Hey, just a quick announcement this time: today’s LA Times has a nice little article on Aquilops on page A6. It’s also available online here. Good luck tracking down a hardcopy – our local Barnes & Noble doesn’t carry the LA Times (not sure which party that reflects worse on), and I got the last copy from a gas station down the street. I’m so happy that they used Brian’s artwork!
If you’ve been reading around about Aquilops, you’ve probably seen it compared in size to a raven, a rabbit, or a cat. Where’d those comparisons come from? You’re about to find out.
As I mentioned in my first post on Aquilops , I drew the skull reconstructions that appear in figure 6 of the paper (Farke et al. 2014). I’m writing this post to explain that process.
Today sees the description of Aquilops americanus (“American eagle face”), a new basal neoceratopsian from the Cloverly Formation of Montana, by Andy Farke, Rich Cifelli, Des Maxwell, and myself, with life restorations by Brian Engh.
UPDATE the next day: Since I published this post, it’s become clear that the similarities in the two images are in fact convergence. Davide Bonadonna got in touch with Mike and me, and he has been very gracious and conciliatory. In fact, he volunteered to let us post the making-of images for his painting, which I will do shortly.
We feature a lot of Brian Engh’s stuff here–enough that he has his own category. But lately he has really been outdoing himself. The wave of awesome started last year, when Brian started posting videos showing builds and suit tests for monsters–monster suits, monster puppets, monster you-name-its.
Because “here’s that Brian Engh sketch of a sauropod literally stomping the guts out of a theropod you ordered” was a bit ungainly for a post title.
This post is just an excuse for me to show off Brian Engh’s entry for the All Yesterdays contest (book here, contest–now closed–here). The title is a reference to this post, by virtue of which I fancy myself at least a spear-carrier in what I will grandly refer to as the All Yesterdays Movement.
From field correspondent Brian Engh: A Brontomerus on the edge of a jumbled forest of partially knocked over trees.
We’ve gotten a few complaints this year about how much time we’ve spent talking about open access instead of dinosaurs. Brian Engh is in the more-dinosaurs faction, but he doesn’t just whinge about our non-dino coverage, he does something about it. He writes: Awesome. Happy new year, sauropod fans. Enjoy this rearing Dicraeosaurus courtesy of Brian.