Railroadatrox Paleoart

Paleoart sideblog for Railroadlion

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DRAGONS OF THE MESOZOIC

I got commissioned to design a pterosaur back tattoo, and decided to use the opportunity to redraw my original dragons of the Mesozoic design.

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Therizinosaurus cheloniformis

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Dilophosaurus wetherilli

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Postosuchus kirkpatricki

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Shringasaurus indicus

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Quetzelcoatlus northropi

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Tyrannosaurus rex

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DRAGONS

Hello, I’ve been making more paleoart recently so I’m gonna be updating this blog again after so many years lol.

To begin, some pterosaurs from a while ago.

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12/31 Sinosauropteryx! 

Everyone knows this fella from the fame this fuzzy coat has granted him. Not only was Sinosauropteryx the first non-avian dinosaur to be discovered with fossil remains of feathers (much closer to fur or downy fluff than the flight feathers of modern birds), but those same feathers were the subject of scientific research into melanosomes!

Melanosomes are structures that indicate pigment in animals from squids to birds, and although they aren’t complex enough to indicate exact hue, they can show us the value and patterning of certain extinct animals. Case in point: the bands along the long tail of this handsome lad. (Side note: Red has become the trendy paleoart color-meme to portray extinct animals that feature melanosomes in their fossil remains. Sinosauropteryx in particular is almost always orangey red, but it’s a look that’s become almost too iconic for its own good) 

I wanted to depict a behavior that was unusual for an animal like this: hiding in a tree without the proper faculties to climb out. How did he get up there? Is he hiding from a predator? He looks a little scared, but I’m sure he’ll be fine.

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A major Mitchell's cockatoo and psittacosaurus squawking at one another

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11/31 Edmontosaurus Regalis!

It certainly has been a while since I’ve e added to this series. I hope that in the future I’ll spend less time laboring over backgrounds and just focus on the animals.

These fellers are weird! Edmontosaurus regalis is a species of dinosaur we have amazing soft tissue evidence of. That cockscomb on its head is based off of a real display structure likely used for attracting mates that was preserved in amazing detail!

In addition to the sexual dimorphism present in this species, I wanted to show off some ontogeny with the offspring of this bull here. His children are all a more washed out shade of gray than him, and their coloring is more spackled and stark to better hide them from predators in the underbrush. The shapes of their skulls are also much shorter and, frankly, cuter! This leads us to belive that parents of these Edmontosaurus offspring cared for their young because they found a charm in their babies they wanted to protect. As they grew bigger (eventually reaching sized of 30 feet/13 meters in lenghth, and 9.8 feet/3 meters tall!!) Their skull shapes and sexual features would grow in the early stages of adulthood, similar to modern birds.

Hopefully I won’t take too long to get around to th next paleoart, so look forward to it!

P.S. This reconstruction was heavily inspired by the Prehistoric Kingdom version of the animal. They do phenominal work and more people need to know about this gameand the love being poured into it!

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Whoops, wrong blog!

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10/31 Microraptor & Repenomammus!

Whew! It’s been a hot minute since I posted a proper paleoart here! These two beauties are Repenomammus (left) and Microraptor (right). These uncanny creatures lived in great forests in what is now China 125 million years ago. Microraptor was a dromeosaur with familiar features incorporated in the most unfamiliar ways. It not only had wings made for flight, it had four of them! Flight feathers on its arms and legs which most people are still unsure of the precise function of. Did it fly? Glide? Hard to say. Microraptor is also significant to the paleontology world because we know it’s exact colors! The very well preserved remains of its feathers tell us that the proteins responsible for Microraptor’s coloration formed iridescent black feathers- like a raven!

Repenomammus (as you can probably tell) is not a dinosaur, but is instead a mammal! A mammal that most likely laid eggs and lived a lifestyle similar to most Tasmanian devils or monotremes- like the echidna. One of the key fossil specimens of repenomammus show us something very fascinating: it’s diet! The preserved stomach contents of an unlucky repenomammus show a baby psittacosaurus (a cat sized bipedal ceratopsian) eaten whole. This shows us that these tiny mammals were scavenging and stealing young from dinosaurs right under their noses to get by, not unlike a raccoon or fox stealing eggs from a chicken coop.

For this piece, I thought why not switch the roles of this classic image: instead of a cold-blooded snake or feisty fox stealing eggs from a bird, why not have the bird stealing eggs from a primitive mammal? And here we are! A hungry Microraptor sneaks into the den of a repenomammus thinking she has left her eggs unattended, when the mother lunges out and drives her away with fierce vibrato!

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The Survey of Paleoartists returns!

The Survey of Paleoartists returns!

Paleoartists, it’s time to be heard! The 2019 edition of the paleoartists survey is now live. Since I’ve created a page for the survey here at LITC, I’m not going to make this a long post. I’ll just ask that in addition to participating, you share the survey far and wide! My goal is 700 respondents this year, double our 2017 number. I think it’s possible, but I need your help to spread the word.…

View On WordPress

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I’m on Twitter and Insta too

Twitter

Insta

I only post art on there too, so i’m just as quite as I am here

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Even dinosaurs aren’t safe from the staff

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Happy Thanksgiving! Here’s a commission I did for a classmate’s velociraptor OC, Lilac. Velociraptor is always compared to a turkey in terms of size, so I thought today would be an appropriate day to share this gal.

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09/31 Giraffatitan!

Of all the (proper) dinosaurs, sauropods have been the hardest for me to learn about. Their long necks are cool, but aside from varying posture, limit them to all looking kinda the same. Info about soft tissue remains is also super scarce, with the exception of only ONE article I found about maybe Diplodocids having iguana like spines along their backs. I wanted to be as scientifically accurate as I could with my depiction of Giraffatitan, but it seemed like I had to try my hand at some speculative biology.

First, I decided to limit the scale of body markings and display structures to just the business end of the animal. I’ve noticed the bigger a modern animal gets, the less they need to worry about camouflaging and distracting predators with fancy markings (that being said, inverted stripes on the tail and hind legs look cool and help break up the monotony of all that gray). Now to attract mates, the orange pattern on the neck would accentuate length and size of the animal when compared to other members of their species, flushing with blood when entering a fight or flight response. The gradient of black as the stripe gets closer to the head helps accentuate the orange. And finally, some teeny spines just for the heck of it. I’m still dubious on that one study, but sauropods are really thirsting for distinguishing features that aren’t their necks or size.

It’s hard to depict these animals without focusing on their sheer size and consequently losing all their finer details. Because of that, I tried my best to give plenty of height comparisons and layers of depth, while also trying to flesh out the animal as best I could.

Also, I'll try to make some more #Dinovember stuff, but who knows if I'll be free enough. I'll give it a shot though!

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08/31 Kronosaurus

Plesiosaurs are a bit outside of my range of knowledge when it comes to prehistoric animals, but I think I learned a lot about them from this piece. I’m breaking the chronology (Kronology?) a bit with this one, since Kronosaurus didn’t show up until the early cretaceous and we’re still in the jurassic, but I’ll bend the rules for one of the biggest marine reptiles to have ever lived.

I really wanted to accentuate the little fin on kronosaurus’ tail by having it cleanly peaking out of the water like a shark’s fin, but for the sake of the composition as a whole, that visual had to go. All In all, I’m happy to have explored such an amazing creature in a such a colorful way!