Leapin’ lizards – that ain’t no ordinary lizard!!
If you had to choose just one of Charles R. Knight’s influential and iconic paleoart pieces as his very greatest work, which one would you pick? Out of all Knight’s incredible paintings, the one I personally find most captivating is the 1897 “Leaping Laelaps“, a vivid illustration of two large theropods pouncing upon each other in what could be either play-fighting or serious combat.
The late Cretaceous tyrannosauroid, Dryptosaurus, is a historically significant genus that due to the fragmentary nature of its preserved material has been largely forgotten and ignored. Dryptosaurus aquilunguis was one of the first theropods ever discovered and the first theropod discovered in the Americas.
Dsungaripterus is a genus of pterosaur that lived during the early Cretaceous in China. With its upturned beak and crest it has a distinctive appearance. The body was robustly built, and it is thought that this pterosaur spent most of its time on the ground, using its uniquely adapted beak to pry prey from rocky crevasses or sandy mudflats.
There are presently around 40 known genera of mosasaur, ranging from relatively small fry like Halisaurus and Kourisodon to frightening behemoths like Gnathomortis and Prognathodon. There were also some truly unique ones like Globidens, with its rounded teeth for pulverising ammonites, and Plotosaurus, the most advanced swimmer of them all.
The two valid species of the North American hadrosaur Edmontosaurus, E. annectens and E. regalis, are known from multiple fossil specimens. Taken together, they make the genus “fully known.” But while a complete skeleton can give us a reasonable idea about an animal’s appearance in life, it is not necessarily a full or accurate one.
Edmontosaurus has been a staple in dinosaur toy lines since the very beginning of dinosaur toy production with Marx in the 1950’s. It’s a quintessential dinosaur, right up there with Triceratops, T. rex, and Stegosaurus, even if it was historically regarded as nothing more than theropod fodder.
