WWD: The most fearsome predator of the Jurassic (WIP)
Added 2023-07-13 09:12:42 +0000 UTCPreliminary sketch for a commission of a remade scene from Walking with Dinosaurs to accompany my WWD Redux series. There were a lot of potential choices for scenes, and I thought about the options for a while, but I decided the best choice would be the scene that is arguably the most iconic of the entire series, for better or for worse: the introduction to "Cruel Sea", showing a monstrously gargantuan Liopleurodon lunging from the surf to snatch up an unsuspecting Eustreptospondylus in a huge bait-and-switch.
As following the redux, the Liopleurodon and Eustreptospondylus have been changed to Pliosaurus and Juratyrant, respectively, since neither of the prior two animals actually lived at the time the episode is supposed to be set. The sketch here makes the pliosaur a little too big, but that will be fixed later (a more accurate size comparison is in the second image). The scene is not going to be one-to-one, more like a remake, à la the redux parades it supplements.
So, right after I finished the redux for the "Cruel Sea" episode, a study was published documenting 4 pliosaur vertebrae from the Kimmeridge Clay pertaining to a pliosaur of huge size (about 10-11 metres range, so still nothing even close to the WWD Liopleurodon), labelled in the chart as "Abingdon pliosaur". Pretty bad timing, but the exact locality of the vertebrae was not established so I think I'm better off not including it in the parade, but for the specific "big, even for his king" pliosaur that stars in the episode, it would make a good scale, and it easily would have been the largest predator on Earth at the time.
