Mei long is not always sleeping

This is my entry to the current art contest at Hell Creek forums. The challenge for this round was "Year of the Dragon", which means that we had to draw any prehistoric animal with "dragon" somewhere in its name. So I drew the tiny troodontid Mei long, the famous sleeping dragon. I'd wanted to draw this animal for a while, so it was a good excuse to put some more effort into it than I normally would've.

Mei long is well-known from its beautiful holotype, which shows the animal perfectly preserved in a sleeping position when it had died, presumably from volcanic ash. The curled holotype is tiny - probably no larger than a softball - but many people don't seem to realize that it represents a very young juvenile. The adult animal was probably a strapping troodontid around the size of a duck. I've reconstructed two adult Meis here, a male and a female, running through a rare patch of Liaoning deciduous trees. The male is nearer to the viewer and is almost identical to his mate save for brighter rufus display patches and a reddish facial streak. Many birds, such as woodpeckers, exhibit a similar sort of dimorphism.

I wanted to draw this cute little troodontid doing something other than sleeping, for once. Even though its holotype fossil is one of the most gorgeous paravians to come out of China (and that's saying something), reconstructing it in this position every time is overlooking the beauty the animal surely exhibited in wakefulness as well. This long-legged, pheasant-sized troodontid was probably a fleet of foot, agile little predator that may've darted through the undergrowth and over logs, flashing glints of shiny feathers in the sunlight.

Jeholornis in the Morning Light

My final feathered dinosaur illustration for the book I'm working on. This is the basal bird Jeholornis from the Jehol Group of early Cretaceous of China (of the Jiufotang formation, around 120 million years ago). This species is meant to represent the original J. prima, though the tail fronds are based on the well-preserved tail of J. palmapenis, which may not be a distinct species.

Jeholornis was fairly similar in anatomy to the more well-known Archaeopteryx, but differs in being decidedly more "birdlike" in several respects. It had very few teeth, more well-developed shoulder girdles, longer forelimbs, and claw morphology that indicates perching ability. The hallux may or may not be reversed, and more likely than not is representative of a state of partial reversal.

The type fossil of J. prima is interesting in that it preserved a collection of fossilized seeds in crop area. It is unknown what plant they belonged to, but here I've reconstructed it eating the seeds of a fallen branch of the Ginkgo tree, which it very likely would have done. The morphology of the mandible, dentaries and teeth indicate that Jeholornis was well-adapted for feeding on seeds. The seed-eating lifestyle would allow more carotenoids to be present in the animal's diet than would a stricter carnivorous lifestyle, so I've taken some liberties here in giving it some slightly brighter colors on the head and tailfan, which was likely used for display.

It is depicted alongside the Jehol dragonfly Aeschnidium.

High-res version here.

Deinonychus Prey Restraint

This is an illustration based on the new paper by Fowler et al, which discusses a likely possible method of predation by Deinonychus and other dromaeosaurs (the "raptor prey restraint" model, or RPR). This excellent publication is available free to download. It suggests that the unique foot morphology of dromaeosaurs was an adaptation to take prey in a very similar manner to extant birds of prey: by grasping with the foot claws, digging in with the hypertrophied "sickle" claw, and tightly hanging on to the prey animal as it struggles and thrashes around. The dromaeosaur would then begin to feed on it while it's still alive, until it finally dies from blood loss and organ failure, all the while standing on top of the animal to pin it down (a likely use of the unusually short ankles found in dromaeosaurs) and using primitive flight strokes with its "wings" to maintain balance.

The primary animal of study in the RPR paper is Deinonychus, so that's what I've drawn here. It is shown preying on the hypsilophodontid Zepheryosaurus. Though Deinonychus is usually depicted in a dense floodplain environment, here I've reconstructed it amongst some higher-altitude arid North American mountains.

This is my version of a Christmas dinner. :)

Liaoning details

By popular request, a few detail shots of my last upload.

Liaoning Scene

I consider this to basically be my magnum opus of paleoart at this point in time. I've spent months on all of the details and shading. The full resolution version is about five times larger than this one. I am SO glad it is finally finished.

This represents a hypothetical scene from the Jehol group of early Cretaceous Liaoning of China, something like 122 million years ago. Several animals from the Yixian formation are represented here: Sinornithosaurus millennii, a feathered dromaeosaurid dinosaur; Liaoxitriton zhongjiani, a salamander; Alloraphidia, a snakefly; Epicharmeropsis, a mayfly, and a dead Callobatrachus, a frog.

The gliding dinosaurs are meant to be generic microraptorine dinosaurs, not Microraptor gui specifically, in order to avoid the slight anachronism caused by placing Microraptor and Sinornithosaurus in the same scene. Despite that, it is (obviously) based on Microraptor gui (I started this scene before I learned that the two animals were not quite contemporary, I admit).

This illustration will be the section header for the chapter on feathered dinosaurs for the book on evolution and religion that I'm currently working on with a few other people. Once again, thanks to Jon for shading critiques and suggestions.

To see a larger version, please click here.

Jehol Juxtaposition

This picture was never meant to be. It is technically a mashup of two very large, time-intensive and high-resolution pieces I've been working on for months. I seldom upload lately due to the fact that the bulk of my artistic energy of late has been going into these two pictures.

Since both images are intended for print, a lot of the detail in the background will be lost when I finally resize them to upload for the internet. I thought it would be nice, though, to show some elements from each image that will be downsized in the final versions. They seemed to fit together well. Think of it as a glorified WIP.

This particular scene depicts Microraptor gui, a tiny four-winged gliding dromaeosaur, and Epicharmeropsis, an ancient mayfly.

Photoshop CS4

Sinornithosaurus with prey

Sneak peek at an upcoming larger image. Sinornithosaurus with its prey, a freshly killed Callobatrachus.