Let's Design Some Dinosaurs - A Fun Speculative Zoology Exercise
Bloody hell, it's been five years since Jurassic World came out and paleontology nerds the world over despaired at ever seeing scientifically accurate dinosaurs in cinema ever again.
Bringing up that again wasn't what inspired this post, however. The recent speculative zoology binge I've been on got me thinking: what fun it would be to imagine a dinosaur. Back in the day, Jurassic World had a go and the Indominus Rex ended up being a rather boring design that was simultaneously too exaggerated and not outlandish enough. Naturally, this prompted the palaeontology nerds to rally and come up with much more interesting designs:
Jolly good stuff, people. But now we can stop talking about the creatively bankrupt institution that is Hollywood, let's imagine some dinosaurs! First, some ground rules for the process:
- Placed somewhere on the dinosaur family tree. No wacky hybrids allowed here!
So having had one too many coffees and going nuts with a ballpoint pen, GIMP and Google Translate, here's the five hypothetical dinosaurs I've come up with for giggles. 🦖
Ceratopsians were pretty darn weird creatures. Beaks, horns, elephant feet and big frills make up a family of creatures that are absolutely nothing like anything we have today. It is generally agreed that they were vegetarians, their sharp teeth and beaks optimised for cutting up tough wood and vegetation that was unpalatable for other herbivores.
Or maybe not...
That rather graphic picture up there is about five years old, so it is entirely possible that I've missed the boat on some important paleontological discoveries on the subject. But even though your average Triceratops was not built for hunting at all, it did have a massive pointy beak and a mouth filled with teeth that palaeontologist Gregory Erickson has described as being built like 'fighting knives'. Omnivorous behaviour isn't much of a stretch for them, in much the same vein as creatures like bears, pigs or even hippos.
So what do we need to adjust in order to make a predatory horned dinosaur that would fit nicely into Late Cretaceous North America? Well, any predator worth their salt needs to be able to catch their prey and successfully compete with any other predators in the neighbourhood. For speed, the first step is to slim down a bit from your archetypal horn-face, since larger ceratopsians weren't built for speed so much as they were built like tanks: they were quite chunky, in order to support their body weight and all the decoration and armament on their faces.
So our hypothetical predatory horn-face should probably not have these features:
1. Horns or extravagant frills, so it wouldn't be a real 'horn face' after all. This is because predatory animals generally lack horns in favour of sharp beaks, teeth or claws, and a big frill would probably outweigh (literally) any other advantages it could have.
2. Massive size. The apex predator niche in America 64 million years ago was well covered by Tyrannosaurs, so our meat-eating horn face probably wouldn't have much of a chance against them.
Thankfully, there are plenty of smaller ceratopsians we can use for inspiration. The earliest ones like Yinlong or Psittacosaurus were bipedal, but just for fun we're going to say that our imaginary predator is quadrupedal. This is in order to better carry a bone-crushing beak without sacrificing its front limbs, and also because twice as many legs could come in handy.
Next question: where did our meat-eating friend live, what did it eat and how did it survive in Tyrannosaur country? One option is that it lived in places that large, bipedal dinosaurs would find hard to inhabit. Dense forests, steep hills and boggy swamps are good candidates, since a large animal with only two legs and a high center of gravity would likely not want to hang around a place filled with tripping hazards and pitfalls. As for prey, our creature could hunt anything that was too fast or stealthy for Tyrannosaurs or Dromaeosaurs to catch easily. A stalker with a keen sense of smell perhaps, its quadrupedal body having a naturally sneaky low profile while still being strong enough to overpower prey and deliver a killing bite with a strong hooked beak.
So what we've got here is basically a Ceratopsian equivalent to a big cat: a forest, swamp and mountain ambush hunter about the size of a leopard, more sure-footed than its competitors and quite happy to sneak through underbrush, swim through ponds and climb steep hills in order to pounce on ornithopods, young hadrosaurs and perhaps the odd dromaeosaur that it could get the drop on. For bonus style points it could have Psittacosaurus-style bristles on the tail, refined to porcupine-quill levels of sharpness to deter anything biting it in the backside.
And here it is, drawn by yours truly: RamfostÃgri Dasos, which is mangled Greek for 'Beak Tiger of the Forest'.
These creatures developed their suits of armour directly in relation to the toothiness of the predators that were trying to chew on them. Considering the variety of armoured dinosaurs, it probably worked: what predator could bite through several inches of spikes and bone?
Quite a few, as it turned out. Considering that a T-Rex's jaw strength wasn't so much 'bone-breaking' as 'car-crushing', armour would probably not have been a sure-fire defence against the largest of tyrants. This is why many armoured dinosaurs weren't just armoured, they were armed: tail clubs were a signature feature of Ankylosaurus itself and Nodosaurs were covered in spikes like a reptilian pineapple (presumably doing messy things to any theropod dumb enough to step on them).
Even then that apparently wasn't enough. In 2017, close examination of one of the best-preserved Nodosaur fossils ever found evidence that the animal might have been ginger-coloured on top of its body, and paler in tone underneath. This colour scheme - darker on top, lighter underneath - is called 'countershading', and is exceedingly common in the animal kingdom for very good reason. It's one of the most basic forms of camouflage, counteracting the shadow of an animal and making it blend into the background better. Animals that are mostly 100% predator-proof such as adult elephants and rhinos don't have countershading because they don't need it. So the fact that an armoured lump of a dinosaur was trying to hide suggests that there were creatures running around in its habitat that could (and would) bite straight through its armour like a hard shell taco. Or at the very least, circumvent it.
So in a hypothetical world where the KT Extinction asteroid missed the earth, you could have an armoured dinosaur evolve to essentially say 'Screw it, this isn't working. Time to try something else.' But what would work against a giant, better-than-eagle-eyed animal that can bite skulls in half?
Run away. Run away very, very fast.
This might sound like an illogical evolutionary path for a big lump of an armoured animal to take, but it's happened before: smooth shell turtles lost their bony carapace in favor of speed proving the hare wrong, and multiple crocodile species can gallop like horses because even crocs have things they need to run away from.
So in a hypothetical post-Cretaceous, what would turn an Ankylosaur into a speed freak? One possibility is resources: growing an armoured skin takes time and energy, and if it stops being useful in the face of bone-crunching predators then natural selection stops favouring it. An open environment lacking sufficient cover would make camouflage less useful as well. So armour and stealthy skin could give way to much more weight-efficient scaly spines like the Thorny Devil, since faster predators like dromaeosaurs, giant pterosaurs and young tyrannosaurs could still be an issue. A tough dry badlands creature, perhaps the size of a pony, that could still tank anything it can't outrun.
So here it is: Armislorica cursor, which is horrible Latin for 'Armour-coat runner'.
Well, they were generally pretty small. The largest head-butter (Pachycephalosaurus itself) was five metres long at most, about 450 kilograms and shorter than a grown human being.
Not exactly tiny - pretty big in fact by modern standards - but not imposing by dinosaur measures. So how about we make a larger version, evolving in our hypothetical no-KT-event world?
But why would these creatures increase in size? The typical suspects for evolutionary gigantism could factor:
1. Lack of competition or improved competitiveness. In an environment where other large animals do not exist, there is potential for smaller species to get bigger in order to take advantage of niches that larger animals can more effectively exploit. Primarily this means food, which leads to...
2. Lots of food, and the ability to get it. Pachycephalosaurids couldn't climb and were pretty short, which restricted their diets to vegetation roughly one metre off the ground. Getting bigger - more specifically, taller - would allow access to a wider selection of food, further fueling increased size. A larger size would also mean a larger fermenting gut, allowing more efficient digestion due to the lack of decent chewing teeth.
3. Predator-proofing. It's a pretty hard and fast rule that the larger an animal is, the fewer predators can successfully kill it. Even a small increase in size can help, making the difference between being light enough to bowl over and being hefty enough to body-slam a predator off its feet.
4. Aggressive sexual dimorphism. The debate over whether the head-butting dinosaurs in fact butted heads has been going on since it was first suggested in 1955. If they did indulge in agonistic behaviour over mates or territory, sexual selection could lead the males getting bigger and bigger in order to get a competitive edge. Since having a big lump of a lad mount you could be a trying experience, surviving mating without broken bones or other trauma could favour the females getting bigger as well. Thus, this could lead to both sexes of our hypothetical head-butter getting larger with all the other advantages that come with it.
So we have a number of reasons for our Pachycephalosaur's size, and so the picture is starting to come together. Since head-butters tend to have extraordinarily thick skulls and very small brain cases, I like to imagine them as being grumpy 'hit first and ask questions never' creatures, which could contribute to their competitiveness against animals of similar size. An extended feeding envelope could be achieved mostly through longer legs, since the neck would need to remain short in order to support the bone-headed skull. What we end up with is a creature that could fill the niche formerly filled by sauropods: a high browser, with the additions of a thick knobby skull and the weight class and temperament to bully other herbivores away from trees and send Tyrannosaurs scampering off with broken bones.
Thus I present to you: Ferrumcaput Rex, which is (bad) Latin for 'Iron-Head King'.
So how does one make a giant duck-faced trombone player that stands out from the crowd? How about making the crest on it good for more than just making noise and looking good? But the logical path to fighty hadrosaur headgear is a long one. Display structures such as those on Lambeosaur hadrosaurs weren't weapons: they were often hollow, extravagant structures meant for display. So what evolutionary path could lead a trombone to be repurposed as a weapon?
Not only that, the clever folks over in the paleontology department have even figured out what colour some of these critters are. By studying the shape of fossilized melanosomes scientists can make pretty good predictions of what colour these creatures were, and the results are amazing: bright colours, patterns, even iridescence is evident in numerous species. Some artist's impressions:
Beautiful... I want to make one.
And to hell with explaining the logic, here's a Dromaeosaur (and a potential soul mate) that would make a peacock shake his head in disbelief. Why? Because sexy purple fluff raptor, that's why.
Meet Superbiaraptor dominus, the 'Prideful Thief Lord'.
Bringing up that again wasn't what inspired this post, however. The recent speculative zoology binge I've been on got me thinking: what fun it would be to imagine a dinosaur. Back in the day, Jurassic World had a go and the Indominus Rex ended up being a rather boring design that was simultaneously too exaggerated and not outlandish enough. Naturally, this prompted the palaeontology nerds to rally and come up with much more interesting designs:
Jolly good stuff, people. But now we can stop talking about the creatively bankrupt institution that is Hollywood, let's imagine some dinosaurs! First, some ground rules for the process:
Our Dinosaurs Must be...
- Physically possible. They shouldn't break the laws of physics or biology.- Placed somewhere on the dinosaur family tree. No wacky hybrids allowed here!
So having had one too many coffees and going nuts with a ballpoint pen, GIMP and Google Translate, here's the five hypothetical dinosaurs I've come up with for giggles. 🦖
I. Predatory Ceratopsian (Late Cretaceous)
Ceratopsians were pretty darn weird creatures. Beaks, horns, elephant feet and big frills make up a family of creatures that are absolutely nothing like anything we have today. It is generally agreed that they were vegetarians, their sharp teeth and beaks optimised for cutting up tough wood and vegetation that was unpalatable for other herbivores.
Or maybe not...
 |
| Straight from the paleontologist's mouth. |
That rather graphic picture up there is about five years old, so it is entirely possible that I've missed the boat on some important paleontological discoveries on the subject. But even though your average Triceratops was not built for hunting at all, it did have a massive pointy beak and a mouth filled with teeth that palaeontologist Gregory Erickson has described as being built like 'fighting knives'. Omnivorous behaviour isn't much of a stretch for them, in much the same vein as creatures like bears, pigs or even hippos.
 |
| Except that bears, pigs and hippos don't have teeth shaped like razors. (Picture comes from here: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/when-horned-dinosaurs-traveled-east/) |
So what do we need to adjust in order to make a predatory horned dinosaur that would fit nicely into Late Cretaceous North America? Well, any predator worth their salt needs to be able to catch their prey and successfully compete with any other predators in the neighbourhood. For speed, the first step is to slim down a bit from your archetypal horn-face, since larger ceratopsians weren't built for speed so much as they were built like tanks: they were quite chunky, in order to support their body weight and all the decoration and armament on their faces.
 |
| Examples one through nine: big boys. |
So our hypothetical predatory horn-face should probably not have these features:
1. Horns or extravagant frills, so it wouldn't be a real 'horn face' after all. This is because predatory animals generally lack horns in favour of sharp beaks, teeth or claws, and a big frill would probably outweigh (literally) any other advantages it could have.
2. Massive size. The apex predator niche in America 64 million years ago was well covered by Tyrannosaurs, so our meat-eating horn face probably wouldn't have much of a chance against them.
Thankfully, there are plenty of smaller ceratopsians we can use for inspiration. The earliest ones like Yinlong or Psittacosaurus were bipedal, but just for fun we're going to say that our imaginary predator is quadrupedal. This is in order to better carry a bone-crushing beak without sacrificing its front limbs, and also because twice as many legs could come in handy.
Next question: where did our meat-eating friend live, what did it eat and how did it survive in Tyrannosaur country? One option is that it lived in places that large, bipedal dinosaurs would find hard to inhabit. Dense forests, steep hills and boggy swamps are good candidates, since a large animal with only two legs and a high center of gravity would likely not want to hang around a place filled with tripping hazards and pitfalls. As for prey, our creature could hunt anything that was too fast or stealthy for Tyrannosaurs or Dromaeosaurs to catch easily. A stalker with a keen sense of smell perhaps, its quadrupedal body having a naturally sneaky low profile while still being strong enough to overpower prey and deliver a killing bite with a strong hooked beak.
So what we've got here is basically a Ceratopsian equivalent to a big cat: a forest, swamp and mountain ambush hunter about the size of a leopard, more sure-footed than its competitors and quite happy to sneak through underbrush, swim through ponds and climb steep hills in order to pounce on ornithopods, young hadrosaurs and perhaps the odd dromaeosaur that it could get the drop on. For bonus style points it could have Psittacosaurus-style bristles on the tail, refined to porcupine-quill levels of sharpness to deter anything biting it in the backside.
And here it is, drawn by yours truly: RamfostÃgri Dasos, which is mangled Greek for 'Beak Tiger of the Forest'.
 |
| Yeah, I'm definitely no Mark Witton. |
II. Speedy Ankylosaur (Post-Cretaceous)
I previously mentioned that Ceratopsians were tanky. Well, they were, but nothing compared to the genuinely tanky Nodosaurids and Ankylosaurids: the armoured dinosaurs. |
| Seriously: go buy Mark Witton's stuff. |
These creatures developed their suits of armour directly in relation to the toothiness of the predators that were trying to chew on them. Considering the variety of armoured dinosaurs, it probably worked: what predator could bite through several inches of spikes and bone?
Quite a few, as it turned out. Considering that a T-Rex's jaw strength wasn't so much 'bone-breaking' as 'car-crushing', armour would probably not have been a sure-fire defence against the largest of tyrants. This is why many armoured dinosaurs weren't just armoured, they were armed: tail clubs were a signature feature of Ankylosaurus itself and Nodosaurs were covered in spikes like a reptilian pineapple (presumably doing messy things to any theropod dumb enough to step on them).
Even then that apparently wasn't enough. In 2017, close examination of one of the best-preserved Nodosaur fossils ever found evidence that the animal might have been ginger-coloured on top of its body, and paler in tone underneath. This colour scheme - darker on top, lighter underneath - is called 'countershading', and is exceedingly common in the animal kingdom for very good reason. It's one of the most basic forms of camouflage, counteracting the shadow of an animal and making it blend into the background better. Animals that are mostly 100% predator-proof such as adult elephants and rhinos don't have countershading because they don't need it. So the fact that an armoured lump of a dinosaur was trying to hide suggests that there were creatures running around in its habitat that could (and would) bite straight through its armour like a hard shell taco. Or at the very least, circumvent it.
So in a hypothetical world where the KT Extinction asteroid missed the earth, you could have an armoured dinosaur evolve to essentially say 'Screw it, this isn't working. Time to try something else.' But what would work against a giant, better-than-eagle-eyed animal that can bite skulls in half?
Run away. Run away very, very fast.
This might sound like an illogical evolutionary path for a big lump of an armoured animal to take, but it's happened before: smooth shell turtles lost their bony carapace in favor of speed proving the hare wrong, and multiple crocodile species can gallop like horses because even crocs have things they need to run away from.
 |
| OH SHOOT I LEFT THE OVEN ON |
So in a hypothetical post-Cretaceous, what would turn an Ankylosaur into a speed freak? One possibility is resources: growing an armoured skin takes time and energy, and if it stops being useful in the face of bone-crunching predators then natural selection stops favouring it. An open environment lacking sufficient cover would make camouflage less useful as well. So armour and stealthy skin could give way to much more weight-efficient scaly spines like the Thorny Devil, since faster predators like dromaeosaurs, giant pterosaurs and young tyrannosaurs could still be an issue. A tough dry badlands creature, perhaps the size of a pony, that could still tank anything it can't outrun.
So here it is: Armislorica cursor, which is horrible Latin for 'Armour-coat runner'.
 |
| I don't know exactly what he's running from, but I can tell you he doesn't like it. |
III. Giant Pachycephalosaurid (Post Cretaceous)
Pachycephalosaurids are among my favourite kinds of dinosaurs. Small-ish, weird, bone-headed pea-brain critters... what could possibly make them better?Well, they were generally pretty small. The largest head-butter (Pachycephalosaurus itself) was five metres long at most, about 450 kilograms and shorter than a grown human being.
Not exactly tiny - pretty big in fact by modern standards - but not imposing by dinosaur measures. So how about we make a larger version, evolving in our hypothetical no-KT-event world?
But why would these creatures increase in size? The typical suspects for evolutionary gigantism could factor:
1. Lack of competition or improved competitiveness. In an environment where other large animals do not exist, there is potential for smaller species to get bigger in order to take advantage of niches that larger animals can more effectively exploit. Primarily this means food, which leads to...
2. Lots of food, and the ability to get it. Pachycephalosaurids couldn't climb and were pretty short, which restricted their diets to vegetation roughly one metre off the ground. Getting bigger - more specifically, taller - would allow access to a wider selection of food, further fueling increased size. A larger size would also mean a larger fermenting gut, allowing more efficient digestion due to the lack of decent chewing teeth.
3. Predator-proofing. It's a pretty hard and fast rule that the larger an animal is, the fewer predators can successfully kill it. Even a small increase in size can help, making the difference between being light enough to bowl over and being hefty enough to body-slam a predator off its feet.
4. Aggressive sexual dimorphism. The debate over whether the head-butting dinosaurs in fact butted heads has been going on since it was first suggested in 1955. If they did indulge in agonistic behaviour over mates or territory, sexual selection could lead the males getting bigger and bigger in order to get a competitive edge. Since having a big lump of a lad mount you could be a trying experience, surviving mating without broken bones or other trauma could favour the females getting bigger as well. Thus, this could lead to both sexes of our hypothetical head-butter getting larger with all the other advantages that come with it.
So we have a number of reasons for our Pachycephalosaur's size, and so the picture is starting to come together. Since head-butters tend to have extraordinarily thick skulls and very small brain cases, I like to imagine them as being grumpy 'hit first and ask questions never' creatures, which could contribute to their competitiveness against animals of similar size. An extended feeding envelope could be achieved mostly through longer legs, since the neck would need to remain short in order to support the bone-headed skull. What we end up with is a creature that could fill the niche formerly filled by sauropods: a high browser, with the additions of a thick knobby skull and the weight class and temperament to bully other herbivores away from trees and send Tyrannosaurs scampering off with broken bones.
Thus I present to you: Ferrumcaput Rex, which is (bad) Latin for 'Iron-Head King'.
 |
| Don't even think about it. |
IV. Unicorn Hadrosaur (Post-Cretaceous)
Hadrosaurs (also known as 'duck-billed dinosaurs') seem to be one of those categories of animal that people remember primarily for their ability to be T-Rex food. Which is a shame, because they are very interesting creatures in their own right. For one thing, they apparently had skin so resilient that it was 31 times more likely to be preserved in fossils than other dinosaurs. That's a long-term skin care secret that Chanel would kill to have.
And Lambeosaurs like Parasaurolophus could sound amazing.
 |
| NEEEOOOOOOOOOWW (Translation: DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE THIS IS) |
So how does one make a giant duck-faced trombone player that stands out from the crowd? How about making the crest on it good for more than just making noise and looking good? But the logical path to fighty hadrosaur headgear is a long one. Display structures such as those on Lambeosaur hadrosaurs weren't weapons: they were often hollow, extravagant structures meant for display. So what evolutionary path could lead a trombone to be repurposed as a weapon?
Perhaps when you have no one to play music to. There is a lot of fossil evidence to suggest that Hadrosaurs were social, herd-dwelling creatures, an important factor in developing good communication skills. A hypothetical solitary Hadrosaur in the post-cretaceous period would need a somewhat different set of life skills in order to get by. A large forest-dweller perhaps, like a giant duck-billed moose, able to live by itself for extended periods. Which now provides incentive to grow additional functional headgear: a hollow trombone extension on the back (shortened and thickened so as not to get caught on branches all the time) which extends into a vicious rhino-like spike in front, for stabbing Tyrannosaurs in the gut and backing up its bark with some bite.
So what we have here is a firmly solitary, forest-dwelling giant that looks like the ornithopod love-child of a duckbill and a unicorn, basically a Parasaurolophus with a big horn stuck on the front. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you this beast named in (terrible) Greek: Monokerosprosopo papia, the 'Unicorn Faced Duck'.
V. Paradise Raptor (Late Cretaceous)
Raptors had feathers. This is not a new discovery by any means and is pretty much a done deal by now amongst palentologists, but you'd be amazed by how many people passionately refuse to believe that dinosaurs - any dinosaurs - had feathers. But they did. I mean, look at this list I found on Wikipedia.Not only that, the clever folks over in the paleontology department have even figured out what colour some of these critters are. By studying the shape of fossilized melanosomes scientists can make pretty good predictions of what colour these creatures were, and the results are amazing: bright colours, patterns, even iridescence is evident in numerous species. Some artist's impressions:
 |
| Pictures by, in descending order: Matt Martyniuk, Fred Wierum and Fiann M. Smithwick. |
Beautiful... I want to make one.
And to hell with explaining the logic, here's a Dromaeosaur (and a potential soul mate) that would make a peacock shake his head in disbelief. Why? Because sexy purple fluff raptor, that's why.
Meet Superbiaraptor dominus, the 'Prideful Thief Lord'.
 |
| LOOK AT MAH BUTT |
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