Hațeg Island Residents

At the end of the Cretaceous period, Hațeg Island in modern Romania was home to one of the strangest animal communities known to science: With a few exceptions (including one very big one), most of the animals here were miniature versions of creatures from the mainland. I had long wanted to visit this island through my art, as well as do another two-page, multi-species spread like my Niobrara Aquarium piece (see the last post of September 2015). Here, then, is the result:

1) Rhabdodon priscus
2) Struthiosaurus transylvanicus
3) Telmatosaurus transsylvanicus (note the extra "s"; don't ask me why)
4) Allodaposuchus precedens
5) Bradycmene draculae (yup)
6) Magyarosaurus dacus
7) "Hatzegopteryx" thambena (I use the parentheses because some scientists regard the genus as synonymous with Quetzalcoatlus)
8) Zalmoxes robustus
9) Balaur bondoc

The two smallest animals here, Struthiosaurus and Bradycmene, were both about two meters (six and a half feet) long.

Choosing color schemes for the three largest dwarf dinosaurs (the largest of which was 20 feet long) was a challenge, but I ultimately opted to give both rhabdodonts spots (based on an earlier hand drawing I did of Muttaburrasaurus, now classified as a rhabdodont by some) and to give Telmatosaurus a striped tail, just as skin impressions of North American hadrosaurs seem to suggest. So as not obscure Magyarosaurus' osteoderms, I made the animal a solid, bluish-green.

Balaur is reconstructed according to the hypothesis that it was a flightless, paravian theropod rather than a dromaeosaur, hence the shorter skull (the real one still hasn't been found). As for the star of this spread, Hatzegopteryx, I worked off the idea that azhdarchid pterosaurs were more like storks than vultures, opting for river game over carrion. With that in mind, I based loosely based its body colors on the saddle-billed stork of sub-Saharan Africa, while I based the crest and beak coloration off of the wrinkled hornbill of Southeast Asia.

I'm hoping that image of a giant pterosaur towering over much smaller dinosaurs (plus Allodaposuchus) will take people who view this piece off-guard and that their eyes will linger on this beast. The other eight, I'll admit, are drawn rather small and perhaps under-rendered, but given their size in life and the crudeness of some of their fossils, that's sort of the point.

Backyard Endangered Species

The bulk of the endangered mammals I've been drawing in the past year come from Africa or Asia, while chances are that most the people who read this blog will come from either the United States or Europe. These latter regions, however, do have their own imperiled species as well.

Black-footed ferret (Mustela nigripes)
Current Range: Pockets of Canada, Mexico, and the western United States
Conservation Status: Endangered (c. 1,200 as of Fall 2013)

This mustelid used to be the primary predator of prairie dogs, but went into severe decline during the 1800s and 1900s due to fur-trapping and the culling of their main prey.

Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus)
Current Range: Pockets of the Mediterranean and mid-Atlantic, including Madeira, the coast of Croatia, and the Aegean Sea
Conservation Status: Endangered (less than 700 as of 2015)

The world's rarest seal, this backyard beast was hunted extensively as early as the days of the Roman Empire, and in more recent times has been killed by fishermen who regard them as pests.

Baird's tapir (Tapirus bairdii)
Current Range: Central and South America, from the Yucatán Peninsula to western Colombia)
Conservation Status: Endangered (less than 5,000 as of 2008)

While much further from American or European readers than the other two species in this post (outside of zoos, of course), the Baird's tapir still inhabits a wide though sparsely-populated area. And though much smaller than an elephant or even the smallest rhino species, this bizarre animal is the largest mammal indigenous to Central America.

Season of the Titanosaur

 
While Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, and Brachiosaurus were the dominant sauropods in the dinosaur books I grew up reading (along with Supersaurus and the more dubious Seismosaurus and Ultrasauros) titanosaurs have gradually been eclipsing these Jurassic giants in both size estimates and public exposure. They prove that sauropods were still going strong during the Late Cretaceous and that the largest species were by no means limited to the Morrison Formation.

This sea change began in 1993 with the description of Argentinosaurus. Though known only from a handful of bones, they clearly hinted at a truly awe-inspiring sauropod. Expeditions in Patagonia continued to churn out titanosaurs weighing around or above 50 tons and approaching 100 feet in length: Puertasaurus, Futalognkosaurus, Dreadnoughtus, and most recently, Notocolossus. These giants weren't limited to Argentina either: In 2001, American paleontologists described Paralititan, a titanosaur around the same size as Argentinosaurus and which lived alongside Spinosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus, two of the largest-known meat-eating dinosaurs. Other giants of lesser renown include Bruhathkayosaurus from India, Ruyangosaurus from China, Sauroposeidon and Alamosaurus from the southwestern United States (the former initially believed to be a brachiosaur and the latter originally believed to have been smaller), "Angloposeidon" from England, and an unnamed titanosaur from Australia known unofficially as "Cooper".

Last month not only saw the debut of Notocolossus, but also the mounting of a titanosaur skeletal mount at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Yet another Argentine animal, this one measures over 120 feet long and is estimated to have weighed around 70 tons, making it the current leading candidate for the largest dinosaur. This display will be up until January of 2020, and as a new exhibit in the country's leading natural history museum, seems to me like a crowning moment for titanosaurs.

While I'm much happier with this titanosaur drawing than the one I did of Futalognkosaurus a year and a half ago (see top of the post), I still had trouble capturing the (rear) right leg, which still looks a bit out-of-place. Like "Cooper", this titanosaur still lacks a proper name, though I've seen the name "Flechasaurus" applied to it given the bones' proximity to the town of La Flecha in Chubut. This dinosaur probably wasn't synonymous with any of the aforementioned Patagonian titanosaurs, due to differences in sediment age and its discovery in a different province from the others.