaurs]

Hello, today is my birthday, and I would like to share a comic I made in the last year with you. It's called Broomistega and Thrinaxodon.

This comic was originally printed with yellow, fluorescent pink, light teal, and violet risograph inks. Physical copies are available in my shop.

[drawingwithdinosaurs]

Hello everyone 👋 After feeling the mortality of my online presence, I decided to place my 5th soul jars here. My stuff will be primarily be paleoart, ASOIAF fan arts (dragons mostly) and random fantasy bits.

[drawingwithdinosaurs]

For those who don't know, in 2018 I founded #Paleostream, a series of streams that happen every weekend. We are on Twitch and try to walk as many unexplored paths as possible, in the way we reconstruct extinct creature, the way they behave, look and are part of their environment.

Here some examples.

[drawingwithdinosaurs]

Hello! Starting up a new Tumblr account ( the old one is buried too deep for me find) and I'll be posting primarily paleo art and other musings.

[drawingwithdinosaurs]

Few land-living hunters venture here. But one does. A type of dinosaur, Velociraptor. Their bodies are kept warm by feathers, but they can’t fly. They are, however, exceptionally agile. And just as well, one false step here could bring disaster.

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Soooo I have some exciting news!!!!

A couple months ago, I submitted an entry to the Waterhouse Natural Sciences Art Prize, a pretty fancy art contest hosted by the South Australian Museum. This was the piece I submitted, a papercraft lightbox entitled “An Outback of Ice and Sea”, and it’s taken a good month of my life getting it all together!

And I am very excited to announce that I have been selected as a finalist! Any of y’all who are in South Australia, you’ll be able to come and see my work (and a whole bunch of others’) on display at the SA Museum from the 4th of June to the 7th of August!

This piece is a scientific recreation of the Bulldog Shale formation, an opal-rich fossil locality in the desert of my home state of South Australia. 110 million years ago, this place wasn’t a desert, but an icy inland sea near the South Pole that was brimming with life! Every animal species in this artwork is based on fossil evidence from the region, down to the crinoids and brittle stars and bivalves!

The star of the piece is Umoonasaurus demoscyllus, a small plesiosaur with crests on its head that was local to this area. The Umoonasaurus is pursuing Ptyktoptychion eyrensis, a giant relative of modern-day ratfish while belemnites and ammonites bod in and out of the seaweed. And overhead amongst the icebergs, the giant pliosaur Kronosaurus queenslandicus looms.

I’m so proud of this piece as something that I’ve poured hours of love and research into, and I’m so thrilled to have been selected to be a part of this exhibition! The details on the museum website are here if anyone’s curious, please do let me know if you got a chance to see the exhibition in person!

[drawingwithdinosaurs]

John Brosio (American, 1967) - Two Earthlings (2003)

[drawingwithdinosaurs]

CollectA Edaphosaurus Repaint

Thanks so much to those of you who enjoyed my Edaphosaurus colour brainstorming drafts, I loved reading the tags on that one! And here’s the final painted version, with colour pattern number 2 from the first post!

This was so much fun to paint, moving from big splotches of colour to refine it down to more and more detail. I also layered on washes and drybrushing to pick out the beautiful wrinkly skin detail of the original sculpt. 

I’m still pretty new to this and I think my paint application is a little too thick? Some of that lovely detail got obscured which is a shame, but overall I’m just so happy with this paint job!

Anyway yeah this is my new guy, hope y’all like him!

[drawingwithdinosaurs]

The foot of most ankylosaurids is undocumented, however you’re in luck as the complete foot of Pinacosaurus has been discovered and described by Currie et al. in 2011.

They confirm that the foot of Pinacosaurus only has three toes (digits 2, 3, and 4), having lost the first toe. The claim of four toes in Pinacosaurus has been put forward and repeated in previous publications, although in the words of Currie and colleagues:

“The four-digit hypothesis was primarily based on a specimen with a damaged left foot (ZPAL MgD-II/9) that appears to demonstrate four metatarsals, although it only has enough phalanges for three digits.” 

The newer specimens seem to confirm previous claims that they only had three toes, consistent with the only other documented ankylosaurid feet.

Image from Currie et al. (2011):

Hey, I'm struggling to find a consensus on ankylosaurid hindlimb digits. Specifically pinnacosaurus. Did it have 3 or 4?