Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality, p Harcourt Brace Jovanovick. Although nature can be host to a va- riety of unfortunate and violent interactions, same-species duels for social dominance rarely end in death. Usually, animals have a surrender signal that lets their conspecifics know that they have given up. For these Fruitadens, the signal is lying flat down on the ground in a submissive posture.
Although this behavior is entirely speculative, it is not un- likely given the diverse contests for social dominance seen in birds today.
The Mesozoic must have been host to count- less similar displays, duels, struggles and competitions for social and sexual supremacy.
On this occasion, the combatants are of the genus Plateosaurus - the forerunners of the long-necked sauropods. Unlike their quadrupedal descendants, Plateosaurus still walked on two legs and their front limbs bore sharp claws which may have been used for defence, or for duels as shown here.
Rachel Lowrie has also adorned her Plateosauri with brightly-colored necks and inflatable throat sacs, which makes them stranger, but also more believable than the bare, snake-necked portrayals we have gotten used to. The almost classical scene of a mid-sized, herbivorous ornithischian being viciously torn apart by a pack of predatory Deinonychi is one such trope.
Such acts of predation are not impossible. In fact, there are Deinonychus fossils preserved alongside the bones of Ten- ontosaurus, a mid-sized ornithischian herbivore.
With this artwork, German palaeo- artist Ramul shows a stark reversal of the commonly-held stereotype. This time, a plant-eating dinosaur has killed a sub-adult Deinonychus by simply stomping on it. Many people fail to understand just how strong a moder- ately-sized herbivore can be, even if it has no sharp claws or teeth. For example, even a present-day horse can be an extremely intimidating and dangerous opponent if in an aggressive mood.
Growing almost as big as elephants, with powerful, muscular legs, arms and tails, herbivorous dino- saurs could certainly hold out on their own against small to mid-sized predators.
As a final detail, the herbivore is eating the remains of its would-be assailant. Such behavior has also been observed in nature, with herbivorous mam- mals occasionally consuming small animals or bird hatch- lings they come across.
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 15 4 : — As seen before in this book, spinosaurs were a group of meat-eating dinosaurs with possible adaptations for an aquatic lifestyle. Some members of this group bore very tall vertebral ridges on their backs.
Rather than an ornamental bony sail, its large neural spines serve an armor-encrusted anchor point for enormous tail muscles that propel it through reed and duckweed-infested swamplands. Locked in what seems to be a cycle of realism, prehistoric art could certainly benefit from daring techniques such as those used in this artwork. With this piece, Raven Amos has speculated on a similar behavior for the famous tyrannosaurs. Will this be his lucky day? Perhaps this scenario looks a bit too tongue-in-cheek, yet it still leads to new ideas about dinosaurian social life and mating habits.
Co-incidentally, this is one of the first new illustrations that depict tyrannosaurs with an extensive covering of feathers. Even when feathers were known for smaller dinosaurs, artists were reluctant to draw large tyrannosaurs with feathers, assuming they were too large to need insulation. However, the recent discovery of a large tyrannosaur, Yutyrannus, 1 preserved with feather-like in- tegument, has led artists to revise their depictions of these majestic predators.
Nature 92— Thus, this piece by Robinson Kunz is a welcome deviation from the norm. A large, plant eating dinosaur and a small- er, bird-like species are seen in a symbiotic relationship, where the small dinosaur cleans the larger one of parasites, and stands on lookout for larger predators which may endanger both individuals.
This relationship is similar to the one that exists today between large, savannah-dwelling herbivores and small birds in Africa. The unsuspecting hosts will accept the parasite hatchling as their own and raise it at expense of their own offspring. The parasite hatchling may even kill its nest- mates in order to ensure its survival. Who knows what the nest parasites of the past may have looked like?
Robinson Kunz has come up with this depiction of the long-tailed Darwin- opterus as a pterosaurian nest parasite. Current fossil discoveries indicate that pterosaurs, unlike birds, were able to fend for themselves at a very early stage of their lives, perhaps even right after hatching.
But pterosaurs were a very diverse group, an as it is often the case in nature, there could have been exceptions to the rule. The Pterosaurs: From Deep Time. New York: Pi Press. ISBN X. Artist A Speculative Spinosaurus Rodrigo Vega admits that his interpretation is possibly too extreme, but it serves a very important purpose for people As seen before, the predatory dinosaur Spinosaurus has interested in dinosaurs and palaeontology - it gets us think- been the center of much palaeontological speculation with ing about the relation between fossils and the features they its possible lifestyle and the soft-tissues covering of its supported in real life.
With this spectacular work, con- ceptual artist Rodrigo Vega purposefully delivers the most outlandish interpretation of Spinosaurus he can conceive.
Spinosaurus has a long, almost crocodile-like snout. He speculates that this organ could have been used like a snorkel when the animal was diving, and would also help it snatch prey items. Perhaps, Vega muses, Spinosaurus had a similar adaptation. The presence of trunks, or trunk-like organs in dinosaurian faces, by the way, is not a new idea. Proboscis-like facial organs were proposed for the plant eating sauropod dinosaurs as far back as The tall neural spines, so often thought as supports for a thin, reptilian sail, have been re-interpreted as the basis for an enormous, bison-like hump.
To support the weight of this structure, the animal has reverted to a semi-quadrupedal stance, using its muscular arms to carry itself. Vega specu- lates that Spinosaurus may have used this fatty hump as a food reservoir for lean seasons. Sauropod habits and habitats.
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 17, Look closer, however, and details hint that this is not the case. It has tiny claws where its wings should be, and small, nascent teeth gleam in its beak. This chick is a dinosaur chick, of a species known as Austroraptor.
The toothy maw in the picture it is not that of a menacing predator, but of one of its protective parents. Unusually for its group, it had very short arms and an elongated snout lined with conical teeth. Perhaps, Mazzei speculates, Austroraptors started out as more-or-less aquatic juveniles, and graduated to a more ter- restrial existence as they grew. For a present-day analogy, imagine a mammal that would live like a mouse at infancy, like a jackal in adolescence, and like a tiger in adult- hood.
Some researchers think that this model of growth occurred in most, if not all dinosaur species. Canale, Juan D. Porfiri and Jorge O.
Calvo We have no evidence of such a ritual in the fossil record, and pterosaur wing membranes likely did not leave their legs free for such activities, but nevertheless this piece leaves a momen- tous impact. The sight of two creatures in loving courtship leads us to think about what feelings, affections and emotions prehis- toric animals may have experienced in their lives.
After all, animals share homologous structures such as skeletal parts, limbs and sense organs. Perhaps we have homologous emotions too. Therizinosaurus, as strange as it was, belonged to a dinosaur group that was not too far removed from the ancestry of birds, yet it is mostly portrayed as a hulking, bare-skinned beast in popular books and websites. Aided with a vast reservoir of knowl- edge on anatomy, evolutionary biology and anthropology, he adds layers of details to his concepts and characters, resulting in an engrossing, world-building experience.
A race of terrifying, one-eyed giants, the cyclopes were mentioned primarily in the epic poetry of Homer and He- siod. In , Othenio Abel proposed 1 that the myth may have been started by the skulls of dwarf elephants Pal- aeoloxodon sp. Elephant skulls have a large hole in the center that anchors the powerful muscles of their trunks.
Having no knowledge of extinction, fossils, evolution or anatomy, it is easy to understand how the ancient Greeks may have mistaken these for remains of one-eyed giants. This mad brute is the re- sult of his speculation. Differ- ent models have been proposed for intelligent dinosaurs in recent decades.
This model was later criticized because it looked too much like a human being. Would there really be an evolutionary pressure for all intel- ligent animals to develop a humanoid body plan? More recently, in , zoologist Darren Naish suggested that due to their bird-like anatomy, intelligent dinosaurs would look more like birds. Their bodies would be horizontally aligned, and their tails would not need to disappear. Like parrots and crows today, they would use their beaks to manipulate objects.
With deep knowledge of his subject, Simon Roy makes even these obsolete dinosauroids seem vividly real. Syllogeus 1— Russian palaeoartist Smyslov Alexander brings in a suggestion a few have considered - what if cer- tain dinosaurs only had seasonal feathering? In his hypo- thetical scenario, the early plant-eating dinosaur Heterodontosaurus has two distinct morphs for different times of the year. The animals lose their hair-like body covering during the warm season, and re-gain their plum- age with the arrival of colder weather and rains.
The green color of the autumnal feathering also helps the animal disguise itself from predators. Just take a look at the arctic fox, Vulpes lagopus. These animals adopt a snow-white, insulating coat with the onset of winter and revert to a shorter, darker covering of fur in the warmer summer months. Closer to dinosaurs, polar birds known as rock ptarmigans, Lagopus muta, also have sets of brown and white plumage for camouflage in different seasons.
Discovered back in , 1 this bus-sized dinosaur soon became a palaeontological enigma. At first, the plates were thought to be fused to its skin, like the scales of a gigantic pangolin. Later on, other interpretations were proposed with the plates standing erect in a single row, a side-by-side double row and so on. Some researchers though the plates were independently movable, while others disagreed.
An eccen- tric writer even reconstructed them as tiny wings, which helped the immense animal glide from cliffs! There is still some debate over what function they performed, but it is certain that this did not extend to aeronautical capabilities. It is over this historical puzzle that artist Smyslov Al- exander brings a new interpretation. He maintains the plate arrangement in its orthodox fashion, but proposes a covering layer of skin, muscle and subcutaneous fat on top of them.
American Journal of Science 3 14 : — The Ogden Standard-Examiner, pp. He has immersed himself in a calm river and is causing the water around him to vibrate and bubble with sound waves. The extensive system of air sacs 1 in his lungs and chest is help- ing him better transmit vibrations from his body to the water.
Evidence for bird-like air sacs in saurischian dinosaurs. They can either be symbi- otic, beneficial for both parties, or parasitic, in which one animal benefits at the expense of another. But real life is not so clear-cut. Nature is full of opportunistic relationships that can change back and forth between symbiosis and par- asitism. Indeed, this is how distinctly parasitic or symbiotic relations evolve in the first place. An animal might initially approach another as a parasite, but may inadvertently cause beneficial side-effects.
In due time, such relationships may evolve into symbiosis - and vice versa. Artist Oscar Mendez has here imagined a similarly am- biguous relationship in dinosaurs.
The small, bird-like, one-clawed alvarezsaurs are approaching the tired Saurolo- phus with intent to pick at its skin and lick the blood that issues from the wounds. How would one classify such an interaction? The smaller dino- saurs are costing the Saurolophus a few drops of its blood, but they are also cleaning it of insects that might spread potentially lethal diseases. In due time, the alvarezsaurs could start feeding more on the insects and less on Saurolophus blood, and this could be the beginning of a truly symbiotic partnership.
If drawn Passive Defense - Oryctodromeus a few years ago, Troodon would have feathers, but would retain a dragon-like head. Its fingers would be visible from This stylized drawing is an excellent summary the great among a few long, feathers emerging awkwardly from its image revision that dinosaurs underwent in the last mis-aligned hands.
Oryctodromeus would still be a quasi- decade or so. It shows a plant-eating ornithischian dino- reptilian kangaroo. To protect In contrast, artist Oscar Mendez has drawn these animals itself, Oryctodromeus is hiding in its burrow, and brandish- in the light of our latest knowledge, and in a wider un- ing its spiny tail to ward off the attacker. Accurate representations not only make dinosaurs animals with specifically and only those patches present.
In more interesting, they also help convey the evolutionary reality, the patchy preservation is a by-product of fossiliza- relationship they have with birds. They make us realize tion, and these animals must have sported a more extensive how much of conventional palaeoart is based on repetitions integument that even covered their faces. Perhaps one day, new discoveries will make this artwork seem as dated as the reptile-like Likewise, Oscar Mendez has illustrated Troodon as a proper, dinosaurs of the past.
Based on careful observations of real-life birds, Mendez has given it subtle nuances of movement such as its folded wings and the flexing posture of its feet as it 1 Zheng, Xiao-Ting; You, Hai-Lu; Xu, Xing; Dong, Zhi-Ming 19 March Nature : — Unlike most related species, its legs and tail were not extensively feathered. Despite its small size, it did not seem to have the ability to fly. Artist Oscar Mendez has here interpreted this puzzling animal as a nocturnal, gruond- scurrying hunter of insects and other small animals, a dino- saur converging with shrews and other small mammals.
Whether this interpretation is true or not, this enigmatic lit- tle dinosaur has shown us that the evolution of birds from dinosaurs was not as straightforward as once believed.
Instead of a straight progression from small, meat eating dinosaurs to avians, the natural history of birds seems to have included myriads of side-paths, dead ends and tangent forms. Who knows what other strange quasi-birds may have shared the world with dinosaurs and their flying descendants?
Nature Communications 4: Instead of trying to argue the errors of hybrids of different fossil animals and even machines.
Its fronds are full of symbiotic algae colonies that convert Longisquama is known mainly from one fossil, which only sunlight into energy and it spends most of its life hanging preserves its front half. A variety of purposes have been suggested for these Although certain invertebrates have recently been discov- fronds, from camouflaging the animal in trees to display ered to integrate photosynthesis into their metabolisms, 5 devices for mating, or as winglets to help it glide from no evidence exists for similar phenomena in vertebrates.
As branch to branch. Because the fossil is indistinct, it is difficult to interpret diagnostic details such as the parts of the skull and the forelimbs. It was thought that Longisquama was somehow related to the base of the family tree that includes crocodiles and dinosaurs.
A researcher by the name of David Peters has claimed he was able to see the missing rear half of the skel- eton by enhancing the images of the fossil in a computer, and proposed that it was an ancestor of pterosaurs, flying reptiles of the past. Paleontologiceskii Zhurnal 1 : — Dawn of The Dinosaurs: Life in the Triassic. Bloom- ington: Indiana University Press. Science : — One such site is the Hell Creek Forums page, from which artist Tom Parker has gathered this nice selection of uncommon scenes people would like to see represented more in palaeoart.
A pterosaur is burying its eggs, much like a sea turtle. Birds employ scoop drink- ing, while mammals drink water with a lapping action generated with their mobile lips, cheeks and tongue. A cool-climate theropod, an adorable Sinosauropteryx prima, is licking moisture off an icicle.
This is a common feather-cleaning and possibly fun, activity undertaken by many birds living today. Featuring a Gorgosaurus, prowling a slow river for frogs and turtles. Believers in such romanticism might be surprised to know that accidents happen in nature, more often than we think.
There are countless cases of unlucky animals breaking their limbs and simply starving to death. Cattle get struck by lightning, walruses plummet off cliffs, and duelling rein- deer get tangled in horn-locks and perish. Perhaps one of the strangest cases of animal death on record is the case of a giraffe dying after getting its head stuck in a cleft tree branch.
Inspired by this incident, Finnish palaeoartist Tuomas Koivurinne has come up with this scene of an unfortunate Giraffatitan perishing in an arboreal accident. I'm certain that you too have such knowledge and I know that you too have probably considered setting them down for the ages- so, go ahead, do it!
Do it now. Once your mind ceases to function, overtaken by death or disease, memories evaporate like morning mist, as if they never were. While you can, I urge you to create, draw, film, write, do something to leave your mark.
Keep a diary, record your experiences and thoughts. You are valuable, you are unique, don't pass us by without a sound. We need to hear what you have heard, we need to know what you have learned! So, tell us! Here you will find thoughts on choices and directions, values and truths, morality and relationships. We present a great number of facts and opinions and ask our readers sift though them, taking and using whatever you believe of value, enriching your own thoughts and hopefully, passing them on to others.
Bufalo's collection of stories, essays, and politically incorrect commentary by and about the Marines fighting terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan shows how troops feel about being in harm's way. Soumya Prakash Sarangi. He has co-authored nearly 10 books. Even if it means opening her eyes to a truth so terrible that she may not survive it Em and Marina are in a race against time that only one of them can win.
All Our Yesterdays is a wrenching, brilliantly plotted story of fierce love, unthinkable sacrifice, and the infinite implications of our every choice. All Your Yesterdays dwells further into the world of rational speculation with in-depth explanation and scientific references about each artwork. Nonfiction Science Dinosaurs Evolution More Details. Kosemen 15 books 46 followers. Kosemen also writes as Nemo Ramjet.
Kosemen is an artist and independent researcher born in Ankara, Turkey. Copies of this book have been purchased by leading universities and research institutes of the world. It has won the Eduard-Duckesz History Prize.
Search review text. All Yesterdays was a very good book pointing out some serious problems in paleoart. It gives the reader a good idea of its subject matter and uses plenty of examples to illustrate the problems within it while pointing out that it is just wild speculation. Then it finishes with showing how the animals of today could be incorrectly reconstructed which serves as an interesting thought experiment to further illustrate the point.
0コメント