Dilly

Dilophosaurus

Dilly the Dilophosaur is the mascot of Dinosaur State Park in Connecticut.  He’s sold in plush form in the gift shop, of course!

I am too old for toys now, and don’t have any kids to buy them for.  But I sometimes buy them anyway, admire them for awhile, then donate them to Toys for Tots or one of the other holiday toy drives.  I tell myself it’s to support the museums and spark some kid’s interest in dinosaurs, but really, I just like dinosaur toys.  :-)

Stegosaurus ungulatus

Or is it a young Stegosaurus armatus?

Taken at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, PA.

The spikes of the “thagomizer” are horizontal and pointed backwards slightly, unlike the upright vertical spikes of the Stegosaurs of my childhood.

Happy Easter

Protoceratops andrewsi nest

I was surprised to find out that no one really knows why birds’ eggs are the colors they are.  Research has shown that color does not affect predation for eggs in trees.  On the ground, some eggs have camouflage coloration, but others do not.  In some species, different individuals will lay different colored eggs, and in some, even the same individual might produce eggs of varying colors.

Real Protoceratops egg fossils have not yet been found.  (What was thought to be a Protoceratops nest was later found to belong to a different species, Oviraptor.)  So there’s plenty of room for artistic license.  I decided on a non-tapered oblong shape for the eggs.  Some dinosaurs had tapered eggs, but it seems like most did not.  It was tempting to make the eggs camouflage-patterned, or robin’s egg blue, or maybe even an assortment of bright colors.  But in the end I chose to model the nest on ostrich’s nests.  Plain white eggs, laid on the bare ground, in no discernible pattern.  No real reason, except that the general lifestyle and environment of Protoceratops reminds me of ostriches.

Dinosaur Mountain

A fisheye view of the “Dinosaur Mountain” exhibit at the Arizona Museum of Natural History in Phoenix.  It shows the Mesozoic with a mountain representing time, with older flora and fauna at the base and newer at the top.  Every 20 minutes or so, there’s a simulated flash flood.

An Octopus’s Garden In the Cretaceous

An attempt at on “Oceans of Kansas” type scene.  I don’t know if there were actually any octopuses there, but they were around back then.

Footprints In the Sands of Time

The indoor trackway at Dinosaur State Park in Connecticut.  The fossilized footprints were left by theropod dinosaurs, perhaps Dilophosaurus.

Cretaceous Courtship

Deinonychus antirrhopus

How did Deinonychus mate? Probably very carefully.  ;-)

Black Beauty

Archaeopteryx lithographica

According to this recent story, Archaeopteryx had black feathers.  Or at least, one Archaeopteryx had at least one black feather.  ;-) Only a single feather was tested, so it’s possible the beastie had feathers of many colors, and it just so happened that a black feather was the one that fossilized.  But I found myself intrigued at the idea that Archaeopteryx might have been solid, glossy black, like a crow or raven.

This is so cool.  When I was a kid, I thought we’d never know what color dinosaurs were. 

Raptor Red

Model of a Coelophysis at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

Quetzalcoatlus northropi

I’ve read that Quetzalcoatlus likely lived in drier areas, rather than near the ocean or wetlands.  Not sure what Cretaceous drylands look like, but I guessed maybe something vaguely like California.