#not palaeontology

[jurassicsunsets]

I don’t normally post on archaeology, but this is something I feel is relevant and that I’d like to spread awareness of. 

Misinformation is not harmless, and this kind of anti-intellectual, conspiracy theory-peddling is becoming more prominent. It’s dangerous and encourages anti-science attitudes that make people more susceptible to fascist manipulation.

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[raptorbricksart]

Deep in the ancient oceans, lurks the mighty Dunkleosteus. A bit of Blockbench paleo art from a little while back i never posted.

Based on the recent, more rotund, reconstruction of D. terrelli, still quite the fearsome beast!

Been some time since i did any paleoart so it was great to finally get back to it again!

Let me know what you think!

[toaarcan]

You ever think about how incredibly weird Azhdarchids were?

Like, they had huge heads, very long necks, relatively small wings that they could nonetheless fly with, which they (probably) achieved by pole-vaulting themselves into the air with their bones. They could likely get around on land by galloping like horses, and probably ate anything that they could fit in The Beak, like pelicans.

Also they were this big.

Sincerely, what the fuck.

[saint-nevermore]

susan and her babies

[stavrosskundromichalis]

Patagosaurus fariasi and friends being very much Beach in the Early Jurassic of Argentina 🦕🏄‍♂️🌊

[bobnichollsart]

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

"Cretaceous Blue Moon," a composite artwork from 2013. A gathering of male Elasmosaurus show off their strength by lifting their heads high out of the water during a bloom of bioluminescent plankton.

[kiabugboy]

POV: you went diving at night and spotted Ordovician nautiloids feasting on a eurypterid carcass, after a while the commotion has attracted the giants, Endoceratids slowly creeping into view

[paleo-cafnir]

Animated short film teaser #1

[kadalsaurus]

Baryonyx walkeri sketch

my attempt on baryonyx

[jasper-dracona-art]

I read the phrase “transitioned onto land” for about the thousandth time the other day, but this time I noticed an opportunity!

[fossilprep]

Brachylophosaurus skin impression found by Denver Fowler while prospecting

[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

[johann1220]

Greater Jaws

(All assets are done in Blender & made by me.)

[glassesanddisasters]

Gouache painting of a little scene!

[originalleftist]

Many people, maybe most people, now know, intellectually, that birds are dinosaurs.

But I don't think most people really feel it. Have really internalized it. Even I haven't, completely. The idea of dinosaurs as big extinct lizards is too deeply-ingrained.

But birds are dinosaurs. Not related to dinosaurs. Not descended from dinosaurs. Scientifically speaking, they. are. dinosaurs.

There are between 9,000 and 11, 000+ known species of dinosaurs alive today.

There are over 50 billion individual dinosaurs alive on Earth today.

You can go into a pet store and buy a dinosaur.

You can see dinosaurs at the zoo, or on a farm, or in your backyard.

People grow dinosaurs on farms.

We eat dinosaurs stuffed with potatoes and gravy and pie for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

We eat them battered and fried for a snack.

There are dinosaurs ("fire starter" birds) that use fire as a tool by spreading burning twigs.

Dinosaurs have been in space.

You can go to a local park and see dinosaurs swimming in the creek with their hatchlings.

You can go to the beach and see them scavenging by the seaside.

Some people might think that this makes dinosaurs more boring and mundane.

Of course, it doesn't change the nature of things at all, beyond how we perceive them- but so far as how we perceive them is concerned, I think it makes birds, and the world, more amazing.

I've probably posted about this before, but there was a moment last summer, when I was on vacation, and I went walking on the beach to a spot where I knew eagles often nested, hoping to get some photos. And I did. There was a big bald eagle, sitting way up in a tall evergreen tree, looking down at the beach. And below it, on the beach, there were groups of crows and geese foraging in the shallow pools and seaweed and shells on the beach, at the foot of the trees. And it hit me that it felt just like a scene out of one of my old childhood dinosaur books. Maybe a herd of Iguanodon, foraging on an ancient beach, as a predator watched them from the forest, preparing to strike (there's a site much like that, Dinosaur Ridge in Colorado, not far from the town where I lived as a child, where dinosaur tracks are preserved in stone, covering a hillside, showing the actual movements of actual animals that lived tens of millions of years ago).

And it gave me hope. Because after 150 million years, they're still here. Changed, certainly (they wouldn't have survived otherwise), but still here, despite mass extinctions, climate change, asteroid impacts, and even the continents moving and changing shape.

And if they survived, maybe we will too.

It also gives me more appreciation for the horror of environmental destruction and extinction. Humans have wiped out species of birds.

We could be the thing that finally makes the dinosaurs go extinct.