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Carnotaurus sastrei

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"Feathers on Carnotaurus? Heresy!"

We are all familiar with this popular abelisaur from South America. Its horns, short skull, insanely reduced arms are famous. Even its skin is really well known among paleontologists and enthusiasts, thanks to the incredible state of preservation of large areas, showing big rounded tubercles surrounded by smaller ones. Be careful: they are not identical to the scales found in famous "hadrosaur mummies", and they may not be scales at all. In this drawing I tried to be as accurate as possible regarding the integumentation, and after heavy research I decided to rely on this extremely well done illustration, found in Fezraptor's Sketchbook (Tumblr page of John, an amateur paleontologist): fezraptor.tumblr.com/post/1402…
Every "scaly" areas and every larger tubercle is meticulously placed in what seems to be the original position. With the great help of John's image, it is evident that the bigger tubercles are not following any obvious scheme, contrary to what we can observe in almost every Carnotaurus representation (rows of osteoderms running down in straight lines on the back and sides of the animal). I maintained the same texture on almost the entire animal, leaving only a small area of primitive filaments on the dorsal region of the neck and torso. The arms are instead showing long and flexible filaments: this is not homologous with the "wings" we find inside Maniraptora. Looking at the anatomy of the forelimbs, we can observe that the humerus, radius and ulna, wrist and digits are a solid, rigid structure, but the shoulder joint of the humerus has a spherical head similar to our femur. It is possible that Carnotaurus and Abelisaurids in general had a wider range of movements at their shoulder, allowing a sort of "waving" action describing a cone, that served some social purpose. Therefore I wanted to include the filamentous ornaments, acting just like fringed sleeves on western leather jackets, maybe present only in males or in vibrant colors.

This drawing was requested and created with the support and advice of Cafè Paleontologico.
Some ideas were inspired by this Theropoda post theropoda.blogspot.com/2016/03…


Drawing based off the Scott Hartman's skeletal reconstruction
www.deviantart.com/art/Carnota…
Length: 7-9 m
Bonaparte, 1985



Muscioni Marco, 2017
Graphite on paper

Special thanks to :iconscotthartman:


Please do NOT use my work, it is under copyright.
Image size
4448x2232px 2.5 MB
Date Taken
Nov 25, 2017, 2:45:54 PM
© 2017 - 2024 MarkM98
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PlatinumYuty's avatar
Absolutely amazing