#one of my fav ceratopsians :3

[liviingmemory]

errrmmm new Dinaurian hi

[the-dragon-girl-27]

Seen a lot of paleostream art on here and decided to finally try catching one of the streams myself and drawing along with it, twas fun

these fellas are all from the Yixian Formation.

[betterbemeta]

Hey what are your top 5 fav dinosaurs

what an excellent question.

HONORABLE MENTION: Therizinosaurus

So let’s take like, a goose or something. And let’s give it arms with 2-foot long claws, the longest claws of any known animal in history. 

No skull has ever been found so we have no idea how it ate. If we ever discover one, I expect our assumptions are going to change drastically about this animal. I can’t say it’s one of my favorites because we just don’t know enough about it to really ‘know’ it. But damn if those claws haven’t said ‘Hello!’ 

5. Baryonyx

qualities: long, cool claws, adorable snappy face

Baryonyx was one of the first dinosaurs we discovered ate fish, from fish scales found fossilized in its stomach area.

4. Triceratops

A classic boy. There are cooler looking Ceratopsians but I still like Triceratops for how its big head frill is entirely bony, rather than a hollow sail covered by skin. 

I always thought it skull looks wise or kind. I like to think these were a little like Cretaceous bison. Out of all of the dinosaurs I feel like it would be a spiritual experience to pet one of these on the nose.

3. Kentrosaurus

A spiky boy!!! Look at how thorny he is! Hug if you dare!

if good ‘ol kentrosaurus thagomizes you, you get damn well thagomized

2. Allosaurus

You may recognize this dinosaur as the one in my icon. It’s been my favorite theropod for a long time, partially because while the T-Rex was larger, Allosaurus has always seemed more interesting to me. It’s skeleton is also much more beautiful than the skeleton of the T-Rex, at least in my eyes.

An interesting feature about the Allosaurus is its unusual head and the red-hot discourse about it. The gape angle of the Allosaurus’ jaw is wider than that of many Tyrannosaurids, and the skull itself is unusually strong… but the bite strength is relatively poor. Theories abound about feeding habits, like if it was a ‘flesh grazer’ (taking a bite basically and letting the prey run away), if it caught prey like modern big cats with its forearms and took multiple bites to subdue it, if it used its neck muscles to rip or tear at flesh rather than biting it off just with its mouth, etc.

The patron saint of biting off more than you can handle.

1. Gastonia

HELL YEAH. Covered in massive spikes, armored all over its body, with a tail lined in sharp bone spades– my boy Gastonia had his priorities straight. 

Its whole butt was covered in one big fused bone plate, and its very skin was studded with ossified scutes. Gastonia was ready to rumble. You would roll like water off his back. Discovered by James Kirkland in 1998, it was found in the same environment, in the same geological strata as Utahraptor. This early cretaceous son of a bitch survived the largest known Dromaeosaur species in its immediate environment– and we have more known and complete material of Gastonia than any other ankylosaur. We’re either super lucky to have found a fossil bed with so many specimens, or Gastonia didn’t just survive but thrived with gigantic raptors longer than it was running around.