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Capella
Dark Cat of the Sith
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Rochester, NY
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2010-10-06, 12:22

Quote:
Originally Posted by billybobsky View Post
Yes, Noel beat me to it... the arm it is a-missin'.
Almost all of the skeletal dinosaurs in this book and Paul's prior books are drawn in precisely that pose with the arm missing, as you can see here (that's the exact reference pic that I used). It's apparently a pretty common pose for skeletal restorations, and honestly, by the time I was halfway through the book I swear was so used to it I forgot dinosaurs could pose in any other way, so my Gallimimus lost an arm just like that guy did. Next time I'll add an arm.

Quote:
Originally Posted by billybobsky View Post
That said, I think I just prefer minimal pencil drawings -- the shading, while perhaps accurately reflecting the texture of the creature (assumed by some other artist, or yourself, certainly) doesn't add much to the dimensionality of the beast. In these cases, skipping the shading as a texturing device and adding it as a shadow/depth cue might help give a sense of something less drawn and more life like even though it lacks detail.
Thanks for the tip, I'll be sure to keep that in mind next time. The first stage I scanned was just the drawn and inked version, and he looked a little boring, though YMMV. So I tried doing some texturing on him. I love the new discoveries we're making, especially of stuff like insulation, and I wanted to bring that through. And honestly, I'm not sure I would know how to shade as a depth cue, given that I know nothing about art. But, again, I'll try to vary it up some on the next ones.

Quote:
Originally Posted by billybobsky View Post
I am also amused by the cursive name in the bottom right corner... it screams late elementary/middle school and yet I know full well it was an adult writing it...
Fun fact: I could read adult Star Trek and Star Wars novels by the age of 6. However, I didn't have even half-decent handwriting in print until 7 thanks to fine motor skills development issues (I think I was the only kid in my elementary to be coded as both gifted and developmentally disabled at the same time). I never managed to get cursive down until about 10-ish, and when I entered 8th grade at 12 we stopped using cursive altogether. So I kind of never developed my cursive skills at all and you're lucky it's as legible as it is. :P

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad View Post
So, Capella, were you also disappointed by the recent discovery/realization that torosaurus and triceratops are one in the same? That's three "major" dinos that I can remember (others being brontosaurus and pterodactyl) that were misidentified and mistaught to the youths of the world.

Speaking of which, let's see some drawings of those!
Actually, not really. I found it kind of exciting, because it shows that we still have so much more to learn about these fascinating creatures that dominated our ecological history for such a significant length of time. Like, it gives the sense that there's always more to learn and uncover. (And also makes me want to be a paleontologist as if I was 7 again. Sigh.)

What's fascinating to me is looking at Paul's 1989 opus (the Predatory Dinosaurs of the World I referenced earlier) and looking at his genus/species attributions from then, and them comparing them to this 2010 work, and then seeing exactly how much has changed.

It's not actually that unprecedented in dinosaur history to have major genera and species reclassifications. Some of them are because of laws of taxonomic precedency, like the Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus case you referenced. This is when a taxon described later turns out to be the same as an earlier-described taxon, and the older name gets preferenced for the combined species. We see this often because of cases the March-Cope bone wars that led to a race of "name everything we find as something new" even when it, uh, clearly wasn't.

Another example of renaming is Tarbosaurus bataar, which, while clearly a tyrannosaurid, was given a different genera name because it was found in Asia and not America. However, when the skeletons were compared in detail, paleontologists agreed that had a tarbosaur been found in NA, they woulda called it Tyrannosaurus for its genera, so because the Big T was the older taxonomy, it got rolled in.

The Triceratops/Torosaurus thing is another anatomy problem- it's the different stages of growth from juvenile to adult, and the significant kind of changes you get from that. I mean, I'm sure there are Earth mammals where if you looked at the life stages with no knowledge, you'd go "wait, that's related?" I believe it's also happened with several other species, including some tyrannosaurs and hadrosaurs. As you said, it's just one of the more prominent cases.

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Originally Posted by evan View Post
pterodactyl is fake?!?!?
Well, it's a commonly taught misconception that pterosaurs (the bat-style winged flying animals, for those of you not in the know) are dinosaurs. This is incorrect. Pterosaurs are archosaurs, much like other dinosaurian relatives crocodilians. However, they are not dinosaurs. I could give you an in-depth lecture on why, but the short version is that the Dinosauria proper are a predominantly-terrestrial (with only limited aerial capability at best and no marine capability) group of archosaurs. (Yes, that also means that any sea-going reptile you might have been taught was a dinosaur was also not a dinosaur. Also, for the purpose of this definition, we are excluding their avian descendants.) Therefore, pterosaurs did exist, but were not dinosaurs.

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