Troll_Man

Starlight Mothfish (WIP 4)

Starlight Mothfish (WIP 3)

R'lyeh: Demohound Colours

An old conceptual illustration done back in September of 2017 of different demohound colourations. From top to bottom they're based on a nautilus, a baby tapir, a vampire squid, a pyjama squid, common fruit-piercing moth caterpillar, and snowy owl.

Although I didn't end up going with any of these, demohounds have the ability to change their skin colour, so they would come in a variety of colours of patterns regardless, even including white, in snowy conditions. The nautilus colouration ...

Starlight Mothfish (WIP 2)

Starlight Mothfish (WIP)

Very rough base sketch for a sponsored commission of a species of mothfish which lives around the floating forest ecosystem.

Serina: Chimpbirds

When I was advocating for manbird, I drew up this ice age ancestor to it; the equivalent of the early hominid stage where it was still facultatively bipedal rather than obligately, and had only recently become terrestrial from an arboreal ancestor. Behaviourally, it was something of a mix of baboon, chimpanzee, and some sort of small ground bird. Sadly, this did not convince Sheather to let manbird in.

This ornkey would have lived in and around the cactaiga groves, following the game tr...

WWD: Cruel Sea (Redux)

And now all the costars together in one picture; all of these animals, more or less would have existed in the Kimmeridge Clay Formation during the Pectinatites pectinatus ammonite zone, about 149 million years ago, during the Early Tithonian epoch of the Late Jurassic Period.

At this time in Earth's history, the sea level was much higher than it is now, and millions upon millions of square miles of the planet was covered in warm shallow seas. The Kimmeridge Clay represented a r...

WWD: Pliosaurus macromerus

And finally, the one I'm sure you've all been waiting for, probably the most controversial and infamous taxon depicted in the entire franchise. The history of this one is long, convoluted, and full of misinformation, but I'll just try and summarize it briefly. The episode depicts the taxa Liopleurodon as being a blue whale-sized colossus, the largest predator to ever live. However, there isn't, nor has there ever been, any physical evidence of any pliosaur ever getting even close to ...

Serina: Tall Birds

A sketch drawn back in December 2020 of two ziraphans walking alongside a boomsinger, two of the largest avian species at the time, for a scene that never ended up getting made due to the tight schedule at the time, and now both species have long since gone extinct.

Well, both have now been replaced by tall wumpos and giraffowl/gantuans respectively, so I suppose some variant of this scene could still end up happening.

WWD: Rhamphorhynchus etchesi

This is the only taxa which did not change names or get changed to a different species, since it was one of the only species which actually lived at the right time. Although the species depicted here was not described until 2015.

The episode depicts Rhamphorhynchus as being like a Jurassic seagull or tern, although in reality this was quite a large pterosaur for its time period, with an adult wingspan of at least six feet across, possibly over three metres if a recent rhamphorh...

WWD: Thrissops sp.

The generic fish of the episode, which I've made into the very common fish genus Thrissops, which is the most numerous type of ray-finned fish collected from the Kimmeridge Clay Formation. These herring-like fish are known from many fossils of exceptional quality and likely lived in large shoals in the shallow seas covering Europe during the Jurassic Period.

Although not exceptional in terms of size or appearance, and most likely a staple prey species for many large marine pred...

WWD: Asteracanthus ornatissimus

The nameless shark of the episode, which was supposed to be Hybodus, but for whatever reason they didn't see fit to identify it by name. Part of the franchise's thing about giving sharks the short end of the stick. Technically speaking, hybodonts aren't true sharks, since they're just outside the crown group, but it's sort of splitting hairs at this point because they'd definitely be considered sharks if they were still alive now.

Hybodus was at the time, and still is,...

WWD: Juratyrant langhami

The rather predictable Eustreptospondylus replacement, considering this is the only well-known theropod dinosaur taxa from the Kimmeridge Clay and roughly the same size as the original species (the hypothetical adult size of Eustreptospondylus at least), although it's changed from a megalosaur to a tyrannosaur. Although it should be noted that, unlike Eustreptospondylus, Juratyrant is not known from a skull, and the appearance here is largely speculative. 2023-04-30 11:22:54 +0000 UTC View Post

WWD: Mesolimulus sp.

The horseshoe crabs of the episode. These were almost physically identical to the horseshoe crabs of the modern day (hence them being played by living horseshoe crabs in the episode) and fossils of this genus are known from a span of roughly one-hundred million years, showing how little they changed evolutionarily. It was a bit smaller than the horseshoe crabs of today though, at less than one foot in length.

WWD: Thalassemys bruntrutana

The dead sea turtle that appeared in one scene being scavenged by the Eustreptospondylus. This was one of the largest turtles to live in Europe during the Jurassic Period, with a total shell length and width of close to a metre. Of course, it would be utterly dwarfed by the gargantuan sea turtles of the Late Cretaceous. It's not closely related to the sea turtles of the modern day.

WWD: Belemnotheutis antiquus

The squid equivalent for the episode (appears getting eaten by Ophthalmosaurus), the genus Belemnotheutis, which would have been a very common sight in the shallow seas covering Europe during the Jurassic. Huge shoals of these pelagic carnivores would have have flitted through the sunlit waters after smaller fish and cephalopods, and were themselves a staple prey item for the region's numerous species of marine reptiles; fossils of their tentacle hooks and guards have been f...

WWD: Pectinatites rarescens

One of the most successful taxa of the Mesozoic were not merely the reptiles, but the molluscs. During this period evolved some of the very largest cephalopods and bivalves to have ever lived; vast reefs of giant clams up to ten feet across, while octopods larger than adult humans and ammonites weighing over a ton cruised across the shallow seas. Ammonite in particular are one of the era's greatest successes; they dominated the marine ecosystems in such number and diversity that they're used ...

WWD: Kimmerosaurus langhami

The Cryptoclidus equivalent, a closely related cryptoclidine plesiosaur that actually lived at the time of the episode. There were two suboptimal choices from the Kimmeridge Clay, either one with basically only a skull or the one with only post-cranial remains (Colymbosaurus), and I picked the one with the skull, although it's possible they're the same animal, in which case the latter name takes priority. You may recognize Kimmerosaurus from the other BBC p...

WWD: Thalassodraco etchesi

Possibly the most infamous episode of the original series, for reasons that will be seen very soon. This is the point where the series starts getting a bit liberal with what lived when, because nearly every animal in the original episode, set during the Mid Tithonian, is only known from the Early Oxfordian epoch, about fifteen million years earlier. This isn't entirely their fault, since several of the genera depicted were once thought to have longer temporal ranges, but it's since been found...

River Bunnies

(to reiterate, this was a commission for a species of foot-propelled aquatic rabbits, with the details below based on those given by the commissioner)

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Living in the river systems of a tidally-locked world orbiting a red dwarf star. The meltwater of massive glacial mountains flowing down the slopes and into the continental lowlands creates massive tributaries spanning thousands of miles. These are the basis for complex aquatic ecosystems similar to marine reefs, with kelp and s...

River Bunnies (WIP 2)

River Bunnies (WIP)

Work-in-progress for a commission for aquatic rabbits that swim by kicking like frogs, while their ears are retained for steering underwater.

WWD: Time of Titans (Redux)

And finally, here's all of the Morrison Formation buddies together. The lack of mid-sized dinosaurs (like, say, Camptosaurus, Ceratosaurus, or Camarasaurus) is a little too bad, because it would've helped bridge the gap between giga-mega-huge dinosaurs and the small ones.

Still, it gives you an idea of the scale of this sort of ecosystem. There was like ten or more species of giant sauropods coexisting at the same time in the same place somehow. It's an environment the...

WWD: Brachiosaurus altithorax

Oh boy, here we go. The biggest animal to feature in the episode, even if its role is little more than a glorified cameo just to show off a cool dinosaur, which was, at the time, thought to be the biggest land animal. And for sure, even if not the very biggest, it still was a very large animal, standing over fifty feet tall and weighing up to forty-five metric tonnes. It actually sucks just how tall it is because it is single-handedly more than doubling the height of the size chart because is...

WWD: Apatosaurus louisae

Okay, so this one did not actually appear in WWD, but it's the only one left over and it's in the same time and place as all the others, so I might as well include it. It featured briefly in The Ballad of Big Al, but was very, very obviously just a slightly modified and retextured Diplodocus model. Which is sort of like modelling a tiger by mashing up a cougar, since their builds are pretty different. Although shorter in length, Apatosaurus was much more he...

WWD: Mesadactylus ornithosphyos

The only animal that needed to be changed, the Anurognathus, which has been changed to the tentatively classified anurognathid of the Morrison Formation, Mesadactylus, due to the fact Anurognathus is only known from Germany, not the Morrison Formation. However, Mesadactylus is known from very fragmentary remains which tell us very little about its actual appearance, so this is just modelled on Anurognathus, except slightly larger. It is still by fa...

WWD: Allosaurus fragilis

The lion of the Jurassic. The most common large predator of the Morrison Formation, or well, in WWD, the ONLY large predator of the Morrison Formation (sorry Torvosaurus and Ceratosaurus). This species is known from dozens of fossils, several nearly complete, so this is one of the most well-known dinosaur species.

One issue that that has always plagued Allosaurus is estimates on its maximum size. Often, earlier size estimates often put it at twelve or even thi...

WWD: Ornitholestes hermanni

Okay, here we go, the first coelurosaur. This is the point where the major redesigns start getting real mandatory. Ornitholestes is one of several small coelurosaurian carnivores known from the Morrison Formation; it was less than seven feet long (more than half of its length was made of a long, thin tail) and only about thirty pounds, making it the smallest dinosaur in the episode.

So one of the most notable aspects of its portrayal in WWD is that it possess a rounded nose hor...

WWD: Stegosaurus stenops

Come on, everyone knows this dinosaur. Probably second in popularity, only behind T. rex, and why wouldn't it be? It has such an incredibly memorable and fantastical form. For the most part, its portrayal in WWD is alright, but there are a number of minor aspects we know now to be in error.

When threatened by the Allosaurus, it's depicted as being able to flush blood into its dorsal plates as a threat display. However, it's now known that the plates were proba...

WWD: Dryosaurus altus

The other unnamed background ornithopod in the episode... sort of. In some scenes, an unnamed green ornithopod with a red head appears which is clearly distinct from the blue-headed and striped Othnielia/Nanosaurus, but as far as I know it's never been identified. Since the various small ornithopods of the Morrison Formations have been lumped together, by process of elimination, Dryosaurus seems most plausible now (since it sure isn't Camptosaurus).

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