jurassic-james - Tumblr blog

[jurassic-james]

unreachable itches? that's what friends are for

[jurassic-james]

Some hungry Abrictosaurus consors checking out a dried out river bed in Early Jurassic South Africa

[jurassic-james]

a thief

[jurassic-james]

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

I illustrated several books in 2004 (via the Beehive Illustration Agency). One of them was PLANET DINOSAUR, by Steve Parker and Miles Kelly Publishing. I will post the five main paintings (acrylic on card) throughout today. Second is the Early-Mid Jurassic.

[jurassic-james]

A dilo design for a client on Twitter

[jurassic-james]

sleepy trex + her tiny bird friends :]

[jurassic-james]

‪113 mya. Zephyrosaurus was not expecting Punxsutawney sphenodont to check his shadow. Needless to say, he lost some tough guy street cred with the boys that day.

[jurassic-james]

[jurassic-james]

Commission for @pango-doots of the Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx.

[jurassic-james]

I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna start posting to tumblr!!!!

[jurassic-james]

A full animation using toon shaders! I'm really liking this style!

[jurassic-james]

This Ankylosaurus dad heroically saves his family from a marauding dromaeosa - ah shit wait there goes his son

[jurassic-james]

Sauropods, like many dinosaurs, had pneumatised skeletons! What this means is that their airways and lungs expanded into their skeletons, making them hollow and much, much lighter. It also made their respiratory system a little more effecient by creating a unidirectional airflow. These are seen in modern birds, but seem to have been much earlier adaptations, and are seen across a lot of dinosauria.

So sauropods were likely able to get so big partially because their bones were hollow and therefore, not as heavy as you might think!

y'all ever think about how insane the sauropods were

[jurassic-james]

Saurornitholestes cracking open a big snail by slamming it against the skull of a Stegoceras, a good anvil when a rock is not around.

[jurassic-james]

We know little about the deep sea environments of the Mesozoic but one place where we can get a glimpse into this world is the Münsterland basin. We have here several localities that preserved shallow and deep water animals side by side, caused by underwater landslides. These carried stuff from the rim of the basin and buried them in the deep with other material that was down there.

Tachynectes here is a very early lanternfish. Flattened lanternfishes are no longer a thing these days and we actually have lanternfishes from these localities that show their photophores preserved. We know where they glowed!

[jurassic-james]

This stegosaurus is awakened by a pair of neornithischians rooting around in the moonlight.

[jurassic-james]

Carnotaurus portrait and sketches