Many more Cryodrakon images

Scavening on a dead Cryodrakon by Mark Witton

Chatting to Mark Witton the other day it transpired that artwork of Cryodrakon has already existed for some year. Large azhdarchids would have been a decent meal for small scavengers and we know of at least two incidences of dromaeosaurs eating them, one of which being the holotype of Cryodrakon (the other was Velociraptor I described with a pterosaur bone in it). The above piece was done in reference to this but Mark told me his point was to specifically reference the Canadian specimen which only now has a name.

I’m sure there’s other artworks out there that similarly were based on this northern ‘Quetzalcoatlus’ and would now refer to Cryodrakon, but almost inevitably once the paper came out there was a rush on to produce new images that rapidly appeared online alongside the ‘official’ artwork of David Maas. Here are a few of those.

Cryodrakon attacks a dromaeosaur by Gabriel Uguerto

First off is that by Gabriel Uguerto and this one is a bit of a cheat perhaps because he drew it for me as a commission but I’m delighted to have the original and it’s nice to see an azhdarchid giving something back to the theropods and not just being eaten by them or only following what is now a meme and eating baby sauropods.

Cryodrakon skeletal (full sized) by Dean Schnabel

There are already skeletal outlines appearing for Cryodrakon too. Dean Schnabel (who goes under the pseudonym of Sassy Palaeo Nerd on Deviant Art and Twitter) has produced two. One of all the known material scaled to the incomplete giant cervical (above) and a second that is just the holotype material at the correct size for that specimen (below).

Cryodrakon skeletal (holotype only) by Dean Schnabel

Finally, Joschua Knüppe put out this black one on an especially snowy background. While on the subject of snow, it’s popping up a lot I artworks already. The name Cryodrakon was intended to invoke Alberta as it is now rather than when the animal was alive when it was semi-tropical. That doesn’t though mean that snow is wrong (indeed David Maas sneaked a bit into one of his images) as even the warmest places will get snowfall on occasion and azhdarchids generally could fly long distance and the newly forming Rocky Mountains were not far away. I’m sure on occasion Cryodrakon ended up striding through snow and flying over white landscapes even if it wasn’t the norm.

Cryodrakon in the snow by Joschua Knüppe

These are not the only ones out there, a quick google will reveal a wealth of alternate takes on Instagram, Deviant Art and elsewhere (alongside a load of older rebadged art that various media organisations stumbled to produce and plenty of versions of David’s work, often inappropriately rebadged with someone else’s watermark). More I’m sure are coming but it’s nice to see your own scientific work reach out into people’s imaginations and artistic efforts.

 

Coda: I spoke to all the artists about linking to their work before putting them up here.