Tag: dinosaur

Bathornis

Bathornis grallator, a flightless bird about 75cm tall (2′6″) from the Late Eocene and Early Oligocene of Midwestern USA (~37-34 mya).

It was originally mistaken for a long-legged vulture (under the name Neocathartes) when first discovered in the 1940s, but later studies have shown it was actually one of the smaller members of the bathornithids – close cousins of the more well-known South American “terror birds”, successfully occupying terrestrial predator niches alongside large carnivorous mammals.

Brachytrachelopan

Aaand we’re back to normal updates with a fully working computer again!

Let’s properly start off this year’s art pieces with a particularly weird sauropod dinosaur. This is Brachytrachelopan, known from Argentina at the very end of the Jurassic (~152-145 mya).

A member of the dicraeosaurids, it was a close relative of the spiky-necked Amargasaurus and was roughly the same size at about 10m long (32′9″) – but it also had the shortest neck of any known sauropod, suggesting it was specialized for a completely different diet. It may have been a sort of “iguanodont-mimic”, adapted to a low browsing niche, since actual iguanodonts were absent from its ecosystem.

I’ve given this one a little bit of speculative bristly fuzz, because I can. While all currently known sauropod skin impressions show scales, we don’t have full-body coverage and fuzz was almost certainly present in their ancestors – and both types of integument can also exist on the same animal in the same places.

Also I just like the idea of sauropods with manes and beards.