Dilong and Sinornithosaurus

Phew... finally done with this. Talk about a very long and arduous piece. My hand still hurts.

Anyway, this is a colored pencil reconstruction of two Lower Cretaceous dinosaurs found in the Liaoning province of China, Sinornithosaurus millenii and Dilong paradoxus. Sinornithosaurus, the orangish winged beasts in the trees, are small maniraptors. Here, the female is protecting the nest while the male (with his distinctive bright red head) is attempting to lure the predator away.

The predator in this case, Dilong, is a somewhat recently discovered basal tyrannosaur. Both of these animals have feathers, and they are non-speculative, as both have had skeletal imprints unearthed with very obvious and precise feather patterns. These animals have not been found together but their location and time period suggests they may have been contemporaneous.

I guess that's it. This thing took me freaking forever. I was going to try to get it into next month's issue of Prehistoric Times for the "Feathered Dinosaurs Revisited" section, but I obviously missed the deadline. Oh well, you fine DA folks can enjoy it instead.