Eofauna: New for 2022

[CARN0TAURUS]

I can't wait to see the Eofauna T-rex!  I thought they kind of had to make one after the triceratops release.  Does this announcement mean it'll be out by the end of the year?

[Concavenator]

Eofauna has posted a new image on Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/482134425160798/posts/7852844614756372/

Looks like a T. rex figure is all but confirmed!

Cool! We don't know if it will be released during 2022. It would be more suitable to talk about this in the Eofauna "general thread", at least until we have a tentative release date of the figure (which looks like it's still in the process of being designed). 

[CARN0TAURUS]

Me, I'm at the point of my life where I'm just fine with feathered or featherless renditions of T. rex. These arguments can be intellectually stimulating, but they always conclude the same with no one convinced otherwise. Although given that the T. rex in Eofauna's Theropods book is feathered, it's a reasonable assumption that the toy will be too.

I'm way more concerned about its stability. You should be too.

Is it feathered tho?  The Eofauna book just shows some peach fuzz on the top of the neck and spine, nothing like the Safari Ltd interpretation.  Honestly I don't care if they make it fully feathered, it'll be an auto buy for me regardless because it's Eofauna so I know the quality will be high.

As for stability issues with the Giga, I've never had any problems with mine and it's been on display the whole time and I've not taken it down plus it's never tipped over or fallen.  It does suffer from a slight case of FDS but it's stable.  Maybe I just got lucky with my copy.

[Over9K]

My Giga stood stable for a year or so, and then over the course of a new months became less and less stable, eventually unable to stand. I did the heat-adjust-cool thing a couple times, but each time within a few weeks it was falling over again. In the end I made a base for it, with some Sculpey.

[suspsy]

Me, I'm at the point of my life where I'm just fine with feathered or featherless renditions of T. rex. These arguments can be intellectually stimulating, but they always conclude the same with no one convinced otherwise. Although given that the T. rex in Eofauna's Theropods book is feathered, it's a reasonable assumption that the toy will be too.

I'm way more concerned about its stability. You should be too.

Is it feathered tho?  The Eofauna book just shows some peach fuzz on the top of the neck and spine, nothing like the Safari Ltd interpretation.

That counts as feathered in my book.

[CARN0TAURUS]

My Giga stood stable for a year or so, and then over the course of a new months became less and less stable, eventually unable to stand. I did the heat-adjust-cool thing a couple times, but each time within a few weeks it was falling over again. In the end I made a base for it, with some Sculpey.

Your base looks fantastic!  Did you use CA or some kind of pegs to secure him to the base?

[GojiraGuy1954]

[GojiraGuy1954]

Looks like they took down the tweet claiming Sue was T. imperator. Seems like they don't exactly agree with the finished paper either

[SRF]

Looks like they took down the tweet claiming Sue was T. imperator. Seems like they don't exactly agree with the finished paper either

I can still see their tweet, they posted the same message on Instagram. Eofauna is definitely marketing their Tyrannosaurus as T. Imperator in stead of T. Rex. Since there isn't a T. Imperator in their book, that leaves the design and color choices they can make wide open as well.

[GojiraGuy1954]

Looks like they took down the tweet claiming Sue was T. imperator. Seems like they don't exactly agree with the finished paper either

I can still see their tweet, they posted the same message on Instagram. Eofauna is definitely marketing their Tyrannosaurus as T. Imperator in stead of T. Rex. Since there isn't a T. Imperator in their book, that leaves the design and color choices they can make wide open as well.

Ah, I see the issue. The first time they misspelled Holotype.

[ceratopsian]

They also had an unfortunate typo in Tyrannosaurus.

Looks like they took down the tweet claiming Sue was T. imperator. Seems like they don't exactly agree with the finished paper either

I can still see their tweet, they posted the same message on Instagram. Eofauna is definitely marketing their Tyrannosaurus as T. Imperator in stead of T. Rex. Since there isn't a T. Imperator in their book, that leaves the design and color choices they can make wide open as well.

Ah, I see the issue. The first time they misspelled Holotype.

[Leyster]

L @Leyster, where can I view Benton 2019?  I've not been able to find it.  Perhaps worth noting is that on the Ornithomimosauria Wikipedia page it says there is a debate on whether ornithomimosaurs possessed pennaceous feathers.

As for Cau, he's good but not infallible.  I've seen him make mistakes in the past.  His guide on feathering which you linked to looks good to me, although I doubt Deinocheirus had webbed hands and that feather arrangement.

Here is it. About Cau... well, it's a blog post, so it's as good as Witton's in this regard... unless a paper gets pubblished.

In the comments of this blog post by Mark Witton, Matt Martyniuk argues that down and filamentous feathers would not function much different to hair: https://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2017/06/revenge-of-scaly-tyrannosaurus.html

I see that in this post Witton comments about the paper linked earlier by L @Leyster which talks about the difference between emu feathers and kangaroo fur:

An oft-cited study in this regard is Dawson and Maloney (2004), who found emu feathers block virtually all solar radiation from the skin, preventing them from overheating in solar exposure that causes similarly-sized hairy mammals to seek shelter.

Feathers, however, are not magic structures that defy fundamental physical laws of insulation, nor do they liberate animals from the challenges of heat loss at reducing surface area:volume ratios. Beyond a certain size, shedding excess body heat is difficult for any terrestrial animal, and it gets tougher as they get larger. King and Farner (1961, p. 249) described feathers as having "an extremely high insulating value to the feathered surfaces" and a rich literature of studies on modern birds shows that feathers are as effective at trapping body heat as they are blocking solar rays (e.g. King and Farner 1961; Kahl 1963; Philips and Sandborn 1994; Dove et al. 2007). We can almost see them as a little too effective, leading many birds to develop heat-dumping adaptations to circumvent their own insulation, such as highly vascularised, non-feathery body parts as well as a repertoire of postures and behaviours (maximising exposure of unfeathered body parts; flapping wings; urinating on their legs) that aid cooling (e.g. Kahl 1963; Arad et al. 1989; Philips and Sandborn 1994). So yes, feathers are terrific at protecting birds from environmental heat, but that limits their ability to release metabolic heat from their own bodies.

I read over the Dawson and Maloney paper (you can download the full pdf at the link), and it looks like they are exclusively talking about emu feathers being better than fur at blocking radiative heating from direct sunlight, they don't consider other issues like ambient air temperature and heating from conduction/convection, or the way insulation slows down the shedding of body heat in hot weather. So the paper shouldn't be taken as saying that emu feathers make them even better at staying cool in hot weather than a hypothetical featherless emu would be in the same weather.

Imho Witton kinda worries too much about the body heath a taxon generates. Like, when talking about elephants, he writes that

Elephants spend much of their lives with internal temperatures close to the critical mammalian limit, even tolerating extended periods of near-lethal hyperthermia, to the extent that climate change may push wild elephants over the edge of their adaptive capacity to endure elevated temperatures.

This raises questions of how much bigger elephants (remember that as for Larramendi, 2014 the biggest african elephant reliably measured weighted 10.4 tons, almost twice their usual size of 4-6 tons. That's not extinct species living in much different conditions, it's an african bush elephant). If a 4-6 tons elephant struggles with dissipating heat, a 10.4 tons one should be straight up cooked internally... but that 10.4 tons specimen existed, and there are aneddoctal references of similar sized ones. Thus, I have some issues in believing the problems raised by Witton are as severe as he suggests.

[CarnotaurusKing]

If the split is valid (which I doubt), then it's possible no one has ever made a model of T.rex proper, with pretty much every model of Tyrannosaurus being based on AMNH 5027 ("T.regina") or, in some rare cases, Sue ("T.imperator"). Also, funny how the same guy who's now splitting Tyrannosaurus into 3 species, once considered Daspletosaurus as being a junior synonym of Tyrannosaurus, and considered Styracosaurus and Pachyrhinosaurus as being junior synonyms of Centrosaurus.

[SidB]

If the split is valid (which I doubt), then it's possible no one has ever made a model of T.rex proper, with pretty much every model of Tyrannosaurus being based on AMNH 5027 ("T.regina") or, in some rare cases, Sue ("T.imperator"). Also, funny how the same guy who's now splitting Tyrannosaurus into 3 species, once considered Daspletosaurus as being a junior synonym of Tyrannosaurus, and considered Styracosaurus and Pachyrhinosaurus as being junior synonyms of Centrosaurus.

First a "lumper" and now a "splitter", at least with these taxa? The consensus will determine the best interpretation of the data. I'm doubtful too, C @CarnotaurusKing .

[Duna]

New reply from Eofauna in Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/482134425160798/posts/7856324624408371/

"Despite splitting Tyrannosaurus into three different species appears to be controversial, it should be noted that this is entirely expected for any terrestrial species that lived for more than 2 million years. We do perfectly know this from recently extinct species during the Pleistocene where fossil amount is vast. Also, note that all depend on what kind of species concept is applied, but following the phylogenetic one –probably the most objective one for extinct forms–, defined as groups of populations, which possess diagnosable (usually derived) characters, that proceed from a common ancestor, where these diagnosable differences (repeatedly present) may be very few in numbers (probably even one), the new paper results can be perfectly valid, especially in the case of the oldest species, T. imperator. Of course, future research studies will shed more light on this new study's proposal.

I'm afraid that if Smilodon, mammoths among many other animals had lived during the Cretaceous and its fossils were treated as those of dinosaurs, we would only have a fraction of the species we currently know there were. In the case of mammoths for example there have been nearly 10 different species during the last 2 million years, and several of them cohabited in the same time and place. If they were dinosaurs we would currently have probably 2 or 3 different species, and what is worse, probably divided into 2 or 3 different genera. Also, the ancient DNA is indicating that there could have been considerably more species than suggested by cladistic analysis. We have too many dinosaur genus and too few species. Life is and was much more diverse than we may think."

Asier Larramendi Eofauna researcher.

New Tyrannosaurus paper study: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-022-09561-5

[suspsy]

It's a win-win for everyone. Those who are in favour of the splitting get the very first Tyrannosaurus imperator toy and those who aren't get a top notch Tyrannosaurus rex toy.

The paper in question is getting a ton of criticism, but it's over methodology, not the possibility that there were multiple Tyrannosaurus species. I think it is perfectly possible that there was more than one species of Tyrannosaurus and I even think it is likely when you consider how many different species of Canis and Panthera exist today. And that there are different species of Daspletosaurus, Allosaurus, Torvosaurus, Saurornitholestes, and many other theropods. That said, I don't think this paper presents a slam dunk case. As Paul himself has noted, more research is needed.

[SRF]

If one is in favour of T. Imperator, shouldn't the Safari Feathered T. Rex also be reclassified as that species? It's also based on Sue after all.

What I was wondering, is there a list of which Tyrannosaurus specimen belongs to what species publicly available?

[CarnotaurusKing]

@SRF looks like CM 9380 (of course) and Scotty are T.rex, Stan and Wankel rex (?) are "T.regina", and Sue is "T.imperator". AMNH 5027 is anyone's guess, though I think it'd be "T.regina".

S @SidB Yep, looks like he's gone a bit far in the other direction now. Still, we'll just have to wait and see. Won't lie though, "T.imperator" is growing on me.

[bmathison1972]

If one is in favour of T. Imperator, shouldn't the Safari Feathered T. Rex also be reclassified as that species? It's also based on Sue after all.

What I was wondering, is there a list of which Tyrannosaurus specimen belongs to what species publicly available?

Yes, the most recent feathered version (don't have my data handy, but 2017 or 2018 or so) was based on Sue, so if one accepts this new nomenclature, it would be T. imperator. That Safari figure is the representative of this species in my collection, but I am going to hold off on renaming T. imperator until it is more broadly accepted.  I don't know how important femur width is speciation; I bet if you measured the femurs of everyone on this forum, you'd come up with a couple new species 

[Over9K]

Your base looks fantastic!  Did you use CA or some kind of pegs to secure him to the base?

The figure can still be removed from the base. It's super simple to make. Sculpey is oven-cured, so I shaped the base on a ceramic tile with a sheet of kitchen parchment between the tile and the clay, textured it by using a garden stone as a stamp to press the texture into the surface, and then I pressed the feet of the figure lightly into the surface, leaving decent footprints. They don't have to be deep, just enough to cradle the foot. The base is then baked, and cooled. To make the detail pop, I dry brushed it with some ground up light brown art pastel.

I have also experimented with adding thin, air-cured Apoxie clay pads under individual toes, to stabilize non-standing theropods, to some success. On this Carnotaurus, all six toes now touch, and the figure stands very stable.