Velociraptor scavenging an azhdarchid pterosaur

Image courtesy of, and copyright to Brett Booth.

So yesterday at short notice I rushed up this teaser post which seemed to do the trick, and now I’ve got a bit more time on my hands, I can start putting down a proper post on the subject. Yep, I have a new paper out and this time featuring dromaeosaurs and pterosaurs. Long time readers will remember that almost exactly 2 years ago I had another paper out on dromaeosaur scavenging featuring shed teeth and bite marks on some Protoceratops material. Coupled with the famous fighting dinosaurs specimen we have pretty good evidence for dromaeosaurs, and specifically Velociraptor for feeding on this dinosaur. The record of dromaeosaur predation and feeding is actually pretty good compared to other theropods groups and there is also an isolated pterosaur wing bone from Canada with shed dromaeosaur teeth and bite marks.

This ‘new’ specimen marks the first record of gut contents for Velociraptor and the first record of a pterosaur bone as gut content in a theropod. (The ‘new’ is becuase this specimen was actually found in the 1990s, but has yet to be described, though I’m told there’s a photo of it in Luis Chiappe’s recent birds book). Thus we do have rather exceptional evidence for a Velociraptor chowing down on an azhdarchid.

Velociraptor specimen with a pterosaur bone as gut content (black arrows). From Hone et al., 2012

And here it is, well part of it. The Velociraptor in question was remarkably well preserved and complete which allowed the preparation of it with the chest cavity as a single articulated piece with the vertebrae, sternum, ribs, gastralia and even uncinate processes all intact and in their original positions. The bones are really well preserved and much of the material has been prepared free of the matrix entirely. One obviously example is the skull which, bizarrely, is on display in Barcelona so at least some reader might have already seen that, though sadly I haven’t and had to rely on some superb photos kindly sent by Fabio Dalla Vecchia. It’s hard to show the bone off properly what with the whole ribcage in the way (which is, incidentally, a broken ribcage, one of the ribs took a huge battering and shows a healed break – white arrow in the above picture). S you’ll be delighted to know there are also some close-ups in the paper like this one (below) and even some CT scans in the supplementary data.

Close up of the bone. From Hone et al., 2012

As you can see the bone is incredibly thin-walled which is the major reason that it’s inferred to be an azhdarcid pterosaur, though their presence in the Late Cretaceous, including a related formation, and the general absence of other pterosaurs in the Late Cretaceous helps support this identity. Given what is around and the thinness of the bones, it’s pretty unambiguous as indeed is the identification of the dromaeosaur as Velociraptor given that we have basically the whole thing. In short, this is about as convincing a case as one could make that a Velociraptor had eaten an azhdarhid. But was it really scavenging? Well that and other issues I’ll be talking about tomorrow, as there’s quite a lot more to say on this. Stay tuned.

Finally, my thanks to Brett Booth for more awesome artwork for me to use, and you can see more of this and my interview with him on his dinosaurs here.

Hone, D.W.E., Tsuhiji, T., Watabe, M. & Tsogbataar, K. Pterosaurs as a food source for small dromaeosaurs. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, in press. Horrible uncorrect proof and behind a paywall, but the abstract, figures and other bits are visible to all.

Velociraptor vs Protoceratops: part II

Dinner time! Image courtesy of Brett Booth.

Most people who have read even a little on dinosaurs at some point will have seen a photo, cast, model or reconstruction of the famous fighting dinosaurs (and if not, then follow the link to see them). However, while this fascinating fossil certainly tells us that at least one Velociraptor took on a Protoceratops this is pretty much the limit of our knowledge of their interaction from the fossil record. Protoceratops is by far the most common herbivore in the fossil record in which it is found (and of course close relativels like Magnirostris) and Velociraptor (or perhaps rather these days velociraptorines thank to thinks like Tsaagan and Linheraptor turning up) the most common predator. Although the two are quite similar in size, the abundance of both and the abundance of fossils would suggest that the two would have some sort of trophic relationship. i.e. the carnivore would be eating the herbivore in some way at some point.

Naturally one would expect a small predator like Velociraptor to target small prey (like juvenile Protoceratops perhaps) but that hardly rules out their taking the odd swipe at elderly or ill individuals or of scavenging from carcasses. If that was the case, then were is the evidence? Tantalisingly the famous CCDP (Chinese-Canadian Dinosaur Project) team reported often finding velociraptorine teeth with the bones of ornithischian dinosaurs, but without saying which ones they were, so while Protoceratops is the most obvious candidate we can’t say for sure. However, my new paper (you saw this coming, right?) describes a better association – velociraptorine teeth in association with a Protoceratops skeleton and feeding traces to boot.

I’m quite pleased with this work if only because it’s the first paper based on something I found and then wrote up which is rather nice. Credit must go to coauthors Jonah Choiniere and Mike Pittman who originally found the teeth and brought them back to camp. I had the bit of info on the CCDP report in my head and had been thinking about bite marks at the time, so after some pestering they took me to the site and together with Corwin Sullivan we started to sort through all the bone fragments to look for any with bite marks on them. Despite the intensive weathering of the bones, there were some pieces with drag marks from small teeth so we collected what we could and took it back to Beijing.

This paper reports on these finds and as noted above it consists of a couple of dromaeosaur teeth found in association with various bones with some of those bones bearing trace marks. I won’t labour the details, since it’s all in the paper, but I would like to talk about the implications here – are the fighting dinosaurs a one off, or did Velociraptor regularly go after Protoceratops.

As noted above the two animals are similar in length though of course in terms of build and body mass, the Protoceratops would have been the far bigger animal. That suggests that the dromaeosaurs would be unlikely to want to tackle something that big. Those who immediately want to leap and cite the fighting dinosaurs will hit two problems, first and most obviously, this is a single record of a single incident and it’s hard to say if it’s unique or not. Perhaps the Proto was already ill or injured, or the dromaeosaur was desperate, or who knows what. Secondly, big though the Protoceratops is in the fighting dinos pair, it’s actually probably not an adult and is only about 2/3rd adult size, so may have been a more tempting target for a predator (if obviously not a small juvenile).

Protoceratops teeth recovered at the site of our new record are pretty big and there were some fragments of big bones and over a big area suggesting these were the remains of a hefty animal. This would have been quite a challenge for a dromaeosaur to try and bring down. Even if it had, how much could it eat? The bite marks we found were on areas of bone associated with the jaws, hardly the most flesh-rich of areas, and there were multiple repeated bites. Why was this happening?

Velociraptor gets scavenging. Image courtesy of Brett Booth.

The conclusion we offer is that this is the result of scavenging. It’s unlikely a dromaeosaur could bring down such a big Protoceratops. Even if it did, there’d be tons of meat available on the legs and belly and the tail – there’s no need to go and scrape off what little lies on the jaws. Hell, even a whole group would probably get enough food from an animal that big without having to start chewing on the scraps on the face to the degree that they leave so many small marks on the bones. In short, this really looks like a dromaeosaur came across a corpse and scraped off it what it could (a meal is a meal) losing a couple of teeth and making some scrapes on the bones in the process. While this doesn’t support the idea of dromaeosaurs tacking big protoceratopsians for food, it does provide evidence that the former were probably feeding on the latter, even if that largely consisted of scavenging. Still, while such a relationship might be expected, it’s always good to find new information to support ideas and further understanding of the problems.

…………………………………………………………………

Astute readers will have noted that the paper is not actually out yet. However, the journal in question released the proofs version early and the media have picked up on it. I did check with the journal and as far as they are concerned there’s no embargo on it. Since the press have already picked up on it, it would be silly for me not to mention my own research. However, please don’t ask me for a copy of the paper, I don’t have the final version yet and there are things being added to the proofs. My hand is therefore rather forced by others.

Finally a huge thank you to Brett Booth of the Carnosauria blog for producing the images above at short notice and in colour too. The artwork is Brett’s and should not be used without his permission.

Why I don’t like using modern animal patterns in palaeoart

I remember from some years ago a pub chat with John Conway about what makes ‘good’ palaeoart. We came to the conclusion that it was down to three main things, 1) is it good artistically – is there a nice composition, correct use of perspective, shading and general technique, 2) is it accurate in the sense that the anatomy, environment etc. is right (no Velociraptors vs Diplodocus) and 3) personal taste. In other words, people can produce technically brilliant and scientifically accurate material and you don’t have to like it if it’s not to your taste (though hopefully people would still appreciate it). The others of course remain somewhat subjective too depending on what the artist is actually going for (if you want it to be surrealist or a tribute to 19th Century art then accuracy may not be what you are aiming for – just like John’s own recent History of Painting book.).

This last point about ‘what you like’ is most relevant here because I want to talk about a common theme in palaeoart that I really don’t like and while I’ll try to rationalise and explain it, I do want to be clear that it is a personal preference and so doing this doesn’t really make you wrong and I don’t want to give that impression. So what is this thing I’m now going to moan about for several hundred words? It’s using really clear and obvious patterns and colours from modern animals and applying them to dinosaurs. (And yes, other things too but usually dinosaurs).

I don’t mean really common patterns or general ones like countershading, marine animals being blue or forest ones being dappled or stripes that go through the eyes or anything like that, I mean doing an oviraptorid with the colours of a parrot, or a sauropod with a giraffe pattern or a lammergier pattern on a dromaeosaur or puffin-beaks on pterosaurs or plenty of others. This approach has been around for a long, long time but it appears to be ever more common and increasingly present in high-profile art and projects. I have thought about this a fair bit and what I don’t like boils down to a few key points.

First off, it seems really unoriginal. If you are making palaeoart that is supposed to be as rigorous and scientifically accurate as possible then there’s a lot of creativity potentially taken out of what you can do, but there’s plenty of options and freedom in colours and patterns (while still being realistic) with the unknown. Taking that away that option from yourself and your audience seems a real waste and one I can’t understand. OK, I can’t draw for toffee, but isn’t making up the colours and designs of the animals one of the most fun and creative bits? Just copying another species seems such an incredible waste of an opportunity.

Next up, it’s very distracting. I’m sure there are all manner of weird and unusual animals out there with odd patterns that can be copied without it being obvious (though I still think it’s better avoided) but it certainly pulls me out of looking at the art in front of me and simply going ‘but that just looks like a weird golden pheasant / king vulture / gemsbok’ rather than considering the art itself. It actively does a disservice to the work by distracting you from it.

Perhaps more importantly, I think duplicating well-known colours and patterns is something that, accidentally or deliberately, conveys things about animal depicted because of our understanding and associations with those patterns. If you put a peacock’s colours on a maniraptoran theropod you are imbuing it with cultural or behavioural traits about how they display and their mating system, their habitats and so on that we generally don’t know at all (or are most unlikely to be similar). It’s making inferences that shouldn’t be there and that’s not a good way to communicate about long lost animals and surely that’s a major aim of most palaeoart? I think it often shows a lack of understanding about signals too – after all, something like an agamid might have a bight head and neck to best show off it’s colours, but transferring that to a ceratopsian doesn’t make a lot of sense when the back of the frill and the neck would not be the most obvious place for bright signal colours to appear when the front of the frill has evolved to be the main signal. It’s ignoring or misunderstanding how the signals likely work in both the living model and the extinct animals and again that’s not conveying good information.

There are for sure common patterns like the general white and grey of seabirds, or eye stripes and bright breasts in birds, or occasional striping on antelope that can be easily transferred to dinosaurs and pterosaurs and the like *because* they are either generic, or ecologically driven, or are non-descript (you can’t point to a bird with an eye stripe as being unique it’s so common in a way that you can a puffin bill or a macaw’s pattern) and so again, this isn’t any kind of ‘never’ instruction to copy living taxa. But I think it’s far, far more often a problem than it is a good thing and I can’t be the only one who thinks this, can I?

Actually I know I’m not, since I’ve had this conversation with a few colleagues (palaeoartists and academics and those who span the two) and I know I’m not alone, though I also don’t know how far this feeling runs. Again, I’m not saying this can’t or shouldn’t be done and there’s always a time and place to break the ‘rules’ for various reasons, but what appears to be an often default opinion of just taking one set of colours and patterns and transferring them to another is way too common. It is, to me, not only dull and unoriginal but actively misleading in a way and imbues ancient animals with symbolism and traits that they shouldn’t have while taking the audience out of the moment. So please do it less and think about why you do it when you do.

Microraptor ate mammals!

Ok, if we are being totally reductionist, one Microraptor ate part of one mammal once. But that’s certainly indicative of a pattern and that’s quite exciting. As you might guess, I have a new paper out today describing a Chinese specimen that shows this, though those with excellent memories and niche dinosaur knowledge might already know about this because it’s been announced before and way back in 2010!

Yes, this paper has been on the cards for a very long while. Back in 2010 Hans Larsson was over in the IVPP with his then PhD student Alex Dececchi and looking at various theropods. I was based there at the time working alongside my fellow Postdoc Corwin Sullivan under Professor Xu Xing. While looking over some flattened Yixian specimens, Hans spotted something that really people should have seen before (including me!). Clear as day in the holotype of Microraptor zhaoianus was the foot of a small mammal. Under the ribs.  Yeah, one of the most important and studied early feathered theropod finds had an obvious and very interesting set of stomach contents that had been completely missed.

Hans rather generously asked us all to collaborate on this find and we put in an abstract to SVP that year and so if you have the right knowledge you may have spotted this (or even seen his talk in Pittsburgh). In that regard this isn’t exactly news, and so it might come as a surprise that we ever got this out and so much later. Well, I’ll blame the others for that, (OK, mostly Hans!) but the fact remains it is now out and properly described, documented and put into some context and it’s the first, to my knowledge, example of a dinosaur eating a mammal, so that alone is nice and novel.

We don’t, annoyingly, know what the mammal actually is, despite having a much of things to compare it to, but we do know it’s small (mouse sizes) and doesn’t appear to have much in the way of climbing adaptations so would have been pretty terrestrial. That contrasts with interpretations of Microraptor as some kind of arboreal adapted flier that’s spending a lot of time in the trees. Still, we can’t say if this was predation or scavenging – though either way, it was likely this was picked up on the ground so it’s an interesting nugget of info on Microraptor diet.

On that note, this is now the fourth reported set of stomach contents for this genus with fish, lizards and birds also on the menu. Rather oddly, both fish and birds have been suggested to be something that Microraptor was specialised for, despite showing a) a diverse diet and b) no particularly obvious anatomical specialisations for either of these. Indeed, there’s a greater diversity of things eaten known for this animal now than any other dinosaur and that rather points to a generalist diet of any small thing going down the hatch. This of course comes with a few caveats here, there’s multiple specimens of Microraptor at play from more than one putative species and it’s at least possible that 1 species preferred things like lizards and mammals say, while another took birds etc. or these varied over time and space. Still, if there was any kind of specialistion we would expect to see multiple examples of single clades being taken, and I think that a generalist diet is likely.

That also fits with what we see in other small theropods as there are several with stomach contents or pellets featuring multiple taxa (e.g., Scipionyx) and suggesting they tended to eat a variety of things and specifically those that were rather smaller than them. This is in fact a bit of a pattern in general and while mammals aren’t always the best analogies, there is lots of data for them, and this is a trend seen there so it might well be that small theropod (be they small taxa or juveniles of big ones) tended to be more generalist. We do need to be careful here of course as we also then have preservation biases – Microraptor might, for example, have predated primarily on things like invertebrates and we know there were loads of beetles, spiders and the like around in the Jehol. But those don’t tend to fossilise well (especially not if crunched up and partially digested) compared to small bones, so perhaps these are just missing.

So one other thing we worked in here was to look at the jaw shape of dromaeosaurs in general and how this might fit with biting mechanics and so diet. While generally having incomplete skulls, Microraptor has a rather short head and lies in contrast to animals like Velociraptor with a longer and more slender skull, pointing to a proportionally harder but lest quick bite in the former (for its size) b. That also points to them not being especially adapted for things like insects where a hard bite wouldn’t be too necessary to kill or process them, but a quick bite would be an advantage. So while Micrioraptor might well have taken invertebrates as part of its diet, it doesn’t appear to be especially well suited to the task and biting small vertebrates looks like it was something more normal.

So there we have it, dinosaurs – perhaps unsurprisingly – ate mammals (and at least got their own back for Rapenomammus) at least on occasion. And more than that, Microraptor was (probably) a generalist predator of small vertebrate prey, though we can’t rule out scavenging or indeed other things like insects or even fruit as occasional parts of the diet. This might well be something common to many small theropods, though the general lack of data inhibits us from saying too much, the overall pattern of what information we have would tend to confirm this. It has taken us far too long to get this information out into the world but it’s finally made it and adds a nice note on theropod ecology and behaviour.

Finally, a quick thanks to my coauthors for sticking through all of this but also especially Ralph Attanasia III who kindly provided the illustration that went out with the press release and is shown above.

Hone, D.W.E., Dececchi, T.A., Sullivan, C., Xu, X., and Larsson, H.C.E. 2023. Generalist diet of Microraptor zhaoianus included mammals. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Larsson, H.C.E., Hone, D.W.E., Dececchi, T.A., Sullivan, C. & Xu, X. 2010. The winged non-avian dinosaur Microraptor fed on mammals: implications for the Jehol Biota ecosystems. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP), Pittsburgh, U.S.A.

Terrible Lizards, series 2

A few months ago I put up a post to launch a dinosaur-centric podcast called Terrible Lizards. I and my co-presenter, Iszi lawrence, really didn’t know how popular it might be or how much momentum it would get. As such we recorded one series and then crossed our fingers.

Happily, it has been well-received and encouraged we have recorded and are already releasing episodes for the second series. The first couple of episodes are already up and we’ve kicked off with two taxa that feature regularly in the Musings in Velociraptor and Protoceratops.

All of the episodes of both series 1 and 2 are available here. It’s also available on iTunes, Spotify and all kinds of other platforms so it should be easy enough to get hold of it on your favourite website or set-up. New episodes will be coming every Wednesday for the next few weeks and there’s extra stuff available for some of our patreons too.

 

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.

Pteranodon vs Cretoxyrhina

Shark vs Pterosaur. By Mark Witton.

Over the last 10 years I have published quite a few papers on various feeding traces, shed teeth and stomach contents that help demonstrate and refine some understandings about who ate who in the Mesozoic. These are often very interesting but also frustratingly incomplete and it can be hard to identify one, let alone both, of the protagonists and in any case these are often isolated examples that may or may not represent wider trends. Still, at least sometimes there can be a good set of marks with repeated patterns and enough data to be quite confident about a relationship.

One such is that between the classic giant pelagic pterosaur Pteranodon and various sharks from the Cretaceous, most notably Squalicorax. This is no big surprise, these pterosaurs were spending a large amount of time out over the water and could probably dive and swim after prey, even if they didn’t likely sit for long on the surface when they did so. Even aside from the possibility of being caught, at least some pterosaurs must have died while out over the water or been stranded and ill or injured on the surface and that would inevitably attract large predators to come for a meal. Given the huge numbers of Pteranodon bones we have, it should not then be a surprise that there are a good number of them described with various bite marks that can be confidently attributed to large sharks. Pterosaurs were generally lightweight for their size but that doesn’t mean there was not some decent muscle on them and modern seabirds are not infrequently eaten by sharks providing a nice analogy too.

‘Complete’ Pteranodon at the LACM.

Such data though is limited to marks on bones and it’s always nice to have something more detailed than this. Although mentioned before in several previous papers, one outstanding Pteranodon specimen in LA has never been described or illustrated properly and so when I got my hands on it while visiting Mike Habib a few years ago, it was rather inevitable that something would happen, and the paper on that, with the healthy addition of Mark Witton as a collaborator, is now out.

The indivdual in question is mounted as a lovely complete (and sort of 3-D) pterosaur on display in the Los Angeles County Museum but it is a composite of somewhat indeterminate origin and it’s not entirely clear how many individuals were used to make it or how complete any of them were. What is clear though is that there is a short series of articulated cervical vertebrae and that these have the tooth of a decently sized shark with them. It’s trapped under a prezygopophysis so it’s hard to think it just drifted in there by chance onto a skeleton at the very bottom of the sea, and while the tooth doesn’t look like it penetrates the bone it is a reasonable interpretation that this is a shed tooth from a bite.

The tooth is diagnostic of the large pelagic shark Cretoxyrhina and we have a good enough idea of where in the mouth it sat which means we can get decent estimates of the sizes of each of the two animals here. The Pteranodon clocks in at around 5 m in wingspan with the shark being 2.5 m in length, but despite this apparent discrepancy, the shark would have been by far the heavier animal and in the water it would swim rings round the pterosaur. In short, while we don’t know quite what happened here (was it predation or scavenging) it looks like a decent sized shark took a chunk out of a pterosaur and lost a tooth in the process.

This is the first record of sucha trophic relationship between these two genera, though of course various unattributed bites that are already known might also have been made by Cretoxyrhina. However, despite the large numbers of Pteranodon specimens known, apparent bites on them turn up in only about 1% of cases. In some ways this may sound like a lot but there’s perhaps a 6% rate of carnivore-consumed interactions known for Rhamphorhynchus, so the open ocean (perhaps unsurprisingly) might have had fewer incidences of large predators getting to grips with large pterosaurs than near shore ones with much smaller animals.

All in all though, this adds a nice new point to the dataset on pterosaurs and their position in various food chains. We have a healthy record of them eating things, and being eaten, and each new bit of data like this helps us get a better and better handle on how pterosaurs fitted into ecosystems and how they might have lived, and died, in the Mesozoic.

 

The paper is fully OA and available here.

 

Yet more on bite marks

Yes, I have a new paper out and it is another paper describing bite marks on bones. I have done a number of these now and it can easily seem that they are incremental publications with limited application, but this is important stuff. As has been shown across various papers and descriptions, piecing together the taphomonic history of a specimen and the environmental conditions around it, as well as the nature of the bites, is crucial to showing if bites were likely inflicted by feeding predators or scavengers as well as what species/ clades may have left these traces. If palaeontologists are going to be able to amke effective statements about what bites can tell us then it will help enormously if we have numerous detailed datapoints where we are confident about what information they provide.

So, enter a small and beaten up piece of ceratopsian frill. I was shown this a few years ago by Darren Tanke and Caleb Brown after it was found during a dig in Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. It was unusual in that it was from a fairly young animal and the bite marks were quite small. It is also unusual that these are bites on a frill, it’s not the kind of place an animal would usually feed on becuase there’s bascially no meat there, just a bit of skin and bone which rather points towards these being scavenging traces from an animal that got to a very decayed carcass rather late.

The bites are hard to interpret with lots of cracks and breaks not helping things. There are two clear bites and they fit the classic morphology of theropod traces and we can rule out things like crocodiles, champsosaurs or mammals having been responsible, despite the small size. One looks more like a tyrannosaur bite (though it would have to be from a very small one) and a second looking more like it was from kind of deinonychosaur. It is certainly possible that more than one animal bit this same bit of bone, but equally bite can be variable and identifying them accurately can be very difficult or even impossible to accurately work out who the biting animal was. So despite the apparent possible different candidates it’s hard to say quite what happened here. That’s obviously disappointing, but it’s important to try and evaluate each bite on it’s merits if possible and this does a least provide evidence that even smaller centrosaurs were being bitten by the local theropods and these were not beyond trying to make a snack of a damaged squamosal.

The whole paper is freely available and open access and is online here if you want to see more:

Hone, D.W.E., Tanke, D.H., & Brown, C.M. 2018. Bite marks on the frill of a juvenile Centrosaurus from the Late Cretaceous Dinosaur Provincial Park Formation, Alberta, Canada. Peer J.

 

Protoceratops take shelter – new palaeoart

Although PLOS has many things to recommend it, one thing they don’t do is give you a lot of notice about publication and so actually the production of my recent paper on Protoceratops came shortly before the manuscript went online. As a result, although the paper had been around in various guises for several years, it was a bit too short notice to have everything ready for its publication, including both a press release from me and the following artwork.

The superb illustrator Andrey Atuchin had very generously got involved in producing an illustration to come out alongside the paper, but his recent illness coupled with the limited notice put everything back. However, I am delighted that he has now completed his new work and allowed me to put it up here.

Above is a simple (but fantastic) vignette of a single Protoceratops. This represents the age class of the block of four young animals that were the feature of the paper, with the reduced size of the frill and the overall proportions of the animal that does differ from what we see in adult animals. Although juvenile dinosaurs are often rare, there is a natural tendency for only full adults to be illustrated, or we see young animals only in the context of their parents or part of a herd and it’s great to be able to focus on a single animal, especially when the adult is already so familiar.

This then makes the whole composition below rather unusual and of course very fitting for the paper. We see the group of juveniles together, devoid of adult supervision or as part of a herd but in their apparently natural aggregation. The environment of course reflects the Mongolian Late Cretaceous with a very sandy region and little real plant life. The overall composition though hints at the wider issues of the paper in a nicely understated way – the group are largely at rest, though remain vigilant and the fact that there are multiple individuals means even those not directly scanning the environment are not that vulnerable and the group as a whole are looking in multiple directions. Staying vigilant is especially important for young and vulnerable dinosaurs lacking the size, experience and defences of adults, and so they must with here a pair of Velociraptor on the horizon.

My thanks of course to Andrey (who retains the copyright on these, please don’t share without permission) for this wonderful rendition of group living in the Cretaceous and nice of him to sneak some theropods in there so I can forget about my fall from grace and pretend that this is not just about ornithischians. It’s a wonderful piece and it really does convey not just the contents of the paper, but the issues at the heart of it, and even if you disagree with the hypotheses, it’s certainly evocative and really does show the concepts magnificently.

 

 

 

 

Interview with Julius Csotonyi

The first single-fingered dinosaur, Linhenykus, commissioned to publicize the discovery (2010).

Today I’m delighted to bring you an art interview with Julius Csotonyi. I first came across his art relatively recently after he ended up doing a lovely life reconstruction of Linhenykus and this sent me to discovering his work. I recently got in touch to ask to borrow a bit of that piece for my new blog banner and casually suggested he might like to join the ever-growing list of artists on here and he was most keen. So keen in fact I’m rather buried in his artworks, so enjoy! As usual this art is Julius’ and should not be reproduced etc. without his permission as he retains the copyright.

Interview with Wayne Barlowe

It’s been a good while since we’ve had a new art interview, but I’m pleased to report that Wayne Barlowe has kindly pitched in. While Wanye has not been especially productive in this line of art, he has made some major contributions and his work has turned up in plenty of dinosaur books over the years. As per usual all images are on loan here and should not be reproduced without his permission etc.

 

How long have you been an artist?
I’ve been working professionally since 1977. Spent two years at Cooper Union and began to get called to do science fiction illustration for magazines and paperbacks. In the mid ’90’s I embarked upon a pleasant, albeit short-lived sojourn into the world of paleo art.

How long have you been producing palaeoart?
Well, the truth is, I haven’t actually done any paleo art in some time. When I was doing nothing but, I probably spent a total of 4 – 5 years immersed in that world. During that time, along with doing a few paintings for myself, I rendered the color paintings for THE HORNED DINOSAURS and AN ALPHABET OF DINOSAURS both authored by Dr. Peter Dodson – somewhere in the neighborhood of forty or so paintings.

What first got you interested in dinosaurs and art?
I had a deep and abiding interest in paleo art and paleontology, in general, since I was a child. My parents, both nature artists, had the full set of Augusta/Burian volumes and those acted as perfect catalysts for my young imagination. They actually served as something of an inspiration for my SF nature book, EXPEDITION.

What is your favourite piece of palaeo art that you have produced?
I am generally hyper-critical of my own work. With that said, a few of the paleo pieces still work for me. I’d probably point to JURASSIC SIESTA – a pair of satiated ceratosaurs – as my favorite.

Who is your favourite palaeoartist or piece of palaeoart?
While I happily admire many of the pieces I see being produced today, I’d have to say that Zdenek Burian’s approach has never really been beaten. He was a painter first and a paleo man second. For me, his dinosaur and early mammal paintings are Art. The brushwork, the atmosphere, the composition all bespeak an Old World tradition and sensibility. There is much to learn and admire in those works, despite the advances in understanding of the Mesozoic world. For nostalgia reasons, his classic T-rex and hadrosaur painting has to be my favorite.

What is your favourite dinosaur / archosaur?
I’ll always have a soft spot for ceratosaurs. So baroque and interesting.

Is there any animal you would like to paint but have not?
Given my short tenure in the paleo art world, the list is way too long. Apart from some the newly found feathered dinosaurs, I love flying reptiles – the whole idea is really too fantastic – and would eventually like to do a serious painting of one of them. I’m a big WW1 airplane buff, so these two interests might dovetail and find some expression in a pterosaur painting.

What do you think is the most important part of good palaeoart?
Integrity. Integrity towards the composition, towards the world being depicted, towards the spirit of the creature being shown.

Guest Post: Yurgovuchia doellingi

Those keeping up with the scientific literature will know that a new dromaeosaur was described just the other day. One of the authors, Jim Kirkland, has been kind enough to pen a few lines about the discovery and has included some nice photos of the excavation too. Enjoy: