Your "I'm certain that this dinosaur was this colour!" colour schemes?

[The Atroxious]

Orangey-brown for Carcharodontosaurus. I can envision it having other colors as markings, but the base color is orangey-brown, and it covers at least 80% of the dinosaur. Carchar depicted in any other color just seems off to me.

[Nanuqsaurus]

Orangey-brown for Carcharodontosaurus. I can envision it having other colors as markings, but the base color is orangey-brown, and it covers at least 80% of the dinosaur. Carchar depicted in any other color just seems off to me.

Thanks to JPOG, I can't imagine Carcharodontosaurus in any other color than dark brown/black with red horns above the eyes. Love the look of Carcharodontosaurus in that game, it looks menacing!

[Tyto_Theropod]

Orangey-brown for Carcharodontosaurus. I can envision it having other colors as markings, but the base color is orangey-brown, and it covers at least 80% of the dinosaur. Carchar depicted in any other color just seems off to me.

Thanks to JPOG, I can't imagine Carcharodontosaurus in any other color than dark brown/black with red horns above the eyes. Love the look of Carcharodontosaurus in that game, it looks menacing!

For me, it's definitely some shade of brown but the rest isn't really something I've thought about.

[GasmaskMax]

I always view deinonychus as dark blue with white areas covering much of its head. This has to do with the design of an old model I did for a game called Roblox using that color scheme. I guess I liked it and it just imprinted with me to this day.

[TheRaptorSlayer]

Honestly, I can't really picture the Liopleurodon in any color other than the ones it had back on WWD!  It just fits so well!

[suspsy]

While I can certainly appreciate figures like the new WS Tylosaurus which bring colourful variety to any sea monster collection, I think the real animals would have had fairly bland, dark colour schemes for the most part, just like extant whales and sharks.

[stargatedalek]

While I can certainly appreciate figures like the new WS Tylosaurus which bring colourful variety to any sea monster collection, I think the real animals would have had fairly bland, dark colour schemes for the most part, just like extant whales and sharks.

It's easy to compare them to whales and sharks, but they lived in a very different environment and probably had very different behaviors to match. Most open ocean sharks and whales don't hunt with a great deal of speed or agility relative to their prey (the exception being toothed whales), whereas Mosasaurs were adapted for high speed and great agility despite their size. In fact, Mosasaurs display remarkably few changes between them compared to other marine animals (modern and extinct) so most Mosasaurs were probably doing things very similarly, just scaled up. A better behavioral comparison for the large open water Mosasaurs would be fish such as Marlin or Mahi Mahi.

Even open ocean whales and sharks often have more varied and complex patterns than given credit for:






I don't want to sound like I'm trying to correct you, it's just a bit of a personal pet peeve of mine when people say large marine animals are all just grey toned.

[suspsy]

Dolphins like the ones in those images tend to be the exception rather than the norm though. Large baleen  whales are largely blue-grey or black, although the humpback has a good bit of white mixed in as well. And large sharks generally don't have a ton of markings on their bodies, with the only exceptions being the tiger shark (which only has very faded stripes as an adult)  and the whale shark. I do like the example of the marlin---although it too isn't as bright as the WS Tylosaurus or the Plesiosuchus.

Again, these are toys we're talking about though, and I certainly do appreciate having a variety of colours among my sea monsters.

[Halichoeres]

The few prehistoric marine reptiles we have any evidence for show a tendency toward being uniformly dark, including ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v506/n7489/full/nature12899.html). Lots of potential reasons for that, including camouflage, perhaps reduced reliance on visual signals in a medium well suited for chemical or acoustic signaling, and even heat conservation. And there certainly would have been exceptions. But I tend to agree that dark colors on at least the dorsal surface would be the most likely color scheme, especially for the big guys.

That said, it would just make my day if we someday find a Liopleurodon mummy that shows it in completely wild colors and reveals all our toys as inaccurate.

[Tyto_Theropod]

As I might have already mentioned on this thread, some variation on a 'dark on top and pale below' theme is very common for marine animals as it camouflages them from both above (where they are likely to be against a dark background) and below (where they are likely to be against a pale one). Penguins, Great White sharks and many cetaceans, not least orca, are all good examples of this. Of course it isn't universal, but it's worth remembering.

[stargatedalek]

Not what I meant. What I meant was that these animals don't simply have a "darker colour fades to lighter colour" palette. Even the white shark, arguably the origin of the archetype, has striking patterns and contrasts that are often overlooked. I'm not saying something like the WS Tylosaurus is likely, I'm saying something like the CollectA Kronosaurus is equally unlikely because both differ extensively from all possible points of comparison.

Colour is arguably less important than pattern when reconstructing an unseen ecosystem. Especially given colour is so intricately linked to the specific dominant groups of animals today, and would potentially be freed from those driving factors in an ecosystem dominated by entirely different groups.

[alexeratops]

Yutyrannus has always had a silver/gray-but-frosted-with-white-at-the-tips color scheme for me.

Velociraptor is basically gold/blond just because I like to think it was still pretty deserty when it was around.

T. rex is all shades of brown, or grizzly bear scheme.

Triceratops is different every time I think about it.

Therizinosaurus has recently been shiny black when I envision it.

Apatosaurus is pine green and gray.

Elasmosaurs in general are cream and blue to me, while mosasaurs are dark gray.

Spinosaurus is dark green and brown.

And obviously mammoths were bright and sparkly pink...