Sunday 21 August 2011

Baryonyx and Caulkicephalus . . .




After a brief blogging hiatus due to workload and the fact I spent a few days in France with some friends pursuing my other great love, playing Irish traditional music (in fact, we played some traditional Breton music too with some of the excellent French musicians who were playing at the local Fest Noz), dancing, singing and drinking the rather fine Breton cider, I'm back at the helm of the good ship Paleo Illustrata.

I finally got the chance to finish the composition for my next illustration, and added the mystery animal mentioned in the previous post. This is the ornithocheirid pterosaur Caulkicephalus trimicrodon, described by Steel et al in their paper of 2005. C. trimicrodon is currently only known from the Isle of Wight, adding to the list of mesozoic vertebrates unique to the island and had a wingspan of around 4m. I've depicted C. trimicrodon being harried by an opportunistic Baryonyx walkeri and being relieved of it's catch of a Lepidotes sp. fish (see post of Saturday, 6th August).

Refs:
Steel, L., Martill, D. M., Unwin, D. M. & Winch, J. D. (2005) A new pterodactyloid pterosaur from the Wessex Formation (Lower Cretaceous) of the Isle of Wight, England. Cretaceous Research (2005): 1-13. 

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