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Dino of the Month March 2022

Kind of a slow month. Some Chinese thyreophorans and T-rex was in the news, but T-rex is in the news monthly, so that's not news. Just this week, there was some exciting dino news, but I've already started this picture, so I'm taking that one to April. I plan not to wait to to the end of the month though, so next weekend there will be another Dino Of The Month if all goes well.

Dearc sgiathanach (the name means "reptile from the Isle of Skye" in Scottish Gaelic) is a rhamphorhynchid pterosaur from, well, Scotland. This name is metal af to me. Besides its name, the creature is interesting for its size. It was long thought that not much happened in pterosaur evolution wrt to size during the Jurassic and that their size was pretty limited. All known giant pterosaurs are from the Cretaceous. Here we have a Middle Jurassic non-pterydactyloid pterosaur which is, while not exactly gigantic, pretty big. The described holotype had an estimated wingspan of over 2.5 m. It was also a subadult, so adults could grow even larger. Which makes Dearc the largest known flying creature of its time.

I've depicted this creature in the act of taking off in flight. Pterosaurs had a somewhat weird way of launching: they basically catapulted themselves into the air using their forelimbs instead of hindlimbs. Which must have been quite a spectacle, especially with the ginormous ones.

Link to article (pdf): www.cell.com/current-biology/p…

Digital palaeoart, Cintiq and CSP.

Description

Dino of the Month March 2022

Kind of a slow month. Some Chinese thyreophorans and T-rex was in the news, but T-rex is in the news monthly, so that's not news. Just this week, there was some exciting dino news, but I've already started this picture, so I'm taking that one to April. I plan not to wait to to the end of the month though, so next weekend there will be another Dino Of The Month if all goes well.

Dearc sgiathanach (the name means "reptile from the Isle of Skye" in Scottish Gaelic) is a rhamphorhynchid pterosaur from, well, Scotland. This name is metal af to me. Besides its name, the creature is interesting for its size. It was long thought that not much happened in pterosaur evolution wrt to size during the Jurassic and that their size was pretty limited. All known giant pterosaurs are from the Cretaceous. Here we have a Middle Jurassic non-pterydactyloid pterosaur which is, while not exactly gigantic, pretty big. The described holotype had an estimated wingspan of over 2.5 m. It was also a subadult, so adults could grow even larger. Which makes Dearc the largest known flying creature of its time.

I've depicted this creature in the act of taking off in flight. Pterosaurs had a somewhat weird way of launching: they basically catapulted themselves into the air using their forelimbs instead of hindlimbs. Which must have been quite a spectacle, especially with the ginormous ones.

Link to article (pdf): www.cell.com/current-biology/p…

Digital palaeoart, Cintiq and CSP.