Archosaur Pictures

Edmontosaurus

2011-02-27T21:32:00.001-08:00

Continuing the redoing of old 2008 stuff...

This was originally labeled 'Anatosaurus', but that genus is now thought to probably be Edmontosaurus.

This is a hadrosaur from the very late Late Cretaceous of North America. It was one of the last dinosaurs (barring birds), probably a common food item for the more famous Tyrannosaurus.

belated eggs post

2011-02-27T21:17:00.000-08:00

The sauropod eggs + hatchling from two posts ago, given a more realistic color.

Pink dinosaurs to fight cancer, 2

2010-11-09T04:36:00.000-08:00

Second picture for the ART Evolved cancer fundraiser.

Again, obviously not natural color...

Pink dinosaurs to fight cancer

2010-09-24T02:49:00.000-07:00

ART Evolved Blog (a very cool paleo-art blog) is holding a pink dinosaur challenge for cancer. Every picture of a pink dinosaur submitted, $1 goes to the Canadian Cancer Society; their goal is to raise $500.

Here's the picture I sent in.

Disclaimer: I don't really think sauropod infants were Pepto-Bismol-colored...

Just how big was that animal? Part 2: Hainosaurus

2010-09-19T20:03:00.000-07:00

Again with the organisms whose sizes were formerly overestimated -- early estimates put Hainosaurus as high as 17 meters long. It's now been downscaled to 12.2 meters.

However, as the picture shows (12-meter Hainosaurus compared to 1.75-meter human) that's still very big.

Reference: Lindgren, Johan. The first record of Hainosaurus (Reptilia: Mosasauridae) from Sweden. Journal of Paleontology 2005 79: 1157-1165

Just how big was that animal? Part 1: Deinosuchus

2010-09-08T11:26:00.000-07:00

Generally, the first thing everyone wants to know about a new dinosaur (or giant pterosaur, crocodilian, whatever) is how big it is. Sometimes the initial estimates are too big, occasionally unrealistically so - I'm looking at you, 18-meter-wingspan Quetzalcoatlus!

Then the estimates have to be downsized. Often, when I'm reading about an animal, I'm thinking "Darn! It wasn't that big after all." It's kind of disillusioning. And I'm sure others feel that way too.

But! They're still FRICKIN' HUGE. And this series of blog posts will show that.

Today: Deinosuchus. Formerly estimated at around 15 meters, from a skull reconstructed to be 1.8 m long; now estimated at around 10 meters from a skull more confidently 1.31 m long. (This is not the species' maximum size, but larger specimens are very fragmentary, so size can't be well determined.)

This is an American alligator Alligator mississippiensis (source: USFWS), scaled to the size of a Deinosuchus with 1.31 meter skull length. Human silhouette is 1.75 meters.

...pretty impressive. And they got bigger, too.

(For that matter, what are the chances that the largest individuals were among the relatively few that got fossilized, then discovered?)

Restarting

2010-09-08T09:24:00.001-07:00

OK, I started this blog in youthful enthusiasm (and horrifically bad art skills) two years ago, then ... forgot about it.

I'm restarting it now, though.

And finding some errors in my Deinosuchus post, I'm re-doing that, to kick off the NEW Archosaur Pictures.

Marine crocodiles

2008-10-06T21:17:00.000-07:00

Among the variety of dinosaurs, one other prehistoric archosaur group often escapes comment: the marine crocodiles.

Here is Dakosaurus maximus in yellow at 5 meters, compared to a modern sea otter in brown at 1.2 meters and two better-known marine reptiles: Mosasaurus in black at 12 meters, and Liopleurodon in green at 9 meters.

Here is a picture of Dakosaurus alone.

Velociraptor, continued: and why Jurassic Park is wrong

2008-09-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

Finishing out this week's theropod:

The most famous Velociraptor fossil is the "Fighting Dinosaurs", which shows the creature entangled in a death-grip with a Protoceratops. The latter is a much heavier animal, so Velociraptor must have been quite aggressive.

Velociraptor, in reality, was just over 6 feet long and weighed only about 33 pounds (according to Gregory Paul's Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, anyway). This is no heavier than a good-sized male coyote. The Jurassic Park movies' giants big enough to look a man in the eye are not Velociraptors! They're more like the very biggest Deinonychus. Also, the movie 'raptors have too high of skulls. This post's picture (of the original type specimen of Velociraptor!) shows the correct flat skull.

None of this is the movie-makers' fault, however. In the books, the 'raptors are described as weighing ninety kilos and being "as fast as cheetahs and as smart as chimps". (Velociraptor was intelligent for a dinosaur, but its brain isn't anywhere near large enough to be as smart as that.) The size is understandable, because in 1988, two years before Jurassic Park was published, Gregory Paul lumped the genus Deinonychus into Velociraptor.

Sources:

Paul, Gregory S. Predatory Dinosaurs of the World. 1988.

Crichton, Michael. Jurassic Park. 1990.

Crichton, Michael. The Lost World. 1993.