2015 in Mesozoic Paleontology

To cap off the year, I recently did another paneled, less serious drawing, this time celebrating the new (and old, in one case) Mesozoic fauna described this year:

January: Nundasuchus, a Early Triassic archosaur from Tanzania (hence the safari sign).

February: Ichthyosaurus anningae, a new species of Ichthyosaurus. Uncovered by Mary Anning, but was long mistaken for a plaster cast.

March: Metoposaurus algarvensis, a new species of the amphibian Metoposaurus from Early Triassic Portugal.

April: Brontosaurus, a re-established genus long considered synonymous with Apatosaurus.
May: Yi, a bat-winged, feathered theropod from Late Jurassic China.

June: Regaliceratops, a chasmosaurine ceratopsian from Late Cretaceous Alberta.

July: Wendiceratops, a centrosaurine ceratopsian from Late Cretaceous Alberta.

August: Gueragama, a mid-Cretaceous lizard from Brazil closely related to modern iguanas.

September: Ugrunaaluk, a Late Cretaceous hadrosaur from Alaska. The northmost non-avian dinosaur ever discovered.

October: Spinolestes, an Early Cretaceous mammal from Spain preserved with quill-like hair imprints.

November: Dakotaraptor, a Late Cretaceous dromaeosaur from South Dakota. Lived alongside Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops.
 
December: Kunbarrasaurus, an Early Cretaceous ankylosaur from Australia (hence the aurora australis).

Animalia Transalphabetica

Top Row (from left): Iraq (Malawania), China (Gigantoraptor, Tuojiangosaurus, Changchengornis, Mamenchisaurus, Qianzhousaurus), Egypt (Paralititan), Algeria (Carcharodontosaurus)

Middle Row: Israel (Tanystropheus), Japan (Phosphorosaurus), South Korea (Koreanosaurus), Russia (Liopleurodon)

Left Corner: India (Sanajeh)

Right Corner: Thailand (Siamosaurus)

As I've gone through my black dinosaur sketchbook, I've tried not just to cover a wide range of animals, but a wide range of animals from a wide range of places. While China, Mongolia, Argentina, and the western United States and Canada are inevitably represented by legions of colossal sauropods, tiny-to-titanic theropods, and ceratopsians great and small, I've also featured stegosaurs from Portugal, hadrosaurs from Italy and Russia, amphibians from Australia and Kazakhstan, and pterosaurs from Brazil.

Another idea that inspired this drawing was an insight by my college studio drawing professor: "Your signature and handwriting is a form of drawing." With that in mind, I decided to write out (or rather, draw) how these genera's names would be written out in their country of discovery. Initially, the United Kingdom was to be represented by Megalosaurus or Iguanodon, but I ultimately opted to use non-Phoenician alphabets, and use Arabic characters for both Arabic and Kurdish, the language from which Malawania's name comes.

Speaking of Malawania, initially its place would have been filled by the pterosaur Alanqa, representing Morocco. At some point, however, I opted to use the Iraqi ichthyosaur instead, but neglected to replace the name before drawing it (hence the smudge around the name). Another decision that informed choice of Iraq (as well as Algeria) instead of Morocco was that the latter's flag is much less striking (being a red flag with small green pentagram that would probably be covered by its ambassador animal).

Rather than listing all the dinosaurs representing China, I just wrote the traditional Chinese characters for "Too many to name". 

Sanajeh is written "ancient gape" in Sanskrit, its meaning in its language of origin. The same practice was used to transcribe Tanystropheus from Greek to Hebrew.

With each of the flags, it was important to capture the right color tone. I used different reds for the Iraqi flag's top band, most of China's flag, and the bottom of band of Russia's flag. I also used a darker red for Korea's flag than Japan's.

The one exception to flag backgrounds, of course, is Paralititan, represented in writing within an ancient Egyptian cartouche ("cartridge", the oblong shape that surrounds important people's names) and against the Great Pyramids at sunset.

One of the greatest joys and challenges of drawing dinosaurs is guessing their color patterns. Ultimately, however, I decided to keep the animals uncolored, in order to draw more attention to the countries' flags and respective scripts.

Frontier Ceratopsians

For most of the time that we've known about them, large ceratopsians seemed to be limited to North America. Smaller species were more widespread, inhabiting both North America and Asia, but were scarce elswhere. Overall the past five years, however, ceratopsian fossils have come in new shapes as well as from new places:

1. Ajkaceratops - 2010 - Hungary, 86-84 million B.C.E

2. Turanoceratops - 1989 - Uzbekistan, 90 million B.C.E.

3. Sinoceratops - 2010 - China, 72-66 million B.C.E.

4. Pachyrhinosaurus (perotorum) - 2012 - Alaska, 70-69 million B.C.E. (northmost ceratopsian and latest Pachyrhinosaurus species)

5. Koreaceratops - 2011 - South Korea, 103 million B.C.E.

6. Coahuilaceratops - 2010 - Mexico, 72.5-71 million B.C.E. (southmost large ceratopsian) 

The range ceratopsians inhabited may have gone even further: Two possible ceratopsians called Notoceratops and Serendipaceratops were identified from fragmentary bones in Argentina and Australia, respectively.

The Doom of Giants

Many of the largest mammals alive today are also among the most vulnerable. For the past three centuries, wildlife populations of African elephants, blue whales, giant pandas, and all species of tigers, rhinos, and gorillas have been hobbled both by habitat loss and human hunting (both for sport and resources of dubious real value like ivory). 

This phenomenon isn't limited to human times. Bus-sized nautiloids, 20-foot armored fish, gorgonopsids, sauropods, and basilosaurid cetaceans were all the biggest animals of their world and all were obliterated forever in mass extinctions at the end of the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Cretaceous, and Eocene, respectively.

While my output for endangered mammal drawings have slowed down of late, I did manage to draw two threatened giants in October that I've yet to post here:

Javan rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sondaicus)
Current Range: Ujung Kulon National Park, westernmost Java, Indonesia
Conservation Status: Critically endangered (58-61 as of March 2015)

Northern right whale (Eubalaena glacialis)
Current Range: From the east coast of Florida to the North Sea
Conservation Status: Endangered

Incidentally, pick up A Dynasty of Dinosaurs! It's an amazing dinosaur coloring book for more mature artists by paleontologists Jason Poole and Jason Schein. Here's a set of pages I've been coloring in lately:

While I'm not of the identity of each sauropod here, I know that number 2 (if we follow their heads left to right) is Amargasaurus, and I'm pretty sure that numbers 1, 5, 7, and 9 are Nigersaurus, Saltasaurus, Plateosaurus, and Lessemsaurus, respectively. Numbers 4 and 8 are almost certainly super-sized titanosaurs (possibly Dreadnoughtus and/or Paralititan?), while 3 and 6 are likely diplodocoids (Rebbachisaurus and Suuwassea, perhaps?).

In any case, great job Jasons!