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Description
Its actually the troodontid dinosaur Jinfengopteryx elegans.

now you may be asking WHAT THE....

well, i actually didn't get the idea of making it owl like out of the blue. Its based on many fossil studies that indicate that troodontids didn't only had large owl like eyes, they had "twisted", assymetrical ears like owls too!

Such a thing just seem to point out that troodontids and owls had many convergent adaptations and probably shared similar habits and lifestyles, so why couldn't some species of troodontids also have had evolved the "feather face disks" that give owls their traditional look?

One could say "owls are mostly flying creatures with a different hunting technique" and that would be simply untrue, trough the ages, many owls adopted flightless lifestyle and became land hunters and AFAIK they didn't loose their face disks or their owl look, just check out Ornimegalonyx, the laughing owl and even the extant burrowing owl (who even tough not flightless, spends most of its time hunting on the ground), all of those are land based and still look like owls.

Besides, face disks are known not to be exclusive to Strigiformes at all, they're seen in many species of Caprimulgiformes (especially in potoos and frogmouths),and in parrots of the genus Strigops (Kakapos), wich seem to make a strong case that face disks are a common and beneficial adaptation for nocturnal birds like those, and would be an all around beneficial adaptation for nocturnal feathered dinosaurs such as troodontids, for it helps them enhancing their hearing, making them more apt to hear prey in the dark.

Its still hypothesis, but its far from unlikely, and does make a huge lot of sense, tough i don't think it'll ever gain any dinosaur fan's hearts or be seen purpoted in any book anytime soon in this decade.

One again might say "but hey! that doesn't look like a Jinfengopteryx, its skeletally wrong!" and again they'd be wrong, for one, owls look nothing like their skeletons

[link]
[link]

By looking at that skeleton and that silhoutette only, would you guess they belong to a great gray owl? no, because birds, and all animals really tend to be wildly different from their skeletons. In Dinosaurs, we only know the skeletons and some other mild details, and can't get an overall idea of how these creatures would look, meaning that while sticking to the skeleton may be more "safe", it hardly ever will be the shape the animal will have in real life. Infact, many artists like Nemo Ramjet have parodied the idea of "skeleton strict" dinosaur reconstructions, just look at how it'd look on a human reconstruction

[link]

thats how we'd look if we looked like our skeletons.

For inspiration, i obviously used the spectacled owl (Pulsatrix perspicilliata), as a base for the feathers and color patterns, as im specially fond of this species and think its patterns look great on a forest animal like Jinfengopteryx.

Description
Its actually the troodontid dinosaur Jinfengopteryx elegans.

now you may be asking WHAT THE....

well, i actually didn't get the idea of making it owl like out of the blue. Its based on many fossil studies that indicate that troodontids didn't only had large owl like eyes, they had "twisted", assymetrical ears like owls too!

Such a thing just seem to point out that troodontids and owls had many convergent adaptations and probably shared similar habits and lifestyles, so why couldn't some species of troodontids also have had evolved the "feather face disks" that give owls their traditional look?

One could say "owls are mostly flying creatures with a different hunting technique" and that would be simply untrue, trough the ages, many owls adopted flightless lifestyle and became land hunters and AFAIK they didn't loose their face disks or their owl look, just check out Ornimegalonyx, the laughing owl and even the extant burrowing owl (who even tough not flightless, spends most of its time hunting on the ground), all of those are land based and still look like owls.

Besides, face disks are known not to be exclusive to Strigiformes at all, they're seen in many species of Caprimulgiformes (especially in potoos and frogmouths),and in parrots of the genus Strigops (Kakapos), wich seem to make a strong case that face disks are a common and beneficial adaptation for nocturnal birds like those, and would be an all around beneficial adaptation for nocturnal feathered dinosaurs such as troodontids, for it helps them enhancing their hearing, making them more apt to hear prey in the dark.

Its still hypothesis, but its far from unlikely, and does make a huge lot of sense, tough i don't think it'll ever gain any dinosaur fan's hearts or be seen purpoted in any book anytime soon in this decade.

One again might say "but hey! that doesn't look like a Jinfengopteryx, its skeletally wrong!" and again they'd be wrong, for one, owls look nothing like their skeletons

[link]
[link]

By looking at that skeleton and that silhoutette only, would you guess they belong to a great gray owl? no, because birds, and all animals really tend to be wildly different from their skeletons. In Dinosaurs, we only know the skeletons and some other mild details, and can't get an overall idea of how these creatures would look, meaning that while sticking to the skeleton may be more "safe", it hardly ever will be the shape the animal will have in real life. Infact, many artists like Nemo Ramjet have parodied the idea of "skeleton strict" dinosaur reconstructions, just look at how it'd look on a human reconstruction

[link]

thats how we'd look if we looked like our skeletons.

For inspiration, i obviously used the spectacled owl (Pulsatrix perspicilliata), as a base for the feathers and color patterns, as im specially fond of this species and think its patterns look great on a forest animal like Jinfengopteryx.