#dromaeosaurs

[paladingineer]

I heard this sound in my head when I saw this.

Raptors would have been really silly, this is my scientific opinion

Twitter

Bluesky

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Jurassic World and other media things: Have their raptors have ridiculously wiggly tails

Actual raptor tails:

the tail is so stiff the tendons became bones

[knarme-art]

Another commission done, for Zapsalight on Twitter! My commissions are open.

[makairodonx]

Pencil impression of Sauronitholestes langstoni, a 2-meter-long Late Campanian-Early Maastichtian dromaeosaur from the Dinosaur Park Formation of Alberta that is also essentially Canada’s answer to Velociraptor

[bobnichollsart]

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology…

Zoom into my Wulong reconstruction, from 2021. This was the press release artwork for a paper describing "The iridescent plumage in a dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur" (Croudace et al).

[i-draws-dinosaurs]

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:

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:

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:

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!

[troodontid]

I work at a dinosaur museum and this is our desktop background. Thought you all should know

[kanaevamon]

✨ dinosaurifies ur kawoshin ✨

Shinji as Dromaeosaurs

Kaworu as Saurornithoides

[fishsfailureson]

A little velociraptor skull doodle- still not particularly experienced with drawing bones but hey I did my best, that's what really matters. (also wikipedia has so many good photos of bones which is nice yay)

Also an entry for my sideblog @artist-quests

[the-dragon-girl-27]

Lokiceratops fighting off a flock of Dromaeosaurs

really happy with how this one turned out

[joitiks]

you’re home!

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

So it turns out Terror Birds/Cariamiformes are, in every possible sense, "Dromaeosaurs 2: The Quickening"

[crow0artzz]

Microraptor, one of the smallest dromaeosaurs

[makairodonx]

Linheraptor father brooding his nest

[bobnichollsart]

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology…

and we flap into 2021 with Wulong bohaiensis, from Early Cretaceous China. This was the press release artwork for a paper describing "The iridescent plumage in a dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur" (Croudace et al).

[avillanappears]

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"