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Viergacht β Canis concolor and Puma lupus
#alternate #cougar #evolution #feline #felis #hybrid #life #lion #lupine #lupus #paleo #paleoart #panther #parallel #prehistoric #puma #restoration #species #speculative #swap #tiger #universe #wolf #wolves #mountain_lion #paleoillustration #specevo #spec_evo
Published: 2015-07-06 13:09:08 +0000 UTC; Views: 15062; Favourites: 399; Downloads: 50
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Description
A little thought experiment to illustrate an inevitable flaw in paleoart.Imagine an alternate universe in which there are no felines. For whatever reason, they all died off before a human could see or draw a representation of one. And then a paleontologist digs up the complete, perfect skeleton of a puma, and a paleoartist is tasked with painting a life restoration. What is he going to do? With no close living relatives to reference, he uses the next best thing - Β another common predator, more distantly related, that lives in the same area and hunts similar prey. The result is on the left, a puma skull restored with details of the soft tissue and fur of a timber wolf.
On the right is the life restoration of an extinct animal from an alternate universe with the opposite situation. All members of the cat family are present and accounted for, but no one has ever seen a canid. Another artist is handed the the skull of a wolf to work with. Rather than simply grafting the colors of an extant animal onto her skull, she combines inspiration from a tiger, puma and cheetah to come up with pelt marked like a typical feline, reasoning that since most cats have brightly patterned coats, it's likely her mystery animal did too, although she can never know the exact array of spots and stripes.
It's interesting how much of the character of an animal is in the details, and how much an artist's choices can influence the way we picture a fossil animal.
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Comments: 69
Furries? But seriously, that's an interesting thought.Β
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Reconstructing a human skull from a wolf or puma? Or reconstructing a wolf or puma skull from a human?Β
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The second would be incredibly creepy.
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Have you ever thought about illustrating their whole bodies?
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I have! It's one of those projects for when I have some free time
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You know, these interesting examples of paleofail reminds to me the Shrink Wrapped animals.
Do you know it?
It's about reconstructing modern animals in the way we would reconstruct the dinosaurs and others ancient animals.
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Yep, even back when it was a popular trope I thought it looked kind of weird.Β
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Well, it have too look weird.
Look at the platypus, knowing just his skeleton would you make an actual egg-laying mammal?
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Every now and then I remember this, and I lie awake at night thinking of all the soft tissue details we will never know
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Same. Although it is pretty amazing we known some dinosaur colors now, and all the little feathered critters they've been finding recently.
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It's absolutely amazing, and it's a good point to bring up when there are people teetering on the edge of the feather argument who happen to be artists; I have "converted" at least one person that way, lol.
Supposedly there was a new plesiosaur fossil with soft tissue or soft tissue indicators that showed they were fatty?
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Oh cool! Makes sense, for streamlining and keeping them warm.
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The Canis concolor looks adorable!
Anyway, I agree.
Someone once said: ''Hey, Microraptor was black, why did you illustrate Changyuraptor as brown!?''
I facepalmed.
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Oy. And we don't even know if solid black was both genders, like crows, or just one.Β
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Hmm, lots of feathered theropod dinosaurs, especially dromaeosaurs, are so often given colors that are either heavily influenced or even completely taken from a living species of bird. Like what if those dinos had completely different color patterns than any living birds, since the relation IS still pretty distant, even though both are classified inside Dinosauria.... Dromaeosaurs even had lips and teeth, unlike living birds, so.... They must've been very, very different-looking, despite having had feathers and had common ancestry with them.
Your drawing here demonstrates very well why I think lastly mentioned is kinda disturbing. It's lazy. To wrap something extinct in the skin, flesh and color of something living. It may be so inaccurate.
Extinct dinosaurs get constantly wrapped in soft tissue from living dinosaurs (birds), various lizards and crocodilians. Rarely does one see a reconstruction where dinosaurs would look more like their own thing.Β
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Yeah, I don't like it when an exact pattern & color is lifted wholesale for a serious reconstruction, although it can be cute in a less-serious drawing. Obviously there's going to be some convergeance - countershading, stripes for disruptive camo, etc - but artists should really take the opportunity to be creative.Β
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Couldn't agree more, with these exact words you spoke.
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Have you seen - he's really amazing at coming up unique and believable patterns for his prehistoric reconstructions.
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Very fascinating cat-wolf and dog-tiger. Kinda wish there were domesticated cat-dogs; they look much cuter.
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Maybe someone will genetically engineer one?
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Interesting.Β My icon is my OC Amanda Fuchs.Β She's a tiger-striped red fox who has a tiger's face and here you are drawing something similar using a wolf and a puma.
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An interesting concept on how paleo art's strengths and limitations. So often artists turn to known and familiar animals to fill in the blank of an unknown.
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Well, we do what we can with what we have - it's guesswork, but the good artists use educated guesswork
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Totally true. It is always interesting to explore all sorts of possibilities and interpretations.
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Also, I don;t think Creodonts would've looked too dog like either.
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Thanks
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Love this speculative subjects !
That's exactly the thing we're doing right now; mostly at Dinosaurs.
Although the prime subject has ceded to avians; after the crocodiles.
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How do you think the would've looked different?
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If it were me, I would paint it with more of a furry coat like calves have. It split off from modern elephants pretty early, so I'm not sure how much like them it would have been in little details like the ear shape and so on. Plus a lot of artists just seem to get the shape of the head wrong - the trunk would have been very massive at the base, not at all like a modern elephant - and it must have been doing something really odd with those tusks.Β
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Just the picture looked awesome! Then I read the description and it got even better! Please do more of these
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Hah, awesome! From aesthetic point of view, I prefer Canis concolor ^^ Though it somehow look weird, but I can't say why... maybe it looks sapient? O-o
Though for reconstructing they would probably use a closer relatives, like bears, raccoons for canine and civets in feline's case. That would give more accurate effect (though they couldn't know it xD). Unless they are extinct too O_o Yeah, that would be a problem XD.
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They probably would, but it probably also partly depends on the artist's skill, and whoever did the first reconstruction sort of creating a trope - I deliberately used very unalike carnivores to make the image more striking.Β
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Before I read the description I was like you've given them the wrong structure!! But once I read the description the world made sense! But it's a really interesting thought that I've never thought before. Reminds me a bit of when they thought the iguanadons thumb claws were a type of odd horn so for a while you only had illustrations of them with horns not thumb claws!
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I love this! Β I think about this a lot.
Most paleoart tends to go on the conservative side enveloping the animal with simple bland meat and skin. Β Others mock it up with closest living relative's skins. Β
All in all they seem kind of conservatively wrong somehow.
Reconstructed monkeys and apes from the point of view of never seeing them is also pretty creepy
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I usually try to go with something reminiscent of living animals in a similar ecological niche, but the further back you go in time the inevitably more speculative you have to get. I'd rather see a little bit of imagination than just being boring, tho.
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Very cool concept, I don't think I've seen the idea shown like this before.
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This is really cool. Have you ever read All Yesterdays? I assume you have due to your knowledge and interest in paleoart, but I figured I'd mention it since I really enjoyed reading it, myself.Β
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