Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Cretaceous Taxi - Revision


Here's the progress so far on my Triceratops piece for the art show. The Alexornis are still a little big, but any smaller and it would be impossible to get any kid of detail work . Anyway, enjoy!

5 comments:

Zach said...

I'm not even that familiar with Alexornis. Is it an enantiornithine, or a crown-group bird? Gorgeous sketch--I love the patterning of the T.tops.

alaskanime said...

It is an enantiornithine....it even had cute little claws on its wings. According to Wiki, they also might have been the predecessors of Coraciiformes (Kingfishers, Hornbills, and Bee Eaters) and Piciformes (Woodpeckers, Barbets, and Toucans).

Zach said...

Well, if they still have wing-claws, they can't be ancestral to modern groups. The basalmost "modern" birds, even the Cretaceous ones, have lost their manual claws.

alaskanime said...

Which is why I put "according to Wiki" ;) I really need to get some REAL books written by REAL paleontologists.

Really.

Thank you for correcting me. :)

Dicing with Dragons said...

OUTstanding!

Yeah, wiki is... somewhat behind the times (dig the King Peter Came Over For Grape Soda ranks and Linnean taxonomy they still use!), but bird phylogeny is a complex subject, one which I can scarcely wrap my head around at times.

Modern (crown-group) bird taxonomy is also undergoing a bunchload of changes. See Will Baird's post on this for some details.