#koreaceratops

here's today's #Paleostream sketches!!!

today we sketched Eryops, Plateosaurus, Mahuidacursor, and Koreaceratops

Yuanaayo The Yuanaayo is based on the Iguanadon. Iguanadon was one of the earliest dinosaurs discovered and there were a lot of early mistakes. The most famous mistake with early reconstruction of Iguanadon was where people misplaced it's thumb-spikes thinking it might be a horn on their face, but I just learned that one man named Richard Owen claimed that they were not just lizards, but advanced lizards with mammal like features that were given to them by god with transmutation!? I figure the Yuanaayo is the closest comparable creature to a Centaur we are going to see in Soaring

Chimalixo The Chimalixo is based on the Protoceratops. The most famous Protoceratops fossil comes from the Gobi Desert preserving an eternal fight between a Protoceratops and a Velociraptor where it appears they became buried alive in the midst of their battle.

Kuetotlopitsi The Kuetotlopitsi is based on the Microceratus, one of the smallest members of the Ceratopsid family that stood on it's hind legs leaving it's front arms free. I gave it a pair of proto-wing claws it could use to scratch at creatures trying to grab them from above and the quills make them uncomfortable to bite form the back.

Kuachimali The Kuachimali is based on the Pachycephalosaurus. It was previously believed that Male Pachycephalosaurs used it's large cranial dome to ram one another like Bighorned Sheep and Musk Ox, but there is no evidence that Pachys had the neck integrity to take that kind of impact, and we have not discovered scaring on the fossil that would suggest that the every took that kind of impact. An alternate theory is that they may have used their heads to hit each other in the flanks. Having said that I imagine in Soaring the Kuachimali would produce a magical repulsive force from their head but acting as a shield that redirects impacts off their head and protects their body from taking the impact.

Koreaceratops hwaseongensis is a species of basal ceratopsian from Early Cretaceous South Korea. Unfortunately only the tail and hind legs of the specimen are known, due to the fossil being found in a block that had been quarried and used in a seawall, with the front half of the fossil apparently having been sliced off in the quarrying process. However, we can infer the front end of the animal based on other early ceratopsians, like Archaeoceratops. Thankfully, the most interesting part of this animal does seem to be its tail! Its tail was comprised of tall neural spines, similar to the “paddle tail” of Spinosaurus. This may have been a display feature, but it has also been postulated that this could be an adaptation for swimming! It’s unlikely that there was a fully or even semi-aquatic ceratopsian, but Koreaceratops may have used its tail to escape to the water to swim away from land predators. The specimen was an estimated 1.3 m (4.3 ft) long, but seemed to have been around 8 years old when it died, and may have not been fully grown.

Due to the nature of its discovery, Koreaceratops can’t be assigned to a specific formation. A bone histology examination reveals that it likely lived in a semiarid environment. Many arthropods are known from South Korea during the Early Cretaceous, but other archosaurs are only known from footprints and indeterminate teeth. Ichnofossils (species known only from footprints) include the large theropod Grallator, the tiny theropod Minisauripus, and the bird Ignotornis.

eryops plateosaurus mahuidacursor koreaceratops

Flocking Together #73

Eryops/Plateosaurus