#zhenyuanlong

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Have you Appreciated Zhenyuanlong Today?

Now you have!

Look at those feather impressions!

Raptors (Dromaeosaurs) had huge wings!

[sherkathyy]

dromaeosauridae. Bunch of cuties

on insta

[percivalias]

The Maniraptoran Alphabet (Part 5)

Aaaand here's the fifth and final part of my dinosaur alphabet! Thanks for joining me, everyone - I hope you enjoyed it! Let me know if you'd be interested in a physical book or poster or something of these together; I'm planning on making something like that for myself & friends and I would be happy to make a few extra to sell if there's interest.

[rcrisdraws]

Dinosaur walker  👌😊✨✨ (and beware one of these things is not like the others~)

[ID: Illustration of a woman in a white tank top crop-top and high-waisted brown pants walking a whole lot of dinosaurs on a crosswalk coming from a park. Dinosaurs, left to right are: in front of the woman are Zhenyuanlong with colors inspired by a golden pheasant, Tsaagan with white feathers speckled with black and behind these last two are two Velociraptors, one on the left without feathers resembling a grey sphinx cat, one on the right with blue budgie plumage. Behind the woman are Austroraptor, resembling a black vulture in appearance, a Herrerasaurus with a muzzle in a tan with dark stripes color and lastly an Deinonychus with bearded vulture facial feathers and the colors of an Akita Inu.]

[hasellia]

My Raptor Collection.

[jeranodon]

Zhenyuanlong. Aka Leggy.

[vickysaurus-art]

A stargazing Zhenyuanlong. The stars it sees are different from the ones we see, but mostly because of their motion relative to one another. Except for giants like Betelgeuze and Deneb, the stars in the Quaternary night sky were already out there somewhere in the Cretaceous.

I drew this using my Beasts of the Mesozoic Zhenyuanlong as a model.

[tapiocapo]

Hello dromaeosaur enjoyers new Z. suni oc just dropped

[vickysaurus]

While my Zhenyuanlong is a bit harder to pose standing up than the others, I’m loving this pensive sitting pose it quite naturally assumes.

[bookrat]

Stuffed my shop with more little guys:

[justgoji]

omg stop saying the anchiornis wings are not accurate they are it’s longest wing feathers were actually at the wrist shut up shut up shut up ifuwhfuuagrisu

[moonbittern]

on the one hand i love the late cretaceous. on the other i want a season where each episode focuses on a different formation and i want one of those formations to be the yixian

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Common Dinosaur Mistakes

you know the "bunny hands" pose everyone does to indicate t. rex? with the hands folded down, palms facing the chest? yeah. almost no dinosaurs could do that. it would break their wrists. only one unique group evolved to do that, which doesn't include any of the Jurassic Park dinosaurs. the term for this is "pronation" and actually the vast majority of land vertebrates can't do it. mammals can. mammals are weird.

not a single dinosaur has claws on their fourth or fifth fingers. not a single one. not even if they're quadrupedal.

most dinosaurs have very stiff tails and can't wiggle them around like a lizard tail. the tails were stiff for balance.

the "tongue flick" thing that lizards do is a lizard thing. dinosaurs wouldn't have done that. they don't do that today (birds, birds don't do that)

"nonavian" dinosaurs with feathered wings had them like birds. they covered the hands. and attached to the hands. stop giving Velociraptor hands. it had wings. and very big ones, too, based on Zhenyuanlong.

dinosaurs with scales don't have lizard scales. lizard scales are a derived trait found only in lizards. they had scutes similar to those of living birds, but much smaller compared to body size, and often in crazy shapes and patterns. dinosaur scales are super weird tbh

sauropods don't have elephant feet. they handled the problem of size in a much weirder way: instead of spreading out the weight, they turned their feet into columns. like pillars. some of the biggest species didn't have any fingers, their front limbs just. end. for maximum column support.

dinosaurs were chonky. you could not see the bones like a silhouette under the skin. some might have been skinnier and some of the features of the bones would be somewhat like with skinny bird legs, but most of the time? no. so stop making the holes in their skulls visible on the outside like damn. jurassic park/world is the biggest offender for this one.

the whole unique feature of dinosaurs is having their legs DIRECTLY under their bodies. they do not sprawl. I can't believe I have to say that, but I do.

hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur) front feet were hooves. like, seriously, hooves. not little flippers. not three fingered hands. hooves.

I reserve the right to add more to this post as I think of things.

other people can too, but just research before you do.

[saritawolff]

And to finish off the dromaeosaur series: the obligatory size chart. I figured some of the poses would be misleading if I put them in a size chart… so I redrew everything 🙃. Neutral poses for the first one, and then my original poses for the second.

All the neutral poses were mostly traced from skeletals, by Scott Hartman (Austroraptor, Buitreraptor, Microraptor, Velociraptor, Deinonychus, Sinornithosaurus, Utahraptor, and Dromaeosaurus), M. Auditore (Halszkaraptor), Ashley Patch (Zhenyuanlong), Xing Xu and Zichuan Qin (Zhongjianosaurus), and Gunnar Bivens (Saurornitholestes). Changyuraptor had to be estimated based on the fossil slab as no one (except Peters of course) has made a skeletal of it yet.

~~~

And that’s it for my Dromaeosaur series (though I may draw more in the future of course.)

Nex up, I’m thinking either Troodontids or Oviraptorines. Both are very special to me, so I shall probably put it to vote on my Instagram.

[new-dinosaurs]

Daurlong wangi Wang et al., 2022 (new genus and species)

(Type specimen of Daurlong wangi [b: close-up of skull; c: close-up of eye socket; d: close-up of preserved feathers; e: frog skeleton preserved nearby; scale bars = 20 mm for b and 10 mm for c], from Wang et al., 2022)

Meaning of name: Daurlong = Daur dragon [in Chinese]; wangi = for Wang Junyou [director of the Inner Mongolia Museum of Natural History]

Age: Early Cretaceous (Aptian), about 121 million years ago

Where found: Longjiang Formation, Inner Mongolia, China

How much is known: Nearly complete skeleton of one individual with preserved feathers.

Notes: Daurlong was a dromaeosaurid theropod, making it a fairly close relative to Velociraptor and Deinonychus. It was especially similar to Tianyuraptor and Zhenyuanlong of the Jehol Biota (also from the Early Cretaceous of China). Like Tianyuraptor and Zhenyuanlong, it had relatively short forelimbs for its size, and was larger than most other Early Cretaceous dromaeosaurids that have been found in China, being about 1.5 m long in total length.

The type specimen of Daurlong not only preserves an exceptionally complete skeleton with feather remains, but also a dark mass in its abdominal cavity. In terms of shape and anatomical position, this mass resembles the preserved intestines of Scipionyx, a theropod known from a well-preserved juvenile specimen from the Early Cretaceous of Italy, and may therefore also represent preserved intestinal remnants in Daurlong.

Reference: Wang, X., A. Cau, B. Guo, F. Ma, G. Qing, and Y. Liu. 2022. Intestinal preservation in a birdlike dinosaur supports conservatism in digestive canal evolution among theropods. Scientific Reports 12: 19965. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-24602-x

[hasellia]

Prehistoric Planet Family watch along Day 3

Mum wasn't buying Velociraptor as a cliff climbing animal in the beginning. She warmed up to it a little bit after the featurette but still didn't think it was likely.

Everyone was weirded out by the Deinocheirus. "Can't believe it's bigger than a T.rex" "It's so shaggy." "Looks like a bunyip".

Everyone was even more weirded out by the Quetzalcoatlus. "She just goes from being a giant head to a long neck and then she's just legs. How does she hold all those eggs inside? Where is her stomach?!"

Most gruesome death so far goes to that gooey Quetzalcoatlus egg.

Pterosaur vault launch elicited a "HOW??" reaction.

Sister noticed the similarity between Masiakasaurus teeth and Grey Nurse shark teeth. "Thick and spaced out like a rake but not as sharp and not curved inwards." (actually upon further inspection the teeth ARE curved inwards, they're just hidden by lips!)

Most shocking death in the series so far goes to the baby Masiakasaurus being eaten by the Beelzebuffo. Not because we didn't see anything snatching it up, but because being eaten by a frog just seems to be an awful way to go. Nasty.

Surprised none of them have heard of Elasmosaurus.

Personal notes

Velociraptor is my GOAT so it was my time to absolutely shimmer tonight.

I seriously want to thank my mum and sister for watching this series with me and letting info dump them about dromaeosaur biology.

"So how does the velociraptor go back up the cliff?" "YOU ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD! Wing Assisted Incline Running! It allows me to summon from my deck Creative Beast Zhenyuanlong!"

Seriously, watching the featurette and being able to predict or explain factoids to my family was just as fun, if not more, than watching the episode itself with them.

Quetzalcoatlus makes for a great campfire story monster. "And there is was tall as a giraffe! Head of a heron, body of a bat!"

Someone should be counting how many babies have died so far in the series.

Overall this was another fantastic episode. This has been a really fun and exciting experience so far. And of course it had realistic Velociraptor so it was an automatic 700000000000000/10.