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Description

This is a joke I drew for an account I run on twitter, @CursedDinosaurs.

Microraptor is one of those lucky dinosaurs that was discovered with clear traces of feathers. This particular portrait was kind of a thought experiment - what would microraptor be drawn like if it had been discovered in the 90's, without traces of feathers? Would it suffer the same misrepresentation that velociraptor and deinonychus have been subjected to all these years?

The hands were interesting to draw. At first I gave it standard broken raptor wrists, but when looking at skeletals I realized the middle finger is very elongated. On the fossil this finger is very clearly part of the wing, but without that context, one might assume that the Microraptor used its long fingers in a way similar to the modern aye-aye.

The colouration is a bit of an illogical choice - we only learned that Microraptor was dark in colouration after analyzing its feathers - but I wanted to keep those colours so that this dinosaur more clearly read as a Microraptor. I considered making it a garish green, but worried it would look too much like a Compsognathus. That said, there's still a Microraptor model at the ROM that, while feathered, is a stunning shade of Mountain Dew green.

Description

This is a joke I drew for an account I run on twitter, @CursedDinosaurs.

Microraptor is one of those lucky dinosaurs that was discovered with clear traces of feathers. This particular portrait was kind of a thought experiment - what would microraptor be drawn like if it had been discovered in the 90's, without traces of feathers? Would it suffer the same misrepresentation that velociraptor and deinonychus have been subjected to all these years?

The hands were interesting to draw. At first I gave it standard broken raptor wrists, but when looking at skeletals I realized the middle finger is very elongated. On the fossil this finger is very clearly part of the wing, but without that context, one might assume that the Microraptor used its long fingers in a way similar to the modern aye-aye.

The colouration is a bit of an illogical choice - we only learned that Microraptor was dark in colouration after analyzing its feathers - but I wanted to keep those colours so that this dinosaur more clearly read as a Microraptor. I considered making it a garish green, but worried it would look too much like a Compsognathus. That said, there's still a Microraptor model at the ROM that, while feathered, is a stunning shade of Mountain Dew green.