Turtle Beaks And Dinosaurs

It’s interesting to note that that beaks of animals come in all sorts of strange shapes, including hooks and serrations. Sometimes, none of this matches the underlying bone structure.

The Never-Ending Artistic Revision Cycle – MPC-D 100/42

Every so often, new data gets thrown out there that requires us artists to change how we present the scientist’s work. Recently, I’ve been sharply reminded that even when scientists mean well, some things just get mucked up. One of the best examples in the Zamyn Khond oviraptorosaur, commonly called Citipati sp., which is based on a well-known, but rather obscure specimen, MPC-D 100/42 (formerly, IGM or GI or GIN or GI (SPS) 100/42 — so many names!).

And the Nemegt Mother Makes Four

With yesterday’s publication in PLoS ONE, Federico Fanti, Philip Currie and Badamgarav Demchig add more information to an otherwise unknown oviraptorosaur, Nemegtomaia barsboldi. That taxon, described in 2004 by Lü Junchang and colleages and, in Lü’s PhD thesis once called Ingenia, is now more substantially known than it was before.

Caught in a Moment

Oviraptorosaurs are my favorite group of fossil animals, a fact I do not think anyone doubts. WAAAAY back at the beginning of last year, shortly after ending a somewhat lengthy drawing hiatus of about 2 years (egad!), I decided to test if my skills were too rusty or if the impetus to improve had shown fruit as I put graphite to paper … and sought to be better at what I was doing before. As such, the result, a depiction of the poorly-known oviraptorid Conchoraptor gracilis, was a trial to show a profile of the forward body. He (or she?) seems to be reaching out, but I wanted to provide an ambiguous dynamic, where the lower portion of the image seems in motion but the upper is still. Perhaps he is in display for his mate, or to get another girl to lay her eggs in his nest. I think I succeeded in applying some ideas about reconstruction of the beak, eye, feathering, and general form to this, while keeping a distinctive style intact. Whether I succeeded in achieving “better” work than I have in the past is up to the viewer. I mean, well –  it’s not my best, I know, but it is pretty up there and high on my favorites list.

That Was Fun….

Apparently my Google-fu is good.

What Isn’t Oviraptor?

One of my biggest pet peeves (when it comes to dinosaurs, anyway) is that when people are talking about Oviraptor, they aren’t actually talking about Oviraptor philoceratops. Mostly, they are talking about GI 100/42, because for the most part, that’s what was said to be Oviraptor for most of the last 50 years.

20 Reasons Why Gigantoraptor is a Caenagnathid

And I’m only going to describe this using the mandible. Let’s get started:

The “Mitrata” Oviraptorid

There are a few images floating around of a set of skulls of an hitherto undescribed oviraptorid, one with a tall, steepled premaxillo-nasal crest.

The Brush Narrow and Broad

Typically, I would be hesitant to use this material for any purpose, as it not only represents an undescribed specimen, but is also a cast. I cannot verify its authenticity.

Better Know an [Oviraptorid] — The First Egg Thief

Scientists are often busy fellows, so that when they find and describe a new animal, they must often do so in steps, preparing longer works of description as they do their other things. Some taxa wait a few years, others a few decades. Oviraptor philoceratops has waited for almost 100 years.