If just one single species had to represent how our reconstructions of prehistoric animals can drastically change, it would have to be Hallucigenia sparsa.
1970s
First discovered in the 1910s in the Canadian Burgess Shale fossil deposits, specimens of Hallucigenia were initially categorized as being a species of the early polychaete worm Canadia. It wasn’t until the 1970s that they were recognized as being something else entirely, and the first reconstruction of this tiny animal was bizarre.
It was depicted as a long-bodied creature with a single row of tentacles along its back, and several pairs of long sharp spines that were interpreted as being stilt-like “legs” used to walk. The tentacles were thought to catch food from the water and pass it forwards to the bulbous “head” – and at one point it was even proposed that all the tentacles had their own additional “mouths” at their tips!
It’s easy to look back on this version now and laugh at how ridiculous and obviously wrong it was, but it’s important to remember the historical context here. This was coming from a point when the incredible animal diversity of the Cambrian Explosion was only just starting to be understood, revealing a range of poorly-understood bizarre and alien-looking forms like Opabinia – “weird wonders” that were considered to be representatives of previously unknown ancient branches of life.
At the time, Hallucigenia’s utter weirdness and impractical body plan seemed to almost make sense as a unique evolutionary “failed experiment” that had left no living relatives.
1990s
Discoveries of legged-and-armored lobopodian “worms” in the Chinese Chengjiang fossil deposits during the 1980s prompted a re-interpretation of Hallucigenia in the early 1990s. Speculatively reconstructing it as a lobopodian with the spines on its back and with the tentacles as a set of paired clawed legs started to make it seem a lot less alien and a lot more like a real velvet-worm-like animal – and just a year later the “missing” other half of the leg pairs was confirmed to be present in some of the fossil specimens.
But it was still unclear which end was actually the head, and whether the large blob-like structure was a real part of Hallucigenia’s anatomy or just an artifact of the fossilization process.
2020s
New research in the mid-2010s finally settled the head problem and clarified a lot of Hallugicenia’s anatomy, discovering that the slender elongated end had a pair of simple eyes and a mouth with a throat ringed with tiny teeth.
We now know Hallucigenia sparsa lived all around the world during the mid-Cambrian, about 518-508 million years ago, with body fossils known from Canada and China and isolated spines found in numerous other similarly-aged locations. Instead of an evolutionary dead-end “weird wonder” it was actually an early member of the vast arthropod lineage, just one of a highly diverse collection of successful Cambrian lobopodians, and its closest living relatives are probably velvet wormsandtardigrades.
It grew up to about 5cm long (2") and had seven pairs of long sharp defensive spines along its back, covered with a microscopic surface texture of tiny triangular “scales”. It had seven pairs of clawed walking legs, with most of its feet tipped with two claws each but the final two pairs having just one, and its body ended right at the final pair of limbs – the “blob” structure in some fossils was actually just an artifact the whole time, formed by Halligenia’s innards being forcefully squeezed out during its burial in the seafloor sediment.
Its neck region bore three pairs of long delicate tendril-like limbs, which may have been covered in feathery hair-like structures for filter-feeding similar to some other lobopodians. A small pair of velvet-worm-like antennae may also have been present on its head, and could have been a sexually dimorphicfeature.
A couple months ago, I submitted an entry to the Waterhouse Natural Sciences Art Prize, a pretty fancy art contest hosted by the South Australian Museum. This was the piece I submitted, a papercraft lightbox entitled “An Outback of Ice and Sea”, and it’s taken a good month of my life getting it all together!
And I am very excited to announce that I have been selected as a finalist! Any of y’all who are in South Australia, you’ll be able to come and see my work (and a whole bunch of others’) on display at the SA Museum from the 4th of June to the 7th of August!
This piece is a scientific recreation of the Bulldog Shale formation, an opal-rich fossil locality in the desert of my home state of South Australia. 110 million years ago, this place wasn’t a desert, but an icy inland sea near the South Pole that was brimming with life! Every animal species in this artwork is based on fossil evidence from the region, down to the crinoids and brittle stars and bivalves!
The star of the piece is Umoonasaurus demoscyllus, a small plesiosaur with crests on its head that was local to this area. The Umoonasaurusis pursuing Ptyktoptychion eyrensis, a giant relative of modern-day ratfish while belemnites and ammonites bod in and out of the seaweed. And overhead amongst the icebergs, the giant pliosaur Kronosaurus queenslandicuslooms.
I’m so proud of this piece as something that I’ve poured hours of love and research into, and I’m so thrilled to have been selected to be a part of this exhibition! The details on the museum website are here if anyone’s curious, please do let me know if you got a chance to see the exhibition in person!
Man, I went to the paleofail tag to look at funky avacado dinaosaurs with weird faces but instead got discourse on why the entire Jurassic park crew are horrible cause they didn’t feather their velociraptors.
Are you serious? This is what you’re devoting your time to? Making people feel bad for enjoying a SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE?? I saw a discourse post about Land Before Time???? They’re movies and toys and video games, it’s not like they’re advertising realism. Good god people, if you want realism, watch a documentary and not a FICTION MOVIE WHERE THEY BRING DINOSAURS BACK TO LIFE!! And then critique the documentary for not having ENOUGH feathers on their velociraptors. Stop making people feel bad about liking dinosaurs that don’t look ‘right.’ Find something more important to dedicate your time to and not making people who like dinosaurs for fun feel like garbage.
If you’re wondering where all the raptor designs are from, someone asked me to sketch some ideas for a lacrosse team logo. Someone else came up with the actual design, but I still like these.
Art/posting will be slow during the holidays, so here’s something to look at in the meantime!
Back in 2013, Saurian (then called Crynosaurs) held a competition to come up with color schemes for their Triceratops. I don’t think there was really a reward or purpose for it beyond seeing cool color patterns, but I can’t fault them for that.
This was my entry, one of many now-lost designs. A lot of submissions looked pretty good, but only like 3 can still be found on Google. Also, this was done in 2013, I was just dumb and wrote ‘15.
Lineart by Alex Lewko. I guess he’s still floating around the paleoart sphere somewhere? Chatted with him when Spore was big and he got me interested in paleoart instead of just drawing JP dinos, so thanks bud!
While their plumage is extensive and ostentatious, revived Archeops have actually proven to be rather poor flyers. While they are able to fly short distances or quickly escape to high roosts with their wings, they are more adept at running. These feathers seem to be more important as flashy display features, with powered flight evolving later in time. Being omnivores, they hunt down prey and forage for fruits in packs.
Things have been pretty busy so this has been on the back-burner a little while, but I finally finished it! Only one more to go. The Despot of the Ancient Era…
Another batch of old sketches while you wait for another overly-elaborate Pokemon. Coloring this up took some time that I could have used to make more progress on said Pokemon, but I love coloring sketches like this.
Despite its modest size, Bastiodon is quite tough and imposing. Rough scales, scutes, and armored spikes cover its body. Its massive head is its greatest attribute, with a tall, wide frill that can repel attackers in conjunction with two long, pointed horns. The four tusks sprouting from its beak are used to dig up food and in bouts between rivals.
We’re in the home stretch! Only two more to go as well as a photo of them all together. Some fixes will be needed as well but otherwise I’m really happy with these. I’m actually gonna have to look into the logistics of selling prints, but I’m optimistic. You know I’m saving the best dino Pokémon for last, but the next one shouldn’t beat itself up over it. It’ll lower it’s attack and special attack…
Sketch dump of some old school sketches I’ve had stowed away while I work away on the next Pokemon. Expect some more of these here and there. The more I scan, the more storage space I free up.
While large, thin structures and extra surface area may seem like a liability for creatures in colder climates, the sails on Aurorus are crucial to its behaviors and lifestyle. Not only do the size and movement of the sails help to convey status and emotions between individuals even during heavy snowstorms, chromatophores in the sails allow them to change color as well.
Got the idea to do this while drawing and chatting with a friend. Aurorus’ sails can be pretty expressive, with 2/3 alternate sail colorations seemingly only used in Pokémon Amie. So it seemed a shame not to do something with them.
