Small collection of color sketches of speculative art of dinosaurs
Some color sketches I made as a personal creature design challenge, I've been having fun making these unnacurate and featherly representations of dinos on my spare time. My goal was to make em as visually striking as a could without losing the base design in the process.
From top to bottom they are: Carnotaurus, Qutzacoatlus, Spinosaurus Mirabilis, Yi Qi, Dilophosaurus and Ankylosaurus
The enigmatic Esconichthys apopyris lived during the late Carboniferous, around 308 million years ago, in a lush tropical estuary covering what is now Illinois, USA.
Up to about 8cm long (~3"), it had a prominent pair of eyes, two pairs of elongated external gills bearing long feathery projections, a slender limbless body lined with muscle segments, and a single low fin running along the underside of its tail.
There also seem to have been two different body types that might represent separate species: the "flathead" form with wide-set eyes, and the "snubnose" form with close-set eyes.
Often nicknamed "blades", "ghosts", or "grasshoppers" by fossil collectors, specimens of this little animal are the most common vertebrates found in the Mazon Creek fossil beds — and yet we don't actually know what it is. In the past it was proposed to be a larval lungfish or amphibian, but its anatomy doesn't quite fit any known group.
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References:
Bardack, David. "A larval fish from the Pennsylvanian of Illinois." Journal of Paleontology 48.5 (1974): 988-993. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1303297
Bardack, David. "Fishes of the Mazon Creek fauna." Mazon Creek Fossils. Academic Press, 1979. 501-528. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-519650-5.50024-2
RCFossils. "Mazon Creek Best Of The Best Esconichthys Apopyris Bardack, 1974." The Fossil Forum, 03 Dec. 2019, https://www.thefossilforum.com/topic/100449-mazon-creek-best-of-the-best-esconichthys-apopyris-bardack-1974/
Young, Andrew. "Mazon Creek Fossil Fauna - Tetrapods, Aistopods, and Larval Fish." Andrew Young Art, https://www.andrewyoungart.com/mc-fa---tetrapods-and-blades.html
Here is another commission for Gaming Beaver that I made around the same time as the Ceratosaurus. This time it's an image of a foraging kentrosaurus pausing to take a drink.
'Microraptor and the Nest Guard' - an early-Cretaceous short by me.
I actually made a video documenting my animation process from start to finish for this specific short, so if you're interested, check it out on my YouTube channel!
I know Eohippus means Dawn Horse in Greek, but coincidentally, Eoh also means Horse in Old English (originally, before it was replaced by Hors) so Eohippus could also means Horse Horse.
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