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Paleo-King In reply to Majestic-Colossus [2017-06-05 23:14:15 +0000 UTC]

It's pretty close. Actually I shortened the legs on this to match the 8th version more closely.

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Majestic-Colossus In reply to Paleo-King [2017-06-06 00:24:00 +0000 UTC]

I read you will do the 9th version. What will you change in this 9th version?

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Paleo-King In reply to Majestic-Colossus [2017-06-06 02:01:43 +0000 UTC]

Everything.

I have better visual data now, as well as better related skeletons to fill in the gaps (i.e. Dreadnoughtus). The limbs and tail will be entirely redone, in all angles. With the Dreadnoughtus 3D model, I have a much more accurate tail to work with than the old Trigonosaurus tail, which had some features you don't even find in lognkosaurs. Some of the lines on Mk-VIII were just plain wrong, and Hartman's version (which I partially used for reference) glossed over some details.

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Paleo-King In reply to Corallianassa [2017-01-22 22:47:25 +0000 UTC]

Thanks! Would you believe I am working on a 9th version of the skeletal for this animal?!?!?!? A 9th version! . Thanks to  Calvo and his "measuring skills" for that. And his trickle-down attitude to fossil information, to where the only reliable anatomical data seems to be from unofficial visitor photos on instagram, which reveal further errors and force me to revise this thing every year.

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Paleo-King In reply to Saberrex [2012-07-11 03:35:51 +0000 UTC]

Thanks for the compliment This is also the only live depiction based directly on actual measurements of the fossils.

However, Futalognkosaurus is NOT the biggest known dinosaur after Alamosaurus. Puertasaurus is tied with Alamosaurus for the record at around 125-130 ft. long and 100 tons, at least based on my restorations (not counting Amphicoelias fragillimus fragillimus of course). Argentinosaurus, Huanghetitan ruyangensis, Ruyangosaurus, and probably the unnamed "French Monster" [link] are all larger than Futalognkosaurus as well (they are all in the 110-foot range, and anywhere from 80-90 tons), though not quite as big as Puertasaurus and Alamosaurus.

Futalognkosaurus (the holotype specimen anyway) was probably 100 ft. long and roughly 70 tons in mass. Very huge indeed, but not the biggest or even second biggest. And of course tomorrow may bring even more new finds that are larger than Futalognkosaurus.

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Saberrex In reply to Paleo-King [2012-07-11 03:54:59 +0000 UTC]

oh yeah. forgot about that. even non-paleontologist experts like myself get a little ahead of themselves. i wonder also if Bruhathkayosaurus is bigger, and more importantly, if the evolution of giant sauropods like these encouraged the growth of predators that were so big they could bring these behemoths down. where there are giant prey animals, something has to eat them.

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Paleo-King In reply to Saberrex [2012-07-11 05:01:21 +0000 UTC]

Well, yes and no.

First off, Bruhathkayosaurus is VERY shady. It may be a hoax, or a chimera of two unrelated animals, or possibly just grossly overestimated. The discoverers took very bad-quality photos and never re-photographed the thing. Also they apparently didn't even excavate it in over 30 years, and the remains were allegedly lost in a monsoon recently. In fact I blogged about it, look at [link] and [link] . Some people have even claimed the alleged "tibia" was really just petrified wood. Yadagiri and Ayyasami couldn't even make up their minds as to whether "Bru" was a theropod or a sauropod. Just like they claimed Dravidosaurus was the last stegosaur, later on it turned out to be a very badly eroded plesiosaur, or like Sankar Chatterjee's "protoavis" turned out not to be a dinosaur or a bird but a chimera of different cold-blooded animals including a small lizard-like reptile similar to Longisiquama. Then we have Dr. Malkani, who keeps on digging up random nondescript bits of rock and labeling them as brand new titanosaur genera worthy of their own families! Am I the only one wondering why this sort of thing seems to happen so often with paleontologists from India?

As for the second point, yes the presence of huge sauropods probably did create a niche for predators to increase in size so they could attack them. But even then, the predators usually did not have much success killing something that big. Long, heavy, slow predators like Giganotosaurus may have actually scavenged giant sauropods more than they hunted them. Of course smaller prey could be easily killed. But when attacking live titanosaurs they may have just taken shallow bites but not killed the animal, based on their skull and tooth shape... resulting in a very painful "flesh farm" experience for a sauropod which would have progressively been weakened by more attacks over several weeks or even months as the predators followed the herds. Finally blood loss took its toll and the animal died. But since it was arguably "dying" for a long time, the lines between predator and scavenger get VERY blurred with this kind of prey.

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Saberrex In reply to Paleo-King [2012-07-11 16:44:09 +0000 UTC]

i'll bet that there aren't too many paleontologists in india, for one, and most are probably amateurs still learning the ropes, looking for attention. perhaps it is a hoax, and perhaps we'll never know. but then again, we may find out sooner than thought.

as for the predators, i think carcharodontosaurs and other allosaurs had way too deadly a bite to be flesh grazers, plus, carcharodontosaurs are fast enough to attack such a beast. the upper estimate for Giganotosaurus is 31 mph, and not only that but their jaws can tear away more than 160 pounds of meat in on bite. if this is not enough, many of these animals would swarm their prey leading to death in a matter of hours. add to that theropods seem to hunt in packs more than mammals do, and you get one serious threat.

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Paleo-King In reply to Saberrex [2012-07-12 02:55:32 +0000 UTC]

Perhaps, but Carcharodontosaurus and Giganotosaurus share the main design paradox of most allosauroids, which is a WEAK bite, but a strong skull. Their bite is actually weaker pound for pound than some large mammalian predators. However with such a big heavy head, they could use the upper skull as a weapon itself, like a huge battle axe, to slash chunks of flesh off the bone. Compueter modeling shows Allosaurus had to hunt this way to avoid damaging its teeth or jaws. As for hunting in packs, there is some debate over whether giant cretaceous allosauroids hunted in true packs or just disorganized mobs. They don't seem to have any more brainpower than Allosaurus itself, which was considerably smaller and more primitive. The other thing is that they would have to be very careful around titanosaurs, especially those that were huge and those that had armor. Futalongkosaurus was huge, and belongs to a family which has produced armored species, though its own armor (if it had any) has yet to be found. Something that size can easily smash the skull of an allosauroid (which is a lot less reinforced than that of T. rex) with just about any part of its body, and the thin slender teeth of allosauroids can easily break on the armored hides of the typical lognkosaur or lithostrotian. So even if they hunted in organized packs, hunters like Megaraptor were still taking a huge risk tackling an animal ten times their size.

And remember that sauropods also traveled together, attacking a herd is not as simple as the TV specials make it look. Many titanosaurs have a large lateral bulge on the femur as well as flared ilia to anchor huge thigh muscles for kicking out forward and sideways, and the intermediate and derived ones also appear capable of supinating their arms, which allows them to lunge sideways and cram an unlucky predator up against their mate or herd member. Or just topple it over so those big foot claws can do their dirty work.

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Saberrex In reply to Paleo-King [2012-07-12 03:43:23 +0000 UTC]

i am well familiarized with that bite strategy. the carnosaurs were very adept at it as i have looked into and experimented on with sculpted models. truthfully, i think carnosaurs and theropods that did hunt together were usually interrelated individuals. also, the titanosaurs grew armor not for defense, but apparently for storing minerals during times of drought or famine. carnosaurs attacking a sauropod is like lions attacking an elephant; possible, but difficult.
but i do agree, attacking a herd is definitely a difficult prospect. nothing is more dangerous for a predator.

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Paleo-King In reply to Saberrex [2012-07-12 04:22:31 +0000 UTC]

The armor was probably a "dual use technology". In younger animals it served to store minerals and to act as defensive armor. As they grew older the armor became hollow as the minerals were used for growth spurts or for seasonal egg-laying. Eventually those species that reach giant sizes would start to reabsorb the armor or reduce its size, in really large titanosaurs that have armor, it's very small relative to body size and has lost most of its uses, since the animal is too big for most predators to attack anyway, and doesn't have much more growing to do, so the calcium storage function of the armor is not essential. Also they were probably not for drought or famine, because other sauropods did just fine without osteoderms, and there's no indication they had it any easier at any point in time. However for storing minerals in preparation to the radical changes in robustness (and probably hormones) that accompanied puberty, they were ideal. Yes other sauropods went through puberty probably just as fast, but derived titanosaurs got a LOT more robust as adults relative to their juvenile forms. The armor was useful defensively as well since predators were evolving ever more dangerous bites. From the massive blood loss of a Megaraptor bite, to the rib-snapping crunch of Rajasaurus, to giant dromaeosaurs and big-clawed carnosaurs. Any sauropod hides not armored in some way would be defenseless. The predators were bigger, badder, and often built tougher than in the Jurassic. So armor was a big step in keeping ahead.

Furthermore saltasaurs and probably other derived titanosaurs had small hard "nodule" scales in between their osteoderms, these were definitely for defense and useless for mineral storage, so its likely the armor also had a defensive purpose. Otherwise, it would be easier to store minerals in internal structures like the main skeleton, rather than external studs and plates. That would also eliminate the nutrient cost of growing hard keratin sheaths to cover the "mineral deposits", which we know existed since the osteoderms have a very rugose pitted surface with a distinctive radial pattern for anchoring a hard casing on the top.

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Saberrex In reply to Paleo-King [2012-07-12 13:38:08 +0000 UTC]

very interesting. perhaps that was the case after all. you have some pretty good theories on these subjects.

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Paleo-King In reply to Teratophoneus [2011-07-15 19:48:25 +0000 UTC]

It's impossible to tell what it is, but the URL says it's supposed to be a Futalognkosaurus. The #1 problem with these no-name illustrations (aside from lack of accuracy which makes it impossible to guess what species they're actually supposed to portray) is that they get recycled and labeled with different names on different websites, and there's no "official" version with an explanation by the artist of what the thing is supposed to be. That particular image is labeled as Futalognkosaurus on some websites, Turiasaurus on others, and probably Argentinosaurus on yet others...

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Paleo-King In reply to BrokenMachine86 [2011-07-09 18:04:12 +0000 UTC]

Thanks! This is just a taste of what's to come.

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BrokenMachine86 In reply to Paleo-King [2011-07-10 16:39:27 +0000 UTC]

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Paleo-King In reply to magicwolfimp [2011-07-09 09:08:06 +0000 UTC]

Thanks bigtime

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magicwolfimp In reply to Paleo-King [2011-07-09 09:10:11 +0000 UTC]

no problem ^^

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Paleo-King In reply to Algoroth [2011-12-02 22:09:52 +0000 UTC]

Not sure about that, but it's likely that even the arm that's not in the air would be a bit flexed to balance the weight of the animal's front end while the other arm is in the air. How heavily flexed is another matter entirely. We're not talking Todd Marshalls Fabio Pastori's here.

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Paleo-King In reply to gdpr-15972286 [2011-06-04 21:37:16 +0000 UTC]

Thanks!

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Paleo-King In reply to PRIDEofKENYA [2011-03-28 09:44:05 +0000 UTC]

Thanks, Pride! There are a lot of bad drawings of this animal on the net, it's surprising just how many of them are coming out of the woodwork even though it's only been known for a few years (and I'm STILL waiting for that anticipated third paper which I'm hoping will FINALLY include multi-view pictures of the dorsal column and ribs!)

So far this is the best Futalognkosaurus yet (and aside from Csotonyi's, probably the only accurate one), because it's the only one based on a constantly revised skeletal drawn from as many of the actual bones as can be reliably mapped and measured, given the terribly inconsistent published data. The new version of the skeletal this drawing was based on will be up soon.

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Paleo-King In reply to EmperorDinobot [2011-01-15 20:50:38 +0000 UTC]

Lol you like that feature huh? My bad, I couldn't think of one to pick for a while. Since this is apparently my "signature dinosaur", I'll pick a favorite piece that I can actually play myself. Here you go:[link]

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PRIDEofKENYA In reply to Paleo-King [2011-03-29 22:31:38 +0000 UTC]

I think [link] is more appropriate given the nature of the creature!

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Paleo-King In reply to PRIDEofKENYA [2011-03-30 02:26:51 +0000 UTC]

Naaaah that's just not my taste. And it doesn't sound like something "early morning" which is the setting of this picture.

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EmperorDinobot In reply to Paleo-King [2011-01-16 14:57:01 +0000 UTC]

I was thinking more of a John Williams Jurassic Park thing going on, but this works too. The thing just wants breakfast, right? No humans staring in wonder and making their insane dreams come true.

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Paleo-King In reply to EmperorDinobot [2011-01-16 18:55:55 +0000 UTC]

Yeah. I figured it probably wasn't some kind of super-epic John Williams scene. No rearing up either, just strolling along on a wet floodplain looking for a tasty tree. I like to listen to this music in the morning, gets you more energetic. And I can actually play it on piano myself (wish I had a harpsichord to make it extra-authentic but those can cost $10,000 or more so probably not for a while )

I try to pick background music that fits each scene, this one wasn't a perfect fit IMO but it's the one that sounded best to me.

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Paleo-King In reply to Brad-ysaurus [2011-01-03 07:30:20 +0000 UTC]

Thanks!

Well Brad, it's true - Matt Wedel's post can be interpreted as pretty much the opposite of what I did, but this idea needs a few caveats. But firstly two points - this drawing dates from well before his post (I'm sure you saw it at SVP in October) and also I've been unfortunately very busy with both non-paleo things and a paper which I want to publish (inspired by Mike Taylor's post on amateur papers) - hence the absence of my comments (which I assume would probably spark a heated and long debate). But don't worry, I will comment on Matt's post. The skull holes bulging with jaw muscles are a pretty "conventional" thing but it's true these margins probably were not so easily visible. I tried to make the lines light here but increasing the contrast to make everything else look dark enough amplified them and no moderation attempt is perfect. I'm open to the possibility of doing some digital editing on the head, when there's time. Matt does make a very good point that we tend to see the head as "less real" if the shape of the bones is not visible. However I don't know if these details can be left out entirely. As for the other points:

1. Nostril position - I don't agree with putting it on the tip of the snout for a number of reasons. Of course there are many artists who DO put them there and many of them are fine with that theory and don't question it (just as there are - or were - plenty of artists who followed Kent Stevens and drew horizontal-necked macronarians without question for most of the past decade). I personally think the evidence advanced for the snout-tip nostril configuration is far from unambiguous or conclusive, and such an arrangement basically defeats the evolutionary purpose of having bony nostrils on the forehead for the first place. It's important to also take account of how sauropod noses evolved over time, something that often gets overlooked by many artists who insist on placing the fleshy nostrils on the snout tip. All that aside, my sauropod noses are still very different from the debunked sample of a "traditional restoration" in Matt's post. That thing not only places the nostril way too far back in the bony nares, but also leaves out the upper neck muscles. So to that extent I agree with Matt.

2. Eyes - yes they probably were big, sauropod eye sockets were huge. All the same it's hard to show that when you're drawing the whole animal, but I admit the eye came out a bit on the small side here. Once again I'm open to editing this.

3. The infamous neck spines - I doubt any sauropod other than diplodocids had these, and even when I do draw them on macronarians, I usually keep them pretty small. There's no evidence of them on any genus except for Diplodocus, so even putting them on all diplodocids is a stretch. But that also means that if you put speculative spines on a macronarian, you have free artistic license to do them however you think was more likely. In the case of titanosaurs, I don't consider them likely at all. They've never been found on a single titanosaur, not even those for which osteoderms have been recovered.

4. The throat pouch/dewlap - a big wrinkled dewlap the way Brian Engh draws it may be a possibility. However I don't think this was in any way necessary for sauropods to feed. Even with just a normal esophagus and no pouch, a Giraffatitan could put away easily 25-50 pounds of food in a minute (rather than in a single gulp as a throat pouch could allow). Which translates to over 1500 pounds per hour. Which is plenty more than it would need daily to fuel a warm-blooded metabolism, according to most of the scientific literature. Even if it needed 2 tons of food a day, that would still take less than two hours to consume without a pouch. What's the hurry? I don't see the digestive need for a pouch. And as for a display structure... it's entirely possible, and I know Matt's advice is "go extreme so you're not both wrong AND boring", but my view on huge dewlaps is they are generally unlikely for sauropods simply because of how rare they are on anything BIG in the animal kingdom today. When you're that huge, your own body can be used for display, forget the dewlaps. You see elastic pouches on smaller animals like frigate birds and lizards, which are otherwise very unimpressive, but nothing like the big, permanently sagging folds of skin on Indian humped cattle (the Brahma and Zebu). It seems a bit too much "overcompensation" for a bigger animal if you're going for display (and it's also the main thing I found unrealistic about Pastori's unfinished restoration). There appear to be pretty complete hyoid bones found with Abydosaurus - but it seems nobody so far has said anything about whether they lend any credence to the notion of sauropod throat pouches. Even to fill such a huge hypothetical pouch would take a huge, rapid, and sustained inflow of air - sucking in that much extra volume of air in addition to normal breathing, and how it affects respiration in such a large animal, presents a lot of physiological problems that small animals like frigate birds and anoles don't have to deal with. This is a critical area of sauropod anatomy that needs more study - in that regard, controversial or provocative throat pouch drawings are actually a good catalyst to spur more research. Not necessarily accurate, but a good thing to shake up the field nonetheless.

5. Bright colors - here I actually agree with Matt 100%. Although I kept the patterns minimal here, the fact is I don't see any reason to make sauropods all dull and gray like the Clash of the Dinosaurs fiasco did. I think sauropods did have a lot of coloration - especially on the face and the upper neck, since those were the areas other sauropods would see most easily from a close distance. I'm shocked by how many artist still don't put any color patterns at all on their dull gray sauropods. This was one downside of Csotonyi's restoration (which in most other respects is top-notch work). Even if you aren't doing color paintings, some kind of pattern would make more sense than none at all, since sauropods had eye sockets built for color vision, and definitely were not ambush predators like many big reptiles today. I have to paint some of these sauropods to really get across what I think they looked like.

As for the concentric wrinkles.... I don't think I made them any more prominent than any other wrinkles on the body (and certainly not darker) but overall you're right, a lot of people draw them on all dinosaurs, not just sauropods. I believe it was Greg Paul who started the trend, but I haven't seen them that distinct on living animals. The main reason for drawing them seems to be inspired by a cross between the linear wrinkles on the thickened areas of elephant wrists, combined with the concept of calluses on camel leg joints - the idea being that many dinosaurs had large bony processes on their wrists and knees that would be well suited for crouching or "kneeling" by such a "composite" skin feature - even in sauropods, where the cnemial crest and distal radial processes were not very sharp, they were still much larger than in elephants. You could draw dinosaurs without the concentric pads, I don't think it's any kind of gospel truth among paleo-artists.

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Thewhiningrhino In reply to Paleo-King [2011-01-16 01:47:39 +0000 UTC]

Just a quick comment here about dewlaps. I seem to remember that evidence for a zebu-like dewlap was found in a specimen of either Maiasaura or Iguanodon, I don't remember which at the moment. Wouldn't surprise me if some theropods had them too.

Ugh, I can't STAND the classic "pachyderm type" colors on sauropods. At the same time though, I remember reading a tip from Gregory Paul that whether they be monitor lizards or people, large, naked-skinned animals that live in tropical climates are generally quite dark in color, to protect against UV damage. I guess it's all about finding a balance between the two.
With feathers of course, all bets are off!

I'd LOVE to see some of your sauropods in color!


P.S. As someone with a deep fondness for iguanas, I personally think restorations with dorsal scales are awesome.

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Paleo-King In reply to Thewhiningrhino [2011-01-16 03:04:57 +0000 UTC]

Haha I knew you'd say that about the dorsal spines

I intend to get some serious paintings going but it will take a while I suppose to really produce a good sauropod painting. However be sure that when I do I will put it up here on DA.

I don't like dull solid colors on sauropods either. Greg Paul has a good point when he says most large naked-skinned animals (and even some large hairy ones) tend to be "earth-tinged" or brown in other words. So they may not be that colorful. But when you start drawing all sauropod species the SAME color it gets pretty ridiculous. Elephant gray is probably the most abused color in that regard. The main thing is the patterns. I think sauropods all had SOME amount of patterns, maybe not something as extreme as zebra stripes, but at least a partial local pattern.

I don't know if there is good evidence of zebu-like dewlaps in Iguanodon or any duckbills. I know that Bakker's analysis of the Leonardo (Brachylophosaurus) mummy shows a little bit of saggy skin at the bottom of the deep vertical folds near the base of the neck and the shoulders. But this isn't anywhere near as big or prominent as a zebu dewlap. The shoulder folds of duckbills have been known for a long time, these bottom fringes of the were probably pretty small. Lukas Panzarin certainly restored them that way based on Bakker's research.

Big projecting semi-circular dewlaps as in anoles just look wrong on dinosaurs. The thing is they are often popping up in certain artists' work constantly, and not in others'. Todd Marshall and Fabio Pastori in particular. They have a lot of talent for sure, but their dinosaurs aren't really that believable compared to Greg Paul, Doug Henderson, Lukas Panzarin, or Raul Martin. A Marshall or Pastori dinosaur looks more like a mythical movie monster than a real dinosaur. Not only does Pastori's Futalognkosaurus have a huge crazy dewlap, but also the humeri are way too short compared to the lower arm (I'm assuming its arms were built like every other macronarian on the planet, with the humerus longer than the ulna!), and its snout looks more like a duck than a sauropod. I don't know where he gets this stuff from...

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Algoroth In reply to Paleo-King [2011-06-27 23:11:47 +0000 UTC]

Large animals with patterns alive today. I'm talking reasonably large here, not necessarily huge. The whale shark has prominent patterns, as do orcas. Yes, these are sea creatures, but there were sea creatures around during Mesozoic times.

Now for land animals: okapis are fair sized, unless I'm mistaken, maybe horse mass? Speaking of which, there are those nasty tempered things called zebras. Yes, just horse sized, but sizable by today's standards for land animals. And let us not forget giraffes. I've seen them in person, and giraffes are big. Yet, they are tropical animals with prominent skin patterns. So, no need to assume all sauropods would be plain gray.

Adult crocodiles are color patterned and they are basically the largest predators I know of that can hunt on land, albeit by ambush from the water. Tigers seem to be our largest terrestrial predator that have color patterns.

Humpback whales are black and white.

Bears of the hunting type don't seem to have any prominent color patterns I can remember. Lions only have patterns when young.

Extrapolate to dinosaurs. Adult sauropods might have had reason for cryptic patterns and then again, maybe not, if their size protected them. However, how about the youthful sauropod crowd? Cryptic patterning might have been extremely necessary. Most of the duckbills might have found camouflage useful, and, I imagine the predators, from small to gigantic might have found it a survival enhancement as well. In an era with predators who could easily have hunted Kodiak bears, I would think camouflage would be useful. So, I think it's reasonable, though certainly unproven, to assume us artists can pattern the skin of most any dinosaur, or leave it be.

Then, said he, there are large ground birds, which, I have heard whispered, are descended from...DINOSAURS!!!!! Ostriches and rheas have patterns. Cassowaries are black, with vividly colored faces. In other words, we can easily believe, probably correctly, that there were plainly colored monochromatic dinosaurs and dinosaurs with cool customizations that would take our breath away. Can't prove it, but the assumption is very reasonable.

So! To those who say dinos, especially the big ones, had to be black or gray...chew on that for awhile.

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Paleo-King In reply to Carcharodontotitan [2010-12-27 07:43:17 +0000 UTC]

Well don't be too shocked, a lot of things about titanosaurs are weird.
And the skull hasn't been found, so the head's pure guesswork - but very informed guesswork nonetheless. Basically I made it a "transitional" lognkosaur head, less rounded and big-nosed than the head of Malawisaurus but more so than the heads of lithostrotians (Antarctosaurus, Saltasaurus, etc.) The upcoming version of the skeletal will reflect this shape for the head. BTW the head of Argyrosaurus was probably somewhere in between this speculative Futa head and an Antarctosaurus head.

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Carcharodontotitan In reply to Paleo-King [2010-12-29 04:15:20 +0000 UTC]

Wow, it must be hard to do the right amount of crest(LOL). (Roundness).

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Paleo-King In reply to Carcharodontotitan [2010-12-29 20:54:16 +0000 UTC]

Yeah, it can be tricky. Not only the height or protrusion of the crest, but also how long it is relative to the snout. I made it pretty long for Futalognkosaurus, so the nose is still big, but not all that deep or protruding compared to earlier macronarians. From this shape it probably got a bit shorter and placed higher on the face in Argyrosaurus, and in Antarctosaurus we know it was small and placed very high on the forehead.

I have a series of titanosaur heads I'm working on that will show this, hopefully I can have it up soon.

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Carcharodontotitan In reply to Paleo-King [2010-12-29 22:18:42 +0000 UTC]

Ok, cool

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Paleo-King In reply to tuomaskoivurinne [2010-12-27 03:34:32 +0000 UTC]

Thanks, you too
I don't mind at all. A jackpot, huh? I like the sound of that.

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