#wendiceratops

[solferreralua]

DINOSAUR PRINCEZAM!! He's a Wendiceratops! I also added Spinosaurus Zam as a treat because it's his favourite dino. But imma be so honest Zam you're NOT Spino coded.. you don't got that aura bro /silly

[lynxbriight]

Sir this is a wendiceratops (design wholly inspired by this:

Going to use this as an opportunity for a little update:

Taking a small break for the week.

One of my rats is dying and I want to make her last moments as rad as the ones she gave me. Worry not, I’ve built up a stock of art I can still post, but hope you understand.

[randomanimaloftheday]

Day 176#: Wendiceratops pinhornensis

Merry day five of Dino-December! Today's animal of the day is Wendiceratops pinhornensis!

Image credit: Danielle Dufault

This species of ceratopsian dinosaur lived during the Late Cretaceous period in what is now Canada. It was named after Canadian fossil hunter Wendy Sloboda, who discovered the first fossil specimens of this dinosaur during an expedition to the Pinhorn Reserve in Alberta, Canada. It was around 20 ft long, weighed 1.7 tons, and, like its larger cousin, Triceratops, had three horns on its face (two brow horns and one nasal horn). However, paleontologists have not yet found any of the brow horns, so their exact size and shape are unknown, but we know that Wendiceratops had them due to the shape of the available skull fragments. We have a better idea of what the nasal horn looked like, but it's broken in most specimens. Paleontologists estimate that it was around 4.5 inches long and had a base length of around 3.5 inches.

Image credit: cisiopurple on DeviantArt

Unlike Triceratops, the topmost epoccipitals of Wendiceratops, which are the little spikes on the edge of the frill, curved up and folded down against the front of the frill instead of sticking straight out like the epoccipitals of many other ceratopsian dinosaurs did. Having a distinct frill shape would have helped Wendiceratops differentiate members of its own species from other types of similar dinosaurs that lived in the same place and time. Wendiceratops was a member of the Centrosaurine subfamily, which typically had smaller but more elaborate frills, while the Chasmosaurine subfamily, which included Triceratops, had larger but less fancy frills.

[derived-centrosaur]

A slightly different take on Wendiceratops

This piece is the result of having too much time to sit and think during lockdown 2020. Wendiceratops is a centrosaurine from the lowermost section of the Oldman Formation on the Canadian side of the Montana/Alberta border. It's not one that gets brought up or mentioned a whole lot, but the few bits of art you see of it always show it with large brow horns, even Danielle Dufault's beautiful rendition in the original species description shows it with large brow horns. This is totally reasonable for a basal centrosaurine (i.e. a non-Eucentrosaur). But, there's an issue. In phylogenetic analyses Wendiceratops consistently groups as the sister taxon to Sinoceratops. The known fossils of Sinoceratops, while incompletely preserved, definitively show that it had no brow horns, only a couple tiny bumps. Furthermore, within the description of Wendiceratops the authors note that "Unfortunately, most of the braincase (...) and the postorbital have not been recovered." (Evans & Ryan 2015 pg. 9). Therefore, given the lack of postorbital material and the sister relation to Sinoceratops it would be most parsimonious to reconstruct Wendiceratops without brow horns. So that's what I did!

As for how well I executed that idea, well... It's not my best. I was still rather new to digital art at the time, and this was one of the first I had done that wasn't simply tracing over a photo of the bones and adding a little soft tissue. I had to wrangle with perspectives and angles that were unfamiliar, and I even tried to create a scaly effect with one of the 'dot splatter' tools. It turned out much darker, muddier, and less defined than I wanted, and I apparently didn't have a great grasp on how the forearm and chest muscles attached. A neat hypothesis but not so great execution.

References:

Wendiceratops description:

Evans, D. C. & Ryan, M. J. (2015) Cranial Anatomy of Wendiceratops pinhornensis gen. et sp. nov., a Centrosaurine Ceratopsid (Dinosauria: Ornithischia) from the Oldman Formation (Campanian), Alberta, Canada, and the Evolution of Ceratopsid Nasal Ornamentation. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0130007. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0130007

Sinoceratops description:

Xu, X., et. al. (2010) First Ceratopsid Dinosaur from China and its Biogeographical Implications. Chinese Science Bulletin, 55(16), pg. 1631-1635. doi: 10.1007/s11434-009-3614-5

[cleverbunnycompany]

New tote bag design request: Wendiceratops!

A Late Cretaceous Ceratopsian dinosaur from Canada! Its name means “Wendy's horned-face”, after the fossil hunter Wendy Sloboda, who discovered the bone site.

[thehappylittlesmilodon]

Sir this is a Wendiceratops

(design wholly inspired by this:

[topios]

A bit of self reflection.

[sallysurisue]

Hawthorne’s Facial Expressions!