Brontësaurus‏

Brontësaurus‏. Sepia ink and gouache on Strathmore grey toned paper, 151 x 147mm.

'My literary and palaeo friends and audiences so rarely converge (which is a great pity), but I’m jolly well going to try.'

So I said when I first shared this drawing on my own illustration blog, Twitter, and Facebook page a few weeks ago. It has since gained what was for me quite unprecedented attention for a single piece of work on any of those media platforms.* Why, it's even been spread about on Tumblr without any attribution, which I daresay is about as 'viral' as it gets for me. As usual, I hesitated sharing it here from the first because it offers very little next to the nutritional goodness posted by my Chasmosaurs brethren, but I've been persuaded otherwise. Stay tuned, therefore, for more in this series.


*Except perhaps for Ol' Salty, which was shared by the Stan Winston School of Character Arts' Facebook page, though as they uploaded the drawing afresh instead of sharing it directly from mine, the figures were not reflected in the latter. *Chagrined mutterings*

A bipedal Apatosaurus and a Deinonychus

Bipedal Apatosaurus. Sepia ink, sepia powder, coloured pencils, and gouache on recycled paper 278 x 190mm.

Inspired by Mike Taylor's article on the probability of bipedal sauropods and by Scott Hartman's accompanying skeletal on the Walking with Dinosaurs blog. This drawing is another of those curious things which should serve more as a study, but which I nevertheless spent too long working on and eventually 'lost my way' with. One of the perils of being obliged to work on something at sporadic intervals.

A not dissimilar fate befell this Deinonychus study.

Deinonychus. Sepia ink, coloured pencils and gouache, sketchbook page.

Inspired, of course, by birds of prey in general, I made a conscious effort of bulking up its feathers much more than my earlier attempts, and aiming for a yet smoother, more avian silhouette (it suddenly occurs to me how long ago I actually began this study, as it went on to form the basis for Marc's Deinonychus portrait in the New Year greeting I completed back in January). I think perhaps its front third is fairly respectable, which perhaps is just as well, since that third eventually made its way upon a garment after some persuasion.

I also note that the Apatosaurus features what might be considered my signature 'dappled leaves' markings which I seem to apply on all and sundry when I'm not thinking too hard about coloration. I ought to devise something with which it can alternate...

N

Fuzzy Sauropodlet

Well, perhaps a juvenile rather than a 'sauropodlet', but I hope that got your attention, at any rate.

Brian Switek (who surely requires no introduction here) commissioned this highly speculative fuzzy little Apatosaurus from me for his forthcoming book, My Beloved Brontosaurus, to 'visualize a point' and to 'shock readers a little and then explain the image'. It is reproduced in greyscale in the book, but this is the original drawing. I had Brian's permission to share this a while ago, but quite forgot to do so here (chiefly because I still feel ill-qualified as a contributor. Sorry, folks). It is perhaps timely that I chose at last to post this today, since it also happens to be Brian's birthday. I hope you'll join me in wishing him many very happy returns.

As usual, please open the image in a new tab for best viewing!

N.

Hold Your Head High, Brachiosaurus

One of the recent debates in paleontology has concerned the neck posture of the sauropods. Such titanic creatures are completely absent from land today, so it's natural for them to be puzzled over.

Walking With Dinosaurs, the 1999 documentary, featured herds of Diplodocus with their heads held basically parallel to the ground, reflecting some paleontologists' supposition that for the beasts to raise them much higher would have been an unbearable strain, requiring blood pressure too high for their hearts to bear. The SV-POW! team has weighed in with a strong argument to the contrary, based on the evidence provided by living animals - a fantastic summary is available here. Rather than a straight horizontal line, they argue that it made more sense for sauropods like Diplodocus and Apatosaurus to hold their heads at a gentle curve, with the heads well above their bodies.

Examining the Chinese early Cretaceous sauropod Euhelopus, Andreas Christian from the University of Flensberg has concluded that it was especially adapted for high browsing, a conclusion that likely bears true for similar sauropods, notably the ever-popular Brachiosaurus.


Euhelopus, via wikimedia commons.

As you can see in the above reconstruction, Euhelopus is similar to Brachiosaurus in its marked differences from the standard-issue, Flintstones-style "brontosaur." The front legs are longer than the back, and the tail is shorter. In all, the profile is more giraffe-like. Christian's paper suggests that this posture, while requiring considerable effort to pump blood up through the neck, was less expensive than grazing over a broader area - holding its head at a 90 degree angle from the horizontal for five minutes required only about half of the energy expenditure as walking a hundred meters. He also found that the stresses on the neck vertebra were lower in as Euhelopus held its neck more erect. Christian concludes that "raising the neck... may have been less expensive for a sauropod like Euhelopus or Brachiosaurus than walking a long distance. During a food shortage, raising the neck was probably even essential for surviving: it is better to get little than nothing at all." Not an earth-shattering discovery, but one that adds to our understanding of how such a magnificent adaptation made sense for these animals.

Allosaurus, Now and Then

I completely endorse changing museum displays as knowledge changes. But it's also cool when there's a continuity between the exhibits we see now and what past generations saw. For instance, the American Museum of Natural History's Allosaurus mount, in which the Jurassic theropod preys on a fallen Apatosaurus. Compare these two photos, taken nearly a century apart.


From Volume VIII of the American Museum Journal, 1908


Photo by Ryan Somma, via flickr.

Neat, huh? Finally, here's Charles M. Knight's take on the scene, one of the iconic images in the history of paleoart. You can see a second Allosaurus in the distance, standing upright in the formerly accepted theropod posture. Thanks to the fact that his supper is on the ground, this Allosaurus has a much more modern look.


Painting by Charles M. Knight, via Wikimedia Commons

I'll close with a typically wonderful piece of vintage science writing from the American Museum Journal piece the 1908 photo comes from. The writer is W.D. Matthew.

As now exhibited in the Dinosaur Hall this group gives to the imaginative observer a most vivid picture of a characteristic scene of that bygone age millions of years ago when reptiles were the lords of creation when Nature red in tooth and claw had lost none of her primitive savagery and the era of brute force and ferocity showed little sign of the gradual amelioration which was to come to pass in future through the predominance of superior intelligence.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: High-Kickin' Allosaurus

Here's a two-page spread from a 1979 Scholastic book called the First Picture Encyclopedia. It's a pretty sweet piece, complete with a gaggle of erupting volcanos, anachronistic fauna, Rudolf Zallinger-inspired Stegosaurus, and one heck of a high-kickin' Allosaurus, which I find particularly amusing. Not only would it be a crazy way for a big theropod to attack its prey, the stance looks pretty implausible.

The book credits four illustrators: Roy Coombs, Cliff Meadway, Mike Atkinson, and Graham Allen, with Coombs' name most prominent. None of them are particularly visible on the web. Mr. Atkinson has a website, but the style doesn't quite match what we see here.

Downy and Hairy

This morning, I had the rare treat of simultaneously hosting both a Hairy and a Downy Woodpecker at my suet block. As Hairy took her time and ate her fill, smaller Downy fidgeted in a nearby dogwood tree, occasionally chirping impatiently, occasionally fluttering toward the suet only to think better of it and return to her perch. It was adorable.

This was a perfect opportunity to finally compare these two woodpeckers, side by side. I grabbed my trusty Sibley Field Guide to finally settle this pressing matter. See, they look almost identical, save for a few crucial details.

Downy Woodpecker by Peggy Collins, via flickr

Hairy Woodpecker by Geoff Patterson via flickr

The big difference is that the Hairy is larger - not evident in the photos, unfortunately - with a more robust beak and plain white feathers under the tail. The Downy has a thicker tuft of white feathers on top of the beak, and the feathers under the tail have black spots. The above birds are both females; males of both species have a red band on the back of the head. Not being an expert birder by any means, I used to just call any black and white speckled woodpecker I saw flying around a Downy and be done with it. Seeing both in close proximity was a huge help. It made my morning!

So let's pretend that I live near a volcano, and today it erupts, burying these woodpeckers, me, and everything else in my yard. Fast forward ten million years or so. Incredibly, there are still paleontologists around, and they dig up these woodpeckers. Considering how similar the birds are, would the future paleontologists ascribe them to different species? Would they instead be thought to represent natural size variation or different ontological* stages within the same species?

With fully preserved skeletons, a skilled paleontologist could probably deduce that they are different species, at the very least based on the beak. I can only assume that the post-cranial skeleton is similar enough that if the head was missing, it would create quite a challenge. I could certainly see it being debated.

The funny thing is that based on recent genetic sequencing, it appears that the Downy and Hairy woodpeckers, both now placed in the Picoides genus, may need to be placed in separate genera. I had planned on summing up their relationship by noting that they share a recent common ancestor, but based on the distinct selective pressures placed on to separate populations, the lineages leading to Downy and Hairy woodpeckers split. When I did a bit of research, it turned out not to be quite so simple. Their ancestor is more distant than I'd assumed.

It's one of the consequences of technology. We now have to tools to study organisms at a deeper level than outward features, and science cannot ignore new information. It's less of an issue with living species: they have common names unrelated to the latin binomial. When we see chimpanzees we call them "chimpanzees," not Pan troglodytes. Unless we're unsufferable nerds, of course. But when the same thing happens to genera of dinosaurs and other extinct creatures, it's a bigger problem. Thus, Brontosaurus is learned to be a false genus based on a skull being placed on the wrong body. The world still isn't used to Apatosaurus.

*Ontogeny = the way an organism changes from birth to adulthood.