#fossilfriday

[bobnichollsart]

NEW ARTWORK for Fossil Friday Here is "The Twisted Feast," commissioned by The Etches Collection. It features a bunch of fossil species from the museum and the Late Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay: a bait ball of Thrissops, Grendelius and Nannopterygius ichthyosaurs, diving Rhamphorhynchus pterosaurs, Caturus, Gyrodus, and Pachycormus fishes, a Dakosaurus croc, and three Kimmerosaurus.

[stavrosskundromichalis]

For Fossil Friday, here’s a double-page spread from my book (När dinosaurierna tog över, Idus förlag) depicting a scene from Southwestern China during the Early Jurassic. A pair of coelophysids (Panguraptor lufengensis) curiously observe a large sauropod (Chinshakiangosaurus chunghoensis) as it lumbers through the forest.

[lifesciencesmagazine]

[leppeppel]

Today's Aesthetic: outdated paleoart which nonetheless goes hard

...and more dinosaurs:

Here, T. rex is an upright "tail-dragger," as is the duck-billed Anatosaurus. An ankylosaur chills is the foreground, while a pterosaur and Triceratops occupy the background, along with fiery volcanoes. The overall scene gives "Dinos in the Garden on Eden" vibes.

It was once believed that Brachiosaurus lived in water to support its tremendous bulk, with its long neck and nostrils on top of its head acting like a snorkel and blowhole. (This is now known not to be the case.) Its forelimbs are also too similar to clawed elephant feet.

Atopodentatus and Helicoprion are competing for the title of "incorrect reconstruction of a prehistoric marine vertebrate with the wildest dentition."

Basilosaurus, AKA if whales were sea dragons:

The skeleton of the of the Greater Krayt Dragon in Star Wars isn't technically a reconstruction of any "real" animal (although the vertebrae are almost certainly casts of Dippy the Diplodocus), but it always makes me think of the fossilized basilosaurid skeletons found in Wadi el Hitan, "the Valley of the Whales."

The Jersey Shore, circa 80,000,000 BC (N.B. the last Elasmosaurus and the earliest Dryptosaurus were separated by approximately 10 million years.)

Interestingly, this late 19th century illustration imagines theropod dinosaurs (Dryptosaurus, in this case) as being highly agile and active, a concept which is much more in line with modern paleontological consensus but at odds with older notions of dinosaurs as sluggish, lumbering "tail-draggers."

Happy Fossil Friday!

[geologyjohnson]

Work in progress on a goniatite painting. What other critters should I add?

[paleochroma1]

Pulaosaurus qinglong Quick Studies

[mesozoicmarket]

A rooted dinosaur tooth of a Nanotyrannus sp. from the Hell Creek Formation in Carter County, Montana, United States. This unserrated basal morphology was previously known as the tooth taxon, Aublysodon amplus. While unserrated premaxillary teeth were supposedly an ontogenetically variable character, proposed to be found in young Gorgosaurus, recent studies on Nanotyrannus by Zanno and Napoli 2025 have shown this may not be the case implying these cannot belong to immature Tyrannosaurus rex. Which may mean they belong to Nanotyrannus lancensis and Nanotyrannus lethaeus. I'm not sure what this means for unserrated tyrannosaur premaxillary teeth from older deposits like the Judith River or Two Medicine Formation. Do they represent an undescribed Nanotyrannidae indet., or at least, a more basal eutyrannosaur/pantyrannosaur of some kind?

[northernmaineminerals]

Massive Arietites Ammonites in Natural Matrix with Custom Base from Nancy, France ☠️😵‍💫☠️

Nature is Art 🫠

#NorthernMaineMinerals