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Day 15
Prompt: Mysterious
*Disclaimer* this animal never existed.
Often in Media, the question of 'what might have happened if the dinosaurs never went extinct?" is explored. Typically this is an excuse to depict familiar dinosaurs alongside humans (looking at you, Good Dinosaur) without any major changes from the fossil record. With some sorts of dinosaur, such as raptors and nodosaurid ankylosaurs, they developed a good body plan early on and didn't change much. Others, like tyrannosaurs and horned ceratopsians, changed significantly in just a few million years. Just look at how much a million years did to humans! For this piece, I considered a possible evolution for a pterosaur like Quetzalcoatlus if it was forced to adapt to living in trees. Some large pterosaurs may have already become flightless by the end of the cretaceous. It is possible that a flightless pterosaur may have taken to the trees to avoid the dangers of the forest floor. Since forests dominated in the years following the KT extinction, this is a likely evolutionary path for it to take. Ourhypothetical azhdarchid may have become a fruit, seed, and nut eater; evolving a parrot-like beak to tackle these nutrient-rich resources. Again, this is pure speculation, but I’m not immune to the exciting mystery of wondering what dinosaurs and other Mesozoic animals might look like today had their ancestors not gone extinct 65 million years ago.
Prompt: Mysterious
*Disclaimer* this animal never existed.
Often in Media, the question of 'what might have happened if the dinosaurs never went extinct?" is explored. Typically this is an excuse to depict familiar dinosaurs alongside humans (looking at you, Good Dinosaur) without any major changes from the fossil record. With some sorts of dinosaur, such as raptors and nodosaurid ankylosaurs, they developed a good body plan early on and didn't change much. Others, like tyrannosaurs and horned ceratopsians, changed significantly in just a few million years. Just look at how much a million years did to humans! For this piece, I considered a possible evolution for a pterosaur like Quetzalcoatlus if it was forced to adapt to living in trees. Some large pterosaurs may have already become flightless by the end of the cretaceous. It is possible that a flightless pterosaur may have taken to the trees to avoid the dangers of the forest floor. Since forests dominated in the years following the KT extinction, this is a likely evolutionary path for it to take. Ourhypothetical azhdarchid may have become a fruit, seed, and nut eater; evolving a parrot-like beak to tackle these nutrient-rich resources. Again, this is pure speculation, but I’m not immune to the exciting mystery of wondering what dinosaurs and other Mesozoic animals might look like today had their ancestors not gone extinct 65 million years ago.
Image size
5026x5471px 3.8 MB
Make
Epson
Model
PerfectionV600
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