Hollywood might be the one to blame for giving dinosaurs their skeletal monster image – in movies dinosaurs are usually depicted as scaly dragon-like monsters from hell. When we see illustrations of dinosaurs done by paleoartists, skeletal reconstructions are what many artists depend on when trying to draw dinosaurs. Many scientists think that there was more to the dinosaurs than has been depicted, including colorful feathers, larger layers of fat and areas of soft tissue. Let’s see what happens when you try to apply the outdated monster approach to modern day animals!
C.M. Kosemen is an Istanbul-based artist and author of these illustrations. Most serious paleoart bases itself on the detailed findings of paleontologists, who can work for weeks or even years compiling the most accurate descriptions of ancient life they can, based on fossil remains. But Kosemen thinks that many dinosaur illustrations should take more cues from animals living today. Our world is full of unique animals that have squat fatty bodies, with all kinds of soft tissue features that are unlikely to have survived in fossils, such as pouches, wattles, or skin flaps.
One of his main points of contention is the way that we consider dinosaur heads. “The reference has always been crocodiles,” says Kosemen. “The biggest thing is teeth and facial fat. Readers have to be aware that all dinosaurs they see in all media, and especially in popular culture, seem to have their heads flensed. They’ve always got these weird grins with only the teeth visible.” As he points out, most animals have lips and gums and lumps of facial fat that change the profile of the head, and cover the teeth. But in many predatory dinosaur illustrations, these are usually missing, making them look fierce, if improbable.
Another trope is what I like to call the “roadkill hair” trope. Some fossils show signs of hair, which can lead to artists illustrating their creatures with hair only on the parts where it was found on a fossil. However, it’s possible that some dinosaurs had much more hair that they are usually shown to have. Imagine if you found a raccoon, and only half of the tail was covered in hair, so then you carry that over to a living reconstruction.
Then there is the issue of proportion. Kosemen says that there is a tendency to exaggerate the heads and claws of dinosaurs. Certainly many dinosaurs had large claws, and fearsome heads, but in many pictures, they seem to be almost cartoonishly huge.
It’s likely that future paleoartists will have similar problems with creatures we take for granted today. It’s conceivable, for example, that future paleoartists will speculate that turtles once left their shells, or that frogs, with their weird legs, used to run around upright. There’s probably going to be all sorts of reconstructions with reindeer antlers having strange membranes or juvenile reindeer jumping from cliffs, using their horns as paragliders.
..cute, but no…
That is not how you draw animals from fossilised remains.
future paleoartists will speculate that turtles once left their shells, or that frogs, with their weird legs, used to run around upright…
…someone has never heard of photography.
Wait…. Frogs DON’T run around upright??? Kermit lied to us??? Next, are you going to tell me that Bugs Bunny lied and rabbits do not actually eat strictly carrots?
Ugh… clickbait trash
You clicked on a site called sad and useless humor…did you think it would be scientific….
A positive and thoughtful kind of flipside of the coin view.
This is a sad useless humor site…not peer reviewed literature. Why would anyone comment negatively? It’s funny.
@This Article was dumb
When it comes to turtles, the skeleton is clearly linked to the shell. The shell is part of the skeleton. Just look at any display. Any paleoartists worth their salt knows to look at skeletons and how they are assembled. Moreover, indentations and stresses on bones, still visible in fossilized remains, show where muscles got attached. Based on that and with examining modern creatures, the musculature depth and look can be determined with a fairly high degree of accuracy.
These artists simply aren’t guessing.
Cool art! Thanks for sharing!
Oh! These are from that book All of Yesterday, yes? I love they spin on Paleoart. Make you think about what we are doing wrong today 😅
Don’t know enough about all the scientific stuff to give real input, the arts cool and that’s all I care about
It illustrates that we actually don’t really know what dinosaurs actually looked like. It’s an educated guess.
Really cool concept. Thanks! Other ppl in the thread comment negatively because they were expecting real animals?
LoL. Dinos are birds. Why bring other non reptilian creatures into this notion. Mammoths didn’t lay eggs. Leave their trunks alone.
That zebra is actually an accurate depiction of a hornless Unicorn.
Stretch, look at the elephants toes.
I don’t know how they know how pterodactyl sounds
If he truly drew based on skeletons alone, the elephant would be on its tippy toes (Their skeletons are always on their tippy toes, it’s just that there’s a huge pad of gristle under their foot to absorb their weight; their feet can’t bend out of that position.)
The zebra also makes no sense. We have already reconstructed ancient zebra ancestors, and the drawings never looked so ridiculous. If it was truly based on their actual features the feet would be hooves, and it clearly isn’t reptilian (and based on the bones clear indentations, they weren’t skinny).
Also, the illustrator must not actually do Paleo illustration; because Paleo illustration DOES involve comparing to existent animals. Zebras skeletons haven’t changed that much in a few hundred thousand years.
Same with most animals.
That’s part of the reason why our drawings are so accurate; those animals STILL EXIST. Just slightly different.
Hilarious article and equally hilarious comments. Who could ask for more
Fun concept and cool art. Thanks for sharing.
A lot of you guys should look into the correlation between litetalism and autism. It’s okay that you don’t get humor, but it’s reductive and just darn silly looking to get angry on the internet about it.
Dinosaurs are NOT birds!!! Birds are totally different creatures!!! Hollow bones and feathers!!! Dinosaurs are reptiles!!! Just because someone found a fossil that looked like it had primitive feathers doesn’t mean it’s a transitional species… either it’s a dinosaur with collagen fibers that look like proto feathers or it’s a bird with a toothed beak… Dinosaurs and birds are different species created by God!!! This idea that birds are living dinosaurs is ridiculous!!! These illusions are a great demonstration of how little we know about what dinosaurs actually looked like… Years ago they had models of brontosaurus until it turned out they had put the wrong skull on the rest of the skeleton… Ooops! Loved the drawings!
I get the point that’s being made, and it’s cool art, but as someone who lowkey wants to get into paleoart and thinks its possibly the coolest job in existence it’s also just not correct haha. A LOT more goes into it than looking at bones and then adding a skin on top of it. Half these drawings barely even have muscles over those bones.
God, some of those terrifying. ‘specially the swan.
I think that this illustrates a good point. I’ve always believed the t Rex is more like a dragon, having wings not ridiculous arms that dangle. They are always pictured with huge fangs showing. I think we have been miseducated from the very beginning about this time period. But there is a whole lot or miseducation going on today. I believe “dinosaurs” are merely reptiles that existed before the great flood that every culture around the world references. Everything was bigger back then. Even people. I don’t believe there was a time period where only reptiles existed on earth. Just another lie of the devils. And you “scholars” are drinking his Kool aid by the gallons.
oh my god dinosaurs are alive
i don’t understand why people are interpreting this article as if it were fact. on the top of the page, in big words, it says “humor”, letting us know it’s just for fun. the first word in the title “if”, letting us know it’s hypothetical. it’s supposed to poke fun at the way we used to see dinosaurs!
Birds are avian dinosaurs. They, like the non avian dinosaurs are also reptiles. Many dinosaurs had hollow bones and feathers and so did the birds which existed alongside the dinosaurs. The illustrations are a lot of fun, and remind me of those first British reconstructions of dinosaurs done in the 1800’s, which were also hilarious!
People don’t know how to read….they are funny because they dumb. What this article actually talking about is exactly what the future would have thought… the thought exactly as we think* dinosaurs probably* looked* like because we don’t really know what they looked like. It’s all an imagination of what they probably looked like. Better than nothing. We only have the idea and that idea is what they used for this beautiful example of what these creatures would look like, if* we didn’t know..what they looked like, if they were extinct!!!!!! I is an exact replica of what they look like with just their bones
Nice art
I think the only real issue with this post personally is knowing some one out there will take these illustrations and remove the source/context and attempt to make an argument that “science/Paleo dumb, these pics prove scientists have no idea what they are talking about”
Sad world
Half of the comments on here are one telling others to stfu and keep it funny, other half are actual people who look like they are in the field getting butt hurt. Personally? We didn’t know for sure, what this artist is stressing through overreaction is that we literally cannot say for certain, sure, paleontologist make the most educated guesses and yes! They do make some awesome hypothesis by speculating about extra flesh and skin and what not…. But!!!! Stop it. This is a humorous spot poking fun at the fact that, especially back 100+ even 50+ years ago we were still thinking they dragged their tails across the ground like they were cavemen dragging clubs, also inaccurate. So everyone, seriously, stfu. Enjoy the hilarious art, loved the swan lol. And be amazed how far you’ve come, those looking to be into this field! And remove in the fact you aren’t making these mistakes like those before you! And leave us comical artist alone, take out AI bro that’s the bigger problem 🤣
Interesting. I suppose, we really can’t know for sure, hey? Kinda like when the news hit that almost all dinosaurs actually had feathers, lol. Makes one wonder what else we got wrong about history…..
It is possible to enjoy the silly depictions while simultaneously understanding that no serious scientists would call these accurate. The hippo one looks so freaking bad ass but in reality the bone structure would point out major muscle attachments not a cool jagged head.
I love how butt-hurt sheeple get when told the truth about what they believe.
T-Rex and a fruit bat are great examples. People ASSUME T-Rex was a carnivore because of it’s skull and teeth. It’s design is actually something that would suit an herbivore that fed on something in a tree and used its small arms for pulling/steadying itself and crushed the vegetation like a Grizzly that eats MOSTLY berries and termites and chews through rotten logs.
The other is the fruit bat. Look at its skull and you would think it is a terrifying flying carnivore, but its scary dental design is used solely for eating fruit.
What shining examples of intelligence here in these comments.
I don’t understand how you’re coming to the conclusions you’re coming to. Why does the zebra have toes? Why would future paleontologists think a turtle could leave its shell? The sell is literally part of it’s skeleton. The shell is the body between the tail and neck, and what the legs are attached to. People are like “don’t take it seriously it’s meant to be funny.’ But what’s funny? There’s no joke, this person seems to be very serious.
Uh duh da zebwuh dun don’t look like dat, duh… Lmao… Learn to read and make logical correlations; oh, and try to have an imagination.
CAN YOU SAY THE N WORD ON THIS WEB SITE?
This looks like an “All Tomorrow’s” rendition of animals…
So, the baboon and zebra pictures in this article both have large tails–if the pictures are based off hard tissue (i.e. bones) where the hell did the tail in the picture come from?!
Prehistoric animal art typically have problems where they basically put the skin directly on the bone with no room for muscle or fat, which often doesn’t fossilize. Hair and feathers also generally do not fossilize.
This is to be funny can’t anyone take a joke for heaven sake
I’m sorry, but that Rhino’s head just looks wrong.
I love how koseman draws things. they seam so surreal and scary at the same time
If another intelligent race came to earth after humans went extinct and found our bones, I wonder how they would draw us. Actually, I don’t wanna know.
Interesting! If there were no living elephants, no ancient depictions of what they looked like or ancient frozen specimens of elephants or mammoths, the whole concept of a trunk may have been lost to the passage of time. I wonder what other strange soft-tissue appendages may have been lost. There must have been billions of creatures that had no bones like octopuses, slugs or jellyfish that left no evidence of their existence.
BRO THE ZEBRA LIKE: 👁️👄👁️ where am i
Dumb, it would be funny if people weren’t so gullible. It’s hard to laugh at stupid when you live in a world of flat earthers, creationists and anti-vaxxers.
How would they draw humans?
I don’t think a lot of y’all are understanding what the artist is trying to do here. But I digress. Some of y’all are way angrier than you need to be and it’s funny