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RPerboni — #dinocember2019 - Part 9

#pycnonemosaurus #vespersaurus #abelisaur #brazil #dinosaur #paleoart #paleontology #velociraptor #elephantbird #paleoillustration #caiuajara #vorombetitan
Published: 2020-04-16 20:59:17 +0000 UTC; Views: 2185; Favourites: 29; Downloads: 0
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Description From that point on, I started posting my drawings on a new IG profile, more focused on my work as an illustrator and that I suggest you follow too  www.instagram.com/renatodesenh…

Dinosaurs has always been a passion of mine. But this thread is very important to me not only for that reason. At the end of last year my head asked for rest and care. Everything was starting to weigh and I finally started a treatment with a psychiatrist and psychologist, which I continue to this day.

My idea, as with the drawings of Brazilian folklore, was also to take the opportunity to educate lay people. I am not a scientist and at most amateur paleoartist , but I think that combining art and knowledge is the best thing that an illustrator can do. So I will post the descriptions that I did on IG here too. Any mistake I made please point here, both in the text and in the drawings.

* Vespersaurus paranaensis - Formally named in June 2019, the Vespersaurus was a theropod that lived in the Late Cretaceous (90 million years BCE) whose fossils were found in the Cruzeiro do Oeste region, being the first non-avian dinosaur to be discovered in the state from Paraná, Brazil, in a joint work by the entities University of São Paulo (USP), State University of Maringá (UEM), Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales and Paleontology Museum of Cruzeiro do Oeste.
Inhabitant of a desert region, named Botucatu/Caiuá Desert, which covered not only the Goio-Erê Formation, where the Vespersaurus fossils were found, but also the Adamantina, Marília and Uberaba Formations, in the southeastern region of Brazil, this small animal appears to be an agile predator, which feeds on carcasses and small animals, as well as possibly eggs from the pterosaurs that inhabited the region, such as Caiuajara and Keresdrakon, also found in western Paraná.
The most striking feature of this dinosaur, however, is its hind legs, with the second and fourth fingers with blade-shaped claws, similar to the "raptors", probably supporting the body's weight on the middle finger while the other two they would not touch the ground, being almost a monodactyl - it moves on just one finger, like the current horses -, indicating that perhaps this animal would be able to run with great speed through the desert looking for prey or fleeing from larger animals.
Vespersaurus was part of the Noasauridae, small theropods that inhabited regions equivalent to Gondwana during the Cretaceous, such as South America and Africa, being members of the clade Ceratosauria, not being as closely linked to birds as Coelurosaurs, and that they would occupy the niches of their sister group on the southern continents during the Cretaceous.

* Velociraptor mongoliensis - One of the most famous non-avian dinosaurs in the world, the Velociraptor was a dromeosaurid that lived during the Late Cretaceous (75-71 million years BC) in the Djadochta Formation, in the interior of Mongolia, in an environment that resembled an arid desert, with few oases and streams dotted between the dunes, but it was still diverse in its paleofauna, being the first place where fossilized dinosaur eggs were found in 1922, during the Roy Chapman Andrews expedition.
Much smaller than the reptilian monster shown in Jurassic Park, the Velociraptor was about the size of a domestic turkey, about 2 meters long and about 20 kg in mass, certainly covered in feathers, since dromeosaurids are, together to the trodoontids, the dinosaurs closest to the current birds, with several fossil findings of this group with imprints of feathers preserved next to the bones.
Like all dromeosaurids, the Velociraptor had scythe-like claws on its second toes, used to pierce its prey when poucing, jumping over them using its wing feathers as a kind of parachute at the time of the attack, as well as its long, semi-flexible tail. The wing feathers could be used to give the Velociraptor a means of making quick turns during the run, as is the case with modern ostriches, as well as to hatch their litter or to give momentum when climbing on steep slopes.
As for intelligence, Velociraptors appear to have developed brains, but nothing to a degree as suggested in Jurassic Park, being closer to the intelligence of birds like seagulls than any mammal. Even the classic image of raptors hunting in packs is still doubtful, as several fossils found in the same location may indicate an agglomeration as occurs with Komodo dragons today, not necessarily organized pack behavior.

* Pycnonemosaurus nevesi - One of the largest non-avian theropods ever discovered in Brazilian territory, the Pycnonemosaurus was a great abelissaurid that lived during the Late Cretaceous (70 million years BCE), with fragments of teeth, pubis and vertebrae found in the Admantina Formation, in the Midwest from Brazil, part of the Bauru Basin, which includes several geological formations rich in fossils and footprints of the period. With an estimated size between 8 and 9 meters and weight between 1 and 3 tons, the Pycnonemosaurus is possibly the largest member of its family, rivaling in size with the indian Rajasaurus. The Adamantina Formation, like the Goio-Erê, probably had a system of deserts or dry savannas, with seasonal rains, with a fauna rich in crocodilomorphs and titanosaurs, such as Maxakalisaurus, with which the Pycnonemosaurus seems to have a predator- prey relationship.
Like all abelissaurids, Pycnonemosaurus had a relatively short and tall skull, which allowed a powerful bite to trap its prey. The most striking feature of the group, however, is its completely vestigial forelimbs, taken to an extreme similar to that of the tyrannosaurids that inhabited the northern continents, while the abelissaurids dominated Gondwana, with specimens being the biggest predators to the end of the Creataceous in India, Africa and mainly in South America, at the time separated from all other continents as an island. This is yet another example of convergent evolution, in which different groups of animals occupy niches that would belong to others in different locations. Tyrannosaurs dominated the north, while abelisaurs dominated the south.

* Vorombe titan - Probably the largest avian dinosaur that has ever existed, "elephant bird" is a name that designates at least three genera of paleognaths that inhabited the island of Madagascar, namely Aepyornis, Mulleornis and Vorombe, the latter being the heaviest bird in history, weighing between 700 and 800 kg and with the head rising up to 2.9 meters from the ground. The elephant birds probably got their name from the traveler Marco Polo who, in the 13th century, described stories of immense birds with characteristics similar to those of these giants. Some say that the roc (rukh), present in the Sinbad story, would not be a giant eagle, but an erroneous description of one of these animals.
Inhabiting the most diverse environments of Madagascar, with a mosaic of subhumid forests, dry pastures, spiny forests and altitude woodlands, the elephant bird unfortunately suffered the same fate as hundreds of other avian dinosaurs and other animals that lived on islands, with all three genera being extinct around the 19th century, with causes ranging from hunting both by the island's natives and then by the colonizers and the transmission of diseases from poultry such as chickens and guineafowl, as well as the consumption of their huge eggs, the largest ever layed by any bird.
Generalist herbivorous, elephant birds are members of the ratites, but, despite having lived on the coast of Africa, the closest ostriches that inhabit the continent live in the ostriches that inhabit the continent, but the small kiwis, now endemic to New Zealand, being probably nocturnal like them, since apparently they have very poor vision, depending on their sense of smell to look for food.. The ratite evolutionary tree is actually much stranger than you think. Being a very old group of birds, with origins traced back to the Lower Cretaceous, paleognaths are divided into Notopalaeognathae, which involves the Rheiformes (rheas), the sister families Tinamiformes (tinamous) and Dinornithiformes (the extinct moas), and Novaeratitae, where kiwis (Apterygiformes) and elephant birds (Aepyornithiformes) are sister families, along with Casuariiformes (cassowaries and emus).
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