Troll_Man

Serina: Tall Birds

A sketch drawn back in December 2020 of two ziraphans walking alongside a boomsinger, two of the largest avian species at the time, for a scene that never ended up getting made due to the tight schedule at the time, and now both species have long since gone extinct.

Well, both have now been...

WWD: Rhamphorhynchus etchesi

This is the only taxa which did not change names or get changed to a different species, since it was one of the only species which actually lived at the right time. Although the species depicted here was not described until 2015.

The episode depicts Rhamphorhynchus as being like a ...

WWD: Thrissops sp.

The generic fish of the episode, which I've made into the very common fish genus Thrissops, which is the most numerous type of ray-finned fish collected from the Kimmeridge Clay Formation. These herring-like fish are known from many fossils of exceptional quality and likely lived in larg...

WWD: Asteracanthus ornatissimus

The nameless shark of the episode, which was supposed to be Hybodus, but for whatever reason they didn't see fit to identify it by name. Part of the franchise's thing about giving sharks the short end of the stick. Technically speaking, hybodonts aren't true sharks, since they're just ou...

WWD: Juratyrant langhami

The rather predictable Eustreptospondylus replacement, considering this is the only well-known theropod dinosaur taxa from the Kimmeridge Clay and roughly the same size as the original species (the hypothetical adult size of Eustreptospondylus at least), although it's changed fr...

WWD: Mesolimulus sp.

The horseshoe crabs of the episode. These were almost physically identical to the horseshoe crabs of the modern day (hence them being played by living horseshoe crabs in the episode) and fossils of this genus are known from a span of roughly one-hundred million years, showing how little they chan...

WWD: Thalassemys bruntrutana

The dead sea turtle that appeared in one scene being scavenged by the Eustreptospondylus. This was one of the largest turtles to live in Europe during the Jurassic Period, with a total shell length and width of close to a metre. Of course, it would be utterly dwarfed by the gargantuan se...

WWD: Belemnotheutis antiquus

The squid equivalent for the episode (appears getting eaten by Ophthalmosaurus), the genus Belemnotheutis, which would have been a very common sight in the shallow seas covering Europe during the Jurassic. Huge shoals of these pelagic carnivores would have have flitted through t...

WWD: Pectinatites rarescens

One of the most successful taxa of the Mesozoic were not merely the reptiles, but the molluscs. During this period evolved some of the very largest cephalopods and bivalves to have ever lived; vast reefs of giant clams up to ten feet across, while octopods larger than adult humans and ammonites w...

WWD: Kimmerosaurus langhami

The Cryptoclidus equivalent, a closely related cryptoclidine plesiosaur that actually lived at the time of the episode. There were two suboptimal choices from the Kimmeridge Clay, either one with basically only a skull or the one with only post-cranial remains (Colymbosaurus), a...

WWD: Thalassodraco etchesi

Possibly the most infamous episode of the original series, for reasons that will be seen very soon. This is the point where the series starts getting a bit liberal with what lived when, because nearly every animal in the original episode, set during the Mid Tithonian, is only known from the Early...

River Bunnies

(to reiterate, this was a commission for a species of foot-propelled aquatic rabbits, with the details below based on those given by the commissioner)

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Living in the river systems of a tidally-locked world orbiting a red dwarf star. The meltwater of massive glacial mountains flowin...

River Bunnies (WIP 2)

River Bunnies (WIP)

Work-in-progress for a commission for aquatic rabbits that swim by kicking like frogs, while their ears are retained for steering underwater.

WWD: Time of Titans (Redux)

And finally, here's all of the Morrison Formation buddies together. The lack of mid-sized dinosaurs (like, say, Camptosaurus, Ceratosaurus, or Camarasaurus) is a little too bad, because it would've helped bridge the gap between giga-mega-huge dinosaurs and the small ones.

...

WWD: Brachiosaurus altithorax

Oh boy, here we go. The biggest animal to feature in the episode, even if its role is little more than a glorified cameo just to show off a cool dinosaur, which was, at the time, thought to be the biggest land animal. And for sure, even if not the very biggest, it still was a very large animal, s...

WWD: Apatosaurus louisae

Okay, so this one did not actually appear in WWD, but it's the only one left over and it's in the same time and place as all the others, so I might as well include it. It featured briefly in The Ballad of Big Al, but was very, very obviously just a slightly modified and retextur...

WWD: Mesadactylus ornithosphyos

The only animal that needed to be changed, the Anurognathus, which has been changed to the tentatively classified anurognathid of the Morrison Formation, Mesadactylus, due to the fact Anurognathus is only known from Germany, not the Morrison Formation. However, Mesa...