Re: New Dinosaur Art Web Site!

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

Well, you called for it B-) ... ;-) Apologies for the long mail.

Your site is definitely better than anything I can do, but:

The running _T. rex_ on the homepage (as well as the background) is
admirable, but why does the _Triceratops_ sprawl its forelimbs?

_Allosaurus fragilis_ vs. _Stegosaurus stenops_: The thigh of _A._ looks a
bit short and thin, and the belly... it isn't pregnant, is it? It would
probably look that way after having eaten a lot, but judging from the nearly
intact _S._, which has hardly been nipped...
        How was _S._ killed? Where's the blood and the deadly wound? Why
hasn't it fallen onto a side, its center of gravity being high up in the
laterally compressed body?
        There are people out there who can judge whether the neck of _A._ is
too long, which I think it probably is.
        Nice idea with the dark stripe beneath the eye, though.
        "capable of taking down even the largest of prey (with a few
exceptions, of course)" I'm not so sure whether there were limits to the
size of what an _A._ *pack* could kill...

_Byronosaurus jaffei_: Nice, and beautiful feathers, but why doesn't it have
feathers on the snout? There is no evidence for a beak, AFAIK...
        "ossified tendon tail" Sure? Dromaeosaurids had elongated
zygapophyses; it has been debated, I think, whether troodontid tails were
stiffened at all.
        The thighs look very thin to me, again, there are people out there
who can judge.
        What's so special actually about "an air chamber in the snout
passing from the nostrils through to the mouth"?
        Are you sure about the general proportions? The head looks so big,
and the lower leg and metatarsals...

        _Carcharodontosaurus saharicus_ has some problems with perspective:
The upper jaw looks asymmetrical, and the legs look very far apart. The
shoulder blades are way too vertical for any dinosaur, and the fault on the
waist is borrowed from monitors, I'd rather not draw one on a dinosaur.

_Carnotaurus sastrei_, too, has problems with perspective (e. g. the neck
probably looks too long).
        The round belly indicates that this beast isn't exactly starving, so
why are its shoulder blades (but not the clavicles/furcula and sterna) so
clearly visible? This allows me to point out the next error: Again, the
shoulder blades are far too vertical. The coracoids actually met with what
are the ventral edges in the drawing! This automatically brings about
another problem -- the rib cage is much too wide, so the arms (oh, the hands
had 4 fingers, not 3) are too far apart.
        Again, there's that "lacertilian" waist fault.
        The legs are turned too far outwards, AFAI can judge. Theropods, as
shown in trackways, used to literally put one foot _in front of_ the other,
like what they do today.

_Chasmosaurus belli_: Was the trunk really that short? I don't have the GSP
skeleton drawing handy... This short trunk brings about the nearly vertical
forelimb, which makes the whole animal look much slower than it is intended
to be, IMHO. It'll tread on its wrist any millisecond.
        The colors are beautiful. :-)

_Dromaeosaurus albertensis_: Cool pose, but you don't think it had *3*
feathers, do you?!?
        The tail was much too stiff for such a bent pose. It was basically a
stick after the first 10 or so vertebrae.
        I'll leave it to others to dispute the proportions (thin arms? long
trunk?) and the exact size of the sickle claws.

_Erlikosaurus andrewsi_: "Andrews' Erlik's lizard" -- I'd have mentioned
that Erlik Khan is the king of the dead in ?Lamaism.
        The boundary between feathers and naked skin along the neck is very
strange. It makes it look chimeric. Why shouldn't segnosaurs have had
feathers up to their beaks? Where is the beak, by the way?

Question to all: Is a complete segnosaur tail known, if yes, how many
vertebrae are there? (As few as in oviraptorosaurs and alvarezsaurids... ?)

_Euoplocephalus tutus_: Didn't it have much more armor? Was the lower leg
really *that* short? Some people out there might become dangerous to your
health because you are speaking of "advancement"... ;-)
        Why don't the upper and lower beaks match?

_Giganotosaurus carolinii_: Neat, only there's that waist fault again, and
the shoulder blades are as vertical as in a mammal. Perspective has it that
the upper and lower leg appear strangely bowed.
        "But despite the great nature of this animal, it has been implied
that G. carolinii was not a predator at all.  Instead, it may very well have
simply been an active scavenger, scaring other creatures away from carrion
by means of its intimidating bulk." Extremely unlikely. Lions, for example,
do so at any opportunity, but if there is none, they hunt, as is well known.
Your very own drawing shows it was fast enough to run after prey -- that's
not necessary for an "active scavenger".

_Homalocephale calathocercos_: Again the waist fault. Your only problem with
art seems to be perspective: The lower leg of the lying individual looks
like bent away *laterally*.

Judith River Scene: Really beautiful :-) , especially the head of
_Daspletosaurus_, but where are the feathers of _Chirostenotes_? Why do all
depicted animals have a waist fault? Why don't the upper and lower beaks of
_Chirostenotes_ match? And what is between the ischia and pubes of
_Daspletosaurus_? The left leg of the left _Stegoceras_ has an overly long
thigh and an overly short lower leg.

_Ornitholestes hermanni_ (Herman*n*'s bird thief) looks like a vulture with
its feather coat ending at the neck base. That's unlikely for this dinosaur.

_Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis_: "solidify the fact that this dinosaur was
indeed a pachycephalosaur." Rather: "show that a pachycephalosaur is
something very different from a pachycephalosaur." There's a typo
(Pac_ycephalosauria) in the first line.

_Proceratosaurus bradleyi_: "before horn lizard" Intended to mean "before"
or "ancestor of _Ceratosaurus_."
        "Oddly enough, its teeth seemingly show some degree of heterodonty-
the front teeth being smaller and less serrated than the posterior ones- an
exceptionally atypical characteristic for a theropod." Not at all, e. g.
compsognathids have unserrated premaxillary teeth, and tyrannosaurs (to a
lesser degree allosaurs) have "incisors". This is no indication of omnivory,
only an adaptation to carnivory.
        Where are the feathers (instead of the waist fault and the croclike
dorsal crest)? :-(
        As some others have already stated onlist, the genetive of "it" is
"its", "it's" is short for "it is" only.

_Shunosaurus lii_: "Li's Shuo lizard" Shu, not Shuo. The tail club is
widespread among euhelopodids. Exist*e*nce, just like the way you write it
on the _Tyrannosaurus rex_ page.

_Suchomimus tenerensis_: Once more the waist line; perspective has seriously
twisted the right leg.

_Tarbosaurus bataar_ vs. _Gallimimus bullatus_: "You'll notice that the
young fledgling in the background is covered in a downy coat. This feature
is fairly common to the Coelurosauria and would have served to insulate the
young one during the cool Mongolian nights." Why not the adults too? (I
didn't notice the feathers, but this is probably due to my screen or your
scanner.)
        All depicted shoulder blades are too vertical. Therefore the belly
of _T._ is too bloated, and the knees of both species point too far
outwards. Tyrannosaur pelves were amazingly narrow, so the legs nearly
touched one another. The sacral vertebrae were squeezed tremendously!
Probably (someone out there surely knows) the same is true of
ornithomimosaurs.

_Tyrannosaurus rex_: This one looks very active, which it doubtlessly was;
it would look much more active (and realistic) with a narrower ribcage and
more horizontal shoulder blades...
        Only the "incisors" were D-shaped.
        "What's more, the teeth may have also retained deadly toxins within
the furrows of their serrations. Comparable toxins are present in extant
Komodo dragons and are the result of rotting meat having been caught in the
individual tooth furrows.  This would have made the bite even more lethal
since infection would ensue soon after the victim was bitten." Please,
please be so kind as not to repeat this myth. I've once seen a documentation
on Komodo monitors on TV (probably borrowed from BBC): The monitor bit a
deer, the deer was infected and died *15 DAYS LATER*. The monitor simply
walked past the deer all that time in safe distance; endotherms don't have
this sort of patience. _T._ would simply have starved in the meantime, IMHO.
Just as you write, a bite from _T._ is deadly anyway, because the resulting
wound is a meter long. Of course it's possible that the oft-cited pockets
housed bacteria, but _T._ surely didn't have any advantage from that. More
probably there are mechanical reasons for their existence (I've forgotten
the ref :-(  ).
        Maybe you should mention the enormous force _T._ could generate in
one bite (13.400 Newtons).

_Utahraptor ostrommaysorum_: It is still debated whether it was
velociraptorine or not (part of the debate was onlist, I think). Feathers?

_Velociraptor mongoliensis_ vs. _Psittacosaurus mongoliensis_: Is my screen
fooling me, or are there really no feathers below the dark line? As stated
above, I would additionally have feathered the snout. The sickle claws are
too *small*.
        _P._ is a bit out of proportion (the left leg), apart from being
massively out of time.

"New dinosaur found": :-D :-D :-D

Your links list is great -- I'll definitely spend some hours there.

Hope this helps! (Some people tell me I'm annoying... :-]  )

Your potential, anyway, is wonderful. You may end up next to GSP, Brian
Franczak, Jaime A. Headden, Daniel Bensen et al..

:-)