Here’s an illustration I’ve made of two male Xenovenator espinosae, a newly-described Troodontid from the Cenomanian Cerro de Pueblo Formation of Mexico which had a skull roof that was surprisingly similar to that of the Pachycephalosaurids and would have engaged in similar interspecific behavior as a result, headbutting each other in order to win a harem of females in the background…
A Ferencerstops shqiperorum ambles across a dried-up riverbed and into the cover of the bigger ferns as two Hatzegopteryx thambema arrive to snatch up smaller animals scurrying around in their path, 70 million years ago on Hateg Island in what is now the Densuș-Ciula Formation of Romania.
And we have also found news of Ammonites surviving the K-PG extinction and into the first 600,00 years or so of the Danian or earliest age of the Paleocene, too, in the form of fossils from the Cerithium Limestone Member at Stevns-Klint, Denmark!
#ferenceratops#paleoart#paleontology#dinosaur#dinosaurs#palaeontology#palaeoart#dinosaur art#paleoblr#dinoblr#ceratopsian#ceratopsidae#ceratopsid#ceratopsids#ornithischian#hatzegopteryx#azdarchid#maastrichtian#late cretaceous#scicomm#paleontology art#paleoartwork#palaeoillustration#paleoartists on tumblr#dinosaur artwork#palaeoblr#ammonites#ammonite#pterosaurs#pterosaur
An assortment of sketches I’ve made of some of the many animals which inhabited the tropical and subtropical islands which made up what is now Europe during the Late Cretaceous, around 72-66 million years ago.
Top row: inhabitants of the Argiles et Grès à Reptiles Formation
1: Pyroraptor olympius
2: Struthiosaurus sp.
3: Abelisauridae indet.
4: Gargantuavis sp.
5: Ampelosaurus atacis
6: Castignovolucris sebei and Variraptor mechinorum
7: Rhabdodon priscus
8: Obelignathus septimanicus
9: Atsinganosaurus meridionalis
10: Arcovenator escotae
11: Mistralazhdarcho maggi
Lower Row: inhabitants of the Tethys Sea and Maastricht Formation
12: Asteriornis maastrichtensis
13: Mosasaurus hoffmani and Enchodus faujasi
14: Tylosaurus bernardi and Allodaposuchus sp.
15: Janavis finalidens
16: Squalicorax sp.
17: Parapuzosia seppenradensis
Bottom Row: Inhabitants of Hateg Island
From left to right:
Balaur bondoc
Transylvanosaurus platycephalus
Hatzegopteryx thambema
Eurazdarcho langendorfensis
Azhdarchidae indet.
Zalmoxes shqiperorum
Magyarosaurus dacus
Paludititan nalatzensis
Uriash Kasici and Telmatosaurus transylvanicus
An assortment of some Nemegt Formation Fauna
The Nemegt Formation records the presence of a heavily forested floodplain environment that was mainly made up of mudflats, ponds, rivers, shallow lakes and streams, and was quite similar in scope to the bayous of Louisiana of the okavango delta of Botswana. But it had a cold, semiarid and monsoonal climate, similar to that today’s north-central India or Madrid, with dry and wet seasons and the occasional desert or plain here and there. And Since angiosperms were rapidly diversifying around the world towards the end of the Cretaceous, the typical Mesozoic trees such as araucarias, cycads and ginkgoes were now beginning to share their space with fagales or flowering trees such as birches as well as other modern plants such as cypress, Katsura, ginger and sycamores, and the rivers, ponds, lakes and streams were also teeming with cane grasses, caltrops, reed grasses, duckweed, and lotuses.
The Nemegt’s diverse fauna consisted a wide variety of animals such as mollusks, fish such as relatives of the arapaima or arowana, the 4 mètre long crocodylyform paraligator, numerous turtles such as a close relative of the North American Basilemys and Trionychids or soft shell turtles, a giant azdaechid pterosaur, and above all several species of dinosaurs big and small. Many of them were Coelurosaurs, or the feathered theropods which includes modern birds and their closest fossil relatives, such as Alvarezsaurids like Mononykus, oviraptorids such as Nemegtomaia, Oksoko and Rinchenia, ornithomimids such as Deinocheirus and Gallimimus, and tyrannosaurs such as Tarbosaurus, and the bizarre, enigmatic Therizinosaurus, as well as many ornithischians such as ankylosaurs, hadrosaurs such as Saurooophus, and pachycephalosaurs such as Prenocephale, and a few titanosaurain sauropods, one of which is only known from some huge footprints that must have come from a gigantic track maker with a shoulder height of 4 m.
Here’s a Diplodocus clay model I’ve made, inspired by this recent paper on the discovery of fossilized melanosomes preserved in some skin impressions from a few juvenile specimens of this sauropod which came out more than 10 days ago: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article/12/12/251232/364075/Fossilized-melanosomes-reveal-colour-patterning-of
As a brewing storm heralds the beginning of the wet season 99 million years ago in what is now the Kem Kem Beds of Morocco, a lone Spinosaurus aegyptiacus roams across a vast tidal flat while a distant Carcharodontosaurus feeds on a recently-killed basal titanosaur and attracts the attention of two Akharhynchus and two Alanqua as a flock of Anhanguera, the Chaoyangopterid Apatorhamphus and two Xericeps fly overhead, and an Araripesuchus ratoides scurries across the foreground with a random teleost fish caught in its mouth as two larger titanosaurs can be seen strolling in the background.
#paleoart#dinosaur#paleontology#dinosaurs#palaeontology#palaeoart#dinosaur art#kem kem beds#carcharodontosaurus#spinosaurus aegyptiacus#spinosaurus#pterosaur#pterosaurs#spinosauridae#early cretaceous#titanosaur#titanosaurs#scicomm#science communication#paleontology art#paleobiology#palaeoblr#paleoblr#dinosaur artwork#dinoblr#artists on tumblr#paleoartist#paleoartists on tumblr#araripesuchus
Paleo-Files: Nanotyrannus
Nanotyrannus is a genus of small, dainty, 6-7-meter-long Tyrannosaurids hailing from the Lance and Hell Creek Formations of Wyoming and Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota, Respectively. Described in 1988 from a single skull which was found in the 1940s, Nanotyrannus can be distinguished from the larger, bulkier Tyrannosaurus for a few major anatomical differences which include longer forelimbs, long legs which enabled the animal to sprint at fast speeds as an open-pursuit hunter, and a pair of small crests jutting right above its eyes.
But since the 1990s and 2000s, several major paleontologists, especially those who have spent their lived working on T.rex, have considered Nanotyrannus to represent a juvenile Tyrannosaurus for over three decades, until the discovery of a large fossil block study was found on a privately-owned ranch in 2006 revealed what appeared to be a complete skeleton of a slenderly-built Tyrannosaur preserved alongside the skeleton of a Triceratops. And in 2025, an extensive study of the Tyrannosaur specimen soon resurrected the “Nanotyrannus” genus name back into the world of paleontology and scientific literature, shed new insights into why it should be classified as a separate genus from Tyrannosaurus, and that it consists of the species N.lancensis (bottom) and the slightly larger N.lethaeus (top), and found out that the Nanotyrannosaurs were part of an ancient lineage of Appalachian tyrannosaurs which migrated over to the the western island continent of Laramidia with the retreat of the Western Interior Seaway and were built to have been agile, speedy “dinosaurian greyhounds” which went after small ornithischians such as the sheep-sized ceratopsian Leptoceratops as well as juvenile Triceratops and Torosaurus, the ornithopod Thescelosaurus and juvenile Edmontosaurus annectens, and Pachycephalosaurs such as Pachycephalosaurus and Sphaerotholus.
#paleoart#dinosaur#paleontology#dinosaurs#palaeontology#palaeoart#dinosaur art#nanotyrannus#sci art#scicomm#science communication#paleontology art#dinoblr#paleoartists on tumblr#dinosaur artwork#tyrannosaurs#tyrannosaur#tyrannosauridae#theropod dinosaurs#theropod dinosaur#theropoda#theropod#cretaceous#cretaceous period#late cretaceous
Breaking News: New Dinosaur species just dropped! Meet Anteavis crurilongus, a basal non-neotheropod hailing from the Ischigualastio Formation (233-227 mya) that has many anatomical creatures that were previously thought to be found only in neotheropods, and a contemporary of the primitive dinosaurs Eoraptor and Herrerasaurus.
Sorry to let you know that the article describing this species is unfortunately blocked by a paywall, though…
Flesh-Grazer of the Morrison - An Allosaurus jimmadseni pounces on a Camarasaurus lentus and uses its gaping jaws and powerful neck muscles to take a few bites out of the sauropod’s flanks as it uses the claws on its hands and feet to cling on to its quarry. The theropod will jump off the Camarasaurus’ back, retreat as fast as it came, wait for the sauropod’s wounds to heal for a while, and soon return to finish off its quarry…
This illustration is inspired by the “Flesh-Grazer” Hypothesis for how Allosaurus could have hunted large sauropods, as well as by a 2003 study from Mauricio Anton and colleagues that debunked the “Hatchet-Jaw” theory proposed by Bakker in 2001.
