So in the last couple of days we have had Bob Nicholls talk about his beautiful vignette of Zhuchengtyrannus and an interview with artist Brian Choo. Now we can sort of combine the two. As Brian is based at the IVPP he soon found out about the upcoming description of the new tyrannosaur and excited by the new taxa being discovered he went away and produced this:
Yes this is a full-bodied rendering of Zhuchengtyrannus. And here it’s marauding into a herd of the recently described Sinoceratops that come from the same quarry so we know lived together. In light of my work on theropod predatory habits, Brian told me he deliberately did the tyrannosaur going after the juvenile in the herd and not taking the biggest adult he could find. This is probably my first direct influence on a piece of palaeoart and of course I’m cuffed about that as much as the fact that this is a nice picture based on my big friend. My thanks to Brian for letting me show it off here and of course, for doing it in the first place.
Very nice.
So yes this is probably a dumb question (I don’t really have access to academic papers), but how much do we know about the osteology of Sinoceratops?
Not dissing Dr. Choo’s recreation here, makes sense they’d be along known Ceratopsian lines. I’ve just been trying to tabulate which ceratopsians we have a good knowledge of lifecycle for and which we don’t.
I don’t actually have the Sinoceratops paper myself actually, so I’m not really in a position to comment at the moment.
I like his birds too! They look like present day Corvids. Do we know how far back Corvid like birds appear?
Wonderful. I like how it singles out the juvenile too.
Very nice. I’m surprised there aren’t more drawing of it by now.