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Description
This is boring. Yes, I know that it is in profile, and that it's jaws are gaping wide. The facial disks are a rip- ... hommage, because they look so cool on these dinosaurs. Okay, it has been said.

I'm a bit flabbergasted how few good paleoartists/palaeontographers had their try at Troodon. On second thought, the obvious reason occurs that material has been very fragmentary, with the Stenonychosaurus holotype the most complete of the illustrated stuff. I will carefully avoid to even mention the questions about the validity of this "ultimate taxonomic survivor", as Justin Tweet of thescelosaurus.com fame put it. Now that there are good references, I had to do it one day.

It's because I think Troodon/Stenonychosaurus sp./formosus?/inequalis was my first favorite dinosaur ever. When other 5-year-olds drooled over their T-Rexes and trikes, this little (or not so little?) theropod was amazing because of what was written in all those textbooks - it must have been the most intelligent dinosaur ever. Add to that snippets of the hilarious Russell/Sequin-ian "dinosauroid", and that David Norman (?) textbook in which "Troödon" is depicted as a predatory hypsil-type ornithischian, maybe an early misinterpretation of the "Egg Mountain" site. Of course, with so few non-avian maniraptorans looked at regarding encephalization quotients, and with the juvenile Bambiraptor having a higher one anyway (yes, maybe no longer when fully grown), its intellectual superiority is no longer uncontested, although I don't doubt that Troodon and its closest kin were among the smartest non-avian dinosaurs. Okay, shock horror, there's no reason either to assume it's scaly any more, and the "little dinosaur" stuff and the frequently cited length of 2 m is neither right - reaching and maybe exceeding a length of 3 m (not counting any possible tail feathers) is certainly not what one would call a "small" animal if it were alive today, and as a consequence of its general design - it doesn't have the proportion of a small-legged dromaeosaur, but an ostrich-mimic with a big head and sharp claws - it stood considerably taller than dromaeosaurids of like size. It certainly could whip a Saurornitholestes's ass - it may have not been as deadly pound for pound, but had a lot more pounds.

My drawing is based on GSP's skeletal from his 2010 field guide, and the one recently posted by Scott Hartman ([link] ). I was surprised how different they were from Greg Paul's Saurornithoides skeletal in PDW - the only tentative reference for drawing a derived troodontid. The shape of the skull is quite different, and the pelvis is very strange; I would have expected the body cavity to be much deeper.

Although in a full run, I opted for a rather knee-driven mode of locomotion instead of the classic non-maniraptoran tail-propelled one, and thus smoothed the femora more or less into the torso (well, they're hidden by the wing anyway). Tail feathers are inspired by basal troodontids, and although the arms are shockingly small, I gave my troodont pretty hefty wings. As I recall that the nasals of Zanabazar were reported to be rugose, I hesitated to put feathers on them in Troodon.

Other things to bother might be the feathered "cheek", the slender-ish neck and absence of hind wings; I don't think that a big, puffy Anchiornis/microraptorine-style pelage would be developmentally feasible in a 50-70 kg predator, and neither would be rear wings in an animal too large to be able to make regular use of them; I actually had them extend only to above the ankle, and enlarged them now. To be honest, so "much" conjecture feels almost disturbing in the age of Technicolor dinosaurs

As a final note, I'd like to mention how tiresome troodontid rectrices are. I mean, those on this one are already much less extensive than those seen in Anchiornis and Jinfengopteryx.

Description
This is boring. Yes, I know that it is in profile, and that it's jaws are gaping wide. The facial disks are a rip- ... hommage, because they look so cool on these dinosaurs. Okay, it has been said.

I'm a bit flabbergasted how few good paleoartists/palaeontographers had their try at Troodon. On second thought, the obvious reason occurs that material has been very fragmentary, with the Stenonychosaurus holotype the most complete of the illustrated stuff. I will carefully avoid to even mention the questions about the validity of this "ultimate taxonomic survivor", as Justin Tweet of thescelosaurus.com fame put it. Now that there are good references, I had to do it one day.

It's because I think Troodon/Stenonychosaurus sp./formosus?/inequalis was my first favorite dinosaur ever. When other 5-year-olds drooled over their T-Rexes and trikes, this little (or not so little?) theropod was amazing because of what was written in all those textbooks - it must have been the most intelligent dinosaur ever. Add to that snippets of the hilarious Russell/Sequin-ian "dinosauroid", and that David Norman (?) textbook in which "Troödon" is depicted as a predatory hypsil-type ornithischian, maybe an early misinterpretation of the "Egg Mountain" site. Of course, with so few non-avian maniraptorans looked at regarding encephalization quotients, and with the juvenile Bambiraptor having a higher one anyway (yes, maybe no longer when fully grown), its intellectual superiority is no longer uncontested, although I don't doubt that Troodon and its closest kin were among the smartest non-avian dinosaurs. Okay, shock horror, there's no reason either to assume it's scaly any more, and the "little dinosaur" stuff and the frequently cited length of 2 m is neither right - reaching and maybe exceeding a length of 3 m (not counting any possible tail feathers) is certainly not what one would call a "small" animal if it were alive today, and as a consequence of its general design - it doesn't have the proportion of a small-legged dromaeosaur, but an ostrich-mimic with a big head and sharp claws - it stood considerably taller than dromaeosaurids of like size. It certainly could whip a Saurornitholestes's ass - it may have not been as deadly pound for pound, but had a lot more pounds.

My drawing is based on GSP's skeletal from his 2010 field guide, and the one recently posted by Scott Hartman ([link] ). I was surprised how different they were from Greg Paul's Saurornithoides skeletal in PDW - the only tentative reference for drawing a derived troodontid. The shape of the skull is quite different, and the pelvis is very strange; I would have expected the body cavity to be much deeper.

Although in a full run, I opted for a rather knee-driven mode of locomotion instead of the classic non-maniraptoran tail-propelled one, and thus smoothed the femora more or less into the torso (well, they're hidden by the wing anyway). Tail feathers are inspired by basal troodontids, and although the arms are shockingly small, I gave my troodont pretty hefty wings. As I recall that the nasals of Zanabazar were reported to be rugose, I hesitated to put feathers on them in Troodon.

Other things to bother might be the feathered "cheek", the slender-ish neck and absence of hind wings; I don't think that a big, puffy Anchiornis/microraptorine-style pelage would be developmentally feasible in a 50-70 kg predator, and neither would be rear wings in an animal too large to be able to make regular use of them; I actually had them extend only to above the ankle, and enlarged them now. To be honest, so "much" conjecture feels almost disturbing in the age of Technicolor dinosaurs

As a final note, I'd like to mention how tiresome troodontid rectrices are. I mean, those on this one are already much less extensive than those seen in Anchiornis and Jinfengopteryx.