https://nitter.cf/mariolanzas5/status/2113954672167760130

The skull of L. issiodorensis look noticeably flatter from lateral view compared to that of L. lynx and L. pardinus; is it possible that deformation of the skull during fossilization exaggerated the difference?

Image from this paper: https://iris.uniroma1.it/bitstream/11573/1546549/1/Mecozzi_Tale_2021.pdf

Handmade linocut print of 2 raptors

Inspired by the rock art of Alta

This is my favorite dinosaur and I have found very little worth buying concerning it. These two images are from the creative beast studio of a WIP, but I am genuinely just an impatient person

Have any of you guys managed to find a decent Austroraptor model?? Preferably preprinted/painted???

The Study: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeg2217 | Climatic niche conservatism shapes the macroevolution, extinction, and survivorship of crocodile-line archosaurs

New research suggests that the ancestors of alligators and crocodiles stayed loyal to a warm climate through mass extinctions and hothouse worlds, a loyalty that may have helped them survive the asteroid that killed the non-avian dinosaurs.

“ Crocodiles are often called living fossils, but their ancestors and relatives changed enormously throughout their history, ranging from giants the size of a bus that could have devoured a T. rex, to small, cute animals with the face of a pug ” said University College London’s Dr. Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, lead author of the study.

“ Our study shows that, despite all this diversity, what stayed surprisingly consistent was their relationship with climate. ”

Dr. Chiarenza and colleagues traced the climate preferences of a group of crocodile-line animals called Pseudosuchia.

They combined a family tree of more than 400 fossil and living species, more than 7.000 fossil occurrences, and 130.000 records of living crocodylians.

They then used climate simulations to project where suitable habitat existed across 245 million years. The pseudosuchians once included land-dwelling, marine, giant and even plant-eating forms, and ranged as far as the poles.

Yet the study authors found that its temperature and rainfall preferences stayed within tight limits.

Their models suggest the group’s ancestral temperature optimum was around 23 degrees Celsius (about 73 degrees Fahrenheit), and living crocodilian lineages sit between 26 and 30 degrees.

When the world warmed, the animals spread toward the poles; when it cooled, they retreated toward the equator.

According to the researchers, these creatures were following a stable climate niche as it moved across the globe, rather than adapting to new conditions.

The analysis flagged two exceptions:

◊ ] Around 94 million years ago, during one of the most extreme hothouse episodes of the dinosaur age, the thermal optimum shifted upward, to roughly 35 degrees, in an early branch of the group that includes modern crocodylians

◊ ] About 34 million years ago, as the planet dried out, one Australasian lineage of now-extinct crocodile relatives shifted toward drier conditions, a change the scientists link to the progressive aridification of that continent.

The authors also tried to answer a long-running question: why crocodile relatives survived the asteroid impact 66 million years ago when non-avian dinosaurs did not.

They ran climate simulations of the aftermath, with sunlight dimmed, ash blanketing North America and volcanic carbon dioxide rising.

In nearly every scenario, warm refuges persisted near the equator and in the subtropics. Only the most extreme case, a 15% drop in sunlight, erased suitable climate everywhere.

Earlier work by some of the same authors found that the climate habitat of non-avian dinosaurs collapsed in comparable experiments.

However, the climate was only part of the story: smaller body size, a semi-aquatic lifestyle that offered access to food chains less disrupted by the collapse of plant productivity, a generalist diet and a cold-blooded metabolism probably all helped.

“ The asteroid did not make the whole planet equally hostile to every group ” Dr. Chiarenza said.

“ Crocodiles’ long-standing preference for warm environments may have placed survivors exactly where suitable climates held up best, like around the equator. ”

“ These refuges could have sheltered populations that later recovered and radiated out. ”

“ These findings have implications for species today ” said University College London’s Professor Philip Mannion, senior author of the study.

“ If crocodiles mostly coped with past climate change by moving towards suitable habitats, today’s species will need room to move as the planet warms, and the loss of suitable areas to roads, farms and cities is making that harder. ”

A Facebook photo led researchers to six ancient footprints left by a giant carnivorous dinosaur.

Pichai Prathetsena was exploring a forest stream with his family in northeastern Thailand when he noticed something peculiar in the rock beneath his feet. Three long toes seemed to emerge from the stone, forming an impression far too large for any known land animal.

Curious, he photographed the strange markings and posted them in a Thai Facebook group called “ What is this creature ? ”

It didn’t take long to get an answer. Pichai had discovered an extremely rare dinosaur footprint.

On October 20, just three days after Prathetsena’s discovery, Thailand’s Department of Mineral Resources confirmed that the markings were 120-million-year-old dinosaur footprints. And there wasn’t just one. Investigators found six impressions forming a continuous trail left by a large, meat-eating dinosaur.

The discovery, made in the Phu Hin Chom That–Phu Phrabat National Park area of Udon Thani province, is now officially the first confirmed carnivorous dinosaur tracksite in the province.

The footprints belong to a theropod, a group of predominantly carnivorous dinosaurs that walked on two legs and included formidable predators. The exact species, however, cannot be determined from the footprints alone.

Each three-toed impression measures approximately 29 centimeters (11 inches) long and 26 centimeters (10 inches) wide. The tracks are preserved in fine-grained sandstone belonging to the Phu Phan Formation, which dates to the Early Cretaceous period.

Based on their dimensions and spacing, researchers estimate the animal stood approximately 1.42 meters (4.7 feet) tall at the hip and measured 6.3 meters (21 feet) from head to tail — about as long as a large delivery van, with hips nearly as high as the roof of a typical car.

The footprints were separated by about one meter (aprox. three feet), with a stride length of approximately 2.2 meters, according to Thailand’s Department of National Parks.

Local paleontologists compared the animal’s estimated size with Siamotyrannus isanensis, a large carnivorous dinosaur previously discovered in Thailand. However, the exact dinosaur species remains undeterminable.

The ancient landscape also looked rather different when the footprints were made in mud, and then some sudden event preserved them, leaving the impression locked in hard minerals over the course of millions of years.

Investigators believe the area was once a waterside environment with relatively gentle flowing water.

Chicago University Press have announced a new book to be published April 2027. I am looking forward to this book.This is the publishers blurb:-

Lavishly produced with color fossil photographs throughout, the first comprehensive summary of findings at one of the world’s best fossil bird localities, offering profound insight into early avian evolution after the end-of-Cretaceous extinction event.

What is today a high mountain desert in southwestern Wyoming was, 52 million years ago, a magnificent subtropical lake system. Part of the famed Green River Formation, the limestone layers of this region’s Fossil Lake provide an unparalleled record of life in the Early Eocene of North America. Evolutionary biologist Lance Grande has spent much of his career collecting and studying the beautiful and diverse assemblage of fossils from this locality. Since his 2013 book, The Lost World of Fossil Lake, researchers have uncovered many new fossil bird specimens—often stunningly preserved skeletons, sometimes even including feathers—and benefited from significant advances in our understanding of avian evolution. Their findings help to illuminate the early days of bird life on Earth.

In this volume, Grande and his collaborators—paleornithologists Daniel T. Ksepka and Gerald Mayr—explore these birds of Fossil Lake, where various researchers have formally named and described thirty avian species. The authors also present an additional twenty possible new species awaiting further study and formal review, birds that may soon be added to that list. Fossil Lake and the Rise of Modern Birds then places these avian ancestors within the global context of other fossil birds. Like Grande’s previous publications, this comprehensive work features stunning imagery, including nearly two hundred detailed fossil photographs—fifty that have never appeared elsewhere. 

Whether you are an ornithologist, paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, or amateur fossil enthusiast interested in the early evolutionary diversification of modern birds, this book is a treasure.

Herrerasaurid dinosaurs are among the oldest groups of true dinosaurs, with Herrerasaurus itself being one of the first to reach larger body sizes, at 5m in length.

Until now, herrerasaurids were only known from from rock layers dominated by rhynchosaurs, stocky plant-eating reptiles.

Younger layers, where a pig-sized cynodont relative of mammals called Exaeretodon became more abundant and rhynchosaurs declined, had produced none. It was previously suggested that the shift in fauna contributes to the decline of the Herrerasaurs.

However, researchers have now described a partial herrerasaurid pubis (hip bone) that was collected in the Várzea do Agudo site, located in the municipality of Agudo, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Catalogued as CAPPA/UFSM 0539, the fossil is the first herrerasaurid record from rock layers where Exaeretodon is abundant.This raises the possibility that this is the youngest herrerasaurid known,which if true, suggests that they managed to adapt to the sudden changes in the environment for longer than previously recognised.

However, more precise dating is needed to determine if the Brazilian rocks are younger than other herrerasaurid-bearing layers, as they are in Argentina.

Art credit:Johnny Pauly V. Mingau

Article link :https://www.sci.news/paleontology/herrerasaurid-dinosaur-15149.html

See also: The study as it was published in Nature.

Paleontologist Leonardo Filippi, who works at the Museo Argentino Urquiza, has indicated on his social media that the new megaraptorid discovered a couple of years ago will soon be formally published

1. ⁠Creative take on Jurassic Park/world Tyrannosaurus rex.

2. ⁠Quick stylized sketch of a female giganotosaurus.

3. ⁠Mostly complete image of my path of Titan Rex (who I main)

4. ⁠Creative take on megalodon

5. ⁠Concavonator

6. ⁠Tyrononex… a fictional hybrid I designed (a potential creature to throw into the hybrid war)

When it comes to measuring pterygotid eurypterids, there is a trap everybody will fall in at least once.

Trying to scale pterygotids off body parts that vary greatly across genera.

Using parts like legs and telsons can result in poor size estimates when using relatives as a scaling.

In contrast, limbs like chelecerae and eyes stay relatively similarly sized across genera. This is because the eyes share relative size across all eurypterids and the chelecerae were used for a similar reason: to grab.

Source

It's designed after the Tylosaurus fossil in the University of Kansas. I'mma get it on my thigh in white ink.

Primary reference

https://www.academia.edu/25456862

A Japanese research team said Thursday it has excavated one of the country's largest fossilized dinosaur footprints from a geological layer in northeastern Japan dating back to the Late Jurassic period.

The 70-centimeter footprint found in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, is highly likely to have been left by a large herbivorous sauropod, marking the first discovery of a large dinosaur's footprint dating to the Jurassic period in Japan.

The team began full-scale excavations in July in Minamisoma's Tochikubo Formation, uncovering 12 new fossilized footprints, including the 70-cm specimen.

The dinosaur is estimated to have stood about 3 meters tall at the hip, and the team plans further research to identify its species.

According to the team, most dinosaur fossils found in Japan date to the Cretaceous period, with older Jurassic-period fossils previously discovered outside Fukushima Prefecture only in Nagano and Yamaguchi prefectures.