Crazy Paleontology of the day

[stargatedalek]

Crazy Paleontology of the day is a project I came up with on a whim, more of a goal to myself really, to draw out at least one theory that's really "out there" every day I can. The point is to practice my quick sketching skills, my own understanding of paleontology and paleoart, and to raise awareness of how little we really know and to show how little it really takes to throw a theory out there into the internet.



Man, this first concept is a real insane one! We know that crocodilians, dinosaurs and pterosaurs all had soft integument at one point in their ancestry (crocodilians and some dinosaurs lost it later in their evolution), but what do we really know before that? Just how far back does soft integument reach and what would some other archosaur lineages look like if they had it? To that end I've done Tanystropheus, my favorite non-ornithodiran archosaur, in all its fluffy glory.

A friend suggested I gave it plumes on its neck, if I recall his exact words were something along the lines of "give it peacock plumes lol". I went with something a bit more subtle, similar to a lyrebird and that can be tucked back into the thick "down" of the neck for swimming.

[Pachyrhinosaurus]

This looks like it will be fun to watch over the course of your project. I really like the one on the left. It reminds me of an axolotl.

[Meso-Cenozoic]

This looks like it will be fun to watch over the course of your project. I really like the one on the left. It reminds me of an axolotl.

It reminded me of that salamander too! But I couldn't remember its name.

And I agree. This looks like it will be an interesting experiment to follow.

[Gwangi]

Very cool, I love speculative zoology, "All Yesterday's" type stuff. I should point out that we do have skin impressions of Tanystropehus but it's still a cool sketch regardless.

[stargatedalek]

Thanks for the comments everyone! That's very interesting, I'd love to know more about that skin sample.




I actually thought of this a few weeks ago, but sketching it out really helped me get a better picture in my mind of how it might work. What if the branch-lets of edaphosaurus supported inflatable sacks? These could have been for display or perhaps to help protect the seemingly very prone to bending spines. I completely goofed the uppermost sketch of them inflated so please excuse my missing some of the columns. I probably missed a few rows of branch-lets too.

[Gwangi]

All I read was that the scales were rectangular and non-overlapping. Only read about it a couple days ago when I researched my Carnegie Tanystropheus review.

Great idea with the Edaphosaurus, I would have never thought of that as a possibility but sure! Why not!

[stargatedalek]

I haven't been home so I haven't been updating this the past few days.

Here's an... odd one. A new look for brachiosaurus. With a melon head like a dolphin, a sheathe to protect its face from the ends of broken branches, and large pseudo-feather structures to cool itself and for display. "Looser" and "fluffier" than feathers they would maximize blood flow and minimize insulation, but this has the downside of parasites. Symbiotic parasites feed on the harmful ones and so forth. Creatures this large could have been moving microclimates, with their own miniature ecosystems.

Please excuse the incredibly generic pterosaurs and my having only a vague idea of how arthropod mouth parts work