Common Brushtail Possum (Trichosurus vulpecula)

This a typical back of the envelope scribble. Sometimes I think about the form of an animal so much I have to draw it. Here I was thinking about the underlying anatomy and how the possum holds itself with that hunched back. It's kind of like a permanent crouching position. They always look alert with those protruding eyes focusing on multiple distances. Sometime I will have to study these possums better to draw them more realistically, but as yet I have been short of time. As you can see there is significant water damage to this drawing because I spilled a cup of tea onto it! That's the sort of respect my drawings get! :-)

The Common Brushtail Possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) is a very widespread marsupial and it as been able to adapt to an urban existence, adopting any dark cavity for a tree hollow substitute for nesting during the day. The space between the ceiling and the roof is typical. This is an animal the people seem to either love or hate. Some people feed them apples in the night and others evict them from their houses and shoot them. There is great phenotypical variation with Tasmanian animals being larger, woollier and darker. Possums in the north are brighter coppery colours, smaller in size and have shorter fur. In recent years Trichosurus vulpecula has undergone a range contraction in the arid centre of Australia but occurs in high population densities in New Zealand where it is feral.

Various Images of Aquiline

I know that Aquiline has not much to do with pure palao-illustration but this is my reality. I got into palao-illustration because of my alter-ego called Aquiline. I wanted to create a world for him and it has to be believeable. Also, I think this is a great opportunity to boost public awareness of Australian palaeontology! :-) I think people are smart enough to tease apart mythology and truth. Afterall humanity has always needed a legend to make sense of reality. Aquilin is an Imperial Diallonyx (Diallonyx melanofelis imperialis). Being what he is, his relationship with Reddiegonians and the Kadimakara which are the extinct animals of Australia are quite complicated. For every palaeo-illustration I might do nine drawings of Aquiline.

The two drawings above show Aquiline with Rose, the person I am roleplaying with on My Space (http://www.myspace.com/mistyvaleintheforest). The uppermost image is of Aquiline sitting on a rock. I could not concentrate on it so much because I was really supposed to be studying for that Environmental geology exam. I was really focused on how the claws would grip the rock. I was full of tension that day and this is how I release it. I've had a brainwave lately and figured out how the phalanges are positioned under the flesh of the paws. I think it's actually quite similar to possums. The one below that shows Aquiline taking off. He has wings that are quite like swift's wings. At rest they are housed in pouches whose intterior is located in a different dimension. That is why they are not visible when a Diallonyx is on the ground.




These are various pictures of Aquiline's face. It can be difficult to draw him because his face can so easily look vicious but yet there has to be a hint of kindness to him. I suppose the best place to put this is in the eyes. Here you can also see a little picture of the head of a Muttaburrasaurus langdoni. I really like this animal, I think it has equine grace. I look forward to working on it more. You can also see the skeleton of a drawing of a person on the left.



Here I was trying to illustrate the very odd shape of a Nothosaurus to a friend. I could not really remember it well and I've put the wrong number of temporal holes in it's skull. I didn't have any reference at the time, I was on an Environemental geology field trip. That was the most depressing trip I went to. We went to the Strahan and saw the King River delta. It was totally dead. There was no sign of life anywhere and it was totally silent. Everything had been killed by the toxic acid mine drainage and the entire area was covered in a moonscape of tailings orange due to the rusting of iron. There was not even a single bird call or a scrap of algae. n some places an unknown white substance oozed out of the ground like pus from a wound on the face of the Earth. I really hated that subject.

In this picture, on the right, you can also see a top view of Aquiline's head comeplete with his whiskers.

Prodraco reddiegoniensis

The Reddiegonian Dragon or Reswobian Swift Crocodile (Prodraco reddiegoniensis) are animals the occupy the North West of Reswobia, where they live in a gigantic caldera and the surrounding desert with it's shifting sand dunes. Visibility is very poor here because of the volcano puffing aways as well as the dragons themselves producing oily fumes due to the actions of their fire breathing apparatus. They are the genetically modified products of Flickertongue whose main purposes are to dig up the global crsut and allow the magma to take over the land and evaporate the sea. That is the way the legend goes anyway, whether Flickertongue and Psycorn exist is a matter of contention. Most in Reswobia don't believe this to be true.

Prodraco has long legs rather like a horse with a long tail that ends in a whiplash. There are spines that line the back and they have an erectile spiky frill. they not only have bat-like wings but bat-like ears and a nose leaf. Due to the limited visibility of their home they do tend to make use of echolocation to navigate their world. They have throat pacth with has an eye spot for display purposes. Generally they are red all over but it tends to fade into yellow on the underside. Above is an image of a young dragon. (The other creature below it is an ornithomimosaur complete with a beak). It is another set of images I produced when I was stressing over a maths assignment. The image below is one of an adult dragon that I did back in 2005 that I have included her for comparison. There is a volcano in the background.

My Lecture Folder Scribbles

Ah ha! Now we are getting closer to the core of the psychology of why I do palaeo-illustrations. These drawings are ones I did on the front inside cover of my binder folder that I use to take notes from my lectures. I've had it since I was in grade eight but I was drawing in my lesson notebooks back then. My grade nine maths book is basically an alphabetical treatise on Diallonyx! But that is probably a story for another day if someone wants to hear it.

When I started to go to university I had no lecture books but I do have binder refill paper, which many of my scribblings on ruled paper have been done on. The inside of the folder had a plain white paper liner. Now that blank whiteness was just too tempting, so naturally it has been covered in drawings! Most of these were done during 2006-2007 and generally I guess you could say that it tells the tale of the relationship between Psycorn and Diallonyx. You could say that Psycorn is a Dragon but that is not really an accurate description for what he is. He is a being composed of plasma, super-heated gas. Pure energy. Hence they are often known as "plasma beings." Plasma beings are very ancient and most believe that they have been around since the Big Bang itself. They are also very insecure because they don't have a well defined barrier between themselves and external reality like we do. They don't have cell walls or skin. For this reason they often hide in planets so their energy doesn't dissipate so easily. The plasma being that took up residence in Earth underwent massive trauma when a foreign body approximately the size of Mars collided with the earth 4 billion years ago. The earth was blasted to pieces and when it reformed it had a moon. The plasma being was also split into pieces that took up residence in different parts of the planet. Here they started to feel threatened by the presence of each other and started to fight because each thought the other was trying to steal its energy. After some time they discovered the uses of genetic modification and started to manipulate animals to fight each other with. The Diallonyx melanofelis species complex is the animal that Psycorn toys around with. Prodraco reddiegoniensis is the plaything of Flickertongue, the other major plasma being in the Reswobian universe (not pictured here).

On the bottom of the page is the dicynodont, Kannemeyeria. Dicynodonts were therapsids or mammal-like reptiles that lived during the Permian and Triassic Periods, a time span between 298 and 205 million years ago. The name dicynodont means "two-dog-teeth." This comes from one of their defining features which is what resembles a pair of fangs on the upper jaw in the position canines would be on a dog. In this case they were on either side of a beak. They are believed to be herbivores and the "canines" or tusks were used to root around for tubers or other subterreanean plant foods. They could have also been used for fighting or defense against predators. Kannemeyeria has been found in South Africa, Argentina and India and in 1985 a quadrate bone was recovered from the early Triassic Arcadia Formation of south-east Queensland showing features similar to Kannemeyeria. This is truly a Gondwanan genus. :-) I find the therapsid body plan a bit akcward to draw at the moment. Their stance is semi-sprawled and they have rather peculiar shoulder pectoral girdles that I can't quite figure out yet. I need to do more research on these animals.

In the bottom left hand corner you can see the skeleton of a therapod dinosaur. This is the framework over which I reconstruct the animal.




This is the back of the folder's inner cover. It is really a lot of random thoughts with a small Dromornis that you can see in the left hand side of the picture. On the far right is the framework of a Diallonyx that I didn't complete because I wasn't happy with it. The legs felt wrong to me.

Dromornis meets Rose

Now that I have Dromornis on my brain, it's going to pop up in random places. I'll be drawing something else and I'll have a mental shift. Then I'll be drawing Dromornis again. Practice makes perfect and I have to be drawing this creature repeatedly. Most of them won't be masterpieces. In this one I didn't like the feet and I thought it felt out of balance. The humanoid that you see here is the character of someone I do a roleplaying game with on My Space which you can see at: http://www.myspace.com/mistyvaleintheforest The name of the character is Rose and she's supposed to be a shadow angel with some elf blood. I have to learn how to draw humans at some stage and I feel more comfortable in fantasy worlds than trying to sketch people's portraits in real life. I have had to fix Rose's image up because I have been told by her creator that she hasn't got pointy ears and she does have lips. She isn't your classical anime type girl it seems. I have publish many other pictures of Rose in my My Space profile at http://www.myspace.com/reswobia However, you do have to have an account yourself to see those pictures.

Dromornis in profile

This is one of the Dromornis stirtoni profiles that I am more pleased with. The haughty expression might suit the bird because if it was carnivorous it would have been on of the largest ones in the ecosystem. It would have been at least the tallest and probably would not take any nonsense from other animals. I imagine it with a vulturine head with bare pink skin that can flush bright scarlet when the bird is angry and blanch when it is frightened. You can see this in living vultures and in turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) gobblers whose bumpy heads can change colour every few seconds with shifting moods. We are going to have a lot of fun!

The O-Shamo

I was roaming around the Science Library looking at random books, as you do, when I happened across a book that was a Catalogue of South-East Asian Poultry. I was quite intrigued. The shape and form of Asiatic chooks seems to be quite a bit different to the rounded bulk of European fowl. My Mother had described the chickens she had grown up with and they had pictures of Filipino chicken breeds there. They often have very long legs and tighter plumage. They are actually more similar to the ancestral red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus) which is still reputed to be widespread in the wilds of South-east Asia. One particular chicken breed that caught my attention was the Japanese O-Shamo. These birds were imported to Japan from South-East Asia during the 16th century and their name, Shamo is thought to have been derived from "Siam," suggesting their origins. There are two size classes O-Shamo. The O-Shamo are the large birds which weigh about 5 kilos or more and the Chu-Shamo is the smaller bantum type of bird. This chook is a very savage looking creature. It has a skull that juts forwards and presses down on the eyes, giving them a bullish expression. It has a very upright posture thought to give it an advantage at kicking high and hard. They are very muscular and have that lean, mean appearance. The drumsticks are very meaty and the shoulders are broad with the wings held out slightly. It has a small walnut or peacomb and it has no wattles on its throat. Gamefowl generally don't have these and if they do sometimes they are cut off by the owner because they get ripped during fights (cockfighting is a very cruel sport). When I saw this bird I automatically thought "dromaeosaur." I sketched this bird from that book. It was not a clear photo and I wanted a better view of it. Unfortunately my brother showed up wanting to go home so I couldn't finish this sketch. The expression its face would also give some insights into how I design the eyes of Dromornis. You can see that I have added Dromornis profiles on the bottom left hand corner and played around with these ideas.

More Images of Distress....

This is another image I did when caught with a mathematical Environmental Geology practical. I was very frustrated because I knew that hydrogeology was completely (or I think completely) to what I want to do with my life and I was stuck here doing it. If I failed the subject I would be denied of my geology major all because of a skill that I would probably never use again in my life. Its really quite frustrating. The only time I got a High Distinction was when I was doing a course that was 50% palaeontology in first year. I get so irritated by being made to do everything possible except for the thing I want to do the most that the anger drives me to distraction and adversely effects my results. I definitely won't be a first grade Honour's student, although I know it isn't everything. How it is quite infuriating that I am judged on a two digit number which has no reflection on my intelligence. At least that leg of the journey is over.

Anyhow, all these thoughts as well as the grief over the death of my Mum in April this year brought me to tears and I had to flee the practical. I had never done that before. One of the main functions of drawing me, (since I had my break through when I was ten and realised I could turn a circle into anything I liked), was stress relief. It is a form of escapism. You can say that it helps me to manage my Asperger's Disorder and allows me to make sense of the world which is no small feat if you have the condition. Here I was imagining the sort of environment that Dromornis may have inhabited back in the Pliocene (5.3-1.8 million years ago) but of course I am not sure what sort of vegetation was around when Dromornis was roaming the country. That is something for further reference. I've got to stop putting claws on him. Watching him from a tree limb above is a Thylacoleonid. I know it is anachronistic but I was thinking of the Middle Miocene Wakaleo vanderleuri. I had just recently found a set of two volumes in the Science Library edited by Micheal Archer called Possums and Opossums. There was a paper there describing Wakaleo with enormous photos of the skull. I was very excited! I took photocopies for my drawings and ran off into my dreams with them!

In Reswobia, you can be as anachronistic as you like...



This is the reverse side of the sheet of paper. It is a random drawing of Aquiline the Imperial Diallonyx, my alter-ego. That climatology assignment and the environment geology stuff was driving me nuts.

In Times of Distress...

I did this drawing of a very stroppy Dromornis when I was stressing out during an Environmental Geology practical. You can see how I have shifted the wattles to the base of the neck, as in the cassowary (Casuarius), but I am thinking of doing something more similar to the brush turkey (Alectura lathami) now. My working memory is a total mess. It's one of the comorbidities that I have with Asperger's Disorder and it makes maths near impossible for me. I am also not very good at asking for help with this sort of thing. I have a Father that has Aspeger's Disorder as well but we seem to be mirror images of one another when it comes to intellectual ability. My Dad is good at maths, but not so good at English and the arts. I am the total opposite. Unfortunately, my Father expected me to be just like him. I mean I was in many ways when it comes to behaviour but not intellectual ability. He used to get angry with me because he assumed I would have an intuitive grasp of mathematical concepts as he did. I knew they wanted a polymath as a child and alas I never met the mark. When I was at school I was always at the top of the class for English but at the bottom in maths. Hence I was considered bright but stubborn. The teachers used to become very exasperated because I could not understand the whole concept of the times tables in grade one and they used to rage at me saying, "why can't you understand it? You should because all the other children know." But I wasn't like the other children ad I knew that since I was five. Thus I started not to ask for help. I became more and more socially withdrawn. I'm pretty sure these events still affect me now in a very big way. I can't help it very much because they are so deeply ingrained in my subconsciousness. The memories are upsetting because incidents like this continued to happen until I reached university.



This is a little Dromornis head I drew when I was panicking over my climatology assignment, which was all maths.

Mental Formulae

These little drawings are not designed to be anatomically correct. Rather they are for the purposes of developing a mental picture of the form of the animal. Each animals is a collection of shapes and energy lines. Energy lines often follow the movement of the spine and give the drawing a good sense of flow, hence they furnish the image with life. Sometimes you have to step back a bit and pay attention more to harmony, balance and energy. Otherwise the palaeo-reconstruction ends up looking very tight and rigid. The passage above are notes I took when I was listening to ABC Radio National.

Amongst these ostriches are pictures of a robot someone on My Space showed me. It was quite an impressive thing. It was a four-legged beast that could walk over uneven ground, ice, get up when it fell down and was very good at righting itself when it was out of balance. It could even jump and almost gallop. I have plans for robots in the future. :-) Also you can see a little sketch I did of a spider I saw in the geology faculty. In the left hand corner is another picture of an elf that went a bit wrong.

Speaking of Ostriches....

Yes, speaking of ostriches I had a look around in the Science Library for image of ostriches that I could study to improve how I portrayed Dromornis. They have quite a few books on Ostriches because they are farmed for their meat leather and feathers where the climate allows. They also do the same for emus and rheas. Hence there are plenty of photos and drawings of their anatomy and skinned carcasses which are very useful. In the image above I sketched a drawing of an ostrich skeleton and layered muscles on it that I found on a separate drawing. Really they are quite similar to chickens. Pay close attention to the next chicken you are eating. I'm always systematically stripping back the muscles on my drumsticks. :-)



This here is a sketching I made of a photo which was one of a sequence of photos showing the slaughter and butchering of a male ostrich. After it was dispatched that hung it upside down and skinned it. Then they removed the the viscera and cut it in half. In this sketch the viscera has been removed. I am really not completely happy with this one, I may go back to the library and do it again. Next time I will label all the muscles up for future reference. It might be a good idea to know what I am drawing. Above the ostrich carcass you can see two face which are my crude attempts to draw elves. I am doing a spot of roleplaying, which is like a communal story, on My Space. You'll find it on Rose Feather Hailweb's profile under the blog entry called "Travels." I am working on drawing her characters and I'm starting on Rose. You can see my attempts on my My Space profile which is called "Reswob" of course.



This here is a 15 minute sketch I did when I should have been studying for the exams. I really hated Environmental Geology. I think it was just a subject put in place for the mining company's public image. It was all about making the right political noises rather than protecting the environment from acid mine drainage. I was not motivated to study at all and I barely passed; probably because I was looking at ostriches like this one. I found this image at www.kenyaology.com I hope they don't mind because it's hard to find ostriches in Tasmania. :-)I was looking for a view from the rear in particular because I wanted to get an impression on how the legs fit onto the body. This is easier to see on the ostrich because the thighs and the underside of the bird are virtually featherless. This is a Somali Ostrich (Struthio camelus molybdophanes) which is distinguished from other ostrich subspecies (there are five) by its blue neck and legs. It also tends to roam about in pairs or alone rather than flocks as other ostriches do. It inhabits Kenya and it may be a separate species, isolated from the others by the Great Rift Valley.

Meditations on the Dromornis stirtoni wing

As I mentioned before Dromornis may have had features that served to intimidate a foe and avoid combat that could be seriously damaging. I happened across the fact that the cassowary (Casuarius sp.) has five bare quills on it's vestigial wings. These were once the primary feathers. I also noticed the very conspicuous wings of the ostrich (Struthio camelus). The female is all brown but the male is black with white plumage on his wings and his tail. I was looking at the skeletons of ostriches, rheas and emus. It turns out that the wings of the rhea are the largest, but those of the ostrich look the most impressive due the colour and nature of the plumage which seems to look more fluffy. (The rhea is brown all over). The ostrich also seems to hold out its wings more to the side, perhaps because the African climate is so hot. Anyhow the emu has the most vestigial wings of all. They are the shortest and I think they are comparable in length to those of the cassowary; after all they do have a common ancestor. It seems that these dromornthids had wings similar to those of the emu and perhaps the cassowary. Here I was experimenting with adding quills to the wings of Dromornis. I have an image of these birds threatening each other with them; rattling them to make an intimidating sound as they screech at each other. Maybe, to look more impressive, they had black and white bands on them.

Amongst the wings you can see how I am playing around with the general form of the animal, especially the head. Really, you have to make an utter mess of things if you really want to learn how to draw any subject.

First proper Dromornis stirtoni reconstruction

I went hunting around on the internet for some good pictures of Dromornis stirtoni skeletons and I came across a website of Gondwana Studios, a company that produces museum quality casts of fossils. I first heard of them from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery when I went asking about palaeontology back when I was in college. Must have been in 2004, when they had a dinosaur exhibition up. I was sketching their Gallimimus bullatus and their Tarbosaurus bataar skeletons. I would show them to you but the graphite has all smudged and it looks terrible. You are see their wares at www.gondwanastudios.com. It seems that the produce cats of a Dromornis skeleton or the related Bullockornis. This I sketched and layered muscle, skin and feather on it. I think that it may have had a naked head at least if it was a habitual consumer of flesh because it would save feathers from being soiled by gore. Arguements against Dromornis being a carnivore is the absence of a hook on the beak and long recurved claws on the toes, there being hoof-like strutures instead.

Personally, I think that it may have at least been omnivorous and maybe had a ecological niche like a bear (Ursidae). The beak of a bird as a keratin sheath to it. Keratin is the same protein that constitutes your fingernails, hair and the horn sheaths of cattle. The toucan is a bird with a massive beak as well and it does eat mainly fruit. However it does eat eggs and chicks of other birds as well as the occasional lizard. It does not have a pronounced hook on its bill but it does have a few tooth-like projections that point towards the back of the mouth. This would help it hook food into its mouth. These serrations are not present in the bone but only in the keratin sheath. I don't think it inconceivable that Dromonis had some comparable structure. Since the beak is very deep, it may have been also used for some sort of display struture as in a toucan and I have added stripes to it to break up its outline.

I'm thinking of putting wattles on this animal's throat, so I am looking at the wattles I can see in extant birds. I think they should be at the base of the neck, unlike how I have placed them here, so they don't get covered in blood and gore when it feeds. If this was indeed a predatory bird, I believe that display may have been important to it because the damage these animals could do to each other could be potentially fatal. They might have had mechanisms to intimidate an opponent to avoid such injurious conflicts.

Genyornis newtoni right pes

Ah, after the millionth attempt I have been able to upload this thing! We had a hardcore thuderstorm that rattled the entire house. I think that it totally messed with the internet connection. Anyhow, down to business...

This sketch is from Rich and Vicker-Rich's Wildlife of Gondwana. This book has been my constant companion in libraries since I discovered it in Launceston College when I was in Grade 11. It has been invaluable to me because as a lowly student far away from palaeontology central in Sydney, I don't have ready access to specimens. The photography is sooo good! This is a sketch of the right foot of Genyornis newtoni. Here you can see the end point of the evolutionary trends of the dromornithids. I say end point because Genyornis was the last of its lineage, dying out some 26,000-6,000 years ago. Here you can see that the inner digit has been reduced and the increased size of the outer digit. Supposably these were adaptions to a more cursorial lifestyle as the rainforests that once blanketed Australia dried out. Unlike Dromornis stirtoni, Genyornis is more gracile and probably had a better ability to run fast. It also didn't have the massive bill that D. stirtoni.

Personally I believe that G. newtoni had a similar ecological niche to the living emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae) and fed on plants, seeds and probably invertebrates. This I believe a possibily because the emus that were comtemporaries of G. newtoni were smaller than the emus we see today. This could be due to the fact that the species competed with one another for the same resources meaning that the emus were denied of some food and suffered from a degree of stunted growth.

There are some intriguing tales from some Australian Aboriginal tribes that are suggestive of Genyornis newtoni or some other similar animal in the past. The Tjapwurong people of the Lancefield area of Victoria say that mirhirung paringmal or "Giant Emus" were living in the area when Volcanoes were active in the west. That suggests that they were around 6000 years ago at least. I also came across a legend that coud have come from the Kamilaroi People who inhabit the plains and slopes of north-west New South Wales. There is a place called the Boobera Lagoon which is thought to have once been the abode of Kurrea the rainbow serpent and his descentants are known as the Gowarkees or Gowargays, the "water emu spirits." These are also called "Giant Emus" and were said to have inhabit the swampy country near the dwelling of Baiame the All Father. These birds were black and had red legs. Could this be an ancient memory of Genyornis newtoni passed down the generations?

It would make sense if these were the birds in question. If they inhabited swamps and were more needy of water than emus, perhaps this is the reason why they did not survive to the present day.

Dromornithids, "Mihirungs" or "Thunderbirds"

When I came back to Tasmania after my wonderful time at Riversleigh smashing open limestone to get fossils, I decided that my new subject for the pen and paper would be Dromornis stirtoni. After I had drawn a pair of Thylacoleo carnifex scrapping of course. (They are not anatomically sound I know but I will get better at this.) So I pulled out Tom Rich and Pat Vickers-Rich's Wildlife of Gondwana book from the shelves of the Science Library in the University of Tasmania and sketched these dromornithid legs. I saw the skull on one of Micheal Archer's powerpoint slides as he gave a lecture in the relative cool of the evening on the warm open timber awning where we took our meals. Seeing that skull sparked my interest in Dromornis stirtoni once more. I made a quick sketch in the fleeting seconds he had it on the screen...


Here it is amongst the notes I took from Mike's lecture. I really like the shape of this skull. Look at the deep upper jaw with it's beautiful curves. It has such a good solid chin. Isn't it worth swooning over?! :-D After the lecture and all the questions were asked with the lights switched back on, I did a quick reconstruction which was based more heavily on what I remembered of emus, although these Dromornithids are only distantly related to emus. (We actually don't know how these birds are related to other avian lineages but some believe that they are related to primitive anatids, hence Dromornis stirtoni has been dubbed "The Demon Duck of Doom" because of its possible carnivorous habits; others think that they are distantly related to galliforms and it was really a gigantic mutated chook).

You can see the reconstructed head of Dromornis stirtoni lower lefthand corner above. I can do something more interesting with this animal I believe and that is what my next few posts will focus on. In this picture you can also see how I have drawn Thylacoleo carnifex and Thylacinus cynocephalus. Also, I have drawn the skeletal major structures of what I hoped to be closer to the marsupial form. I had an eye opening discussion with Henk Godthelp who told me that that the shoulder structure of marsupials is unique and the scapula is orientated more vertically. The pelvis is likewise in a more vertical position as opposed to the horizontal orientation that you see in placental mammals. Also there are more vertebrae attached to the pelvis of marsupials than those of placental mammals. The marsupial posture is kind of like a kidney bean with the back arched and the limbs held rather lower than it. This is most prominantly seen in bandicoots and wombats. Actually this posture can also be observed in mustilids like otters and ferrets. Henk told me I ought to dissect a possum, but I haven't been able to lay my paws on one yet and I don't fancy going out there and shooting one like many Tasmanians do here. I haven't had time to comb the road for roadkill so far. Micheal Archer told me that the forequarters of marsupials tend to be more well-built than the hindquarters. This can be observed in the Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) in particular but also in the recently extinct Thylacinus cynocephalus. This is a carry over from the fact that when a marsupial is born, it is very underdeveloped but it does have strong forearms to pull itself through the mother's fur to the pouch. We are more likely to see this feature in Thylacoleo carnifex.

The Zoology Practical Book Cover-The Back

This is the back cover of the zoology practical book. The front cover was the subject of the previous post.

At the top of the image are two dinosaurs from early Cretaceous Australia (135-107 mya, I know I made a mistake in the actual drawing). The Mesozoic fossil record in Australia is rather poor. Most of the remains exist as isolated scraps of bone and are often the preserved after travelling in a fluvial system for some time. Thus they have often been rounded and disarticulated by the actions of running water. This is true of Lightning Ridge which is a deposit that records rivers following into the sea. Hence these dinosaurs are very speculative, but hey I can dream, can't I? :-) For reference I had a look at Gregory S. Paul's Predatory Dinosaurs of the World which not only has reconstructions but good drawings of dinosaur skeletons.

Rapator ornitholestoides is known from a single metacarpel preserved in opal. It was about 9 metres long and might have looked like a lightly built Allosaurus. It's specific name, ornitholestoides, means "like Ornitholestes." Ornitholestes hermanni was described in 1903 and is still only known only from one complete skeleton found in the Bone Cabin Site of Wyoming. Ornitholestes and Rapator share an elongated posteromedial process, which is a peculiar trait suggesting that these animals could have been related. Hence, this reconstruction has been modelled on Ornitholestes. The metacarpal is not only larger than that of it's possible American relative, but is also more robust. To convey this idea I added greater depth to the head of Rapator. The nasal bones of Ornitholeste have been a source of some contention, with some people believing that they are the broken bases of a nasal crest as seen in Proceratosaurus and others thinking that the nasal bones are either displaced or the products of post-depositional deformation. For this reconstruction, Ii decided to let myself go on a flight of fancy and added a nasal horn. I have coloured it bright yellow and red because it might have been used as a sexual display . I have also given it darker skin around on the lips and around the eye because they can give better contrast to the teeth. The eyes may also look more expressive. You can see black gums on wolves in which this contrast is used to intimidated other wolves when the teeth are bared. The rest of the body is a mottled green and brown to serve as camouflage when the animals is hunting. Since no more complete remains have been recovered to date there is continued discussion as to the true lineage of this dinosaur. There are other theories suggesting that it might be a giant Alvarezsaurid and Steve Sailisbury now believes it may be related to Nqwebasaurus, a basal coelurosaur from South Africa.

Kakaru kujani is known from a single tibia preserved in opal recovered from Andamooka in South Australia. In the scientific community only a cast is available for study because the original fossil was sold by an opal dealer. The tibia is slender and resembles that of a wader bird. It is similar to Avimimus but has facets for the astragulus (ankle bone) that are unique and it could represent a completely new lineage of dinosaurs. For this reconstruction I have used Avimimus as a model and I have made the bill deep and brightly coloured as in puffins which use their deep beaks for colourful sexual displays. I put the dark ban through it to break up the contours of the beak, as in what stripes do for zebras. It might lend a bit of camouflage. On top of the head are feathers that make up a crest. These only have filaments on the tips, as in a peacock's crest.

Below is my alter-ego, Aquiline the Imperial Diallonyx with a Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) sitting on his back. The Tasmanian Tiger has only been extinct since the 1930's and some people still believe (or want to believe) that it still roams the wilds of Tasmania. It was a remarkable case of convergent evolution and this animal took very strongly after wolves or dogs. However, it was always thought to be a solitary hunter and was the size of a German Shepard Dog. It descended from hopping ancestors and still retained the stiff back of fused vertebrae in the lower back. Note that the thylacine can see it's own reflection Aquiline's coat. The coat of the Diallonyx is has a metallic sheen to it due to silver compounds in the fur. Hence it can operate like a mirror.

The Zoology Practical Book Cover

Righto. For those of you who have not seen this, here it is. This is the front cover of a zoology practical book that that I did in 2007. In university zoology units, it is often expected that sketches and notes of specimens, especially dissections, are taked for future reference. These drawings are ink and coloured pencil on cream card and are covered in adhesive plastic used to cover books to protect them from wear and tear. In this case, the drawings are protected from being soiled or smudged and also waterproofs the card. Now for a little something about the critters...

In the top right we have Ektopodon serratus, an unusual possum recovered from Early Miocene deposits in Riversleigh of Central Queensland and from Lake Ngapakaldi in the Tirari Desert of South Australia. Once this thirsty, arid land was covered in lush rainforest and was home to a multitude of possums. Little more than the peculiar teeth of this possum is known and those teeth were so unusual that they were once attributed to a monotreme. The molars have many cusps in two transverse rows and these have caused much confusion as to what this animal ate. So far it is thought they consumed food items that needed thorough chewing or crushing, such as nuts, seeds or insects with hard exoskeletons like beetles. Judging by the proportions of the palate and the teeth rows, as well as looking at related species like Chunia illuminata, it is thought that Ektopodon had a short snout and large orbits with the possibility of binocular vision. If this animal was still alive today I think that it would have that cute factor koalas have that make people's hearts melt into fuzziness. This would especially be the case if they were really fluffy looking like the Green ringtail possums (Psuedochirops archeri) of the Top End. I think that they would look a little like a weird cuscus and I did find a photo of the blue-eyed phase of the Common Spotted Cuscus (Spilocucus maculatus). The creamy, soft fur and the eyes sparkling back like sapphires just seemed right.

The Marsupial Lion, or Thylacoleo carnifex, is one of the most difficult animals to draw well in my opinion. I think that is this because it has many features that make it look like a felid and perhaps other things too, like possums and koalas, but it also has some very unique anatomical structures. As a result, we have one very strange looking beastie. To produce this image I found a photo of a mounted skeleton with the skull in a three-quarter view (google "Thylacoleo" images and you'll probably find the image I used) and I layered the muscles on after the method Mauricio Anton in the book he illustrated for Alan Turner. It is called The Big Cats and their Fossil Relatives. Firstly I filled in the temporalis and masseter muscles which are the ones that work the jaws. Thylacoleo had a very large fossa temporalis, through which these powerful muscles inserted, providing the animal with a very savage bite. (Steve Wroe wrote a lot about this). To bring this point across, I made these two muscles very bulky, so they bulge out over the zygomatic arch; think about the jaguar which as the strongest bite for it's size of any extant felid. Next I rounded out the whisker pads that would have sat in from of the bulge of the premolars. I had a look at the infraorbital foramen of Thylacoleo and I decided it was comparable to felids. This hole allows the nerves to pass through the skull to feed into the nerves linked to the whiskers. Cats have a large infraorbital foramen that feeds a dense bed of nerves in the whisker pads making this structure look bulky. Therefore, I ensured that Thylacoleo was well-endowed with good, dense whisker pads. The teeth were pretty hard to draw right and this animal as an unusually broad face due to the premolars projecting out to the sides more than usual. Wroe has suggested that it used its long, blade of its third premolars to bite at its prey rather than just relying on it's incisors to stab its prey to death. Naturally, when its snarls as I have illustrated it here, it should be able to expose them. For the coat I drew from the African leopard (Panthera pardus) for the sandy-orange ground colour and from quolls for the white spots. Leopards can often have green eyes. It is thought that this animal relied on stealth more than anything else to hunt, perhaps like a modern leopard. The structure of its feet are quite possum-like and it probably had a plantigrade stance, meaning that it could not run fast. However, it was probably a good climber and perhaps hunted more like an ocelot (Felis pardalis). This South America cat's modus operandi is to sit on a tree limb and wait for unsuspecting prey to pass underneath. It this instant it pounces onto it and dispatches it. It is intriguing because it suggests that Thylacoleo could have been the inspiration for the legend of the "drop bear" in Australia and indeed in life it would have had a stocky build a bit similar to one.

Zygomaturus trilobus is at the bottom of the piece. It was a diprotodontid, hence in the same family as Diprotodon optatum but in a different subfamily; the Zygomaturinae. They were characterised by complicated upper premolars that could have up to five cusps. They were browsers and inhabited rainforest up until the Pliocene when they dried out, after which they inhabited wet and dry sclerophyll forest. Pleistocene Zygomaturus articulated remains have been recovered from Tasmania. These are nearly complete, meaning that it is the best known taxa of it's lineage. "Trilobus" means "three-lobes" and this refers to three knobs located on the snout. It has been speculated that these may have supported keratin horns similar to those seen in rhinoceros today. These knobs do resemble the bony cores of rhino horns and I searched for pictures of rhinoceros to see what I could find. Since I only had profile photos of all the specimens my judgement was hindered but I decided that the shape of the Zygomaturus nasal knobs resembles those of the Indian Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) the most. Therefore I gave it a small single nasal horn. I also gave it an upper lip similar to the black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) because it too is a browser. It made sense fro this animal to have pliable lips and perhaps a prehensile tongue to reach leaves above it.

Life in the Line

....I was told that my drawings have life. A rare sort of energy that is so scarce and precious in scientific illustration. It is ironic that my drawings seem so alive because it is born of suffering and destruction of the psychic kind.

And I know that brutal honestly can destroy one's life.

There are people out there who believe that science and art cannot mix. That science is a dry boring diorama. It's a pity really, when you are just a child you are not supposed to know who you are. They try to shape you, cut your arms off and bind you into their definition of greatness. There are people out there in the public schooling system, call themselves teachers, that have forgotten how to dream. To them dreams are childish things to be quashed by the hard realities of adult life...that includes any remaining desire to be a vertebrate palaeontologist.

Do something useful. Earn some money. Get a real job. Forget the pursuit of knowledge for wisdom's' sake alone. I continued to draw dinosaurs instead of people.

So I had to burn at the stake for my heresy for my impractical dreams and my uneconomical ambitions.

Diprotodon optatum

This animal has the distinction of being the largest marsupial known, living or extinct. It weighted well over a ton and was comparable in size to a rhinoceros. The largest specimens are 3 meters long and 2 metres tall at the shoulder. Although they resembled wombats, they are not direct ancestors of them, belonging to a different subfamily; the Diprotodontidae. The Vombatidae, which is the family that modern wombats belong to, have rootless, evergrowing teeth. The Diprotodonids had rooted teeth with lower crowns, designed to browse on more succulent foliage than the roots and grasses that wombats make more use of. The structure f the nasal bones has been the source of much speculation; some think that it may have had a short trunk, others think the nasal bones resemble those of a wombats and it had a nose like theirs. I'll have to judge for myself in the future.

Diprotodon remains have been found in proximity to the Pleistocene deposits of the inland lakes of inland Australia. These creatures were one of many animals that did not make it to the present day; probably being victims of the drying climate and possibly a change in the vegetation assemblage due to the firestick farming practices of the Aboriginals. It is very likely that Diprotodon was known to the earliest people of this land and was the inspiration of the bunyip legends. It became extinct about 30,000 BP.

When I think of Diprotodon, I think of thirst. Imagine a weary lumbering beast approaching his local lake once so fertile, teeming with lungfish and crocodiles. Only to find a hypersaline puddle with salt so concentrated that it burns and cracks the parched soles of their massive feet. These animals were the equivalent of elephants in their time and elephants need to drink every day. Imagine the last drink beside the sparkling gypsum crystals of forboding beauty. Imagine the agonised eyes sunken with starvation and the drawn, gaunt face drawing up the last particles of moisture from the spreading dust of the desert.

Simosthenurus

I think I did this drawing in 2006. I know these things are a bit old now, but I don't have enough time to scan off my later drawings at the moment. I really should be studying but I find this little journal a fulfilling catharsis in my dreary life...

Anyhow, this is a profile of Simosthenurus sp. that I did directly from a photo of a skull that I found in Vickers-Rich and Rich's Wildlife of Gondwana. This book has been a useful companion for me as I don't have good access to specimens. Yes, so I sketched the skull and layered the muscles on as well as I understood it. If you look at it closely, you can still see the outline of the zygomatic arch, teeth, diastema and the end of the nasal bones where they adjoin the rhinarium. It is also possible to view where I have blocked out the temporalis and masseter muscles as well as the whisker pads.

Simosthenurus ("short-nosed strong-tailed beast") was a sthenurine; a member of an extinct lineage of browsing kangaroos. They are characterised by short, deep muzzles, high-crowned molars with complex crenulated enamel, short robust tails and often they only had one well developed toe (digit 4) on their hind feet. Their bones suggest that they were also heavily built, I might enjoy drawing one of these on steroids! They were often quite gigantic, larger than modern kangaroos. Procoptodon goliah could have been up to three metres tall and is the largest kangaroo known. Simosthenurus itself could have weighed about 100 kilograms; larger than any living kangaroo. It is thought that sthenurines were amongst the first macropods to move out into the woodlands that were replacing the rainforests as Australia dried out in response to the Ice Ages. The short jaws probably gave them a stronger bite, allowing them to masticate tougher vegetation and the monodactylism could be a convergence with horses. It might have allowed them to hop around at higher speeds. Both Procoptodon and Simosthenurus lived during the Late Pleistocene; about 1 mya to 500,000 BP.

Tasmaniosaurus triassicus

This beastie is the oldest archosaur known from Australia. Actually his remains were only found a short distance from the university where I study everything I desire with the exception of palaeontology! Tasmaniosaurus was probably the top predator of its time in the Triassic swamps of Hobart. In appearance it would have probably resembled a crocodile and I have modelled its flesh on saltwater crocodile soft anatomy. I was probably about a metre long and had a similar lifestyle; feeding on the amphibians and heavily scaled fish of its environment. It is believed to be a member of the Proterosuchidae and thought to be a relative of Chasmatosaurus that inhabited Africa and China.

I did this drawing with the possibility that I may have to get into contact with John A. Long, a well-known palaeontologist in Australia who works the Devonian Gogo Formation near Broome in Western Australia. At that point I didn't know where to go for my Honours Project and doing the drawing helped me digest my thoughts. I have several of John Long's books and I did this drawing based on a reconstruction of a skull I found in his Dinosaurs of Australia and New Zealand and other animals of the Mesozoic Era.