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Here’s my rendition of a juvenile Cryolophosaurus ellioti inspired and adapted from a photograph of an Emu by Ed Dunens

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A group of Gryposaurus walking around a lake

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Dilophosaurus #dilophosaurus #procreate #painting #paleoart #ipadpro #applepencil

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I love this dinosaur. It has such weird body proportions and looks like a demon. I colored this in two schemes: one inspired by its surroundings, a blue-red hue which would camouflage it well in the rocky mountains of Argentina. The second scheme is inspired by the red-black colors of Peninsular Rock Agama, the two creatures are not closely related, but I think the red-black colors make it look more demonic.

I researched this dinosaur more deeply after seeing the latest Jurassic World trailer. In the trailer this dinosaur looks like a bulky, slow-moving creature. However the scientific evidence suggests a light weight, long-legged runner, like a cheetah. So I made this painting hoping to create an accurate rendering. I painted this with the Procreate App (on iPad Pro with Apple Pencil). The painting took me about 8 hours and 22700 brush strokes.

Carnotaurus was a strange theropod from Middle/Late Cretaceous period around 72-70 million years ago. It is known only from one almost complete fossil found in Patagonia in 1985. it has very small arms with four fingers that it might have used for balancing, or performing mating dances, or for intimidating other creatures. It had two large horns which it could have used for attracting mates, or for battling others of its kind over territory or food or mates. It had very long muscular legs, a slender lean body, and a stiff muscular tail, all of this made it very fast and it could get up to speeds of 35mph. This dinosaur was more like a cheetah and would chase its prey in short bursts, however it was clumsy as its stiff tail would not allow it to make quick turns. It had a light weight, rather weak jaws, but the indentations in the jaw bones suggest that the muscles it could deliver fast, repetitive bites to kill its prey. The fossil discovered has preserved some portions of its skin impression which show a scaly skin with small defensive bony extrusions.

References

Carnotaurus sastrei: the horned, lightly built carnosaur from the Middle Cretaceous of Patagonia

Paleo profile by Trey the Explainer

Scott Hartman’s skeletal drawings

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I recently started making dinosaur paintings more seriously by doing a bit of research before starting out the drawings. I made this Parasaurolophus by modifying a silhouette I obtained from Scott Hartman’s website. I have never seen a picture of a Parasaurolophus in a fall or wintery background, so I decided to make one. I tried to make the trees look like Magnolias, with moss, and the dinosaur is standing on a bark of some big red wood. Not sure if those plants co-existed this way. For the dinosaur I tried to make it look very organic with patches of dark/light colors like a salamander or hippo, and with muddy/wet near the feet. I’m posting this because I want to share my work with more people, and get critiques. You can see more of my recent work on my tumblr too. Thank you very much!

————————— Hello, your work is very lovely! The environment here is believable as is the animal, and the texture work is amazing.

Accuracy wise for the Parasaurolophus, I don’t see anything that needs addressing. I would add some markings on the body and make colours more vibrant but that may be personal taste and what you’ve depicted is completely reasonable.

As for the plantlife or habitat, I can’t really say, but It seems believable and doesn’t seem jarringly incorrect. If any followers or that know more about habitat/vegetation, feel free to reblog and add on!

And last of all, go give @ganeshnrao a follow and look! I recently reblogged(?) their Cryolophosaurus because it’s by far one of the better photo manipulation dinosaurs I’ve seen. I’ll go ahead and reblog some of their work :D

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Cryolophosaurus ellioti monching on a fish on a nice cool day in Jurassic Antarctica 

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Halszkaraptor escuilliei

By Maya Jade McCallum on @hauntedmech

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Name: Halszkaraptor escuilliei

Name Meaning: Halżka Raptor

First Described: 2017

Described By: Cau et al. 

Classification: Dinosauria, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Dromaeosauridae, Halszkaraptorinae

Halszkaraptor is a recently described genus of raptor, and it is weirder than the spelling of its name: it’s a long necked Dromaeosaurid with adaptations for a semiaquatic lifestyle, much like a modern cormorant. Yup. A Raptor. A cousin of Velociraptor. That was adopted for living in the water. And it wasn’t the only raptor like this - the phylogenetic analysis of the original description indicates that Mahakala (a raptor previously thought to be the basal-most Dromaeosaurid and relatively similar to the ancestral Paravians) and Hulsanpes (which, you’ll remember, we did recently on ADAD, as a general “who knows” Paravian. So we gotta update that entry at some point.) But I digress. Let’s focus on Halszkaraptor, the weirdest dinosaur discovery since Yi. 

By Ashley Patch on @palaeoshley

Halszkaraptor is known from an almost complete skeleton, found articulated in a pose almost as though it were displaying, or even about to swim. It lived in the Djadokhta Formation of Mongolia, living about 75 to 71 million years ago, in the Campanian age of the Late Cretaceous. This environment is where Halszkaraptor’s specific ecology becomes really interesting - the Djadokhta Formation, as far as anyone is aware, is a fairly arid environment, with sand dunes and very few sources of fresh water apart from things like oases and desert creeks. So - without much freshwater - where would an animal like Halszkaraptor have even lived? What did it feed on? The formation also doesn’t preserve much in the way of non-tetrapod fish - a frog is known, but little else in that vein. Yet, here is a dinosaur, with clear adaptations for aquatic living. And they proved it, too. 

By Joschua Knüppe, retrieved with permission from 252mya

The describers, first of all, thoroughly scanned the skeleton to make sure it wasn’t a fake - that a fossil tradesman hadn’t put together parts of multiple different dinosaurs to try and earn more money selling it to scientific researchers. They scanned it with multiple resolutions to show that all the bits of the skeleton were embedded in the original rock it was fossilized, and that the skeleton is all connected to each other along the vertebrae, as were the parts of the hand, and the rest of the skeleton. So it’s not a fake. And then, on top of that, they charted the ratios of the different fingers of the hands, as well as the proportions of the forelimbs, with modern birds, crocodilians, other nonavian dinosaurs, and some other extinct animals that show aquatic adaptations. It showed a clear adaptation for aquatic life similar to long-necked aquatic reptiles of the Mesozoic (like plesiosaurs), and a wing morphology in between that of penguins and other aquatic birds. 

By Fraizer on @saint-nevermore

So, not only does its body shape indicate that it was semi-aquatic  in its lifestyle, it may have even had small flippers, on the way to something like what we see in the modern aquatic dinosaur group, the penguins. This is, of course, under debate, and it may have had small wings like modern cormorants or other semi-aquatic dinosaurs. Either way, the rigorousness of this study shows that this was not a hoax or just weirdly proportioned - it was uniquely adapted for a very specific ecology, and one that would have been very rare in its environment. It had a long neck that it could use to forage for fish, and its flattened out forelimbs that could be raised up like that in modern birds would have let it swim through the water, flipper or not. It would have walked on its hind limbs on land, much like modern water fowl, and probably used its tail for balance. Interestingly enough, due to its aquatic adaptations, its body posture would have been more upright - like modern birds - due to a shift in its center of gravity, and it would have been as horizontal as other nonavian dinosaurs. 

By Joschua Knüppe, retrieved with permission from 252mya 

Halszkaraptor also had a somewhat flattened and long skull - not a beak or a bill as in modern birds, but certainly resembling them, and used for fishing in the oases and rivers in its habitat. It would have looked much like a weird goose with teeth, given its long neck, thicker torso, and bill-like snout; and it even had the sickle claws characteristic of Eumaniraptorans, so just picture a goose with teeth and sickle claws so you get an idea of what kind of thing we’re dealing with here. And, even though its very specific ecological role seems strange, it’s not entirely surprising - the Djadochta Formation is absolutely overloaded with land-based predators, dinosaurs and not - such animals as Byronosaurus, Gobivenator, Zhuchengytrannus, Tsaagan, Velociraptor, Saurornithoides, and many others were present and competing for prey, so perhaps heading to the few sources of water available was a major benefit for Halszkaraptor in trying to survive. In any case, regardless, it was a beautiful, magnificent, just amazing weirdo of a dinosaur 

Sources:

Cau, A., V. Beyrand, D. F. A. E. Voeten, V. Fernandez, P. Tafforeau, K. Stein, R. Barsbold, K. Tsogtbaatar, P. J. Currie, P. Godefroit. 2017. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djadochta_Formation

Shout out goes to @justsalim!

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Halszkaraptor escuilliei, a dromaeosaurid (“raptor”) dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia (~75-71 mya). It’s known from a single near-complete skeleton and would have been about the size of a modern mallard duck, around 60cm long (2′).

It had some very odd features for a raptor, with many small sharp backwards-pointing teeth, crocodile-like sensory pits on its snout, a long flexible neck, small flipper-like arms, a relatively short tail, and a more upright body posture than its other relatives. All these traits together suggest it may have been semi-aquatic, which is a pretty big deal since the only other group of non-avian dinosaurs known to have developed adaptations for life in the water were the spinosaurids.

The fossil was originally illegally excavated by fossil poachers and was owned by private collectors for several years, but it has now been returned to science and is due to be repatriated to Mongolia. With its odd anatomy and the exact origin of the specimen being unknown, there’s some skepticism about whether Halszkaraptor represents a genuine animal or an elaborate fake chimera – but synchrotron scans of the fossil and its similarity to previously-discovered more fragmentary short-armed raptors like Mahakala suggest that it is real, and it really is that weird.

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beibeilong is a type of oviraptor dinosaur described this year! it’s known from a fossilised nest with an embryo (nicknamed Baby Louie™). it’s most likely to be similar to gigantoraptor and would have probably been a similar size as an adult.

the embryo specimen, baby louie, wasn’t full term, and wasn’t in an egg, which may imply being taken out the egg by something else.

here i’ve drawn a hatchling after doing some messing around with the proportions, and an adult based on the proportions of gigantoraptor

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Clidastes sp.

Artwork by Midiaou Diallo

At 2-4 meters (7-13 ft) long, Clidastes is one of the smallest known relative of the gigantic Mosasaurus. It lived in what is now Jordan, just before the extinction that killed most dinosaurs.

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252MYA creates custom-made artwork for private collections and editorial, scientific, or educational project.

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Avicranium renestoi

Artwork by Matt Celeskey

Avicranium, meaning “bird skull,” is part of a group of tree-dwelling reptiles called drepanosaurs. Despite the similarity of body shape and lifestyle, drepanosaurs aren’t directly related to chameleons and their position in the reptilian family tree is currently hard to pin down.

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252MYA creates custom-made artwork for private collections and editorial, scientific, or educational project.

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Desmatosuchus sp.

Artwork by Matt Celeskey

This heavily armored, 4.5 meter (15 ft) long reptile belongs to a group of plant-eating crocodile relatives called aetosaurs. It is thought that the shovel-shaped snout helped it dig for food.

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252MYA creates custom-made artwork for private collections and editorial, scientific, or educational project.

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By the way, if you see any typos in tags or posts that are major, or if I put the wrong clades in the tags, let me know! The ask probably won't be published, but the change will be made.

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Experimenting with the tagging system

Tried to get a little more specific with tags. Because I'm the type of artist which will spend time looking at the genuses in Tyrannosauroidae to get an idea of appearance.

For example, I reblog a Tyrannosaurus rex reconstruction. It will be tagged: #tyrannosaurus rex #tyrannosaurus #tyrannosaurinae #tyrannosaurini #tyrannosauridae #theropoda #theropod #saurischia #dinosaur + any appropriate book-keeping tags, so #accurate and #good design for example.

It's a little bulky, but some of the tags will be particularly useful when searching, like if you're just in the mood to look at chasmosaurines.

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Sitting Halszkaraptor. Because it’s not a bandwagon anymore, it’s a railroad!

Art by me, Shin Red Dear

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Allosaurus atrox. Another species of Allosaurus (there’s like five, bloody hell), this one pretty poorly known tbh. Not much I can really say about it, other than that it was found in the Morrison Formation of Late Jurassic USA, and was likely very high up on the food chain, likely subordinate only to Torvosaurus and other, larger allosaurs.

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Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni skeleton on display at the Natural History Museum in London.