The “Lost” Tyrannosaurs of Mike Kelly. Inedits from an ambitious project(Part One).

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Many years ago (in fact it was 2014) I was approached by a veritable dino-nerd with an extraordinarily ambitious project … a Tyrannosaurus/Turannosauria Project… and no it was not Thom Holtz or Dave Hone (which would have been quite the normal candidates to do this). Instead, it was a man that was no academic, only passionate about Tyrannosaurus.He was also truly serious… he wanted to be informed, study, and WRITE about his beloved subject. Nothing wrong with that I thought! He wanted to be as thorough as possible. and he had the means to do it.

Unfortunately the project never came to fruition (at least until now), but I have kept in my vaults some commissioned artwork that I felt I had no permission to show… A shame I thought. So after talking with Mike, we agreed and here is the first part… some would look familiar to many (because Mike shared some samples before) but others are completely new. What do you think? Should we encourage him to keep at it and finish this? Tyrannosaur fans all over the world would be enormously happy! There seems to be other artists involved, but for me, it all started with some tracing on the pictures of a famous Alamosaurus exhibition in the US.

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For starters, the striking difference of size between the titanosaur Alamosaurus (one of the very rare sauropods known from Late Cretaceous North America) and T. rex is so striking that is simply unbelievable. The sequence is illustrating Mike Kelly’s, own script/story of a family of Tyrannosaurus rex attacking a herd of Alamosaurus. Would this scenario be really possible? I got the idea that combining forces they might have managed to bring down one of the weaker titans by biting in two different places and make them fall unto its belly while being grabbed by the throat pouch by another T. rex.. Here’\s the sequence.

However, the greatest dancger was for any T. rex. A single swipe of the tail of an adult Alamosaurus would be enough to throw a T. rex out of balance and to the floor, breaking legs and ribs and making it unable to rise up again. Something that would have been turn it as an easy meal… to its own family! The famous Shark on Stilts had its weaker points too…

The next sequence would be Tarbosaurus v a Deinocheirus clan. Watch this space.