Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸

W.I.P artwork

Parasaurolophus carcass

Some aspects of this Teleocrater #paleoart I'm still fairly proud of are the coloration with the brighter red tail (display? aposematism?) which I thought worked well against the green, & the shading. But god those bushes could use some work. I was on a pretty tight timeline & this was 1 of many

Photo of an exhibit panel at the Field Museum showing the above illustration against a cream-yellow-white background with text. To the right of the illustration is a fossil cast of one of Teleocrater's hindlimbs, missing the distalmost elements of the toes.

This remains a huge highlight for my career that I'm still humbled by & grateful for. Being so new to #paleoart, some things were tricky for me that I think are evident - this was the first time I had attempted painting without pencil outlines in the final product, & I was still new to backgrounds

Digital painting showing a long, lizard-like reptile running up a rocky slope against a white background. The animal is red with black markings, and loosely painted vegetation pokes between the rocks the animal is clambering over.

Since #Croctober has just kicked off, here's an older illustration of the VERY distant relative to crocodilians, the Triassic archosaur Teleocrater. I made this illustration in 2019, just 2 years into my career, for the Field Museum of Natural History's Evolving Planet exhibition
#sciart #paleoart

Proceratosaurus babies looking up to momma

( #paleoart for Beast studio's upcoming project!)

Oh hai! We're here now! Follow us for the latest articles published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology!

Looks like the Diplodocoidea volume has reached its goal! Proud to be a backer of sauropod research & looking forward to reading
experiment.com/projects/rea...

YouTube video by National Geographic Ever wanted to go inside a dinosaur lab? 🦖 #NationalGeographic #Paleontology

youtube.com/shorts/DKQ1u...

Pencil sketch of the tail club of Shunosaurus with the proposed arrangement of spike osteoderms. I've depicted them as fairly conservative & low, drawing inspiration from the tail scutes of crocodilians. Starting with basics before experimenting #paleoart #sciart

I addressed sauropod researchers but this could be a topic for any paleontologist, perhaps @victoriaarbour.bsky.social or a colleague given her extensive experience researching tail clubs in other dinos. I'd be happy to help or contribute art/diagrams :)

The SVPOW blog posts do mention that the distal caudals of eusauropods like Shunosaurus are rather complex in comparison to those of diplodocoids, with clearly developed neural spines. That may have been the extent of osteological adaptation

Also big glaring obvious aspect of a hypothetical review would be comparison to other dinosaur tail clubs and tail clubs or club-like structures (expansions/fusions of distalmost caudal vertebrae) in extant animals

Main points:
-Review of basics on sauropod tail clubs would be very useful!
-It's not entirely clear to paleoartists which sauropods had clubs & what they looked like
-Clubs never depicted as anything other than defense against predators
-Clubs never depicted being used as a non-weapon

The above crane-inspired hypothesis is not exactly scientific, just pure paleoartist speculation FYI. But I think these features in sauropods are fascinating & deserve more discussion & depiction. They remind me of the provenance of sails/tall neural spines in Mesozoic Africa

An idea I have yet to sketch - what if these fused distal caudals anchored some sort of soft tissue display structure? Sometimes nondescript bony lumps anchor extravagant displays, as in the African grey-crowned crane.

A group of Omeisaurus uses bioluminiscence for communication, the adults holding the light organ at the end of their tails like lanterns to guide any straggling juveniles. The juveniles have their own light organs too, with which they signal the adults so they won´t step on them.

I like
@hodarinundu.bsky.social's depiction of bioluminescent "clubs" in Omeisaurus used as a signaling device between adults & juveniles - a novel hypothesis! More speculation needed in #paleoart with these club structures in my opinion

Structure, Orientation and Finite Element Analysis of the Tail Club of Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis The structure and orientation of the posterior extremity (tail club) of the caudal vertebrae of Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis Young and Chao, 1972 from the Upper Jurassic Shangshaximiao Formation has b...

Xing et al. proposed an interesting hypothesis of the club in Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis as a sensory apparatus, which makes sense to me considering the particular shape (thin, almost plate like) & the gigantic proportions of this animal onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

As far as I know the idea of them being used against members of the same species (like antlers) hasn't been mentioned in the literature or depicted in #paleoart - why not?

Also worth noting if these spikes are definitely associated with the club, that to me doesn't automatically mean they were used primarily or exclusively for defense. Reptiles LOOOVE using spikes for display! Also hasn't been much if any speculation on keratin or soft tissue coverage

In Shunosaurus, the S. lii monograph figures the club with the associated spikes. However I unfortunately don't have a pdf that shows photos of the specimens, & the illustrations in the monograph are of questionable reliability. For example, the toes on the skeletal are in reverse order

Shunosaurus using tail club for defense (Mark Hallett)

Shunosaurus striking theropod w/ tail club (Todd Marshall)

Shunosaurus defending its young from some basal Sinraptorid theropods (“Schezuanosaurus zigonensis?”) [Engh]

A "review" of #paleoart depictions of sauropods with these clubs to me shows that a review would be a great help. They're almost always depicted as defensive weapons, with Shunosaurus wacking Yangchuanosaurus the most common depiction of these "clubs" in action

What’s the deal with your wacky tail-club, Shunosaurus? In a comment on an earlier article, What’s the deal with your wacky postparapophyses, Shunosaurus?, brian engh asked: What’s the deal with most Shunosaur “life restorations” showing spikes on the t…

A crash course on the tail club of Shunosaurus via the lovely folks at SVPOW: svpow.com/2010/06/11/w...

The Discovery of the Bony Tail Club of Sauropods (Zhiming, 1989) Figure 1

The Middle Jurassic dinosaur fauna from Dashanpu, Zigong, Sichuam, vol. 1- sauropod dinosaur (I); Shunosaurus [Zhang 1988] Figure 39

The Discovery of the Bony Tail Club of Sauropods (Zhiming, 1989) Figure 2

Structure, Orientation and Finite Element Analysis of the Tail Club of Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis (Xing et al. 2009) Figure 1

For those unfamiliar this is what these clubs look like in various sauropods: that of Shunosaurus is apparently associated w/ 2 osteoderm spikes, & note how narrow that of M. hochuanensis is

Gonna start by saying it looks like in Kareem et al. 2024 there may be just what I'm looking for - if anyone would be kind enough to send me a pdf I'd greatly appreciate it! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

SAUROPOD RESEARCHERS: A review of reported "tail clubs", their morphology & hypothesized function(s) would be very useful. They seem to exist in Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis, Omeisaurus, Shunosaurus, Kotasaurus & related taxa. I think this would be a valuable contribution to the literature

New Jurassic Lizard Species Has Confusing Set of Features Seen in Snakes and Geckos | Sci.News Breugnathair elgolensis is a species of hook-toothed lizard that lived during the Middle Jurassic, about 167 million years ago.

Congrats to @brennanstokkermans.bsky.social on the beautiful #paleoart of this new Jurassic lizard. Look at those horsetails!
#sciart
www.sci.news/paleontology...

OCR?

Agreed, never knew it had such a great name either

Photo of hand holding the Omeisaurus monograph printed, in Chinese

Just shelled out $10 for a book I can’t even read, let’s go
#Omeisaurus #paleontology

Yi qi by Liam Elward | Redbubble Simple design of the flying dinosaur Yi qi

www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/1744...