The partial skeleton of Saltopus is mostly gone at this point.
The skeleton was not that great to begin with actually. The original
material consists of a partial vertebral column, pelvic girdle (which
contained an ancestral two vertebrae and not the novel trait of four),
and partial remains of both the fore and hind limbs. The skull,
unfortunately, is completely missing from the holotype. That material,
also, is the only known material to date. The majority of that material
was originally preserved as casts (or impressions) in the sandstone of
the Lossiemouth Quarries.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Big animals with small ears
Some recent Dino practice and study starting with some skeletal paintovers from Museum fossils that I visited.
Log in - Log Out , Digital Painting over Torosaur skeleton |
Painting overlaid onto photo of Torosaur at Milwaukee Public Museum |
"Jane" Digital study over Tyrannosaur fossil |
Jane fossil from Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh |
This is a Sculpey head study of a hadrosaur
Hank the Hadrosaur - Sculpey and Acrylic |
Would you like some dewlap with that? |
.. and this below was based on some toy dinosaurs by Papo.
T-rex vs. Ankylosaurus ver. 1 - Cretaceous Standoff - digital painting |
And a second version with a more chicken like Tyrannosaur demonstrating his primary bite weapon .
T-rex vs. Ankylosaurus ver.2 - Cretaceous Decapitation - digital painting |
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Tachiraptor admirabilis: New Carnivorous Dinosaur Unearthed in Venezuela
Paleontologist Dr Oliver Rauhut of the
Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany, and his colleagues
have described a new dinosaur genus and species that lived in what is
now Venezuela during the earliest part of the Jurassic period, about 201
million years ago.
The newly-discovered dinosaur is a small bipedal theropod, with an estimated body length slightly over 1.5 meters.
It belongs to a sister group of Averostra, a large clade of theropod dinosaurs that is known primarily from the Middle Jurassic.
The paleontologists found only two fossilized bones of the new dinosaur in the La Quinta Formation, about 4 km northwest of the town of La Grita in Táchira, Venezuela.
They named the new genus and species – Tachiraptor admirabilis.
“The genus name tachiraptor derives from Táchira and raptor (Latin for thief), in reference to the probable predatory habits of the animal,” the team explained in a paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
“The specific name admirabilis honors Simon Bolivar’s ‘Admirable Campaign,’ in which the town of La Grita played a strategic role.”
Tachiraptor admirabilis probably preyed upon any smaller creature it could catch, including a recently discovered plant-eating dinosaur called Laquintasaura venezuelae.
The newly-discovered dinosaur is a small bipedal theropod, with an estimated body length slightly over 1.5 meters.
It belongs to a sister group of Averostra, a large clade of theropod dinosaurs that is known primarily from the Middle Jurassic.
The paleontologists found only two fossilized bones of the new dinosaur in the La Quinta Formation, about 4 km northwest of the town of La Grita in Táchira, Venezuela.
They named the new genus and species – Tachiraptor admirabilis.
“The genus name tachiraptor derives from Táchira and raptor (Latin for thief), in reference to the probable predatory habits of the animal,” the team explained in a paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
“The specific name admirabilis honors Simon Bolivar’s ‘Admirable Campaign,’ in which the town of La Grita played a strategic role.”
Tachiraptor admirabilis probably preyed upon any smaller creature it could catch, including a recently discovered plant-eating dinosaur called Laquintasaura venezuelae.
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