#late cretaceous

[cenospire]

A very curious Pyroraptor spots something interesting (a cycad seed) on the forest floor, and is just...tickled pink by it for some reason.

[theprinceofmycologia]

A NEW DINOSAUR HAS BEEN DISCOVERED!!!!! NOT ONLY THAT, IT WAS ALSO NAMED AFTER THE NORSE GOD LOKI!!

BEHOLD THIS BEAUTIFUL DINOSAUR!! OH IT IS SO LOVELY!

HERE ARE SOME COOL PICTURES OF THE SKULL AND CASTS OF THE REAL BONES TO RECONSTRUCT THE SKULL

READ MORE ABOUT IT HERE:

[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

[new-dinosaurs]

Lokiceratops rangiformis Loewen et al., 2024 (new genus and species)

(Reconstructed skull of Lokiceratops rangiformis [scale bar = 1 m], with unpreserved portions in gray, from Loewen et al., 2024)

Meaning of name: Lokiceratops = [Norse deity] Loki's horned face [in Greek]; rangiformis = Rangifer [genus of the extant reindeer]-shaped [in Latin]

Age: Late Cretaceous (Campanian), roughly 78.1 million years ago

Where found: Judith River Formation, Montana, U.S.A.

How much is known: Partial skeleton of one individual, including a partial skull, several vertebrae, and some limb bones.

Notes: Lokiceratops was a centrosaurine cereratopsian, making it a horned dinosaur more closely related to Styracosaurus and Pachyrhinosaurus than to Triceratops. It is one of the largest known centrosaurines, with its skull alone being nearly 2 m long.

The skull of Lokiceratops was highly distinctive. A pair of very large, curved horns at the back of its frill pointed out to the sides. Furthermore, a pair of smaller horns closer to the center of the frill was asymmetrical, with one horn being larger than the other. Asymmetrical head ornamentation is also seen in the antlers of reindeer, hence the species name "rangiformis".

Lokiceratops is known from approximately the same time and location as three other centrosaurines, Albertaceratops, Medusaceratops, and Wendiceratops. Despite their diversity, all centrosaurines discovered so far are only known from very narrow ranges in both time and space. This may suggest that these horned dinosaurs diversified rapidly into numerous forms differentiated primarily by display features such as the shape of their horns and frills, with each species lasting only a short time in a small geographic region before evolving into new species or going extinct.

Reference: Loewen​​, M.A., J.J.W. Sertich​, S. Sampson, J.K. O’Connor, S. Carpenter, B. Sisson, A. Øhlenschlæger, A.A. Farke, P.J. Makovicky, N. Longrich, and D.C. Evans. 2024. Lokiceratops rangiformis gen. et sp. nov. (Ceratopsidae: Centrosaurinae) from the Campanian Judith River Formation of Montana reveals rapid regional radiations and extreme endemism within centrosaurine dinosaurs. PeerJ 12: e17224. doi: 10.7717/peerj.17224

[kadalsaurus]

pair of baryonyx nuzzling

sketch

[shattersaurus]

Mosasaurus the sea emperor of the cretaceous

[stavrosskundromichalis]

The iconic Tyrannosaurus rex on a Saturday morning 🦖 Realized that I haven’t made a serious attempt to draw t-rex since the nineties! 😳

[joitiks]

rip king 😔

[imtrippingdude]

✦The dino stickers are finally complete!!✦

I'd love to know some of your favourites, send me an ✦ask, or reply to this post with prehistoric animals you'd like to see drawn!

✦These are not ready for purchase, but will be once I finish more dino stickers, and finish the rest of the stuff i need to do to set up my shop!

✦HEY, like my art?! If you're interested in my commissions, click here!

[ppaleoartistgallery]

Coahuilaceratops

for those who dont know, i was commissioned to make a press release piece for the recent Coahuilaceratops paper by Barrera-Guevara et al., (2024) and im still quite happy with this piece

[proflambeovt]

Paleovember 2023, Tarbosaurus!

Famous for being the sister species to Tyrannosaurus rex, Tarbosaurus bataar is often easily written off as being the Mongolian T-rex. The reality is that Tarbosaurus was quite different; besides being slightly smaller, it was also slimmer, with a narrower back portion of the skull, meaning it's vision was less directly binocular. This is due to the animals it hunted being different from those found in North America; whereas Tyrannosaurus went after hadrosaurs and ceratopsians, Tarbosaurus went after hadrosaurs and SAUROPODS, the latter apparently not needing as much binocular vision.

[cenospire]

Some more paleoart - two pterodactyloid pterosaurs (perhaps Mimodactylus or something similar) play along a forested clifftop during the late Cretaceous. This one took a bit longer than usual, glad to have it finally finished!

[makairodonx]

Why not start a new month of the year with a newly-discovered dinosaur species? Meet Lokiceratops rangiformis, a fantastic exemplar of the rich ceratopsian diversity in Laramidia during the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous. A 6-meter-long centrosaurine ceratopsian with a 2-meter-long skull, it lived about 78.1 million years ago in what is now Montana’s Judith River Formation and appears to be most closely related to the slightly-younger Medusacertops lokii from the same formation and Albertaceratops nesmoi from Alberta’s Oldman Formation. The three species all together constitute the newly-created subgroup Albertaceratopsini within the Centrosaurinae.

[new-dinosaurs]

Asiatyrannus xui Zheng et al., 2024 (new genus and species)

(Skull of Asiatyrannus xui, from Zheng et al., 2024)

Meaning of name: Asiatyrannus = Asia tyrant [in Latin]; xui = for Xu Xing [Chinese paleontologist]

Age: Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian)

Where found: Nanxiong Formation, Jiangxi, China

How much is known: Partial skeleton of one individual, including a nearly complete skull, some hindlimb bones, and several tail vertebrae.

Notes: Asiatyrannus was a tyrannosaurid theropod, making it a fairly close relative to Tyrannosaurus. It is the second tyrannosaurid to be named from the Nanxiong Formation, the first being the much larger and longer-snouted Qianzhousaurus. Indeed, Asiatyrannus was small for a tyrannosaurid, estimated as having been 3.5–4 m long in total body length.

Although other supposed "small" tyrannosaurids had previously been named, these turned out to have been based on immature specimens. Based on microscopic examination of its bone structure, the describers of Asiatyrannus suggest that the type specimen had not finished growing when it died, but its growth had slowed down such that it was close to reaching its full size. It is estimated to have been at least 13 years old at the time of its death.

Reference: Zheng, W., X. Jin, J. Xie, and T. Du. 2024. The first deep-snouted tyrannosaur from Upper Cretaceous Ganzhou City of southeastern China. Scientific Reports 14: 16276. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-66278-5

[blueiscoool]

Large Iridescent Ammonite Placenticeras costatum Late Cretaceous (approx. 71 million years ago) Bearpaw Formation, Alberta, Canada

[shattersaurus]

Apexpredator of the cretaceous oceans, Mosasaurus Hoffmanni