Thank you all friends and followers of this blog for your support in 2017…
… and for those who don’t want celebration hats or anything to do with “holiday seasons”, here’s, by request, the original version of the illustration for the “postcard”… T. rex might have been a good parent in difficult times too!
Imagine yourself walking quietly searching for prey on a field of ferns in the middle of a Jurassic tropical forest. You have good colour vision to spot any unusual coloration in the sea of greens. You discover some structures raising above the greenery and approach carefully… but you should have realised (just by the colour) that the row of structures were also warning signs… and the greenery is hiding the spiked end of it. Suddenly you are up in the air with the Stegosaurus stenops spikes lethally puncturing your crotch from underneath!
This fossil was unearthed in Wyoming in 1999. By the look of the abscess Allosaurus must have died of septicemia. For years, and after some discussions with Dr. Bob Bakker (whose reconstruction of the “accident” is well known), I have been trying to figure out and alternate vision of what on earth could have caused the actual a thin Allosaurus pubis punctured with such precision, not from the side (as I would have expected from an attack of Stegosaurus) but from under, right in the crotch like a modern bullfighter.. The keratinous covering of the spikes of Stegosaurus should have made them extremely sharp to penetrate with such accuracy. I have come with this little story that seems to me more credible than other explanations. Here’s the genesis of the composition, from pencil study to finalised drama… as Peter Norton commented: it must have hurt!
An addition to Dinosaur rEvolution in the future. This might become part of another oncoming, massive, very ambitious project that could become very important and original… I’m still awaiting instructions to disclose more details!
And this time for real… No helping Diplodocus restorations, no talks, no scientific accuracy… only surrealism. Hope you can excuse indulging once again in my taste for Pre-hispanic Art and the fact that I keep turning to use its influence for some of my own paleo-interests . Yes the famous Aztec symbol of the eagle and serpent over a cactus (in remembrance of the legendary origin of Tenochtitlan, the Mexica capital, famously used as the Mexican flag’s national emblem) has been of special interest for me over the years. On my annual visit to Metepec near Toluca (Edo. de Mexico), inspired and aided by the workshop of Israel Soteno and Blanca Jiménez, and with their priceless help, I decided to do some more clay work inspired by a Prehispanic design I’ve seen years ago… and once again the raptor would go back in time and become a Veloci-raptor , while the serpent would have the tiny legs of a Cretaceous one. The cactus is being “vomited” by a yet even more surreal version of Tlatecuhtli, or Mother Earth ( considering how volcanic is the soil…”Atom Heart Mother”?), representing an island surrounded by the veins of water from the lake.
I show here three stages; No. 1 still fresh and wet. As with all traditional procedures, things might go wrong… and they did: the piece broke while drying before being burned in the massive oven… then it further broke while bringing it home to London so I had to mend it, reconstructing it with different kinds of cement and glue.
No. 2 shows it already painstakingly reconstructed and with an enamel coating to start painting it.
No. 3 is the piece finally painted very much in the style of a three dimensional Aztec Codex, a style I learned to apply on clay from Carlos Soteno (see here the previous example I did together with Carlos two years ago in a much more traditional rendering).
The Codex pictorial literature tell us the life and history of the indigenous Americans and look to me as precursors of contemporary comics and picture books. A colourful, playful language that became very much part of my childhood and younger days in Mexico, and that I’d like to pay tribute to once again… and this time recounting what might have been Prehistoric Mexico using familiar, traditional symbols!
Once Palaeontologists get their heads down to revise classification things start to be seen with different eyes and everything changes. There’s almost a full acceptance now on the newest reclassification of dinosaurs, that managed to challenge the traditional dinosaur evolutionary tree… we were used to see Dinosaurs as “Ornithischians” and “Saurischians”. No more: we have now Saurischia (subdivided in Herrerasauridae and Sauropodomorpha) and Ornithoscelida (subdivided in Theropoda and Ornithischia) ,
But, just as in Darwin times, we needed a “Missing Link”… South America continues to produce wonders! Meet Chilesaurus diegosuarezi, the latest motive of confusion on one side and settling an argument on the other. This new dog-sized animal has been called the “Frankenstein” dinosaur. For the late Jurassic, it must have been already a relic! In parts it looked like a theropod with the backwards pelvis of an Ornithischian. The dentition showed also a vegetarian diet. The mixture of characters made it anomalous from the moment it was discoveredend (even the pelvis looks primitive for an ornithischian!), but it is only until now that finally everything makes sense: it is a basal ornithischian with theropod characteristics! Yes it seems that this is the Missing Link the new Ornithoscelida grouping was calling for! Ornithischia and Theropoda are confirmed more closely related than it was previously thought, thanks to this new primitive Ornithischian with major Theropodan characteristics… The strong, two clawed hands (with vestigial third finger) look very theropod-like, and the pelvic differences that defined both clades are now better understood thanks to the transitional stage of Chilesaurus,
And where did the old Saurischia go? Well, Sauricschia now comprises Sauropodomorpha and Herrerasauridae. So the dinosaur family tree just got more… complicated. 
I am currently updating to the last detail the forthcoming new opening of Dinosaur rEvolution in several places in Australia… and I’m betting we are going to be the first ones to have a completely update, revolutionary view of dinosaur evolution. In the meantime, this little critter is going to be prominently featured!
Of course, the external porcupine-like external integument is my own personal prediction…
Presenting: The Art of the Dinosaur.
It is difficult to describe my excellent relationship with a consummate professional like Mr. Kazuo Terakado, science journalist and senior researcher at the Japan Space Forum. 
His love for Dinosaur Art seems to have no bounds and has the right ideas for it. When he asked me if he could use my “Home’s Garden” for the last words of this excellent book, I understood that he knew very well what he was up to and knew the boundaries between science and “Art”. I’m very keen on the word “Paleoillustration” but as many know, I like to think that I’m interpreting scientific ideas through art techniques and leaving “art” in another realm. Perhaps it is true, we all develop a certain style that becomes almost a blueprint with our own personality… but illustrating Palaeontology has certain boundaries that “Art” doesn’t have… and those boundaries are called “science”: you have to be very careful to do your homework properly, well beyond mastering Photoshop techniques! Dinosaurs are NOT “monsters” anymore!
Nevertheless, as you’ll be able to still see, there’s an (almost) boundless realm of imagination for artists interested in recreating scientifically an extinct world. The competition these days is much more fierce than it was 20 or even 30 years ago, but every artist continues to develop his own personality, his own blueprint… and variety is what counts when doing Paleoillustration… For me the detective work was what counted, and the fact that many many years ago, a child dreamed to live in a museum… and happened to realise his dreams after all, but with the slant of the adult researcher and the new wonder that those fabulous monuments he was in awe of at the museums, were actually living creatures again, thanks mostly to the Dinosaur Renaissance… Today the Dinosaur Renaissance has exploded as you are able to see in the enormous variety of artists, apart from yours truly, that this book contains. It is a good example that variety of talent means everything for creativity… and it becomes even more relevant if it is compiled with the love and care that virtually only the Japanese publishers do these days! Many thanks Mr. Terakado!
The book is available here and now , don’t miss it!
It’s been a while since I do something spiky and scaly… no feathers this time! But I couldn’t resist the temptation: It is not very often there’s a find as this remarkable nodosaur fossil now at the Tyrrell Museum, the supreme Dinosaur Mecca in Alberta, Canada and made public by National Geographic in astounding detail… the carcass, now named as Borealopelta markmitchelli, originally fell to the bottom of the sea or waterway on its back, but turned over and with a painstakingly good restoration work we get an almost life-like gargoyle, a real snapshot of the animal’s front, fully armoured and looking as if it was alive still! It clarifies a lot about nodosaur armature, and simply the incredible brightly woven spikes would be a deterrent.. and a distraction to the odd Acrocanthosaurus, busy following sauropod herds!
It is not the first time I do a spiky one coloured red… While Jakob Vinther fully reaches his conclusions studying melanosome fossilised remains preserved… I picture a reddish handsome devil!
Finding new Gondwana hadrosaurs is always an event. I have had the great pleasure and honour to restore this robust new saurolophine for my friend Penélope Cruzado Caballero, that has done her PhD on hadrosaurs!. She has always been the Hadrosaur Ace to my eyes.
Bonapartesaurus rionegrensis, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, possesses a strange mixture for characters that reminds me of the tall vertebrae (hips and tail) that I found also typical typical of Mexican hadrosaurs, but now represented as South as late Campanian–early Maastrichtian of the Salitral Moreno site in Argentina!
Bonapartesaurus is obviously named not after Napoleon, but after the legendary, charming, and sometimes infamous, Argentinian palaeontologist José Bonaparte (responsible of so many South American dinosaur finds), whom I had the privilege of meeting a SVPCA meeting in Oxford many years ago.
According to Penélope:
“Bonapartesaurus has extremely long sacral spines . The sacrals are very wide anteroposteriorly and narrow lateromedially. While the caudals have a very characteristic baseball bat shape. That is, they widen greatly towards the distal end of the spine.
The foot has a very large bone regrowth in one of the metatarsals,.We still do not know how it could affect the life of this dinosaur. It is the next new project that I will carry out.
It is related to the North American hadrosaurids Prosaurolophus maximus and Saurolophus osborni and the Asian Saurolophus angustirostris.
Measurements: The femur has a length of 96 cm and a diameter of 12.4 cm. The tibia has a length of 81.5 cm. Bonapartesaurus was about 9 meters long.
Associated fauna
They have been found in the same area remains of the titanosauridos Rocasaurus muniozi and Aeolosaurus sp. There are also remains of saltasaurines and sauropod eggs of titanosaurides have been found.
Remains of birds, turtles, coelosaurid theropods and nodosaurid type ankylosaurids were also found.
Among the hadrosaurids found in the site was the species Willinakaqe, that is no longer valid. Among its remains we discovered that there were two different morphotypes, but we have not been able to tell if they are due to sexual dimorphism or two species.
Paleoenvironment:
Alluvial plain of a delta.”
I have taken some liberties (especially considering that we don’t know how the pathological bone would have looked from the outside) and have added some dromeosaurids to spice up things! The landscape I chose as model was as a tribute to Penélope (who is Spanish)… it is the Asturias coast in Northern Spain where some of the biggest footprints of titanosaurs have been found… a little arbitrary detail to add some meaningful ‘artistic’ content!
