Carnivora Obscura

More endangered species. Lately, I've been focusing on lesser-known subspecies of iconic carnivores long menaced by over-hunting:

Asiatic lion (Panthera leo persica)
Current Range: The Gir Forest, Gujarat, India
Conservation Status: Endangered

Persian leopard (Panthera pardus ciscausica)
Current Range: Northern Middle East, from eastern Turkey to western Afghanistan
Conservation Status: Endangered

Darwin's fox (Lycalopex fulvipes)
Current Range: Southern coastal Chile, especially Chiloé Island
Conservation Status: Critically Endangered (pop. c. 320 estimated in 2008 -- 70 on the mainland, 250 on Chiloé Island)

Red wolf (Canis rufus/Canis lupus rufus)
Current Range: North Carolina and pockets of the southeastern United States
Conservation Status: Critically Endangered (pop. c. 300 estimated in 2007, mostly in captivity)

Formosan black bear (Ursus thibetanus formosanus)
Current Range: Taiwan
Conservation Status: Endangered

Fukuistein's Monster

Despite being the birthplace of Godzilla, relatively few dinosaurs are known from Japan. One of the most notable is Fukuiraptor, uncovered in the Kitadani Formation in the Fukui Prefecture, and described by paleontologists Philip Currie and Yoichi Azuma in 2000. About the size of a Siberian tiger, this predator is one of the better-known megaraptorans, an enigmatic branch of Cretaceous theropods also known from Utah, Argentina, and Australia. Depending on who you ask, they were either the last of the carnosaurs, cousins to the better-known allosaurs and carcharodontosaurs, or a sister group to the tyrannosaurs. Fukuiraptor only complicates matters because it seems to have features suggestive of both carnosaurs and tyrannosaurs (or to use more exact and technical terms, allosauroids and tyrannosauroids).

Incidentally, other Kitadani dinosaurs include the ornithopod Fukuisaurus and the sauropod Fukuititan, also co-described and named by Azuma. Creative.

The Sauropod Club

This was another drawing where my decision to use a sketchpad limited my illustration options. Instead of showing a full Shunosaurus lurching forward on one page or bestriding two, I chose to draw two partially-concealed individuals in order to highlight the animal's odd extremities.

This sauropod is one of a handful known to have had tail clubs. Each of these animals lived during the mid-to-late Jurassic and all but one were native to modern-day China (the exception being Spinophorosaurus, from Niger). It would have been especially useful for Shunosaurus, which as adults grew only about 30 ft in length and a few tons in weight -- not a whole lot bigger than some of the local predatory dinosaurs.