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.

Talos sampsoni

This is the newly described troodontid Talos sampsoni of Utah's Kaiparowits Formation. The described specimen of this derived troodontid had an interesting feature, which is that the sickle claw-bearing toe of the left foot had been broken in life, including a surface lesion, and had then healed. The authors speculate that the toe may have been damaged in some sort of physical trauma or infection. A popular theory is that it was damaged in the act of predation, though that remains a speculative idea.

Here I've reconstructed it inspecting the hurt toe after the injury had occurred, perhaps cleaning it as best as it was able.

The paper is open access, so please feel free to read more about it here.

Saurornitholestes langstoni

Saurornitholestes, a remake of an earlier image.

Around a year ago there was a new discovery involving fossilized scratch marks, presumably from the foot claws of a maniraptoran, at the entrance to an ancient primitive mammal burrow. I illustrated it at the time and some of you may remember it. However more recently a museum representative from Denver contacted me wanting a larger resolution version of the piece, so I updated it accordingly and added some additional details for accuracy and interesting-ness, including the trio of Pteranodon longiceps from a recent submission. (This is not the highest resolution, obviously, but I think the improvement in detail is noticeable.)

To reiterate the study:

The scratched-out burrows provide a unique insight into both the behavior and diet of these dinosaurs, which must have occasionally dug out the burrows of their prey, like many modern predators do. This trace fossil was found in Utah and is dated at around 80 million years old, which means the claw marks could belong to several different small dromaeosaurs or troodonts. I've illustrated the dromaeosaur Saurornitholestes here, which was similar in size and anatomy to Velociraptor. The findings were published in the journal Geology.

Microraptor

Microraptor sitting on a branch. Quick sketch from class today, nothing special. Done without references, so possibly inaccurate.