There's pigment data from mosasaurs, several ichthyosaur specimens and a handful of turtles. Not many species, alas, and the complexity of reptile colour production means we can't be confident what their colouration was even with fossil pigments.
This point has been made in the literature, but "plausible" and "confidently reconstructed from robust fossil data" are not the same.
One of the most famous mosasaurs, Tylosaurus proriger, submerges after taking a breath. It is dark above and light below, as tentatively suggested by some palaeocolour data. The challenges of interpreting scaly reptile palaeocolour, and the tiny scraps of colour data we have for this animal, preclude much confidence in chromatic interpretations of this species, however. Also, if you stare at this long enough, you'll see a few sharks. No foolin'.
Been thinking marine-reptiley thoughts today. Here's one of my latest #paleoart efforts along that line: Tylosaurus proriger. The colour is based on fossil colour data, although it's far from certain that this animal was black and countershaded.
Print link: www.markwitton.co.uk/product-page...
Omeisaurus, an especially long-necked member of the long-necked dinosaur group, displays his dark skin to an unseen audience. We often show dinosaurs displaying with bright colours, but melanin - which turns skin browns, blacks, greys and earthy-hues, is also widely used as a display colour among living animals. Pigments of any kind are expensive to create or source, so their presence is an honest signal of health and vitality, even if they aren't bright.
It's that time of the week again, folks: TGIO: Thank God it's Omeisaurus.
(Prints of this and my other artworks are available: www.markwitton.co.uk/product-page...)
#FossilFriday #dinosaur #fossil #paleoart #sciart
OMIGOD LOOK AT ALL THE GREAT ART YOU CAN BUY AS REDBUBBLE PRODUCTS AND THERE'S A SALE ON CERTAIN ITEMS RIGHT NOW SO IT'S DEFINITELY A SMART TIME TO BUY EXCEPT THERE ARE MORE PIECES BEING UPLOADED ALL THE TIME SO WHAT TO DO WHAT TO DO WHAT TO DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?
This #FossilFriday, @gizz47.bsky.social has been helping me (= done the entire job) update my Redbubble store for the first time in years. Your favourite #paleoart from King Tyrant and Spinosaur Tales, as well as other new artworks, are now available as merch! www.redbubble.com/people/MarkW...
Nowadays, the idea is mainstream, has been supported by lots of additional data, and is widely accepted. But papers like that linked to above still feel like a win given some of the responses we got at the time.
It's perhaps worth stressing that, when Darren and I started work on what became the "azhdarchid terrestrial stalking" paper - Witton and Naish 2008 - two decades ago, the idea that pterosaurs spent a lot of time on the ground, let alone foraged terrestrially, was very controversial.
New paper: possible track evidence of a small reptile or salamander being pursued by an azhdarchid-like pterosaur. Validation of the Witton and @tetzoo.bsky.social model of azhdarchid foraging? Maybe.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
In any case, my post was not about Thescelosaurus, so I'll avoid further "he said she said"over these features.
I mean, Boyd (2014) states "The surface of the premaxilla ventral to the anterodorsal shelf and anterior to the nares is dorsoventrally concave", even if he didn't identify a well-marked narial fossa. There's objectively a depression there, whatever we want to call it.
I'm not sure that's true about Thescelosaurus. There's a depression extending in front of the internal narial opening that could well have housed nasal tissues, even if it's not as defined as in other taxa. But, in any case, that doesn't tell us what Muttaburrasaurus was doing.
...the nasal vestibule surely extends to the top of the beak, as in all ornithischians I can think of. That means there's potential for nasal cartilage to run right to the end of the jaw, matching the shape (if not the anatomy) of old-timey Muttaburrasaurus recons.
I should mention that I don't think the reconstruction in the Herne et al. paper is likely, because they have the nasal volume receding towards the jaw tip, like an old-school sauropod restoration. It's hard to gauge what's happening because the premax is badly preserved, but...
...but Muttaburrasaurus might provide some evidence for it, showing an ossified, voluminous posterior nasal region. Yes, lots of dinosaurs have vaulted noses, but we've never found evidence that they were filled or covered with skeletal tissues that altered the shape of the face.
My hunch is that a lot of big-nosed dinosaurs, those with nasal vestibules extending right over their snouts, were sporting lizard-like cartilage capsules, not airsacs or balloons. This is, of course, not something that's been looked into in detail...
I'm not so sure it's pneumatic, at least not entirely. Plenty of lizards have nasal basins that look similar to what we see in dinosaurs, and we already think some aspects of dinosaur faces - extra-oral tissues - were plesiomorphically "reptilian". Could that extend to aspects of nasal anatomy, too?
I'm not saying we should have a 12 year old as world president based on a Bluesky thread, but I'm also _not_ not saying that.
As with all my new art, signed prints are available: www.markwitton.co.uk/product-page...
Don't give a hoot about Triassic dinosaur(omorphs)? There are lots of others to choose from, too: www.markwitton.co.uk/category/all...
From 2026: the dinosaur-like reptile Nyasasaurus sprints after a tiny beaked reptile, a rhynchosaur, in Triassic Tanzania. Trees, living and dead, erupt from shallow banks surrounding a shallow stream, across which Nyasasaurus has splashed.
My old 2012 take on Nyasasaurs, produced in association with Sterling Nesbitt and Paul Barrett. Here, Nyasasaurus examines the remains of an uprooted cycad, while rhynchosaurs munch foliage in the distance. I'd been producing palaeoart semi-professionally for a few years when I created this, but drawing was still a side gig. It wasn't long after I made this image that I began taking my art more seriously, investing in better equipment and leaning more into it as a career.
I get a lot of licensing requests for my 2012 #paleoart of (what might be) the oldest known dinosaur, Nyasasaurus. 2012 was a professional lifetime ago, so I've prepared a nicer version for new clients. Nyasasaurus is so poorly known that you could take a recon. in several directions. #sciart
They could have served as a resonating chamber, yes, but this is just one possible function.
They don't have these enormous, bulbous structures, though! Lots of lizard noses are expanded by their cartilage (monitors being particularly extreme examples), and this might suggest that big-nosed dinosaur faces were similar.
Volume rendered model of the Muttaburrasaurus langdoni (QMF6140) cranium, from Herne et al. 2026.
Late to the party as usual, but the new paper on Muttaburrasaurus is fascinating (peerj.com/articles/207...). I'm struggling not to equate that giant nasal capsule with the face-altering cartilage noses of lizards. Is this an ossification of a structure that could have been common to some dinosaurs?
There aren't many bears in the UK, of course!
This is probably a case where advice from known authorities - like one of the biggest wildlife charities in the UK - should take precedent.
I'm unsure about that advice, not knowing where it came from. I assume the RSPB know their business when it comes to wild bird welfare though.
"you can still put out fat balls and suet balls"
Yes, but in feeders, not on bird tables, and also not in great quantities.
We retired ours, with much sadness, yesterday. @gizz47.bsky.social and I are keen birders and have habitually put out bird table food every morning for as long as we've had a garden. But our enjoyment is secondary to their wellbeing, so both tables are now in the shed.
This made national news yesterday but I figure it's worth sharing to ensure maximum exposure. Time to take down our bird tables, folks: they're spreading diseases that are decimating bird populations.
www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happen...
We're #1 etc.!!!
So looks like my book with @markwitton.bsky.social on the biology of the amazing spinosaurid #dinosaurs is doing well and is currently number 1 on the Amazon sales chart (for Palaeontology). Can't keep a good book down it seems.
If you like this image, you can buy a print of it at my store: www.markwitton.co.uk/product-page...
Alternatively, choose from hundreds of others: www.markwitton.co.uk/category/all...