#dinosauromorph

yesterday was SO FUCKING GOOD!!!! We did cameroceras,

Thalassotitan,

Ctenosauriscus, (he has blimd eye)

And the teeny tiny mouse lizard, Saltopus

Portrait of dinosauromorph Pisanosaurus mertii from the Late Triassic of Argentina. A partial skeleton of this reptile was discovered in rocks of the Ischigualasto Formation and described in 1967 as belonging to a basal ornithischian. Initially, the animal was even attributed to the Pisanosauridae family. Phylogenetic analyses in 2015 and subsequent years showed it as a relative or even a representative of silesaurids, a group of dinosaurs very close to dinosaurs proper. Pisanosaurus has features of both silesaurids and early ornithischians, which may indicate the relationship of these groups. Judging by the single specimen, it reached a little over a meter in length. The animal's name was given in honor of paleontologist Juan Arnaldo Pisano.

I decided to make a portrait because, due to the uncertain classification, it is not known whether Pisanosaurus was bipedal or quadrupedal. Filamentous structures are speculative.

I have made a thing

Okayyyy, back to posting art on here!! It’s been a while, but here’s the first piece that I created for @wtf-triassic​, the tiny boi dinosauromorph Lagerpeton chanarensis. This small lad hails from the Argentinian Chañares Formation, and is about 235ma old. As a dinosauromorph, Lagerpeton falls just outside the line between dinosaur and non-dinosaur, which is a super abitrary line given how similar some of these species are to “true” dinosaurs. The Chañares Formation is full of other almost-dinosaurs-but-not-quite, making it a fascinating snapshot in time of the very beginnings of the dinosaurian lineage.

As an almost-a-dinosaur, Lagerpeton was probably covered in fluffy filaments, or “protofeathers”, since based on their existence in both dinosaurs and pterosaurs these fibres were likely ancestral at least to ornithodirans, the group that includes pterosaurs, dinosaurs, and vague difficult-to-define little things like Lagerpeton.

There’s not a whole lot special about this reconstruction in particular, I used my usual process for digital painting. I did make more use of textured brushes, which are an excellent way of roughing out textures that I highly recommend experimenting with. I might make a tutorial post on that at some point, it’s something I’ve found extremely useful.