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One of the groups that I have never depicted in my works are ankylosaurs. Their armor, all these rows of osteoderms seemed to me very difficult to draw. But recently I decided to test myself and draw an armored dinosaur for Ankylosaur Week on Twitter. As usual, I was very late. As the first anky in the gallery, I decided to choose a taxon that I liked as a child - the nodosaurid Sauropelta edwardsorum from the Early Cretaceous of North America.

Sauropelta is one of the most studied ankylosaurs. The holotype was discovered in the 30s of the last century by the famous paleontologist Barnum Brown in the Cloverly Formation (Montana). Later, this dinosaur hunter found two more specimens, one of which has perfectly preserved armor. In the 1960s, expeditions led by John Ostrom found new fossils, and in 1970 the animal was named. The length of the Sauropelta, according to various estimates, was 5.2-6 m, the mass is estimated at 1.5-2 tons. The skull was typical of a nodosaurid, with a narrow snout. On its flat surface, the boundaries between the bone plates that many ankylosaurs have are not visible. It may be a preservation artifact. Leaf-shaped teeth helped to cut plant material. The body, as usual in ankylosaurs, was very wide. It was covered with rows of small conical osteoderms, which united in the pelvic region into a pelvic shield, which is perfectly visible in the AMNH 3036 specimen. A characteristic feature of Sauropelta is large spikes on the neck and shoulders. The old reconstructions have only one row of neck spikes, but now it is believed that there were two of them. Another characteristic feature of the taxon is a very long tail. All known specimens of Sauropelta were extracted from a 108.5 million-year-old layer in the Cloverly Formation. This nodosaurid was part of a rich fauna of Early Cretaceous vertebrates, the most numerous of which was the ornithopod Tenontosaurus.

This work was quite difficult for me. It was not easy to force myself to make rows of osteoderms, because the ankylosaur as an object of drawing is unusual for me. There were difficulties with the perspective (after all, "three quarters" is a slightly ambitious idea for the first dinosaur with complex armor). Well, for the first armored dinosaur in my gallery, it turned out quite well, although there are some errors here. I got an interesting experience, although I doubt that I will often draw ankylosaurs. Based on a skeletal reconstruction from GetAwayTrike (www.deviantart.com/getawaytrik… ).

Black ballpoint pen, black colored pencil and white gel ink pen, 2021.

Description
One of the groups that I have never depicted in my works are ankylosaurs. Their armor, all these rows of osteoderms seemed to me very difficult to draw. But recently I decided to test myself and draw an armored dinosaur for Ankylosaur Week on Twitter. As usual, I was very late. As the first anky in the gallery, I decided to choose a taxon that I liked as a child - the nodosaurid Sauropelta edwardsorum from the Early Cretaceous of North America.

Sauropelta is one of the most studied ankylosaurs. The holotype was discovered in the 30s of the last century by the famous paleontologist Barnum Brown in the Cloverly Formation (Montana). Later, this dinosaur hunter found two more specimens, one of which has perfectly preserved armor. In the 1960s, expeditions led by John Ostrom found new fossils, and in 1970 the animal was named. The length of the Sauropelta, according to various estimates, was 5.2-6 m, the mass is estimated at 1.5-2 tons. The skull was typical of a nodosaurid, with a narrow snout. On its flat surface, the boundaries between the bone plates that many ankylosaurs have are not visible. It may be a preservation artifact. Leaf-shaped teeth helped to cut plant material. The body, as usual in ankylosaurs, was very wide. It was covered with rows of small conical osteoderms, which united in the pelvic region into a pelvic shield, which is perfectly visible in the AMNH 3036 specimen. A characteristic feature of Sauropelta is large spikes on the neck and shoulders. The old reconstructions have only one row of neck spikes, but now it is believed that there were two of them. Another characteristic feature of the taxon is a very long tail. All known specimens of Sauropelta were extracted from a 108.5 million-year-old layer in the Cloverly Formation. This nodosaurid was part of a rich fauna of Early Cretaceous vertebrates, the most numerous of which was the ornithopod Tenontosaurus.

This work was quite difficult for me. It was not easy to force myself to make rows of osteoderms, because the ankylosaur as an object of drawing is unusual for me. There were difficulties with the perspective (after all, "three quarters" is a slightly ambitious idea for the first dinosaur with complex armor). Well, for the first armored dinosaur in my gallery, it turned out quite well, although there are some errors here. I got an interesting experience, although I doubt that I will often draw ankylosaurs. Based on a skeletal reconstruction from GetAwayTrike (www.deviantart.com/getawaytrik… ).

Black ballpoint pen, black colored pencil and white gel ink pen, 2021.