#kepodactylus

Welcome to DinApril 2024! Our third day features my favorite thyreophoran, and my overall third-favorite non-avian dinosaur: Stegosaurus stenops! Here we see a male in full mating season colors chasing off a Kepodactylus that did...something to offend him; did he bite his tail or try to sell him a self-help book? Who knows? Does a large herbivore with a small brain currently full of testosterone need a reason to be aggressive?

Stegosaurus has always been my favorite thyreophoran, and it's also my mother's favorite dinosaur thanks to a book called The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek that she read as a kid; I got her a copy of it for Christmas last year. In the book the titular Stegosaurus attacks a plane thinking it's his nemesis, a Pteranodon; however, these animals were separated by about sixty million years in real life, so they never would've met and antagonized each other. So I used Kepodactylus instead since it's also Morrison. I have no idea if Stegosaurus could gallop like a rhinoceros, but that's the comparison I went for.

For Dinovember, day 18, I have another double post, and they aren’t even dinosaurs 😅 Originally I wasn’t going to devote full pages to pterosaurs. Not on purpose, they just hadn’t come up when I did my thumbnails and layout. But then my pages didn’t match up in a printable way, and while I’m sure I probably missed a few dinosaur species, I decided on this instead. I mean, there will be marine reptiles at the end of the book, why not some flying reptiles too?

For the first one, this little Eilenodon better hope that sunning kepodactylus doesn’t notice it. Maybe the pterosaur won’t be a bother, but why take the chance? Get moving!

Second picture for today, there be fish in these waters, and close enough for these dermodactylus to easily snatch some up.

Only single page posts going forward, but I should have just enough to finish out the month!

The past few years, I used Dinovember to make color books for my niece. This year I wanted a theme, and since we live in Colorado, the Morrison formation seemed appropriate! So since July, I’ve been researching my little heart out on fossil lists, the different species, how they may have interacted, plant life, anything I can think of to make this as accurate as I can. And it’s definitely not fully accurate, but I’m doing my best with the information I can find. It’s definitely improved from the past two years, I think.

And I’m still not done! But I have a good head start to post starting tomorrow! I’ve been working so hard on this, I can’t wait to share it! 🦕