Omeisaurus pencil drawing from 2020.
#palaeoart #art #noai

If Corythoraptor didn’t have a long tail and claws on its wings, you’d literally just think it’s some weird kind of crested, short-faced bird.

A moa would probably see it as that anyway.

What a thing for me to wake up to - I pretty much just made it into published literature. Got cited in Thomas Holtz's newest paper. (doi.org/10.3301/IJG....)

In particular, this blog post about E. annectens sizes from 2021.
thesauropodomorphlair.wordpress.com/2021/02/10/s...

Wow. I knew that the anti-Nano crowd became toxic, but this is just appalling.

Brachiosaurid pencil drawing finished in 2019. No references, drawn from memory.
#art #palaeoart #noai

Generic unnamed nemegtosaurid titanosaur drawing I finished late 2022. Drawn from memory with no references used.

'Utetitan zellae' would have done just fine.

Nearly six years ago, I wrote a blog post on how many dinosaur species probably existed in the Mesozoic.

thesauropodomorphlair.wordpress.com/2019/12/29/h...

It had also led me to be much less trusting of taken-for-granted species-level taxonomic lumping. We had even overlumped modern birds.

The biomechanical limits for how large land animals could theoretically function at are very likely far higher than most people imagine it to be.

Hokkannen (1985) calculates it at the order 100-1000 t.
www.miketaylor.org.uk/dino/hokkane...

As much as I'd like definitive evidence for extraterrestrial civilisations out there, we are very much nowhere near ready to make contact with one.

Different ethnicities, sexualities, neurodivergence, etc. had already been enough to turn humanity against itself. How about life not even from Earth?

A piece of wisdom to live by: If you do not wish people to celebrate your death, it's easy.

Just don't be a terrible person in life. That's it. It costs nothing. As far as we know we only have this one life; DON'T use it to harm innocent people.

Estimated range of motion for the tail (first 18 caudals) of Giraffatitan brancai, Díez Díaz et al. 2025.

doi.org/10.1098/rsos...

Something mind-blowing regarding theropods in my head: a single adult individual of Giganotosaurus - the holotype specimen - would have been far more massive in life than entire current estimated population of the smallest theropod known (bee hummingbirds).

This chart is one I remember well from my childhood years. I still really wonder how they can somehow come to the idea that Pachycephalosaurus was an animal comparable to or larger than a Tyrannosaurus.

A recent publication by Dempsey et al. in regards to dinosaur masses, body shapes, and their implications. Based on the estimated centre of mass from their models, giant carcharodontosaurids (e.g. Acrocanthosaurus) would have had more erect, columnar legs than tyrannosaurs.

doi.org/10.1111/brv....

Recent publication by Deak et al. regarding megatheres suggests that they would have done pretty well in temperate regions with dense 10 or 30 mm fur pelts at 4 or so tonnes.

The estimated body temperatures for the megatheres are about ~29-32 C give or take.

doi.org/10.1007/s109...

Haven't published a blog post in more than two years. Haven't produced much in the way of palaeontology-related content for a while. About time I try and break that lull with a post about sauropod life histories.

thesauropodomorphlair.wordpress.com/2024/12/03/o...

Now on Bluesky!

I'll post more from time to time later on, but for now here's my media links from other sites.

Blog: thesauropodomorphlair.wordpress.com
DeviantArt: www.deviantart.com/spinoinwonde...
FFN: www.fanfiction.net/u/13815516/
Ao3: archiveofourown.org/users/SpinoI...