A Mesozoic Mosaic blog

Here is a notice for all those interested in paleontology oriented topics

After a couple of weeks of posting on my first (experimental in a way) blog "Oberon Cartoons", dedicated to my interests, inspiration and my cartoons, I came to a conclusion that the blog was too diverse and that I have too much material to show.  Thus, I thought it would be only appropriate to start another blog which would deal mostly with the paleontology stuff. So here is the blog "A Mesozoic Mosaic".

The Main Brijun (Istria, Croatia) Early Cretaceous scene.

Forbidden planet's Monster from the ID

  I keep watching Forbidden planet movie from time to time. It was so good, so ahead of its time in so many ways: from the music score to the design. One of my favourite scenes is when the captain and the doctor were speculating about the shape of the monster, deducting from cast of its footprint. It is quite similar to the real task when paleontologists are trying to figure out the characteristics and features of extinct animals who left only their petrified tracks in the rock. I search for the ancient tracks on the Adriatic coast and it is a lot of research and fun.

It is also amusing that some species of dinosaurs had claws, not unlike the one from the movie, but on their three-fingered hands. Check out the cast of the finger claw of the allosaurid theropod  Saurophaganax here :
 Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

My drawings of the fossil bones of some theropod hands. Above is Megaraptor left hand (manus) and below is Allosaurus left hand:

Please, note that in life, the claw would be covered with a keratinous sheath - talon (like our nails) which would make it considerably longer.

The second part of this article continues on my Mesozoic Mosaic blog:

Forbidden planet's Monster from the ID part 2

Edmontosaurus with a fleshy rooster-like comb

Besides being a cartoonist I am also a paleoartist. I have been a paleoartist for decades. You can see some of my restorations at the Natural History Museum's in London site:
Natural History Museum London Picture Library
or at my old neglected tripod site:
Beri's Dinosaur World (BDW)
I am happy to note that although many of the life restorations of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals are decades old (the oldest dating from 1983), they still can pass as reasonably accurate ones or even don't have any major flaws regardless of the recent advances in paleontology and numerous new discoveries.
To cut the long story short, recently a new wonderful and very surprising Edmontosaurus fossil with some soft body parts impressions has been discovered and described. According to this find, not only the various dinosaurs had the bony combs, crests, horns and sails, but they might have been decorated with the fleshy ornaments as well. The Edmontosaurus had a fleshy rooster's comb.
National Geographic Society site has the story. Julius Csotonyi has produced a nice life restoration for the paper and the magazine.

However, looking at the published paper, I have noticed that the fleshy comb might have been larger and of a bit different shape than Julius has painted it. Here is my interpretation: