HOME | DD
nemo-ramjet — Brontosapiens
Published: 2010-06-14 20:25:28 +0000 UTC; Views: 31404; Favourites: 302; Downloads: 311
Redirect to original
Description
"-But what use would a mind have if no force in nature could hurt you?""-Well, it always helps to remember... and never forget!"
Aside from just being cool, I drew this intelligent sauropod to illustrate one of my educated suspicions about these great animals - namely, the presence of soft-tissue display organs on the skull and (maybe) the neck. If you look at the level of pneumaticity in a sauropod skeleton and observe some of their weird skulls, there is no way something weird WASN'T involved in the whole structure.
Related content
Comments: 135
Wowza!!!! Maybe a formally lush and plentiful habitat was rendered barren, and selective pressures led to sauropods needing superior memory and problem-solving to extract limited food?
👍: 2 ⏩: 0
I WAS JUST THINKING THAT!!! (they even use their mouths for tool construction)
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I wish humans were these... Imagine the head mounted telephones, imagine the FOOTBALL STADIUMS!
I know this isn't really meant to be taken seriously as a sapient but if it were I reckon it would be more plausible for it to be descended from something like Europasaurus.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Sauropods were lighter than they looked thanks to the air sacs in their bones, in fact they could float with ease!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
*gigglesnort* Love the tongue.
This sort of reminds me of the sauropods in Dinosaurs vs. Aliens. If you haven't seen this, it's the late cretaceous, and dinosaurs are banding together against an alien invasion. It's cool for a lot of reasons, but stretches the premise a bit when we see sauropods wearing elaborate headcrests. Um... I guess the raptors made those for them? It looks gorgeous, it just doesn't make much sense.
Meanwhile, I won't be happy until I see a Amphicoelias with a full coat of flight feathers.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Feathers-possibly, but FLIGHT feathers?
That would be a sight indeed. How long would the retrices & regime feathers be - two meters long each?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
For an amphicoelias? Who knows. I just know that it would be AWESOME. Especially if such a talented artist such as yourself took the initiative and sketched it out. HINT HINT
Which reminds me, what ever happened to your website? The neocene project domain has a backup of All Tomorrows, but there was so much other cool stuff there. Like your memetic fauna. I miss that stuff. :c
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Is that a paintbrush it's holding, or a smoking-pipe? With the lung volume that they must have, I'd expect them to do their smoking out of cycad-trunk bongs or something 
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
There was definitely something really weird going on with sauropod skulls, it's impossible for such a mad structure be covered by "shrink-wrapped" skin only.
Would you happen to have a drawing of your thermoregulation flaps?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
...I do *now*! Ha ha, I actually just scrawled it out yesterday, and didn't use any reference for the skull so I got the orbits and everything else completely off (I'm talking 100% wrong here), but I liked it enough to upload it anyways. It... doesn't look quite as stupid as it has always looked in my head. At any rate, this [link] is pretty close to what I've envisioned for a few years now, really those skulls are so freakishly specialized that there could be almost *anything* attached to them. A big dolphin-like fat-melon for echolocation isn't any less likely than a trunk or an air-sack or those stupid flaps I've drawn there.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Possibly there was some mega wattle-air sac... Like a gharial's "thing," but bigger: [link]
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Inflatable gular pouch? I like it! With so much neck to work with, I'm sure sexual selection must have come up with something.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I get such ideas whenever I look at Brontosaurus skeletals. The pouch would fill up like a huge balloon, then the air would be slowly and steadily expelled through the nostrils, modulated into notes and patterns by the muscular "lips" covering it... like a bagpipe of gods.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Im definitely with you on the display features; if you think of how common wattles and combs of various types are in birds, it seems plausible that they existed on their genetic ancestors
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thanks! I think that there are so many unrealized possibilities when drawing dinosaurs.
Do you know of "Frederik Spindler"? He's also followed this train of thought - one of the best paleoartists around...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Nope, will check him out for sure.
At the moment I'm getting in to the concept work Greg Broadmore did for King Kong and his pulpy speculative stuff about lifeforms on venus (being hunted by victorian gentlemen with blunderbuss rayguns)
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Wow, I'd known Greg Broadmore but I'd never heard of this venusian project. Would you happen to have a link to share here?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
here you go [link]
It's all part of the Dr Grordbort universe he's working on. You might recognise the ray guns, they were cropping up all over the internet when Weta first started selling them (although as a kiwi I may have a slightly skewed view of their popularity)
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Wow, thanks!
It's a bit sad that most such efforts are too "creature design-y" and look less like animals with a natural history. Still, this Venusian project is better than most.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
yeah, I much prefer something with at least abit of thought to environment and evolutionary pressures etc, but i think his creatures having necks made of jointed long bones was pretty cool. Doesn't hold a candle to your sea cucumber descendants though; only ones that even come close to Snaiad are Furaha and Nereus in my opinion
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
please draw a sapient Noasaurid that would be awsome.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Haha, that would've been awesome... Perhaps I will - pity that noasaurs were not the "abelisaurian raptors" as believed in the 90s. They looked more like pinheaded carnotaurs without horns and slightly longer arms.
👍: 0 ⏩: 2
Now that i think about it, noasaurids had quite Bullterrier like heads, didnt they ??
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Abelisaurs, yes, but noasaurs had more conventional, smaller heads.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
would be cool. I think sereno mentioned on paleofest that masiakasaurus was a digging animal, but i dont really believe that. i think masiakasaurus was more of an piscivore, while other noasaurids probably were like jackals, small opporurnistic carnivores.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
The mouth structre is really weird, but it doesn't have to be an exclusive piscivore. Such a tooth structure can also help snag any sort of small animal.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
An intelligent sauropod. I have no words... 
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I like this idea. The display structures are weird and wonderful. But I think these guys might have trouble manipulating things (lingipulating things?) With their eyes placed so that they cannot see the tip of the tongue. I can imagine this tongue evolving as a way to get past the defenses of trees (ala the toungue of the giraffe), so maybe with increased intelligence and need for dexterity, the tongue splits, then splits again. Rather than relying on sight while crafting tools, the brotosapiens rely on touch, using an organ like a fractal tree to manipulate and observe the tool at the same time.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I guess the tongue would never become as sensitive or dextrous as a hand or an elephant's trunk. It would have a limited use, perhaps only for grasping and carrying light items.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Oh but that's no fun. Go ahead and stick an octopus in that mouth. You know you want to.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Very interesting ornamentation, and definitely plausible...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
The nasal airbags makes me think of an elephant seal that made passionate love to a bellbird.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
And they both got jumped by an armadillo and a sauropod.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
That part is blatantly obvious.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Intelligence would be most useful in the tiny juveniles, I think.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
A great idea. Perhaps their society can have a built in "juvennile slavery" system.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I like the use of the tongue as a tool to pick things up
The scaling on the back is well done and the feet are lovely developed
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
| Next =>