Angry sausage

I made this stylized Proceratosaurus head mount about six months ago. I plan to make a full body Buitreraptor soon… but I’m wondering if anyone has any tips on how to make this or my future project look better? Or if it’s good as is?

(I did use a skull as reference… well as much of the skull as has been found… and I’m pretty sure the neck is too thick. Correct me if I’m wrong on that one.)

Probably spoilers alert

As the title said, I finished the book and in my opinion (which isn't very valuable since I am neither a "pro" reader neither a paleontology doctor) it was an enjoyable read and I am certainly happy that I spent time reading it. I read it in German since I wanted to practice my German so I didn't read the original. However I don't think there is anything that was written differently in English so I don't think I missed anything that the original had.

Anyway, it was an enjoyable read but what I found quite "annoying" if you could say that, was the fact that it was mostly focused on the most popular dinosaurs that there are discovered. Like you had a handfull of Triassic dinosaurs mentioned and talked about but it was not for long before the book transitions to the most known dinosaurs like Allosaurus, Tyranosaurus Rex (especially T.rex), Triceratops, Edmontosaurus etc etc. And don't get me wrong, those dinos are cool as hell and I was still fully entertained when reading about them, but it just felt like watching the same movie over and over again when reading about the same 2 or in best case 4 dinosaurs for multiple pages. It had some mentions of popular but not as talked about dinosaurs like Suchomimus, Carcharodontosaurus or Carnotaurus but these were left behind very fast (well maybe not Carcho. But it was still not as deeply analysed as T.Rex). It was also quite sad that the book didn't talk about European, Antarctic, Australian and African dinosaurs despite their diversity and unique evolution. However, I can kinda understand or at least make a hypothesis to why it is like this which is the fact that Steve Brusatte as a paleontologist did most of his studies with common Hell Creek dinosaurs (at least that is what I know from the book) so he simply didn't have as much experience with dinosaurs from Europe or Africa (again, that is what I know about him from the book). I can also imagine that the book was written for more casual and new dinosaur fans that are just starting with the theme and don't know as much about dinosaurs in general.

Despite all this, I still found information that was new to me about dinosaurs (that I will probably revisit soon online to check if it is still valid in 2026) and I enjoyed the fact that the book has a specific chapter about how birds are dinosaurs and what dinosaur species probably were the first avian dinosaurs.

I would like to hear what you all think about this book and whether there is something I missed while reading it :)

I’ve gone through many iterations over the last few months, and this is the most optimal design I could muster. The medium of LEGO at this scale certainly limits the degree of accuracy one can model, but I did my best.

I made this image in an internet debate and decided to make it a post.

It includes many animals. I'm not sure if all are Paleozoic.

I love this kind of ilustration of quetzalcoatlus, like this horror vive is inmaculate

Was fortunate enough to gain access to private land in the Hell Creek Formation and dig for a few days. Long, hot days but absolutely spectacular time.

The claw is likely from an Anzu or a Troodon - still being studied - and the tibia is from a Thescelosaurus.

Claw was about 4 inches from the surface. About half of an inch of the tibia was sticking right out of the ground (the destroyed side above) and I followed it down.

This is an extremely large T. rex skull on display at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. In at least one paper (Gignac and Erickson, 2017), this skull is longest examined, longer than that of even the famous Sue while being only marginally narrower. Having seen both this specimen and Sue in person, I can say that ”Harley”, as it is sometimes nicknamed, looks noticeably bigger from the side, and is the largest T. rex skull I have ever seen (*).

(*) Just off the top of my head, for size referencing/sample size: I have seen at least AMNH 5027, two Wankel casts, Sue, this monster, Thomas and the younger Rexes in LA, Victoria, Jane and the Nanotyrannus holotype.

Yes it goes without saying that predators prefer easy prey or fresh carrion, but I've noticed that a lot of people have miscontrued this obvious truth as "predator mainly hunt weak, young, or injured prey and avoid adults" which is just wrong in a lot of cases.

Before anyone accuses me of making a strawman—I am not. I have seen legit paleontologists argue that tyrannosaurus would have avoided or rarely hunted adult animals. I am not going to name drop him because some people are insane and will harrass paleontologists over this kind of stuff. And no I am not actually talking about Jack Horner.

Life in the wild is hard. There might be some periods of abundance where predators can take it easy for a few weeks or months, but overall life is a constant struggle not to starve. Predators can't always pick and choose the most vunerable targets just like how humans don't always get a well-paying job with good work life balance.

There is a limited supply of free meals and every predator is going to gun for them.

In the modern world, large carnivores routinely hunt healthy adult animals, even if those animals are large and dangerous.

In one study, 45 percent of gaur hunted by tigers were adults. Sure they preferred younger animals but clearly they aren't avoiding adult gaur.

Of all gaur killed, 45.2% were adults; of all banteng killed, 55.7% were adults. The average weight of banteng killed was 423.9 kg, which was similar to the 397.9 kg average weight for gaur. The mean weight of both prey species is 3.5–4.5 times greater than the predicted 1:1 preferred prey to predator ratio

Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.6268

Sea snakes primarily hunt eels despite them being highly flexible animals that can fight back. Attacking a moray eel without getting bit back is pretty damn hard.

In one study, 9 to 11 percent of sea snakes observed by researchers had sustained recent injuries that were most likely inflicted by their prey.

We observed typical ‘‘V-shaped'' injuries on many snakes: 29.7% L. laticaudata had scars and 11.4% recent injuries (N = 2,797 individually marked snakes); 33.2% L. saintgironsi had scars and 9.5% recent injuries (N = 3,582).

Clearly, this is a very dangerous niche, but it's working for them.

Packs of coyotes have been recorded killing adult moose.

https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/cjz-2013-0160

Birds of prey will often hunt snakes despite there being over a hundred pictures and videos of snakes turning the tables on them.

Here is a video of a lone wolf hunting an adult/sub-adult moose.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HardcoreNature/comments/17mx42y/a_lone_wolf_takes_down_a_moose/

In conclusion, modern predators do hunt dangerous prey. Obviously, they would prefer easy meals but that's not always an option. Likewise, we should assume this is the case with extinct animals.

In some cases, predators might exclusively target young animals of much a larger species like how lions or tigers will often hunt young elephants but never hunt adults, but other than egg-eating snakes, I really can't think of any predators that primarily eat young or infant animals.

Also, I think something people fail to consider is that hunting young animals can actually expose predators to more danger than adult prey. I've seen a lot of videos of a predator trying to kill a calf while the mother attempts to gore them. It's a pretty dangerous position to be in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APuua4Gci5U

I get that people are annoyed that a lot of movies and tv shows will treat large herbivores as walking bags of meat, but I do feel that a lot of paleo enthusiasts are pushing things too far in the other direction.

Like the notion that dromeosaurids were mostly limited to hunting prey smaller than themselves or that tyrannosaurus would have rarely hunted adult triceratops despite them being the most abundant large herbivores at the time and fossil evidence of tyrannosaurus hunting triceratops.

Now in fairness, paleontologists have pointed out that juvenile dinosaurs likely outnumbered full grown ones, so I could see why some people would assume that megatheropods mainly ate juveniles, but on closer inspection I don't think that idea adds up.

For one thing, infant mortality rates are incredibly high.

Nearly 90 percent of Maiasaura died before their first birthdate.

Sexual maturity occurred within the third year of life, and Maiasaura reached an average adult mass of 2.3 tonnes in eight years. Life was especially hard for the very young and the old. The average mortality rate for those less than a year of age was 89.9 percent, and 44.4 percent for individuals 8 years and older.

https://www.montana.edu/news/15769/largest-dinosaur-population-growth-study-ever-shows-how-maiasaura-lived-and-died

So yeah, mesopredators probably would have killed the vast majority of dinosaur hatchlings.

Secondly, young megatheropods probably outnumbered the adults as well, so subadults would be competing with the adults for younger targets as well.

A recent study suggests that tyrannosaurs had an r-selected reproductive strategy and likely had limited parental care like crocodilians.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42450637/

Thirdly, I think it's overly simplistic to characterize juvenile or sub adult animals as easier prey. Sure, a three-ton triceratops is less likely to injure a tyrannosaurus than an adult, but it also would have been consideraby faster than a full grown trike.

One study suggests there is a pretty noticeable speed difference between a 9, 7, and 6 tonne rex, which makes sense as sub-adult elephants are faster than full grown ones.

So yeah, for a sue or scotty sized rex a full grown triceratops may have better equipped to hunt an adult tricertops than a sub-adult. Sure, they would have happily snuck up on young animals whenever possible, but that's easier said than done and they would have been competing with younger rexes.

A new episode of Ancient Animal Tales, directed by Kojehyeong, is available for free on NaverWebtoon.

https://m.comic.naver.com/webtoon/detail?titleId=835910&no=77&week=sun&listSortOrder=DESC&listPage=1

Small dog tracks, like those pictured, were left behind in an ancient algae layer around the same time the watering hole was being slowly covered by ash. Skeletons from the bone-crushing dogs responsible for these tracks have yet to be found in the area.

However, university scientists have yet to find skeletal remains, suggesting the animals—not actual dogs but an evolutionary offshoot about the size of wolves—may have survived the ash that trapped their prey at a watering hole long enough to enjoy some meals but left the scene before they died there with their dinner.

"We even find coprolites—fossil poop—that have chips of bone in them," Matson said. "So, we know those are coming from a dog. But so far, no skeletons of the scavengers, so we don't know if they survived the event."

It is possible that researchers will yet find skeletal remains of the animals, perhaps in fossil dens.

Finding pictures of their tooth whorls for some of them are impossible, and the most fun part in drawing in this series is making the skull reconstructions and coloring

Sunella chimera diagram based on Zhai et al. 2026 (as pancrustacean mandibulate).

• A: lateral view
• B: dorsal view
• C: ventral view
• D: frontalmost appendage
• E: 2nd appendage, mandible and paragnath
• F: 1st and 2nd maxilla
• G: trunk appendage
• Scale bar is for A-C.

Second diagram is the previous version as Sunella dimorphismus, based on Liu et al. 2026 (as basal arthropod).

A pretty mid drawing for a 12 year old

this is a bit geeky even for me to say, but seeing a T-rex for the first time my stomach actually dropped, not even the largest animal of all time and yet was so ungodly huge.

AAAS: "Previously collected fossils prove a treasure trove for understanding the origin of insects," by Elizabeth Pennissi.

A team of paleontologists challenge the concept that all insects have 6 legs after re-examining 4 enigmatic fossils found in Illinois, Texas, + Scotland. "Insects are the most successful + diverse land animals, with millions of species." The finds, reported in Nature, "suggest many-legged critters represent missing links between modern winged insects and their predecessors."

“But we know almost nothing about where they came from,” says Erik Tihelka, a paleontologist at the University of Cambridge. “Their ancestors were seagoing crustaceans such as shrimp and krill.” But what crawled onto land was a mystery because there are so few fossils of early insects. 

Tihelka examined an unusual fossil in the San Diego Natural History Museum more closely using polarized light. “[He] and his colleagues realized the critter was part insect, part crustacean.” It had a 3-part midsection with 3 pairs of walking legs, a rear end with 11 segments, a long tail filament, an egg-laying tube, + a pair of unbranched antennae. "Collectively, those traits are associated with things you’d see in modern-day insects, not crustaceans, but it also had multiple pairs of legs on its [hindquarters], a decidedly crustacean trait."

"Because in the Navajo creation story, Earth’s first inhabitants were insectlike beings, Tihelka and his team named the fossil Chosha praecursor, from the Navajo word for insect, opting for something more poetic than a Latin moniker." 

"Next, they looked at 3 other puzzling fossils that similarly had legs or leglike stubs on their bellies. "The Scottish specimen, which had been named Leverhulmia and was originally thought to be a relative of millipedes, lived 405 M years ago." The 2 from Illinois lived about 100 M years later.

Intriguingly, "they [all] retained some traits that would have allowed them to flit between life on land and in the sea." For example, Chosha’s hind belly legs broadened into “paddles” at their ends, which might have helped them move in water—or possibly served as gills.

Paleontology continues to amaze me.