Sophie M.

Progress for this piece I’m working on ft the giant ground sloth, Eremotherium laurillardi. This is tender courting interaction takes place in what today is the Everglades National Park, more than 20,000 years ago!
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#paleoart #pleistocene #megafauna #iceage

A close-up of a rough-scaled, horribly sad looking Allosaurus with rows of shark-fin shaped scales down its back.

Today's mood: Zallinger's Age of Reptiles Allosaurus.

Repost of some recent #palaeoart drawings. I hope I will see some of you from Bluesky at #DinoCon (Table 15 in the vendorhall).I will be selling original drawings and postcards. #dinosaurs

A Mourning Dove gathers nesting material.

Massospondylus embryos and hatchling provide new insights into early sauropodomorph ontogeny - Swiss Journal of Palaeontology Ontogeny and patterns of growth provide crucial insights into the evolution of dinosaurs and their biology, however, ontogenetic changes of the postcranial skeleton are generally poorly known and rest...

new open access paper describing several massospondylus embryos and a hatchling, and their implications for the ontogeny of early sauropodomorphs
sjpp.springeropen.com/articles/10....

Forgot to post the Flocking sketches! #paleostream
Simbakubwa, Postschizotherium, Brygmophyseter and Venetoraptor.

A new day a new plesiosaur! The Posidonia shale is a gift that keeps on giving! Please welcome Plesionectes! An animal that looks more like a elasmosaur than an early Jurassic plesiosaur. Here is is shown with the relatives it overlapped with. Paper below

If you enjoyed this little thread, check out my last one for another look back into palaeoart history!

The prominence of the teeth reflects a trend in all of Burian's great prehistoric sea monsters, they're always plainly visible regardless of what sort of animal he's painting. He can't really be blamed in this case, though, since the teeth are the most famous feature of megatooth sharks! (3/4)

The striped underside is odd, very much unlike any comparable living shark, but it's pretty and eyecatching! The waxy quality of the skin is another oddity, perhaps a byproduct of referencing museum specimens rather than living animals? I can't imagine Burian ever saw a live white shark! (2/4)

A orange-tinted megatooth shark with a waxy, whiteish skin and subtle black striping zooms through the water beside several dark rocky formations.

Today's random piece of nostalgic palaeoart: Zdenek Burian's "Carcharodon" megalodon!

A notable work in the artistic history of this most famous of sharks, Burian's 1979 painting draws heavily on the great white shark of today while adding a unique, if unusual, flair. Very classical in feel! (1/4)

Fallen Sauropod on a verdant forest display base

Fallen Sauropod on a verdant forest display base

Fallen Sauropod on a verdant forest display base, note the white sockets for attaching trees

It’s the Cretaceous so can have all the plants (kinda) 😂

Because I know and adore several Palaeobotanists, the fallen Astrodon display has got much more colourful! Once it’s finished this display is one of two pieces I’m contributing to the @dinoconuk.bsky.social charity auction! Few little tweaks here and there but pretty happy with it! 🏴‍☠️🖤🦖

This is truly shameful. I'm convinced everyone who follows content scraping accounts, everyone who posts images without credit, everyone who likes and has shared those over the years, helped pave the way for this AI slop and direct theft from people who create.

I posted quite a bit there but the algorithm was never very nice to those tweets! I'm still doing preview threads for now, I haven't had the time to put together a website but that is still on the eventual to-do list.

Yep! This is a world where the impact happens several hours later and hits closer to Africa.

I’m sorry, Natee, the feeling is all too relatable.

A pair of Jakapil running up a boulder, trying to move out of the path of two titanosaurs walking near them

The enigmatic Jakapil kaniukura, a really weird armored ornithischian dinosaur from the earliest part of the Late Cretaceous of South America

#paleoart #dinosaurs #jakapil

Here’s an official first look at our new #ExtraordinaryExtinct Dinosaurs Reptiles and Birds Activity Book, which is published this Saturday 2nd August and will be live on our website in just 24 hours 🎉

⭐️ Copies will also be on sale @dinoconuk.bsky.social - we can’t wait! 🦖🦕🦤

Results from the Ocher sub-assemblage zone! This was our first look into the Permian of Russia. The Russian Permian was for the longest time the biggest influence on our idea of this period, besides the red beds in the US. Never the less we rarely think of these formations etc.

a photograph of the plesionectes holotype

a new plesiosaur has been identified from early jurassic germany! a warm welcome to plesionectes longicollum, known from an almost complete and articulated specimen that preserves a staggering 41 cervical vertebrae 🤯
peerj.com/articles/196...

a Simbakubwa with a slightly damaged ear patrols the smokey aftermath of a forestfire, areas are still ablaze and thick smoke still coats the area Simbakubwa is a very large hyenadont (large mammals that are related to both cats and dogs) that lived in Africa, it had a very robust jaw and stood taller then a lion

a Postschizotherium rolls around in some mud. it sticks it tongue out of its mouth in satisfaction as it uses its back leg to scratch an itch on its arm Postschizotherium is a large extinct relative of hyraxes that had a large tapir-like trunk and small tusks, they also possessed eyes situated very far away from their skulls giving them a very derpy look

a Byrgmophyseter attempts to wind a Hokkaidornis, however the bird manages to rocket out of the water and dodge the whale's attack Byrgmophyseter is an extinct whale with large teeth, it was around the size of an orca but most likely had a more obvious melon Hokkaidornis is a basal penguin that looked more like a long and large cormorant, however was not able to fly like most cormorants

a Venetoraptor jumps to catch a dragonfly mid air, it kicks its feet out and waves its arms to keep balance Venetoraptor is a reptile that is closely related to pterosaurs and based on hip material from relatives would've most likely used hopping as its main form of fast locomotion, Venetoraptor also possesses a hooked beak

here's this week's #Paleostream flocking sketches!!!

this week we sketched Simbakubwa, Postschizotherium, Brygmophyseter, and Venetoraptor

#science #sciart #paleoart

A chunky, spiny-scaled lizard with a thin, short tail is shown beside the silhouette of a hand, showing it to be roughly the same size as a Bearded Dragon. Text to the upper left reads "Spiny Snurg, A New Age of Reptiles" and text near the bottom reads "@sophiesaurus98.bsky.social"

A New Age of Reptiles: The Spiny Snurg

Along with its charismatic megafauna, the alternate timeline of the New Age of Reptiles is home to an unimaginable diversity of smaller animals. One notable example is the Spiny Snurg, a chunky herbivorous scincomorphan lizard from northern Africa. (1/5)

Saddle up!

Domesticated horses introduced to Iberia around 1800 BC but wild horses derived from Palaeolithic populations still persist until around 500 BC.

A large, seemingly inflated black beetle with orange red markings on it. The abdomen is blown up and it has tiny hardened front wings which don’t cover its body.

A smaller individual of the same species which seems to have had the abdomen shrivel up some.

The large individual curled into the fetal position with an orange glob of its toxic blood secreted around its head to avoid predation and hopefully deter entomologists. Unfortunately for him, I had forceps.

Two specimens of Megetra punctata from southeastern Arizona. Surprisingly the smaller one was a female and the larger a male - I think size is totally related to how much blustery ooze they have left in them and not correlated to gender. These things reflex bleed as soon as they are touched!

I've spent a LOT more time with ZT2, but the first one has a special early childhood nostalgia few games can match. I can still remember sitting beside my dad at the computer watching him beat scenarios when I was 3, too young to really understand the gameplay but fully engrossed despite that.

As always, I'm happy to answer questions about this project. It's the single most expansive and time-consuming project I've ever worked on and relish every opportunity I can to talk about it, so please do ask whatever questions come to mind, whether about this animal or anything else! (5/5)

The New Age of Reptiles is my alternate history speculative evolution project, detailing a world where the K/PG impact was delayed by several hours. The result is an entirely different biota, where a diverse set of reptiles form the bulk of the world's megafauna. Stay tuned for more! (4/5)

While numerous predators threaten them at all life stages, their local abundance across their range hint at huge and stable populations that will make them popular research subjects for para-temporal field teams for years to come. (3/5)

Snurgs are a successful Afro-Eurasian clade identified by their prominent lateral fringe of spiny scales, used both for defense from predators and rivals along with serving a heat-dissipating function allowing them to remain active when many other animals must seek shelter. (2/5)

A chunky, spiny-scaled lizard with a thin, short tail is shown beside the silhouette of a hand, showing it to be roughly the same size as a Bearded Dragon. Text to the upper left reads "Spiny Snurg, A New Age of Reptiles" and text near the bottom reads "@sophiesaurus98.bsky.social"

A New Age of Reptiles: The Spiny Snurg

Along with its charismatic megafauna, the alternate timeline of the New Age of Reptiles is home to an unimaginable diversity of smaller animals. One notable example is the Spiny Snurg, a chunky herbivorous scincomorphan lizard from northern Africa. (1/5)