Mesozoic Megadeth

It's taken thirteen years, but paleontologists have now published a full description of the sprawling system of bonebeds discovered in 1997 near Hilda, Alberta. This new paper, published in New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs, puts forth the idea that sudden flooding brought on by a massive storm is the likely culprit, rather than the evergreen "river crossing" scenario. In the late Cretaceous, the area was a coastal floodplain, where lead author David Eberth of the Royal Tyrrell Museum says that Centrosaurus likely gathered in huge herds. When a storm hit, the flooding occurred too quickly over too large an area for them to escape.

Once the flood waters receded, the land would be littered with carcasses. After the scavengers had their way, the bones would be left to be covered by subsequent floods, fossilize, and eventually be exposed and discovered.

Drowning Centrosaurs by Michael Skrepnick, from the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Natural History

Scenes like this have always captured my imagination. It would have been an awesome sight to be sit on a low ridge and look out over hundreds of acres of Centrosaurus, the two species apertus and brinkmani differentiated by horn shape and perhaps coloration. But the imagination gets a little shaky when asked to picture those same dinosaurs desperately trying to find safety amid the chaos of a storm. Or to picture the reeking smorgasbord presented to local Albertasaurus, Gorgosaurus, and Troodon. Maybe some Hesperonychus would be hanging back, darting in for their share. Or maybe they wouldn't need to: there would be enough ceratopsian flesh to go around, and then some.

If I only had the money to commission that scene...

Dino Donner Party

When will this avalanche of tyrannosaur news stop? I'm not burnt out yet, but it would be nice to read some crazy hypsilophodon news. A new study from the University of Alberta, authored by PhD candidate Philip Bell and paleontologist Philip J. Currie, offers another example of interspecific fighting, this time in the Gorgosaurus branch of the family. Gorgosaurus was a mid-size tyrannosaur known almost exclusively from Alberta. Gorgosaurus is the predator with the highest representation in this area's fossil record, so it's very likely that this is Gorgo-on-Gorgo violence. Tragically, the wound shows no sign of healing, so the victim probably died soon after the incident.

Here's a graphic distributed by the University to accompany this announcement (Bell is the fellow below the dueling Gorgos):

When I first saw it, I thought to myself, "David, that illustration looks strangely familiar. It reminds me (and therefore you) of another artist's style." It didn't take long for me to figure it out: it looks like it could be the work of one Nicholas Gurewitch, whose now-on-hiatus comic Perry Bible Fellowship is wonderful, cool, and supremely fabulous to the extreme.

Here's an example of a dinosaur in his work. Maybe I'm nuts, but Philip Bell's drawing looks like what Gurewitch might do if he tried his hand at scientific illustration. I guess it's the stippling and the prominent outline. I'm not accusing Bell of using a ghost-artist, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was influenced by Gurewitch. It's probably just a coincidence, but I'm going to go ahead and email Bell to find out. If the response is interesting enough, I'll post it here.

Word!

UPDATE: Heard back from the man. No connection. Pure coincidence.