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Description
Here's a proper introduction to this guy, that I previously posted as a part of an April Fool's Day prank under the name of Hylaeodromaeus.

I created this illustration sort of by accident. I originally wanted to try to create a hypothetical early ornithoscelidan that fit in just after the supposed divergence of Ornithischia from Theropoda. However when I sketched the skull that I drew the line art on top of, I was a bit sloppy, and when I started to clean up the skull sketch for a drawing to go with the life appearance, I realized it was a lot more like a regular Ornithischian than I intended. Unsure of what to make of it, with April 1st just around the corner, I ended up turning into the aforementioned hoax.

Make no mistake though, I intended this to be a realistic restoration of an animal that could have existed. I blended together features from a number known early taxa like Eocursor and Eoraptor. The scalation is based on squamates, and went with the assumption that ornithiscians had diapsid-style lips. Whether the lower jaw supports a proper rhamphotheca or if it's just an enlargened scale, the animal definitely has a toothless predentary, which did end up supporting a ceratinous beak in later ornithischians. I decided to depict the filaments emerging from the facial scales, inspired by the strange integumentary structures of Kulindadromeus that have a number of filaments attaching to a plate-like base. Whether or not those are modified scales I don't know, but I decided to run with it.

Description
Here's a proper introduction to this guy, that I previously posted as a part of an April Fool's Day prank under the name of Hylaeodromaeus.

I created this illustration sort of by accident. I originally wanted to try to create a hypothetical early ornithoscelidan that fit in just after the supposed divergence of Ornithischia from Theropoda. However when I sketched the skull that I drew the line art on top of, I was a bit sloppy, and when I started to clean up the skull sketch for a drawing to go with the life appearance, I realized it was a lot more like a regular Ornithischian than I intended. Unsure of what to make of it, with April 1st just around the corner, I ended up turning into the aforementioned hoax.

Make no mistake though, I intended this to be a realistic restoration of an animal that could have existed. I blended together features from a number known early taxa like Eocursor and Eoraptor. The scalation is based on squamates, and went with the assumption that ornithiscians had diapsid-style lips. Whether the lower jaw supports a proper rhamphotheca or if it's just an enlargened scale, the animal definitely has a toothless predentary, which did end up supporting a ceratinous beak in later ornithischians. I decided to depict the filaments emerging from the facial scales, inspired by the strange integumentary structures of Kulindadromeus that have a number of filaments attaching to a plate-like base. Whether or not those are modified scales I don't know, but I decided to run with it.