abbyhoward
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Extinct Creature Sketches #1
🕑 Added 2016-06-07 17:33:43 +0000 UTC So I am gonna do these weekly extinct creature posts! Each one will have some sketches and a little educational info. I'm currently only doing Mesozoic creature sketches, but will probably skip back to the Paleozoic in a little while. As I said, I'll be updating the Patreon rewards pretty soon to reflect the stuff I am actually able to do! These will probably be available to $2+ patrons?So the first drawing is the only one I managed to do when I went to visit the ROM in Toronto! It's Futalognkosaurus, which is about 85 ft long and used to live in Argentina (before it was Argentina, of course.) It's a titanosaurid sauropod from the late-ish Cretaceous, and it ate plants and stuff. Sauropods are Very Cool
The second set of sketches are some Triassic weirdos. The Triassic was full of weirdos. These guys are called Aetosaurs (EAT-o-sors), they are amored herbivorous archosaurs that lived in the mid-to-late Triassic-- they aren't related to any other armored herbivores, despite the resemblance! During the Triassic, the archosaurs evolved into a bunch of different groups to fill the niches left over from a mass extinction at the end of the Permian (which came right before the Triassic), and one of those groups was the aetosaurs. Another one of those groups was the dinosaurs! The dinosaurs kept going, but the aetosaurs did not.
They use their cute snouts to dig up plants!
Comments
The Ferret
I've clearly been to the ROM too many times as I recognized Futalognkosaurus immediately. The aetosaurs are really intriguing, they make me think of armadillos almost. Was the bump on the end of the snout to help them dig up plants, or just an evolutionary quirk I wonder.
