Ohyeah it's #FossilFriday! Wanna talk about the weirdo body proportions of #Dilophosaurus, based on @NotThatMarsh's newly published & crazy thorough #osteology?

I've been workin on a *few* things based on Adam's work, including a life-sized #paleoart #sculpture for @LVNHMuseum.

The #paleoart above is based on the measurements of this truly odd early #Jurassic #dinosaur. But before we get into the nitty gritz, let's get 1 thing out of the way - the largest specimen - known as the "tall crested" specimen or UCMP 77270 is BIG. Here's a recon of it's skull.

Most of us puny humans (including many paleontologists) didn't realize how big this animal was because the skull is quite fragmentary. Here's the actual fossil of UCMP 77270 (w/out the back bits). The total length is 67 cm! That's about as long as the LARGEST SALTWATER CROCS

Another reason why a lot of us thought #Dilophosaurus was smaller than it is (aside from Jurassic Park) is because all of the mounted museum casts of it are based on the Holotype (UCMP 37302), which, by my calculations is about 20% smaller than the big lunker UCMP 77270.

To assemble a #skull reconstruction I traced and scaled together the best preserved parts of all the skulls, using overlapping elements to help with scaling. I also filmed the tall crest & holotype from various angles to understand how they've been crushed. #PaleoartProcess

Then by comparing notes with Adam, we corrected for distortion and badly crushed bits. We decided to leave the edges of the crest as they are in the tall crested specimen because it's so incomplete the true crest shape is unknown. #PaleoartProcess #Dilophosaurus

Now compare my #Dilophosaurus skull reconstruction to the old sculpture from the 1960s. Pretty different, eh? Pay attn to the CREST.

New specimens & new technology make a big difference in the #PaleoartProcess. Still a cool old reconstruction though. :}

#Paleoart #paleontology

Here's a few angles of UCMP 77270, being handled by the great @ucmpberkeley curator @PatriciaHolroyd.

That pitting texture is not just damage, it's due to the fact that this was air-filled SINUS bone. Look how the crest connects to the big sinus in the middle of the skull.

Now onto overall body proportions. In short, I did the same #PaleoartProcess as with the skull reconstruction: matching overlapping elements and scaling according to the difference in size between the specimens. @NotThatMarsh's paper includes tables of measurements galore!

Now I didn't go in and draw EVERY rib and ALL the vertebrae, because my goal wasn't to make a technical skeletal reference drawing (I'll leave that up to yall). My goal was to get overall body proportion measurements so that I could make patterns to build this for @LVNHMuseum:

In this video u can see how I've transferred bone measurements to full scale (by projecting and tracing drawings), so that I can build out the muscular structure around the underlying skeleton and make this #paleoart #sculpture as accurate as possible #PaleoartProcess

I still have a long way to go with this #exhibit for @LVNHMuseum , but I'm excited to share my #PaleoartProcess with you in the weeks to come, as I attempt to make the largest and most life-like #Dilophosaurus sculpture ever made!

(& yes I am DAUNTED by texturing this thing!)