Not used for Contest 2013

[Federreptil]

Please excuse me for going back to the Horrible Horn Horde 2.0. But it's simply the big thing this year. There is even a video about it.

[Federreptil]

There is an update for Hell Creek:



After a while, the fern savannah for the horned lizards seemed a bit too dry and bare to me. It seems unlikely that the migrating herds would have found enough food here. The widespread absence of grass does not mean that other plants have not occupied the open spaces. So I have redensified the open space between the hardwood trees.



So the hornsaurus now stand in a richer green.



The birds continue to perch on the gentle giants.



The young animals almost disappear among the ferns.



Ferns of different sizes and shapes now sprout everywhere among the animals, forming a loose carpet, whereas before there were more green spots in the sandy terrain.



The second major new addition is an increase in the Torosaurus herd. Two new members are coming as resin kits from the DeClay Studio in Vietnam, relieving the three PNSO animals, which have so far had to form the herd alone for the new independent herd. The smaller CollectA models were not allowed in the Triceratops herd in advance if the Torosaurus was supposed to be a fully-grown retiree of the three-horned dinosaur. The Schleich interpretation was always just filler, and even the late-nineties Walking with Dinosaurs model from Toyways is perhaps rare, but it is a bit strange.



This is a dinosaur search picture if you only pay attention to the big chunks.



The new members give the herd of torosaurs a completely different weight.



Even the T-Rex has made it into the redensified green.



Soon the torosaurians will get some new additions.



New dangers await the pachycephalosaurs.



Here is the answer to the dinosaur search above.

[Libraraptor]

What a great addition to an already great diorama!

[Federreptil]

There are already colourful eggs for the mammals here. The chickens' ancestors left a large buffet here for the little predators.



Our ancestors are still sitting in the shadows before they occupy the new top of the food pyramid.



Finally, the smaller ceratopsids in Hell Creek: in the shadow of the large Triceratops and Torosaurus herds, the Leptoceratops groups lived more in the shadows.

[Federreptil]

What a great addition to an already great diorama!

There is always room for improvement. And mentally, the story goes on and on. So there will be more updates with new species. (See the Leptoceratops in the Easter special.) And there will probably be more 'action' after all. At the beginning, I just wanted to show the absence of the big duels and predatory dinosaur attacks, because these had long since become a perennial cliché. The films and computer games in particular put the focus on fighting. I deliberately wanted to create a counter-image to this. Now I've come to the point where perhaps the race and hunting success play a bigger role after all. Because they are also part of the Hell Creek stories.

[Federreptil]

I'm just wondering.


These pictures show the Tyrannosaurus successfully hunting. Originally, I wanted to show the Tyrannosaurus in Hall Creek in peace and delegate the dangers of the hunt to the pack of young Nanotyrannosaurus. Now I'm in the middle of a debate about whether the Nanotyrannus is a separate species or really an adolescent Tyrannosaurus. And the theory that the Tyrannosaurus would have occupied all the niches for medium-sized predators in its evolution because it had no competitors is now completely obsolete, at least since the discovery of the Dakotaraptor.


But let's stick with the adult Tyrannosaurus and its hunting success. If we assume that it was primarily a scavenger and would have hunted other more agile predators for their prey, it would be easy. Tyrannosaurus could have relied on its excellent sense of smell and roamed its territory at a moderate speed as an endurance runner to land on its next meal as unerringly as a vulture. With its size, it would have scared away annoying competitors and used its powerful jaws to break open even the largest carcasses and secure the best pieces. The greatest dangers would then have been territorial disputes or complex mating rituals with risks.


If we imagine an agile, active hunter, things become more difficult. And the question marks start spinning. Today, we have no land-based predators that roam the countryside like minibuses, measuring 13 meters in length. The Tyrannosaurus actually lacks the speed to hunt in the open savannah.


Potential smaller prey such as the Ornithomimus or the Pachycephalosaurus, perhaps even the Edmontosaurus, would have quickly fled to safety. Even today's big cats can't sustain a sprint for very long. Given its size, the Tyrannosaurus would have been visible from a long way off. How could it have sneaked up unnoticed against the wind?


Stalking in the first place – if something the size of a minibus breaks through the undergrowth, would padded soles help to make it quieter? How poor must the senses of potential prey have been if they didn't hear or see him coming?


Could several Tyrannosaurus rexes also have been successful in the savannah using cooperative hunting strategies? How many prey animals would there have had to be to feed a pack? That would have required truly enormous herds of herbivores on the move. Such large herds have such a high food requirement that they would have changed all vegetation if they had lived in one place.


Is the Tyrannosaurus a selective specialist that actually targets the sluggish horned dinosaurs above all else? As if there were a big cat today that hunted almost exclusively elephants and rhinos? If the overly long horns of modern Triceratops depictions are not just a fashion fad, they would suggest large herds rather than solitary animals. Especially since there is finally a bonebed for Triceratops. Could a Tyrannosaurus be successful here if the herds were not so huge that they could not escape him?


And what if the Tyrannosaurus had been a lone hunter, lying motionless in a favorable spot for a long time. Suddenly bursting out of its hiding place when its prey passed by unsuspectingly. Then I wonder if the potential prey really had such poor senses that it could lie in wait unnoticed. How huge would the hiding place have to be? Would that really have been a mighty redwood forest? In a real primeval forest, wouldn't hunters and prey have become hopelessly entangled within a very short time? Today, we only know of a commercial forest with hardly any undergrowth and a wild tangle of fallen and rotting trees.


In addition, today we can only find fossils where animals were able to sink into wet sediments or were covered by pyroclastic eruptions. Large areas of the Tyrannosaurus's former territory remain terra incognita for us.


But I admit that I find it difficult to imagine an agile Tyrannosaurus in its full power. On the one hand, I believe that such a powerhouse could literally explode and rush forward with incredible energy—nothing like the sluggish, cautious movements of most movie dinosaurs. From this perspective, we actually have no idea of this power. On the other hand, some skeletons of the great predators show healed injuries and how dangerous life can be, especially for large predators. After all, the Tyrannosaurus charges forward with a huge, heavy skull, struggles to maintain its balance like a crane with enormous outriggers, brings a considerable weight and thus mass into motion, and when it falls, its small arms cannot support or catch it. Shouldn't a T-Rex be more careful? Or does it possess a level of body control that we cannot imagine because there are no real comparisons for it today?


But this is probably all too simplistic. Perhaps all possibilities apply at the same time and a T-Rex can be anything: a scavenger, a loner, a lurking hunter, and a roundabout strategist who takes any kind of prey when the opportunity arises. Just as the tiger knows many ways of life depending on its territory and opportunities.

About the models:

When a project takes a long time, conditions change. When I started preparing for Hell Creek, I didn't want to show the typical fighting and hunting scenes with Tyrannosaurus. Instead, I wanted to use the calm as a contrast to expectations. But I've been working on it for so long now that it might get a little boring to always see resting herds. This is a model by @nikola_roglic_3d printed by @dinosauriacreatures.


Sue at work. The Field Museum @fieldmuseum in Chicago has created a new reconstruction of its famous Tyrannosaurus skeleton, showing Sue eating a young Edmontosaurus. @declaystudio offers a resin model in exactly this pose. How a full-grown T-Rex could actually catch a young Edmontosaurus is up to the imagination of the viewer... Here, of course, the rest of the Edmontosaurus herd flees in fear and terror.


I guess I'm a little megalomaniacal or just too carefree. If I don't use any of these pictures for the current diorama competition, I'll continue to publish them here.