#meiolania

[fossillad123]

bowser from down under

[bjekkergauken]

Here's something i started last spring and left in a drawer to gather dust until now basically, last spring I played through the original Zoo tycoon (One of my big childhood games) and I wanted to paint all the prehistoric critters in the Dinosaur digs expansion. Went for more accurate reconstruction, but with game-based coloration.

[nazrigar]

Beast Fables Weretober 2025 Batch One: Meiolania, Caspian Tiger, Megalara and Giant Hornet

The first batch of Weretober drawings I've done.

Meiolania: Myles' paternal step-grandpa, Nullah, faces off against a Quinkana Lindwyrm.

Caspian Tiger: Andriy Kolosov, one of the greatest hunters and warriors of Beast Fables about to bring down a mighty brethmechin, the chimeric form of a tiger.

Megalara vs Giant Hornet: A giant hornet (left) trying to raid a village, but before she can do that, has to get through the were-Megalara mercenary man guarding it.

[best-fictional-lizard]

Magnificent Bumstinger [Speculative Dinosaur Project] vs. Meiolania [Zoo Tycoon]

Best Fictional Marine Reptile Tournament: Cyan Bracket; Round 1H, Poll 7/8

Magnificent Bumstinger [Speculative Dinosaur Project]

Meiolania [Zoo Tycoon]

Voting ended onNov 24, 2025

(The bracket color names are just for thematic organization and are NOT representative of the candidates!)

Propaganda (if any) under the cut! Please be civil, and feel free to reblog!

Propaganda for Magnificent Bumstinger [Speculative Dinosaur Project]:

None submitted.

Propaganda for Meiolania [Zoo Tycoon]:

None submitted.

[252mya]

Giant Tortoises Among Us poster

A variety of giant "tortoises" shared the planet with humans and other hominins during the Pleistocene and Holocene. Compare their size and discover where they lived with this amazing poster.

252mya.com/tortoisemap

Art by Joschua Knüppe

[arminreindl]

Meiolaniidae

So honestly I'm relatively new to digital painting. I sketched a little here and there, made skeletals, but actual painting I've done very little. But I ended up putting this together for my work on the Wikipedia page for meiolaniid turtles. (Yes the Ninjemys colours are a reference to it being named after the TMNT)

I've rambled a bit about them before, but basically, meiolaniids are weird stem-turtles thought to be outside the two main modern groups we have. They were decently large animals, their shells alone range from 1 meter to 2 meters in length (3 to 6ft I believe?), they were land animals, had some crazy horns and tails that were encased in spiky armored rings and tipped with a tail club. Here some photos with paleontologist Victoria Arbour, a Ninjemys tail club photographed by Serjoscha Evers and a Meiolania tail club illustrated by W.H. Wesley.

They were found throughout almost the whole Cenozoic, with the oldest form dating to the Eocene of South America and the most recent ones living from the Pleistocene to Holocene in Australia and on various South Pacific Islands. They are honestly pretty cool animals and super underrated, which is why I decided to give their wikipedia pages upgrades in the first place. Which also meant doing a bunch of other illustrations (that I was more in tune with) and pulling a bunch of public domain photos and putting them on wikimedia. Here some skeletals and charts I made, open the last pic, it shows multiple different Meiolania species atop each other.

The results were pretty mixed tbh. Some of the most recent forms, Gaffneylania, Warkalania and even Ninjemys had relatively little to write about. But things were more exciting with Niolamia (if you remember my rant about its messed up history). Meiolaniidae itself was just a big summary of all the other stuff, but easily the most extensive was Meiolania itself, which took AGES to research and put togehter. Tho I'm pretty happy with the result. Here's a little side by side, old and new.

[tym-0n]

Horned turtle from Australia and near islands Meiolania

Scale: 1:35

Material: super sculpey

[dry-gold]

Most interesting extinct australian animal starting with 'M'

Mammalodon

Mandageria

Megalibgwilia

Meiolania

Minmi

Murgonemys

Murrayglossus

Muttaburrasaurus

Mythunga

Voting ended onFeb 1, 2024

Mythunga, a cretaceous pterosaurLinks and propaganda Mammalodon, a cenozoic baleen whale from before baleen Mandageria, a devonian lobe-finned fish Megalibgwillia, a big cenozoic echidna Meiolania, a cenozoic horned tortoise Minmi, a cretaceous armoured dinosaur Murgonemys, a cenozoic soft-shelled turtle Murrayglossus, an even bigger cenozoic echidna Muttaburrasaurus, a cretaceous ornithopod dinosaur Mythunga, a cretaceous pterosaur