#atlasaurus

Atlasaurus was a request from Robin FQ, a Cretaceous tier member on Patreon!

The largest and arguably most property damaging animal of the bunch was the Atlasaurus. The company (Whose name I no longer recall) was taking animals out from other times and putting them in the modern day, to see if they could adapt and if we in turn could potentially adapt to their worlds. The Atlasaurus was the king of the rail shipped animals, a single large unit that didn't move fast, but anything that challenged it would likely fall. Atlasaurus was a dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic of Morocco, and was known for overly sized forelimbs. We've had two specimens near complete of this animal, and while somewhat familiar, was the right kind of bizarre for Melody.

But what is a king without the much more deadly queen? Enter Gigantoraptor, the only other known from a single animal from the train wreck. While the Atlasaurus is scary because a large angry animal that can break buildings is spooky, the Gigantoraptor was the horror angle planned up for the whole thing. Luring people away into the woods with recreated vocal cries like a parrot, before crushing skulls with that beak, she was the closest to monster of the bunch I had planned.

Gigantoraptor was a titanic oviraptorid from Late Cretaceous China, standing over 26 feet in length, 11 feet in height at the hip, and up to 2 metric tons of weight. A true queen of adaptability, and just a spark of horror. I had not seen Weird Birds at the time of making it, nor am I sure that was around three-four years ago. But glad to see others used the idea well.

In the Bishop seat, I had an animal that always reminded me of a clergy member in the form of Corythosaurus. On paper, it seemed a sure case really. Hadrosaurs are/were the "weak" dinosaur, and having two running around would be the kind of thing that would make players de-priortize them or make them easy pickings. Neither of which are true for a 30 ft+ long reptile with a great sense of confusion and the attitude of geese. Corythosaurus is a lambeosaurine hadrosaur from North America, and has some of the earliest and best presreved dinosaur mummies around. But with such clarity, they've fallen in the shadow of Parasaurolophus and I think it's a damn shame. Hence their inclusion.

For the Knights, I had two individuals that feel like they should be paired more often in the form of Dilophosaurus and Ceratosaurus. These more moderately sized theropods are the kind of animals that would be selected as safer than an Allosaurus, only for us to find out that their smaller size means they consider human sized animals more likely for prey. Ceratosaurus was a Late Jurassic theropod from the Morrison Formation of North America. One of the actual dinosaurs to be discovered with scute like bone structures, I wanted to have a good red color to contrast with the greens that were predominating the higher echelons of ranked dinosaurs. Dilophosaurus was a massive predator for it's time of Early Jurassic North America. I swear I had a colored and lined version somewhere, but it was not in the folder with the rest and may be lost. The sketch at the very least does still exist.

With the Rook, I wanted to play a twisted on the usual suspects. Just because the majority would be Mesozoic animals (A crowd pleaser at the table), throwing in a prehistoric mammal or two would be fun. So two Arsinoitherium were added, both to give the species a little bit of shine and also switch things up from existing ideas. Made for a perfect proxy for the rook on a chess board. Arsinoitherium was a large mammal from Eocene of Egypt and North Africa. Despite the horn layout looking like a rhinoceros, this animal was an Afrothere, placing it into the family of elephants, hyraxes, manatees, aardvarks and tenrecs among others. It's almost made a cameo in several different films, but never quite made it out. Didn't make it to Melody either though so it is what it is.

Sauropod dinosaurs were just generally weird animals, but there's something… not quite right about Atlasaurus imelakei.

Named after the Atlas Mountains of Morocco where its fossil remains were discovered, Atlasaurus lived during the mid-Jurassic period, around 168-165 million years ago. While it wasn't the strangest-looking sauropod by any means, compared to other species its body proportions still show a particularly bizarre combination of features, with a slightly bigger head, unusually short neck, and very long slender legs that made up nearly half of its 9m height (29'6").

It's sort of the uncanny valley of sauropods. Everything about it is just a tiny bit wrong.

And more shrinkwrapped depictions really don't help with that. [image source]

Its tall shoulders and sloping back resemble the body plan of brachiosaurids so closely that it was initially thought to be an early member of that group, but more recent studies suggest it may have been part of an earlier evolutionary branch of sauropods known as the turiasaurs – which would mean its brachiosaur-like shape was actually the result of convergent evolution.

But what was it doing with such weird proportions?

…We really don't know. Other short-necked sauropods seem to have been adapted for feeding on lower vegetation only a couple of meters off the ground, but Atlasaurus' leggy build would have made it a high browser like the brachiosaurids it was mimicking. Its long legs may also have allowed it to move faster, or given it some advantage navigating over rough terrain, but since no other sauropod ever seemed to evolve this way it must have been doing something particularly unique.

Or perhaps it was just an evolutionary fluke. Maybe part of a lineage that had started adapting to short-necked low browsing, then moved back towards the high browsing niche – and happened to end up lengthening their legs instead of their necks to get the necessary height back.

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In Honor of #ThrowbackThursday here’s some photos from over the years! 

We thank you for your support over the years! As we start this new chapter with our website it’s cool to look back at how far we have come!

Special shout out to Christian, Emma, and Brandon in these photos!