Mark Wittonさんのイラストまとめ

And, OK, a 5 m wingspan is not that exciting when we know of 10 m wingspan azhdarchids, but in 1852 this was a big deal: not only a flying reptile almost 2x larger than any living bird, but the largest flying animal known at that time. P. cuvieri was a real game-changer.

It's New Year's Eve, so obviously time to talk about the discovery of giant pterosaurs. Most of us think of one animal as _the_ first giant pterosaur: the 7 m wingspan, North American Pteranodon. BUT - what if I told you this wasn't the first pterosaur giant known? Thread...

Some #paleoart love for Deinocheirus this #FossilFriday, depicted with sparse feathering (on account of its size) and a sail rather than a hump (there's no reason to think Deinocheirus had a camel-like fat store: Deinocheirus humps are an art meme, not a hypothesis).

By gum, it's 19:35 on #FossilFriday: time to call it a day. Here's some 2016 #paleoart of the Cretaceous mammal Spinolestes to sign off for the weekend with. The fluffy tails are speculative, but the other soft-tissues are evidenced by fossil data.

Have spent the afternoon with ammonites, so here's some #paleoart of biggest one of all for #FossilFriday: Parapuzosia. A small mosasaur is being scavenged (we don't know what the ecology of Parapuzosia was, but lots of ammonites are thought to be nektobenthic scavengers).

By pure chance, scrolling through an 1854 magazine archive online, I just found these unfamiliar images of the @cpdinosaurs being built. Lots of new details to take in here - the reclining Iguanodon during construction, the Megaloceros group, the giant Palaeotherium and...

@magneticsharkz Plus, we still have compelling evidence of gigantic, 8-9 m wingspan toothy sea-going pterosaurs. Next to azhdarchids, they're the biggest pterosaurs of all - there's plenty of real science on these guys to get excited about. (Average-sized 5-ish m wingspan Cimoliopterus below.)

Some new-to-the-internet #paleoart for #FossilFriday: everybody's favourite tiny-headed synapsid, Cotylorhynchus romeri. Yes, heads that small really went on bodies that big. You could get away with this sort of thing in the Early Permian.

@bone_sharpe I put a few bristles on this guy's face back in 2015. The first version had some too. I don't think bristles like this would anchor to the skull so, even with our awesome ceratopsid epidermal correlate data, it's possible.

New scuterrific Scelidosaurus #paleoart for #FossilFriday at #Patreon, based on the recent three-volume re-description by David Norman. Check it out in high-res for just $1, which also gives you access to heaps of other content: https://t.co/Xg7bVUWWcT