Albino sauropods?

[andrewsaurus rex]

I just got the Mattel Dreadnoughtus.  I'm very happy with the big girl but not crazy about its blue colour.  So i'm thinking of repainting it.  I have the  Mattel Brachiosaurus and the Sideshow Apatosaurus from years ago.  While I am happy with both of those as well, they are both sort of a gray brown colour, which is fine, but I don't know that I want to reapaint Dread. a gray brown too.  So I got to thinking of what other colours to choose and I came across a can of very pale pink spray paint.  A very attractive colour.

While I have little doubt there were albino dinosaurs, i'm not as confident about albino sauropods, mainly because their white colouration would make them stand out like sore thumbs when they were little and be easily picked off by predators.  So I don't know if any would make it to adulthood,.  Now conversely, their white colour might make predators uncertain of what they are and steer clear of them too...

I like the idea of having an albino dino in my collection....interesting, different and if you think about it, it's the only colour you can have for a dinosaur figure and be pretty much 100% confident it is an accurate colour...

[Shane]

Non professional opinion, but most albino animals are extremely susceptible to bright light and heat.

A large sauropod like Dreadnoughtus would have trouble taking cover from light and sun, since its size gives it little in the way of hiding places.

Just my two cents.

[Gwangi]

Non professional opinion, but most albino animals are extremely susceptible to bright light and heat.

A large sauropod like Dreadnoughtus would have trouble taking cover from light and sun, since its size gives it little in the way of hiding places.

Just my two cents.

The same thought occurred to me while reading the original post, before I even got to yours.

[andrewsaurus rex]

yes you are right.  That thought briefly occurred to me last night when I came up with this idea and I had planned to look into it but totally forgot.

So I guess i'm back to painting it grey-brown.   Thanks for preventing me from making a dumb mistake.

[Gwangi]

yes you are right.  That thought briefly occurred to me last night when I came up with this idea and I had planned to look into it but totally forgot.

So I guess i'm back to painting it grey-brown.   Thanks for preventing me from making a dumb mistake.

An albino sauropod is a neat concept. And I've seen paleoart depicting albino sauropods before. We're talking about painting a toy here, so have fun with it, speculation is part of what makes dinosaurs fun. I just don't think an albino sauropod would likely make it to adulthood and if it did, it would have other problems to contend with. It does sound more exciting than gray-brown.

[Newt]

A one-in-a-million scenario happens ten times a day in New York City...

Albino animals of all sorts are pretty uncommon in the wild, for the reasons listed above - but they do still occur occasionally. So why not paint your Dreadnoughtus as an albino?

You've started my gears turning. Have you ever looked at the color morphs of reptiles and amphibians that show up in the pet trade? Besides true albinos with no pigment at all, there are animals missing almost but not quite all pigment (leucistic), only missing one pigment (axanthic, anerythristic, amelanistic), with reduced pigment (hypoxanthic, etc.), excess pigment (hyperxanthic, etc.), and all sorts of combinations and permutations. Any of these would be fun colors for a repaint, especially if you had multiples so you could contrast the "morph" with the normal-colored individuals.

[Shane]

yes you are right.  That thought briefly occurred to me last night when I came up with this idea and I had planned to look into it but totally forgot.

So I guess i'm back to painting it grey-brown.   Thanks for preventing me from making a dumb mistake.

There's nothing wrong with creating something speculative. Just because it's unlikely doesn't mean it never happened; nature is full of surprises.

Do what makes you happy, and what you think looks cool.

[andrewsaurus rex]

Thanks for the words of encouragement all but i'm not disappointed.  I like devising interesting  and creative things to do with my figures but if they aren't realistic or at least reasonably plausible, I lose interest in the idea fast. ...that is why I started this thread to find out if I hadn't thought the idea through.   At this point, it seems to me, that it is very unlikely an albino sauropod would make it to adulthood, so i'll file the idea and maybe try it on another animal some day where it seems more plausible.

For now i'm trying to come up with other ideas for my Dreadnoughtus.   The obvious next idea was to do a melanistic one, but that idea doesn't appeal to me much, for some reason....plus I wonder if being all black would cause such an enormous animal to overheat, with the sun beating on it day after day and insufficient time to cool off at night due to its bulk, resulting in the animal eventually cooking in its own skin.

Which got me thinking.......I wonder if there was an ideal colouration for huge sauropods.  A colour that would repel and reflect heat, so as not to become too warm.  White?  Maybe black afterall?  Or something in between the two extremes? Or did it even matter?

[Gwangi]

Could always go with piebald.





Nanmu did it with their Triceratops and although I'm not going to buy it, I really dig it.

[Halichoeres]

You could go really dark with it and have it pale for the most part but with irregular blotches of melanoma on its most sun-exposed surfaces.

[andrewsaurus rex]

a couple of interesting suggestions, thanks. 

[Newt]

There is a phenomenon called reticulate melanism that occurs in some turtles, frogs, and salamanders. Juveniles and young adults have a strongly developed pattern, but older adults (in some cases only males) turn black. But it's not a gradual overall darkening - they develop small scattered black spots at first, and each spot grows (often linearly, forming worm-shaped marks or vermiculations) until they coalesce into a nearly solid black coloration.

Sliders (Trachemys scripta), American bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeianus), and dusky salamanders (Desmognathus species) are examples I'm familiar with but there are probably many others.

Anyways, just another coloration option to consider, especially if painting up a herd.

[andrewsaurus rex]

Another interesting suggestion, thanks.   Not sure i'll be painting up a 'herd' of these 5 foot long Dreadnoughtus figures though. 

[SidB]

Another interesting suggestion, thanks.   Not sure i'll be painting up a 'herd' of these 5 foot long Dreadnoughtus figures though. 

Wise, I'd say - it would surely entail an 'unheard' of expense!

[andrewsaurus rex]

so I've added the Dreadnoughtus to my collection.  It's now towering on one of my shelves.  In the end, I didn't repaint it.  While I was deliberating what to do, the colour it came in sort of grew on me, or at least didn't bother me so much, so since I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do I just left it as is.

I did make one modification...I shortened the tail by nearly 7 inches.  Most of Dreadnoughtus' tail is known and it's not all that long, certainly shorter than the neck, whereas the tail on the toy is a bit longer than the neck.  So I grafted on a new shorter tail tip I made and painted it to match.  Looks good.

I'm ready for a new sauropod from Mattel next year... 

[Gwangi]

so I've added the Dreadnoughtus to my collection.  It's now towering on one of my shelves.  In the end, I didn't repaint it.  While I was deliberating what to do, the colour it came in sort of grew on me, or at least didn't bother me so much, so since I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do I just left it as is.

I did make one modification...I shortened the tail by nearly 7 inches.  Most of Dreadnoughtus' tail is known and it's not all that long, certainly shorter than the neck, whereas the tail on the toy is a bit longer than the neck.  So I grafted on a new shorter tail tip I made and painted it to match.  Looks good.

I'm ready for a new sauropod from Mattel next year... 

I'm not, lol. But we are apparently getting a Hammond Collection Brachiosaurus.

[andrewsaurus rex]

hm.....would have preferred a whole new sauropod eg Seismosaurus, Mamench, Diplo. to another Brachiosaurus, although it will probably be nicer than the first one.

[Gwangi]

hm.....would have preferred a whole new sauropod eg Seismosaurus, Mamench, Diplo. to another Brachiosaurus, although it will probably be nicer than the first one.

I agree, and for that reason I doubt I'll get it.

[Bowhead Whale]

Interesting discussion here... I know I arrive a little late in it, but there is something I would like to add. Well, I will probably ram down an open door, but...

Have you noticed that among the modern large animals, bright colors are scarce? When we look at elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, or even baleen whales, they all are in grey, drab brown or even black. Crocodiles are yellowish grey and even the "blue whale" is actually silver grey in color and is called "blue" because of the reflections of the sky on its skin. So, yes, it is rather reasonnable to imagine sauropods in greyish or brownish colors. In the modern world, indeed, the bright colors belong to smaller animals: birds, lizards, dart frogs, skunks (black and white is rather bright as a contrast); though leopards and tigers are big compared to us, they are way smaller than elephants and californian whales. See what I mean? So, yes, brownish-greyish sauropods is rather reasonnable as a concept.

[CityRaptor]

Probblem is that nearly all of those are mammals, who have poor color vision, so being colorful would be wasted on them anyways. Crocs meanwhile are ambush predators, so they use camouflage to blend in. A fully grown Sauropod however would be hard to hide anyways, so they might as well go all out. Especially during mating season.