#hadrosaur

[amnhnyc]

Today’s Exhibit of the Day? The Museum’s mummified hadrosaur—one of the most complete pieces of Mesozoic dinosaur remains ever found! This fossil represents one of the greatest discoveries in the history of paleontology: a rare glimpse at the texture of dinosaur skin. Like the skin on modern birds’ feet, this duck-billed dinosaur’s skin was marked by bumps called tubercles. The tubercles are larger along the animal’s back and sides and smaller around the joints, which needed to be flexible.

Photo: Image no. ptc-7737 © / AMNH Library (Circa 1992)

[fossilprep]

Liberty's cradle had to be trimmed three times so it'd fit in the scanner. Upon seeing the scans, the techs were taken aback at how little room there is for a brain - it's all nasal cavity, all the way up.

[sylvanticus]

💗🪷 a Hadrosaur who had a long nap under the camellias and a bonus on my base :]

[dynasoar5]

guys with beaks

[erganyfoxart]

A couple of young shantungosauruses (shantungosaurs?) having a sweet romantic evening

[geek-jpeg]

Another thing of Moss since people seemed to like the last ones-

[sirpamkun]

Some chalk art I did at the public park near my house

Image 1: all the pieces I did today together

Image 2: Tiktaalik

Image 3: Tyrannosaurus Rex

Image 4: Random Hadrosaur

Image 5: Spinosaurus

Image 6: Sinosauropteryx

[wayward-delver]

Prehistoric Planet season 2 just aired and taught me the abject terror being pursued by a flock of giraffe-sized azhdarchid pterosaurs would be. 

(Each large enough swallow a person whole.)

[alphynix]

For a long time there were no hadrosaurid fossils known from Africa.

This seemed to mainly be due to the limits of the geography of their time. Hadrosaurs evolved and flourished during the late Cretaceous, when Africa was isolated from all the other continents, and they didn't seem to have ever found their way across the oceanic barriers.

…Until in 2021 a small hadrosaur was discovered in Morocco, a close relative of several European species, showing that some of these dinosaurs did reach northwest Africa just before the end of the Cretaceous - and with no land bridges or nearby island chains to hop along, they must have arrived from Europe via swimming, floating, or rafting directly across several hundred kilometers of deep water.

And now another hadrosaur has just been described from the same time and place.

Minqaria bata lived in Morocco at the very end of the Cretaceous, about 67 million years ago. Only known from a partial skull, its full appearance and body size is unknown, but it probably measured around 3.5m long (~11'6") – slightly larger than its previously discovered relative, but still very small for a hadrosaur. It might represent a case of insular dwarfism, since at the time Morocco may have been an island isolated from the rest of northwest Africa.

Along with its close relative Ajnabia, and at least one other currently-unnamed larger hadrosaur species, Minqaria seems to be part of a rapid diversification of hadrosaurs following their arrival in Morocco, adapting into new ecological niches in their new habitat where the only other herbivorous dinosaur competition was titanosaurian sauropods, and the only large predators were abelisaurs.

If the K-Pg mass extinction hadn't happened just a million years later, who knows what sort of weird African hadrosaurs we could have ended up with?

———

NixIllustration.com | Tumblr | Patreon

[jackthevulture]

Traditional art dump with some lambeosaurines! Lambeosaurus, Corythosaurus, Lambeosaurus (without any kind of ref for the last one lol). First is oil pastel, mostly Mungyo gallery pastels, Second two are cheap acrylic paint pens, thought the second includes some regular marker for tinting. These were fun! I think my digital painting workflow translates intuitively to opaque traditional media.

Edit: Lambeosaurines, not lambeosaurs. You get the idea.

[thecoffeeisblack]

Work in progress sketch for my new Parasaurolophus painting.

[eutrochiumfistulosum]

Here's the next design in my new set! Definitely a member of this one.

[confusedhadrosaur]

Hadrosaurs at night.

[sylvanticus]

Tlatolophus! Used some monthly themes in a pal's discord server for inspiration 💖

[dynasoar5]

today is international dinosaur day. hello, i am a dinosaur. here are some dinosaurs i’ve painted. 

[vickysaurus]

Edmond, the Edmontosaurus mummy.