#kritosaurus

Katy Ocean - my original character :3

66 million years ago in Late Cretaceous North America, a herd of Kritosaurus navajovius gather around a salt lick in a jungle clearing. Licking minerals from the clay here provides these hadrosaurid dinosaurs with essential nutrients such as sodium, calcium, and zinc which helps with the animals’ physical growth. It’s a behavior many animals throughout the world carry out to this day.

Most of the time, when you see a T. rex going after hadrosaurs in paleoart, the prey is Edmontosaurus. I wanted to shake things up a bit by having the unlucky hadrosaur be Kritosaurus, from the southern half of T. rex’s range, instead.

This saurolophine hadrosaur hailing from the Cerro del Pueblo Formation (73-71 million years ago) which is part of the Sabinas Basin in Mexico, was originally described as Kritosaurus sp. by Kirkland et al. in 2006, but was later described as an indeterminate saurolophine by Prieto-Márquez et al. seven years later. This Mexican kritosaur is unique for sporting a ndistinctively curved ischium, and at 11 meters or 36 feet long, this Mexican Kritosaur was 20% larger than other species of the genus Kritosaurus, making it one of the largest saurolophines ever documented from North America. It shared its coastal wetland habitat, which spanned the southern coast of Laramidia, with other large herbivores such as fellow saurolophine Latirhinus uitstlani, the lambeosaurines Velafrons coahilensis and Tlatolophus galorum, and the chasmosaurine ceratopsian Coahuilaceratops magnacuerna.

'Most extinct animals have only scientific names, Greek or Latin. Because of that the author of the original (Danish) edition invented Danish names for the animals. Finnish versions of those names have been used in this edition except for those (very rare) cases where an animal already has a Finnish name.'

Thank you all so much for your enthusiasm about the last lightbox post, it’s something I really enjoy doing so I’m glad y’all like seeing it too! I’ve included another ‘process’ kinda photo with this one, so you can see all the different layers that make up this piece! This one has nine, I generally keep the layer count under ten because one you get up to that point the light just doesn’t really come through the paper any more so it’s pretty much pointless. This one had the added bonus of the foam board at the bottom of the scene kinda looking like the surface of a creek, which was not intentional but I think it looks nice!

I’m back to drawing scaly hadrosaurid such as New Mexico’s Kritosaurus navajovius to celebrate the #nationaldinosaurday on this day. #kritosaurusnavajovius #kritosaurus #kritosaurini #naayéé #dinosauria #hadrosauridae #ornithopoda #sketchbook #paleoart #artistsoninstagram #artistontumblr #myart https://www.instagram.com/p/CAOZgvxlOdx/?igshid=1g7sjurs1wb9c

Kritosaurus, 1910