#cellulosaurus

[iamthekaijuking]

What's your opinion on these pokemon skeletals from the official fossil pokemon exhibits? I am not asking for the models because they are an absolute eyesore, tyrantrum's jaw is fused to its cranium and aurora's frills are made of bone

These are actually remarkably good, like wow. Everything is there, from the gastralia, wishbones, coracoids, different vertebrae types, and Aurora even has osteoderms. They even included an accurate number of phalanges in each finger.

My only complaints are the lack of braincases, Tyrantrum’s lack of a sternum, and Aurora’s gastralia and numerous claws (which would imply it’s a prosauropod or basal sauropod and not an eusauropod, but that’s just a nitpick considering pokemon might not even be animals and are possibly aliens that replaced them if the implications of the sun and moon games are anything to go by).

I really like these, they’re incredibly accurate.

[iamthekaijuking]

I was reading through the Parave document and an incredibly nitpicky bird evolution nerd question occured to me: How would you account for paravians most likely having digits 2 and 3 embedded together in a fleshy bundle, sorta like modern birds?

(we have evidence of that for both Anchiornis and microraptor and I don't know of any paravian fossil where the digits are clearly all splayed out as if they were independant)

Really that doesn't change how interesting it is to read but I think it's a noteworthy thing to ask, even if I'm 100% sure the MH don't know about that

Have a nice day!

Yeah that’s another anatomy detail that I don’t think the people designing the monsters are aware of.

As for the gradual fusing of digits 2 and 3, I’d just say parave wyverns evolved out of it or maybe never even evolved it at all. It seems like it might be something unique to paraves since I don’t think other maniraptors had a similar thing, for instance Therizenosaurus had separate fingers as far as I can tell. So it’s possible they split off right before that was a thing.

As for the “evolving out of it” angle, Bambiraptor has opposable first and third fingers, so there had to be some degree of separation between digits 2 and 3 for that to work. So maybe as parave wyverns became omnipedal they separated their fingers.

Glad you’re enjoying the read too!