Raptor's Nest

Following on from my previous post, here is another one of my theropod skull line drawings. However, this time, it's a little bit more original than the last one. At least a bit more effort went into it. This is my 'reconstruction' of the Baryonyx walkeri skull and mandible. I based this on photos of various skull elements (Charig & Milner, 1997; Rayfield et al., 2009) and published reconstructions (Sereno et al., 1998; Rauhut, 2003) all scaled appropriately. I also base this on some personal observations of the specimen at the NHM. The arrangement of the postorbital portion of the skull is largely based on Rauhut (2003) (but ultimately on Irritator ) but adjusted so that it fits with the braincase and quadrate. So overall, it looks slightly different from Rauhut's (2003) reconstruction.

When I first saw posters and merchandising for Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones , I was immediately confused by the weird-looking stormtroopers, which I later found out to be the clone troopers. I was confused by two things: first, I had thought that stormtroopers were a uniquely Imperial thing; and second, I didn't understand why the clone trooper helmets resembled the Mandalorian helmet. I've been a big Star Wars fan since even before I can remember, but I really got into the Expanded Universe when I was in my early teens, starting with Kevin J Anderson's Jedi Academy Trilogy and going on to Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy, I was pretty into the Star Wars Universe. I even had an encyclopaedia; Bill Slavicsek's A guide to the Star Wars Universe . And in it was an entry on the Clone Wars, which stated that it was a galactic conflict where the Jedi fought evil forces. And under the entry for Boba Fett it was stated that his armour was that of Mandalorian wa

A while ago, I created some line drawings of several theropods for a talk I was giving. One of those drawings was a Tyrannosaurus rex based on Stan, BHI-3033. It's a simple drawing so I haven't bothered with drawing out all the individual bones, but what I did do was to push the teeth into the sockets so that only the crowns are exposed. It's evident that a lot of the teeth have shot out of the sockets after the animal had died so that much of the roots are exposed. Presumably, this version should be closer to what the tooth row would have been like in life; I don't suppose roots would be exposed too much in life... The result is rather stunning in that the teeth are not as long as you typically see in T. rex skull restorations. And of course, the tips of the teeth form a more uniform and even biting surface. Perhaps I pushed them in too much and maybe the teeth were poking out a bit more, but it shows how much of a difference it makes.