The Next Time Capsule

The people have spoken! The results of the next Gallery poll are in.

Our next Time Capsule will be:

Pterosaurs the flying reptiles, opening July. 1st.

Be sure to get in your take on everyone's favourite flying vertebrates. Send submissions to artevolved@gmail.com. Also be sure to watch out for ART Evolved's summary of Pterosaurs in art. It might show you some takes you've never seen before, and give you some ideas for your own creation!

Finally be sure to have your say on the subject of the next capsule. The poll is located on the right sidebar.

You'll notice the choices are all invertebrates for September, which is only fair given the vertebrate domination of the galleries so far. We thought it fair that the majority of life get their shot to be recreated, as only a tiny percentage of organisms have ever had a bone of any kind in their bodies.

Synapsids in Art

Not to alarm you out there, but there is just under a month before our Permian Synapsid Capsule opens.

Now as Permian Synapsids are no where near as well known to the public as some extinct creatures, we thought it would be a good idea to maybe give you not only an idea of the diverse array of animals you have to choose from, but show you some different Palaeo-Artists interpretations of them.

Sadly as I'm separated from my book collection in Canada, I've had to compile this post from images off mostly wikipedia and the only book my local library had that included Synapsids. That book is Dr. Micheal Benton's The Reign of the Reptiles, and though it is nearly 20 years old it is still, a great resource on the entirety of prehistoric reptiles (and only 10 pages devoted to Dinosaurs, as he covers them in the next book in this series On the trail of the Dinosaurs).

Sadly The Reign of the Reptiles does not credit its individual illustrations with their creator. So the pictures I include in this post could have been by any of these artists: Graham Rosewarne, James Robins, Janos Marffy, or Sally Launder. UPDATE: James Robins has been kind enough to pop by the site, and alert me to whose work in the book is whose. All images from The Reign of the Reptiles posted here are his work, and any other pictures you might be curious about from this book he has credited in the comments section.

As for the wikipedia acquired pieces I am only able to give you a link for one of the artists. The way in which wikipedia organizes and sorts picture contributions is a little complex and non linear, and as a result unless an artist goes out of their way to create a personal gallery, you can not track down general gathering of their work. I was able to find the gallery of Arthur Weasley and you can see it by clicking here. Otherwise by checking out the wikipedia entry on any of the included critters you can try to track down these artists work (and if there is a way I missed to do so, please let me know).



So here is a brief, and not in anyway comprehensive, look at some of the Permian Synapsids. I've included skeletal references where I could find them. If you want to find out more about any of these creatures or where to get more references on them leave a comment below, and someone on the site will be able to help you out.

The Tapinocephalia

A Moschops Skeleton


Moschops by Dmitry Bogdanov

The Estemmenosuchidae

Estemmenosuchus by Mojcaj

The Gorgonopsids

A Gorgonopsid skeleton by James Robins.



A Gorgonopsid skull from The Reign of the Reptiles

Arctops by Arthur Weasley

Arctognathus by Arthur Weasley

Inostrancevia by Dmitry Bogdanov

The Dicynodont

Dicynodont Skeleton by James Robins.


Kingoria by Dmitry Bogdanov

Kannemeyeria Dmitry BogdanovWadiasaurus by Dmitry Bogdanov

The Varanopidae

Varanops by ДиБгд

Varanops by ДиБгд

Anomocephalus by Dmitry Bogdanov

Otsheria by Dmitry Bogdanov

The Syodontidae

Australosyodon by DiBgd

The Pelycosaurs

I included skeletals of the fin backs, but I'm sure you've all heard of these guys before. Edaphosaurus skeleton by James Robins

Edaphosaurus skull by James Robins

Dimetrodon skull from The Reign of the Reptiles

As a final note. Though we aren't trying to discourage people from doing fin backed Pelycosaurs, please think about doing a non fine back. After all there are TONS of fin back illustrations out there, and one of the goals of Palaeo Art is to bring back to "life" animals never before seen by human eyes. At the same time we aren't rejecting such pics either. We're just hoping to get a few different Synapsids is all. As there is a lot of them (many not even hinted at in this post!).

The Permian Synapsid Show

Greetings, fellow paleo-artists! Gettin' ready for the May 1st art show? As you know, the topic is "Synapsida," but I'm afraid we're limiting that somewhat. Were we focus on the "Synapsida" in all its glory, we could potentially have such basal taxa as Ophiacodon right next to Mammuthus or Canis. That's not kosher. Synapsida is as diverse a brand as Sauropsida (they are sister groups, after all). So in an effort to reduce phylogenetic distance and, thus, confusion about what the show is actually about, I'm announcing a change to the lineup: the May 1st art show will focus on Permian synapsids. If I really wanted to screw with everyone, I would say Late Permian synapsids, as that would exclude pelycosaurs like Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus. But I won't be mean. However, that doesn't mean you can all do pelycosaurs because you're comfortable with them. Basal synapsids are wondefully diverse and wierd, and include such bizarre clades as the theriocephalians, dinocephalians, gorgonopsids, anomodonts, and more! None of these groups left living decendants.

I think we have a real opportunity to educate at Art Evolved, and Permian synapsids are woefully obscure. Let's bring 'em to life, folks! By the way, the wierdo above is Suminia getmanovi, the first herbivorous vertebrate to develop a shearing bite. See? Permian therapsids are awesome!

A Big Dinosaur Event At Marvel Comics

For those of you, like me, who think that there needs to be more superheroes fighting with or against Dinosaurs, get to your local comic book store today and pick up a copy of Marvel's Avengers: The Initiative: Reptil #1.

This single issue story focuses on all things Marvel and Dinosaurian in nature.

Not that the art, by Steve Uy, within is promising to be particularly scientifically accurate. Or for that matter of an "intelligent" nature, but man it is shaping up to be both pretty and fun! Especially if you're into Dinosaur related property destruction and mayhem like myself!

The story in short form is the US government has taken something out of Marvel Comic's prehistoric lost world, the Savage Land, something so valuable its inhabitants are launching a full on attack against the modern world with an army of Dinosaurs!

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Now I could go on about prehistoric comic lore, but that would be defeating the purpose of this blog. So I'll end here by simply alerting you to this current Palaeo-Art event. Though I may do another post reviewing the art, once I get my hands on a copy (which could take a while here in New Zealand).

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However for those of you more interested in the story details or background of Marvel's prehistoric themed character please check out these summaries by my good friend, and Marvel employee Mike Hoskin who has been nice enough to do a whole week's load of Prehistoric Comic posts in celebration of this comic's release.

By Craig

Palaeo Art Roundup #1

Welcome to the first ever ART Evolved Palaeo Art Roundup!

In these roundups we aim to highlight and gather as many of the various Palaeo-Art related posts and stories that pop up on the web as we can find! We'll be bringing you this feature every couple of weeks, and would love your suggestions for future editions.

If you see something cool and related to Palaeo Art be sure to fire it our way! Please include the web address at minimum, but if you want to write the caption or include a sample piece of art it'd make our lives easier ;p The email address is of course artevolved@gmail.com

So for this first week here are:

Brian over at Laelaps covers the tale of the sail backed Synapids (the theme for the next Time Capsule Art Gallery!) including the story of Charles Knight's first incorrect restoration of one.


Dr. Naish of the legendary Tetrapod Zoology examines in fine detail the Palaeo-Art proposed idea of trunked Saurpods, and pictures such as this one created by John Sibbick. Definately worth a read before drawing a long necked Dinosaur!

Glendon the Flying Trilobite, in this week's edition of his usual Artwork Mondays feature, takes us through his creating a new exciting Trilobite and Crinoid inspired banner for his blog.

This week saw the announcement of the earth shaking Tianyulong confuciusi, an ornithischian with feather like structures! You can catch the news of this here and there. A taken forgranted feature of this story is the amazing artwork of Li-Da Xing, which has accompanied nearly everyone's posts about it. The picture is great at bringing this animal spectacularly to life in the mind's eye. Ville of Dots In Deep Time has done a great skeletal reconstruction of this Dinosaur that is most definately worth checking out!

ETrilobite in this week's installement of Walcott's Quarry has a rather humourous encounter between Walcott and Gould the Wiwaxia.

Zach of When Pigs Fly Returns brings us an exciting and interesting illustration project surrounding possible speculative evolution of Dicynodonts.

Dr. Ryan of the infamous Palaeoblog highlights an old DC comic and the Dinosaurs and Prehistoric critters who menaced its heroes. This picture was penciled by Ross Andru and inked by Mike Esposito. Speaking of comics watch ART Evolved for a preview of Marvel Comic's upcoming Dinosaur themed special!

Also on Palaeoblog is the featured comic strip Liberty Meadow, by the awesome Dinosaur drawing comic book artist Frank Cho.

Scott over at the Coherent Lighthouse takes us through his artisitic process on his Pachyrhinosaur.

Gombessa Girl while checking out one of her favourite artists found some rather cute Mosasaur inspired sculptures.

We also recently saw the announcment of a new super powerful biting Pliosaur called "Predator X" (for now). Some great 3D art by Atlantis Productions have been accompanying the news posts.
Finally, Craig the Weapon of Mass Imagination has recently been retooling some of his 3D Dinosaurs for use in Traumador the Tyrannosaur's adventures.

Thoughts on Palaeoart II

By Peter

(This post is really a continuation of this post on my blog.)

What does correct palaeoart look like? Is it Sir Charles Knight's pencils or Luis V. Rey's colourful paint? How can you capture what an animal nobody has ever seen before looks like?

This is the basic problem that artists face when reconstructing extinct animals and plants. Interpreting skeletal material, skin impressions, and footprints, they try to create life! This is not an easy job. Mistakes are made, evidence is reinterpreted, ideas and theories change. As ideas change, so must palaeoart.

In a previous post on Bond's Blog, I took the example of Minmi paravertebra and discovered a huge range of reconstructions of this small dinosaur (even with over 95% of the skeleton found!) I would understand such variation in reconstruction for creatures such as Deinocheirus, where we have only found its arms. But for a well known extinct animal, why is there such variation in our reconstructions of it?

For example, I have searched the net for photos of another well known dinosaur: Edmontosaurus regalis.

Skull length, neck length, arm length and positioning, muscle thickness and placement, feet and hand differences, even body pose... This variety in anatomy mixed with the subjective colour and texture amounts to a series of pictures that look like different animals.

Is one reconstruction better than others? What does "better" mean? If we equate "better" with "more accurate," then yes, some are more accurate than others. Accuracy comes with time, new discoveries and new ideas. Is the goal of a palaeoartist to be as accurate as possible?

What are the goals of a palaeoartist? Leave your comments below!

Artist Credits:
1. Charles R. Knight (at the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History)
2. Karen Carr (2008 Dinosaur Society Hadrosaur)
3. Charles R. Knight (1897 Hadrosaurus from Century Magazine)
4. Joseph Smit (1905 Hadrosaurus from Nebula to Man)
5. Rudolph Zallinger (from the Age of Reptiles at Peabody Museum)
6. Dorling Kindersley (with DK images)
7. Unknown artist (from In Hand Museum.com)
8. Neil Riehle (2000 Edmontosaurus)
9. Unknown artist (Edmontosaurus from KidsFront)
10. Unknown artist (for the National Geographic Society)
11. Unknown artist (from the Jurassic Park Institute)
12. Unknown artist (Edmontosaurus from Urwelt Museum Neiderhell in Germany)
13. Joe Tucciarone
14. Todd Marshal (Edmontosaurus annectens)
15. Mineo Shiraishi
16. Micheal Berglund (for Bob Bakker and the Huston Museum of Natural Science)