#lung fish

Wet Grounds / 2011

S. Fakhraie(aka Artem Libertas)

Day 15 of Dinovember, my absolute favorite theropod, Baryonyx, fishing for a ceratodus!

I tend to draw a lot of osteoderm-like scales on theropods I haven’t drawn feathers on. I love spikey scales. And they show up a lot on my sketches of baryonyx. So when I started this, the same thing happened. Boney scales similar to a crocodilian. And I’m not going to lie, I really love how it looks!

But as soon as I finished it, I realized that boney scales and scutes fossilize. In armored dinosaurs and crocodilians, fossils have scute formations on and around them. So, if baryonyx had them, we’d very likely know, right?

And I really want this coloring book to be as accurate as it is withing my power of research to make it. I want my niece to learn dinos right. There will be no stegosaurus fighting a tyrannosaurus in this coloring book! Soooo....there should probably be a more accurate baryonyx with no scutes.

So I fixed him! But I also still like the spikey one, so I am posting both because I can.