#dinapril

Welcome to DinApril 2026, where instead of recycling my list from last year, I made my father come up with the dinosaurs! Our twenty-seventh day features a dinosaur that my father thinks is underappreciated: Yinlong! Two females show what happens when the artist likes puns a little too much.

Bipedal non-ceratopsid ceratopsians don't get much love, especially ones that aren't Psittacosaurus. When I first learned about Yinlong in third grade, it immediately became my favorite, because learning that there were Jurassic ceratopsians that Triceratops might've evolved from was so exciting to me. My father learned about Yinlong in the same documentary I did (which was also where he learned about Guanlong, another favorite of late-preteen me (and it's still one of my favorite theropods)), and pairing Guanlong and Yinlong together just like their cousins/descendants Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops just feels right to me.

Welcome to DinApril 2026, where instead of recycling my list from last year, I made my father come up with the dinosaurs! Our twentieth day features a dinosaur that regained its taxonomic validity during my father's lifetime: Brontosaurus excelsus! Two males Brontosmash.

I didn't want to do Brontosaurus two years in a row for this prompt, but my father, as mentioned earlier, does not know that much about dinosaurs and this was what he chose.

Welcome to DinApril 2026, where instead of recycling my list from last year, I made my father come up with the dinosaurs! Our thirtieth and final day is my father's take on the free day: The Oxford Clay Formation! A male Eustreptospondylus oxoniensis, Callovosaurus leedsi, and Metriacanthosaurus parkeri have been washed out to sea by a storm and struggle to stay afloat, unaware of the hungry Liopleurodon ferox lurking below the debris.

My father's favorite prehistoric animal is Liopleurodon because he saw a clip of the oversized Liopleurodon from Walking With Dinosaurs hunting a Eustreptospondylus, and he wanted the pliosaur to be featured for today's prompt. I, of course, decided not to depict the pliosaur as 82 feet long and instead depicted it as a more realistic (although still rather large) 30 feet long. Fitting that a 30-foot Liopleurodon is featured on the thirtieth day.

This is it, folks. I actually did it! Tomorrow I'm going to make a compilation of all 30 pieces I did this year.

Welcome to DinApril 2026, where instead of recycling my list from last year, I made my father come up with the dinosaurs! Our tenth day features a Cretaceous dinosaur: Parasaurolophus walkeri! This female is lying on a patch of mossy ground to drink from a pond full of water caltrops. Five curious Cordualadensa dragonflies buzz near her face.

This piece looks really calming to me.

Welcome to DinApril 2026, where instead of recycling my list from last year, I made my father come up with the dinosaurs! Our third day features his favorite thyreophoran: Ankylosaurus magniventris! Two males fight each other with their clubs in reference to recent studies suggesting ankylosaurid tail clubs were more for intraspecific combat than anti-predator defense, and the older of the two lands a massive hit on the younger male's right eye.

I've never drawn ankylosaurids using their tail clubs before, or from the top view, so this drawing concusses two Ankylosaurus with the same club.

Welcome to DinApril 2026, where instead of recycling my list from last year, I made my father come up with the dinosaurs! Our nineteenth day features a dinosaur from Jurassic Park that has been redesigned to be more accurate to the actual animal: Dilophosaurus wetherilli! A JP Dilophosaurus has foolishly tried to antagonize an accurate male Dilophosaurus, who has responded to the intrusion into his territory by ripping off the clone's neck frills.

Inspired by the scene in Dinosaur Revolution where a male Cryolophosaurus rips off a rival male's crests.

Welcome to DinApril 2026, where instead of recycling my list from last year, I made my father come up with the dinosaurs! Our ninth day features a Jurassic dinosaur: Stegosaurus stenops! A female grazes in a field of horsetails.

I really like how the colors of this one turned out. Stegosaurus is usually a yellow dinosaur for me.

Welcome to DinApril 2026, where instead of recycling my list from last year, I made my father come up with the dinosaurs! We'll celebrate 5 11/12 day (in reference to learning what my age was a month before my sixth birthday in kindergarten from my mother, which prompted some other kid to insist I was five instead of five and eleven-twelfths) with his favorite sauropod: Apatosaurus ajax! This female is standing in a field of ferns that a flock of Mesadactylus is flying in, and her peace is interrupted by the sudden arrival of a juvenile Apatosaurus chasing some of the pterosaurs. Unbeknownst to her, the juvenile Apatosaurus is her daughter from a past clutch.

We're now 3-for-3 for DinAprils featuring Morrison Formation dinosaurs chasing contemporary pterosaurs.