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#dromaeosaurs
a-dinosaur-a-day · 7 months
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Jurassic World and other media things: Have their raptors have ridiculously wiggly tails
Actual raptor tails:
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the tail is so stiff the tendons became bones
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i-draws-dinosaurs · 2 months
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Would any dromaeosaurs have likely had bald heads like turkey vultures?
It's certainly possible, and I'd go so far as to say quite likely!
We do have some fossil evidence for dromaeosaurs with feathered heads:
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Image sources: Tianyuraptor, Sinornithosaurus, Daurlong, Microraptor.
As for the rest though, we don't have a clear fossil of a bald-headed dromaeosaur! To be certain, we'd probably need to find specific impressions of naked skin around the head, which to my knowledge has not been found yet.
The feathered fossils above belong to either small (right side) or medium-sized (left side) dromaeosaurs, so it indicates that any dromaeosaurs up to a Velociraptor-type size certainly could have had feathered heads.
That being said, the level of head feathering is very variable in modern birds even within the same group. Some vultures have bald heads which may help with cleaning their faces and heat regulation, but there's much wider variation than you might expect! Even just within the clade Aegypiinae, we've got:
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Image sources: hooded, griffon, red-headed, lappet-faced, white-headed, cinereous.
There's a whole range from nearly full plumage to fully naked skin folds to Justin Timberlake Ramen Hair, and I'd say there's no reason to think that dromaeosaurs and other feathered dinosaurs couldn't have had the same level of variation between species!
It's the kinda situation where in the absence of direct evidence, I'd consider varying levels of head baldness in dromaeosaurs as pretty reasonable speculation! So here's a Deinonychus decked out with a variety of different styles that are within the realms of possibility:
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And that's not even taking into account that in a lot of bald-headed birds that skin space is prime real estate for all sorts of flippy flappy dangly bits and colours and lumps and bumps.
So basically, it's not like we can point at any particular dromaeosaurs and be like "that one probably had a bald head", but unless there's contrary evidence I feel it's very likely there was a lot of variation in how feathery the head was!
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troodontid · 6 months
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I work at a dinosaur museum and this is our desktop background. Thought you all should know
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joitiks · 11 months
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you’re home!
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fishsfailureson · 3 months
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An Achillobator stares up at the sky, having sought shelter from the rain under a large rock face (it isn't completely dry but hey, it works well enough).
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ashen-wing · 8 months
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"Arise, my faithful! My soldiers! My sons! Arise, and take onto you the flaming talon for which my power is sworn! Let its infernal power blaze!"
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I finally got some art done. Just some literal pyroraptor insanity from my third [yet-to-be-written] book in this Dromaeosaur trilogy I may or may not ever write.
This scene is pretty epic though but not gonna say why. Basically, think of that sequence in GoT when Melisandre ignites in flame all the Dothraki blades with mystical powers...Only evil.
Art/Story by Me [HT art | 2023]
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plasmagruntcalvin · 1 year
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Recently described a few days ago, the waterfowl-like Natovenator polydontus is an important find as it’s anatomical features suggest that it and other Halszkaraptorinae dinosaurs were likely semi-aquatic fish eating predators.
Natovenator much like Halszkaraptor was found in Mongolia, a place typically known for being a more desert type environment, however the country’s deserts weren’t always dry as some parts of the vast deserts were home to wet floodplains where animals like Natovenator could thrive.
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saint-nevermore · 2 years
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Smaugust day 7 - Feathers
the earliest ancestors of dragons and their relatives were somewhat small Dromaeosaurs, blessed by the deity Drakken to have flammable venom and extra grasping forelimbs. they were covered in complex feathers, with a striking frill of display feathers on their chin and behind their ears unique to the earliest stem-dragons. this unassuming proto-dragon is on it’s hunt on a quiet dawn, incapable of knowing it’s descendants will become some of the most widespread and successful group of animals the world will have ever known
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avillanappears · 1 year
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it's so funny how people went "oh velociraptors aren't as big as in jurassic park so clearly they're just tiny little chickens any person or modern animal could defeat with ease"
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roosaurusrin · 2 years
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Theropods and Hollow Bones
I saw a post going around a couple weeks ago talking about birds and their hollow bones, and wanted to jump onto that train too. Theropod dinosaurs (birds included) are defined by this trait. It often indicates an active lifestyle. The outer bone is often dense (and grows almost like tree-rings, as seen in the Tyrannosaurus rex pubis in the third image), with the inner area being hollow. This allowed them to have sturdy bones without becoming over-weighted.
The fossils above are all from the end Cretaceous - specifically the Hell Creek Formation. The first two belong to dromaeosaurids, and the third Tyrannosaurus rex.   
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a-dinosaur-a-day · 6 months
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So it turns out Terror Birds/Cariamiformes are, in every possible sense, "Dromaeosaurs 2: The Quickening"
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i-draws-dinosaurs · 2 years
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I see most depictions of dromaeosaurs having unfeathered snouts (like the Prehistoric Planet Velociraptor) so what exactly covers the snout? Scales? Bare skin? Perhaps some kind of keratinous "pseudo-beak"?
As far as I'm aware the pseudo-beak has been proposed a couple of times and not caught on because the underlying bone of the skull doesn't have the right texture to support large amounts of keratin.
Scales and bare skin are both totally plausible though! I tend to default to bare skin because it's closer to what we see in birds, and it seems like that's the direction the Prehistoric Planet team have gone with as well, as you can see on the snout of their velociraptorine:
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On the other hand, as far as I can tell there's actually nothing that rules out the possibility that they could have been fully feathered all the way to the tips of their snouts! So maybe that's a possibility worth exploring.
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So here's a Saurornitholestes, restored with hypothetical feathering all the way to the end of the snout! I'm curious what anyone else thinks about that idea.
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pocoslip · 7 months
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Who is Hunted Now??
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joitiks · 8 months
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a deinonychus mother dotingly checks on her first and only hatchling, after losing the rest of her clutch to opportunistic scavengers.
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fishsfailureson · 3 months
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Acheroraptor
This took longer than an art piece of this level of complexity would normally take for me. I'm pretty happy with it.
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ashen-wing · 10 months
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Watching Preistoric Planet 2 and I never noticed they had given the Velociraptors “beaks” where their lips would be. I had suspected it in the first season, but in this night scene, you can definitely tell it is keratin with how it catches smoothly off the moonlight. Really interesting detail!
Do scientists know that Dromaeosaurs had such “beaks”? Or were they flesh-covered snouts? Either way, it’s fascinating to see so many unique interpretations of these guys.
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