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Description
The carcass of a medium-sized (4-meter long) ornithischian dinosaur, Morrosaurus antarcticus, lies among some pine trees 70 million years ago during the early Maastrichtian stage of the late Cretaceous in what is now the Snow Hill Island Formation on James Ross Island, Antarctica, after the unfortunate dinosaur succumbed to an extra cold winter. While global temperatures in the Mesozoic were higher than they are today and temperate forests grew across Antarctica during the Cretaceous, the area was still rather cold, being less than 8°C most of the year, and the long winters already meant several months of night time. This winter has been particularly cold and it has even snowed here, with this Morrosaurus being a victim of the weather. Soon, the carcass begins to attract scavengers. A 4-meter long feathered theropod dinosaur, Imperobator antarcticus, trues claiming the corpse for itself, but it has competition in the form of a normally herbivorous animal. While the armored ankylosaur Antarctopelta oliveroi mostly browses on plants, this one has decided to supplement its diet with some extra protein and starts gnawing on the tail of the carcass. The Imperobator tries its best to scare away the ankylosaur from its food, but knowing it is well-defended from the feathered carnivore with its body armor, the Antarctopelta just ignores it and eats some meat.

Another drawing for Ankylosaur Week (youtu.be/vYGxpJ6svdI ), this one having been suggested by Slatetheraptor (www.deviantart.com/slatetherap… ) on my profile comments. While today Antarctica is a frozen, barren continent with no trees or fully-terrestrial animals that gets so little precipitation it counts as a desert, when global temperatures were around 15°C higher in the Mesozoic era the continent had vast forests home to a wide array of wildlife including dinosaurs. The first non-avian dinosaur to have been found on Antarctica was discovered in 1986 on James Ross Island, and in 2006 it was named Antarctopelta. Growing around 4 meters long, it was a medium sized ankylosaur known from one partial skeleton, and one of very few ankylosaurs known from the Southern Hemisphere (the others are from Australia). For quite some time there had been debate over whether if belonged in the Nodosauridae or Ankylosauridae family of ankylosaurs. Among the known remains are the base of large shoulder spikes, a trait common in nodosaurids, but its tail shows signs of strong tendons similar to those used for swinging the tail club of ankylosaurids (the tip of the tail was not preserved so it is uncertain if Antarctopelta had a tail club, but by nkr drawing the tip of the tail you get out of the debate). Current analysis suggests it was actually a very basal nodosaur (despite living near the end of the Mesozoic). Like other ankylosaurs this creature would have been a herbivore that ate plants, and Cretaceous Antarctica had abundant forests for it to forage in.

The Snow Hill Island Formation has yielded several other species of dinosaurs in addition to Antarctopelta. In 2003 parts of the leg of a theropod dinosaur were uncovered here and in 2007 the specimen was announced as an unnamed type of dromaeosaur (or "raptor" for those of you who use that name). What's notable is that the size if the leg suggests its owner was possibly 6 meters long, a remarkably large size considering most dromaeosaurs only grow under 3 meters long, which would make this one comparable in size to Utahraptor, the largest dromaeosaur. This animal only got official named in 2019 when it was named Imperobator antarcticus, and before that it was nicknamed the "Naze dromaeosaur" or "Antarctoraptor" (the latter was a name coined by Rickraptor105 in 2011 on this site in this drawing's description www.deviantart.com/rickraptor1… ). However, the 2019 paper cast doubt over whether Imperobator actually was a dromaeosaur since it lacked the characteristic retractable "sickle claw" on the inner toe, and found it to be a Paravian dinosaur of uncertain placement. Its size has also since been downgraded to a more modest 3 to 4 meters, which is still pretty big for a paravian though.

The most commonly found dinosaurs in the Snow Hill Island Chalk Formation are small ornithischians, with two genera currently described. One of these is Morrosaurus, named in 2016 from leg remains. Most of the sources I can find do not say how big it was and some have portrayed it as a tiny, 2-meter dinosaur, but using this (www.deviantart.com/lythronax-a… ) as reference suggests a larger size of around 3 to 4 meters. This dinosaur would have been a swift herbivore and belonged to the Elasmaria clade, which has traditionally been thought to be a type of ornithopod dinosaur but more recent studies have cast doubt over if Elasmarians and other groups of small ornithischians are truly ornithopods. Also I gave it a coat if feathers because it's fricking cold where it lived and Kulindadromeus.

All right let's acknowledge the elephant in the room. I know ankylosaurs are herbivores. But guess what, almost every extant animal is omnivorous to some extent. Many primarily herbivorous animals have been observed eating small animals and carrion on occasion (look up "deer eating bird" on YouTube, there's videos of it), and the same goes for how large predators like jaguars and crocodiles are known to occasionally eat plant matter. This is probably done to supplement the diets of the animals with extra nutrients that are mostly absent from the animal's normal diet. You get protein easier from a carcass than a pine branch. There's no reason to think herbivorous dinosaurs wouldn't also occasionally eat meat to supplement their diet. Plus this one is going through a tough winter and the pine needles on the evergreen trees aren't exactly highly nutritious compared to ferns and fruits.

Also the pterosaur in the background isn't just a random pterosaur. Remains of the wing bones of an indeterminate pterodactyloid pterosaur are known from the Snow Hill Island Formation according to this (www.researchgate.net/publicati… ), but they're quite fragmentary and this species has not yet been described (hell they don't even know which family of pterodactyloids it belongs to). I did the reconstruction mostly based on Aerotitan from Argentina. Made sense to me given it lived at the same time and that South America was connected to this part of Antarctica via a land bridge at the time. Also I added some Aurora australis (southern lights) because it's pretty.

Description
The carcass of a medium-sized (4-meter long) ornithischian dinosaur, Morrosaurus antarcticus, lies among some pine trees 70 million years ago during the early Maastrichtian stage of the late Cretaceous in what is now the Snow Hill Island Formation on James Ross Island, Antarctica, after the unfortunate dinosaur succumbed to an extra cold winter. While global temperatures in the Mesozoic were higher than they are today and temperate forests grew across Antarctica during the Cretaceous, the area was still rather cold, being less than 8°C most of the year, and the long winters already meant several months of night time. This winter has been particularly cold and it has even snowed here, with this Morrosaurus being a victim of the weather. Soon, the carcass begins to attract scavengers. A 4-meter long feathered theropod dinosaur, Imperobator antarcticus, trues claiming the corpse for itself, but it has competition in the form of a normally herbivorous animal. While the armored ankylosaur Antarctopelta oliveroi mostly browses on plants, this one has decided to supplement its diet with some extra protein and starts gnawing on the tail of the carcass. The Imperobator tries its best to scare away the ankylosaur from its food, but knowing it is well-defended from the feathered carnivore with its body armor, the Antarctopelta just ignores it and eats some meat.

Another drawing for Ankylosaur Week (youtu.be/vYGxpJ6svdI ), this one having been suggested by Slatetheraptor (www.deviantart.com/slatetherap… ) on my profile comments. While today Antarctica is a frozen, barren continent with no trees or fully-terrestrial animals that gets so little precipitation it counts as a desert, when global temperatures were around 15°C higher in the Mesozoic era the continent had vast forests home to a wide array of wildlife including dinosaurs. The first non-avian dinosaur to have been found on Antarctica was discovered in 1986 on James Ross Island, and in 2006 it was named Antarctopelta. Growing around 4 meters long, it was a medium sized ankylosaur known from one partial skeleton, and one of very few ankylosaurs known from the Southern Hemisphere (the others are from Australia). For quite some time there had been debate over whether if belonged in the Nodosauridae or Ankylosauridae family of ankylosaurs. Among the known remains are the base of large shoulder spikes, a trait common in nodosaurids, but its tail shows signs of strong tendons similar to those used for swinging the tail club of ankylosaurids (the tip of the tail was not preserved so it is uncertain if Antarctopelta had a tail club, but by nkr drawing the tip of the tail you get out of the debate). Current analysis suggests it was actually a very basal nodosaur (despite living near the end of the Mesozoic). Like other ankylosaurs this creature would have been a herbivore that ate plants, and Cretaceous Antarctica had abundant forests for it to forage in.

The Snow Hill Island Formation has yielded several other species of dinosaurs in addition to Antarctopelta. In 2003 parts of the leg of a theropod dinosaur were uncovered here and in 2007 the specimen was announced as an unnamed type of dromaeosaur (or "raptor" for those of you who use that name). What's notable is that the size if the leg suggests its owner was possibly 6 meters long, a remarkably large size considering most dromaeosaurs only grow under 3 meters long, which would make this one comparable in size to Utahraptor, the largest dromaeosaur. This animal only got official named in 2019 when it was named Imperobator antarcticus, and before that it was nicknamed the "Naze dromaeosaur" or "Antarctoraptor" (the latter was a name coined by Rickraptor105 in 2011 on this site in this drawing's description www.deviantart.com/rickraptor1… ). However, the 2019 paper cast doubt over whether Imperobator actually was a dromaeosaur since it lacked the characteristic retractable "sickle claw" on the inner toe, and found it to be a Paravian dinosaur of uncertain placement. Its size has also since been downgraded to a more modest 3 to 4 meters, which is still pretty big for a paravian though.

The most commonly found dinosaurs in the Snow Hill Island Chalk Formation are small ornithischians, with two genera currently described. One of these is Morrosaurus, named in 2016 from leg remains. Most of the sources I can find do not say how big it was and some have portrayed it as a tiny, 2-meter dinosaur, but using this (www.deviantart.com/lythronax-a… ) as reference suggests a larger size of around 3 to 4 meters. This dinosaur would have been a swift herbivore and belonged to the Elasmaria clade, which has traditionally been thought to be a type of ornithopod dinosaur but more recent studies have cast doubt over if Elasmarians and other groups of small ornithischians are truly ornithopods. Also I gave it a coat if feathers because it's fricking cold where it lived and Kulindadromeus.

All right let's acknowledge the elephant in the room. I know ankylosaurs are herbivores. But guess what, almost every extant animal is omnivorous to some extent. Many primarily herbivorous animals have been observed eating small animals and carrion on occasion (look up "deer eating bird" on YouTube, there's videos of it), and the same goes for how large predators like jaguars and crocodiles are known to occasionally eat plant matter. This is probably done to supplement the diets of the animals with extra nutrients that are mostly absent from the animal's normal diet. You get protein easier from a carcass than a pine branch. There's no reason to think herbivorous dinosaurs wouldn't also occasionally eat meat to supplement their diet. Plus this one is going through a tough winter and the pine needles on the evergreen trees aren't exactly highly nutritious compared to ferns and fruits.

Also the pterosaur in the background isn't just a random pterosaur. Remains of the wing bones of an indeterminate pterodactyloid pterosaur are known from the Snow Hill Island Formation according to this (www.researchgate.net/publicati… ), but they're quite fragmentary and this species has not yet been described (hell they don't even know which family of pterodactyloids it belongs to). I did the reconstruction mostly based on Aerotitan from Argentina. Made sense to me given it lived at the same time and that South America was connected to this part of Antarctica via a land bridge at the time. Also I added some Aurora australis (southern lights) because it's pretty.