The First Animals. Written by B. Goodreid. Illustrated by L. Field Marchant. 1970.

I got a Deinocheirus toy from the science museum!! Safari LTD is making some really nice toys lately and I am happy

Gallimimus – Late Cretaceous (70 ma)

Oh boy, I had a lot of fun drawing today’s animal. It’s Gallimimus, coming to you from Cretaceous Mongolia! Gallimimus is really well-known—since its discovery in 1972, we’ve dug up near countless fossils, and plenty of those are very well-preserved. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get in the paint.

Gallimimus was an ornithomimid, theropods who were closely-related to birds. Their family name even means “bird mimic” (Gallimimus means “chicken mimic,” on account of it looking like a big chicken). It was the largest member of its family, at 20 feet long (6 meters).

It has several features in common with birds: a slender body, a keratin beak, and long, birdlike legs. It’s pretty popularly drawn as something like a featherless ostrich, but that shit doesn’t fly here that’s a really outdated portrayal, since we’ve known ornithomimids had feathers for a while, now.

Let’s talk about Gallimimus’ head. Its eyes were big, meaning it probably had good eyesight. Even though its head was small compared to the rest of its body, it had a lot of brain room in that skull, and was likely one of the smarter dinosaurs out there. And hey, take a closer look at that snout!* Those jaws were made of keratin like a bird’s beak, but wider and spadelike. Inside its mouth were bony plates, used for sifting food out of the mud and mashing it up. It ate basically whatever—lizards, bugs, berries, it was all a snack to Gallimimus.

Its arms were weak, even compared to other members of its family. It couldn’t use its claws to grasp things, but might have used them to dig through the mud in search of food. Its legs, though, were really strong. It was one of the fastest dinosaurs, making a run for it anytime it spotted trouble. That trouble? Oh, just Tarbosaurus, a cousin of Tyrannosaurus who was only slightly smaller. So, you know, a pretty good reason to evolve to be really good at running.

This is a pretty popular dinosaur, thanks to its appearance in Jurassic Park. All it really does is run around and scream, but it was a groundbreaking appearance nonetheless. Part of Jurassic Park’s massive influence on popular culture was finally breaking the ideas of the dinosaur renaissance into the mainstream.

The dinosaur renaissance was a paleontological revolution that changed the way we look at dinosaurs. For a long time, we thought of dinosaurs as sluggish, lumbering animals who were kinda stupid. But then, in the late 60’s, legendary paleontologists John Ostrom and Robert Bakker took a closer look at the fossil record and said, “Hold on, these guys weren’t like this at all,” and pretty much rewrote dinosaurs as active, agile, and intelligent animals. This was foreshadowed by one of my favorite classic works of paleoart, Charles R. Knight’s painting of Laelaps (now called Dryptosaurus), but now, it’s considered undeniable fact. Steven Spielberg brought these ideas to the public when he adapted Jurassic Park. Velociraptor is probably the best example of this shift, but Gallimimus is a close second. It’s hardly the big dumb dragon everyone was used to.

Jurassic Park was my first exposure to Gallimimus as a kid, and it’s since become one of my favorite dinosaurs of all time. I’ve always loved slender, speedy animals, and I have a soft spot for animals like that who weren’t predators of large animals. There’s something magical about watching small birds foraging for food, and Gallimimus represents a much larger-scale version of that. This is a dinosaur that’s been on my list for a long time, and today was finally the day.

Rativates evadens by Olorotitan