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Description
77 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period in what is now the Judith River Formation of Montana, a Dromaeosaurus albertensis watches from a distance as a herd of Brachylophosaurus canadensis pass by the edge of a forest. One of the Brachylophosaurus gets annoyed by a small Avaceratops lammersi violating its personal space, and becomes frustrated enough to bite the ceratopsian's tail and toss the smaller dinosaur into the air.

So, there's a Judith River July paleoart challenge going on, and with the sheer amount of break days in this challenge I can totally manage to get it done, especially if I lump several day's together at once like this. So here I do days 1, 4 and 7 (being Brachylophosaurus, Avaceratops and Dromaeosaurus respectively) all at once. And yes I know I am lagging behind and that I should've reached Spiclypeus by now.

A decently-large hadrosaur that lived across western North America during the Campanian epoch, Brachylophosaurus is known from many fossil specimens, including some very complete 'mummies' that preserve even soft tissue, allowing us to learn a lot about this dinosaur. As expected from a hadrosaur, stomach contents in one of these 'mummies' shows Brachylophosaurus was a herbivore and ate various types of plants. And while it may be a bit odd to see a herbivore totally annihilate a smaller animal and not out of defence, interspecific conflict between herbivores does occur, and this drawing in particular was mostly inspired by the video of a rhino tossing a warthog for getting too close. It just so happens that in the Judith River Formation, Brachylophosaurus lived alongside a small ceratopsid that may be within yeetable size range, which led me to draw it doing this.

Avaceratops is a small ceratopsid dinosaur with a bit of a clusterfuck history. Currently the only specimen that can be confidently assigned to Avaceratops is the type specimen, ANSP 15800, which represents an individual who was only a bit over 2 meters long (though it may have been immature). Some more specimens of individuals reaching around 4 meters have since been found, but their assignment to Avaceratops have been questioned over the years. Either way, that is still pretty small for a ceratopsid dinosaur, many of which reach 6 meters or more. And smaller individuals were possibly small enough to be lifted or thrown by the bigger dinosaurs of its habitat, which I thought would be kinda funny to depict. While older reconstructions of Avaceratops depict the animal with three horns, more recent analysis suggests it belongs in the Nasutoceratopsini clade, so it probably only had the two brow horns and no nose horn (the nose bit is frustratingly missing from the holotype skull).

The namesake of the dromaeosaur family (also informally called 'raptors'), Dromaeosaurus was a feathered predatory dinosaur and a distant relative of birds, with an extra large retractable claw on each foot (like all other dromaeosaurs), and grew to around 2 meters long (which is small for a dinosaur but still big enough to fuck you up). It would have preyed upon both animals smaller than itself and dinosaurs a bit larger than itself, but definitely not be preying on stuff as big as adult hadrosaurs like depicted in certain media (*cough cough Jurassic Fight Club*). Fossil remains from much late Cretaceous North America have been assigned to Dromaeosaurus, much of it fragmentary and some have since been reassigned to other taxa, and as far as I know the Judith River Formation's Dromaeosaurus remains are just teeth so perhaps take that genus-level classification with a grain of salt. I don't doubt that some dromaeosaur was in that formation but I would be a little skeptical about it being Dromaeosaurus albertensis itself.

Also, while this drawing was mostly inspired by modern day cases of large herbivores yeeting smaller animals non-defensively like that rhino I linked, I am realizing that it unintentionally ended up being quite reminiscent of Julius Cstonyi's artwork of a Suchomimus throwing a baby Sarcosuchus while a Kryptops watches. Perhaps that subconsciously influenced me or something IDK, I do quite like that guy's paleoart.

Description
77 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period in what is now the Judith River Formation of Montana, a Dromaeosaurus albertensis watches from a distance as a herd of Brachylophosaurus canadensis pass by the edge of a forest. One of the Brachylophosaurus gets annoyed by a small Avaceratops lammersi violating its personal space, and becomes frustrated enough to bite the ceratopsian's tail and toss the smaller dinosaur into the air.

So, there's a Judith River July paleoart challenge going on, and with the sheer amount of break days in this challenge I can totally manage to get it done, especially if I lump several day's together at once like this. So here I do days 1, 4 and 7 (being Brachylophosaurus, Avaceratops and Dromaeosaurus respectively) all at once. And yes I know I am lagging behind and that I should've reached Spiclypeus by now.

A decently-large hadrosaur that lived across western North America during the Campanian epoch, Brachylophosaurus is known from many fossil specimens, including some very complete 'mummies' that preserve even soft tissue, allowing us to learn a lot about this dinosaur. As expected from a hadrosaur, stomach contents in one of these 'mummies' shows Brachylophosaurus was a herbivore and ate various types of plants. And while it may be a bit odd to see a herbivore totally annihilate a smaller animal and not out of defence, interspecific conflict between herbivores does occur, and this drawing in particular was mostly inspired by the video of a rhino tossing a warthog for getting too close. It just so happens that in the Judith River Formation, Brachylophosaurus lived alongside a small ceratopsid that may be within yeetable size range, which led me to draw it doing this.

Avaceratops is a small ceratopsid dinosaur with a bit of a clusterfuck history. Currently the only specimen that can be confidently assigned to Avaceratops is the type specimen, ANSP 15800, which represents an individual who was only a bit over 2 meters long (though it may have been immature). Some more specimens of individuals reaching around 4 meters have since been found, but their assignment to Avaceratops have been questioned over the years. Either way, that is still pretty small for a ceratopsid dinosaur, many of which reach 6 meters or more. And smaller individuals were possibly small enough to be lifted or thrown by the bigger dinosaurs of its habitat, which I thought would be kinda funny to depict. While older reconstructions of Avaceratops depict the animal with three horns, more recent analysis suggests it belongs in the Nasutoceratopsini clade, so it probably only had the two brow horns and no nose horn (the nose bit is frustratingly missing from the holotype skull).

The namesake of the dromaeosaur family (also informally called 'raptors'), Dromaeosaurus was a feathered predatory dinosaur and a distant relative of birds, with an extra large retractable claw on each foot (like all other dromaeosaurs), and grew to around 2 meters long (which is small for a dinosaur but still big enough to fuck you up). It would have preyed upon both animals smaller than itself and dinosaurs a bit larger than itself, but definitely not be preying on stuff as big as adult hadrosaurs like depicted in certain media (*cough cough Jurassic Fight Club*). Fossil remains from much late Cretaceous North America have been assigned to Dromaeosaurus, much of it fragmentary and some have since been reassigned to other taxa, and as far as I know the Judith River Formation's Dromaeosaurus remains are just teeth so perhaps take that genus-level classification with a grain of salt. I don't doubt that some dromaeosaur was in that formation but I would be a little skeptical about it being Dromaeosaurus albertensis itself.

Also, while this drawing was mostly inspired by modern day cases of large herbivores yeeting smaller animals non-defensively like that rhino I linked, I am realizing that it unintentionally ended up being quite reminiscent of Julius Cstonyi's artwork of a Suchomimus throwing a baby Sarcosuchus while a Kryptops watches. Perhaps that subconsciously influenced me or something IDK, I do quite like that guy's paleoart.