FINALLY I’m posting recent art! Made this just a few days ago. I was bored, and haven’t made digital art in months prior, so wanted to get back into it by making a meme redraw with my raptor character, because… ? Whatever works to motivate me I guess.
Speculative Velociraptor threat display i came up with
My speculation is that smaller dromaeosaurus like Deinonychus, Archeroraptor, etc had the feather raising ability to compensate for their lack of size and be able to intimidate enemies, whereas larger dromaeosaurs like Utahraptor, Dakotaraptor, Achillobator, etc didn't because they were already fairly large.
it was a chimera to begin with (ie, an amalgamation of fossil pieces from multiple different animals, including a turtle)
the science in the paper is... not great
and many researchers who specialize in hell creek (the formation it's from) say the claws look like tyrannosaurus claws
ie it already was a chimera and it might be even MORE of a chimera
also, and this is more of a petty complaint, the guy who described it is one of those "actually picturing paleontologists as indiana jones type adventurers is good and I wanna look like that" types. focused more on appearing like an adventurer or cool guy than a scientist. worked on making a mount of the specimen far longer than he worked on the phylogeny <_< which isn't dakotaraptor's fault but like I don't like that man