Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

Cryptic Aquilops, by Brian Engh. Available as a poster print – see below.

One of the many nice things about getting to help name new taxa is that once you let them out into the world, other people can unleash their considerable talents on ‘your’ critters. Which means that every now and then, something cool pops up that you have a deep personal connection to. Things have been fairly quiet on the Aquilops front for a while, and all of a sudden I have news.

I’m still waiting for a plush Aquilops – c’mon, Homo sapiens, how has this not happened already? – but if you’d like a life-size Aquilops in bronze, sculptor James Herrmann has you covered. James got in touch with me last fall when the project was just in the planning stages. His timing was excellent – I’d just seen the presentation on camouflage in Psittacosaurus at SVPCA, and the paper by Vinther et al. was out a week or two later. I sent James some papers and photos of dead animals, he sent back photos of the work in progress, and now his Aquilops is done.

About the sculpture, James writes:

I am offering the sculpture for sale as a limited edition of 25.  The sculpture is life sized, it is approximately 60 lbs and is 33″L x 14”H x 11”W.  The price I am asking for it is $4500.  I am getting a slab of green soapstone for the base although it does display well without the stone so it will be bolted on from below and not epoxied. […] The gingko leaves and log part of the sculpture were made from molds taken from plants growing locally.

I dig it. If you’re interested in getting one, please visit his website, HerrmannStudio.com.

Aquilops ’14. I was there, man. It was crazy. A Brian Engh joint.

Next item: back in 2014, Brian Engh created the public face of Aquilops with the wonderful graphic art he did for the paper and the press release. Now he’s gone back to the well and reimagined Aquilops, based in part on what we know of its paleoecology – that’s the image at the top of the post. He explains his new view of Aquilops in a thoughtful and wide-ranging video on his paleoart YouTube channel. (If you miss his rap videos set in the Daikaijucene, he also has a YouTube channel for music and monsters. And a blog. And a Patreon page. You get the picture.) You should also check out the two-part interview with Brian at the PLOS Paleo Community blog (part 1, part 2).

Here’s the aforementioned video:

Poster prints of Aquilops Classic and Next Gen can be purchased through Brian’s website, DontMessWithDinosaurs.com.

Finally, a couple of older Aquilops-themed art things that I didn’t cover when they happened. Lead author Andy Farke is also an award-winning homebrewer and he concocted his Eagle Face Oatmeal Stout in honor of our little buddy. He has lots more beer-and-dinosaur crossover goodness on his brewing blog – check it out.

Last fall artist Natalie Metzger did a bunch of drawings of extant animals wearing the skulls of extinct animals for Inktober. In the very first batch was this awesome squirrel looking unexpectedly badass in an Aquilops skull. I don’t know what it means, but I would totally play that D&D campaign. Natalie has a bunch more cool stuff on her blog and Patreon page, and she’ll be at the Rose City Comic Con in Portland this September, so go say hi and buy her art.

Really finally, I am not on Twitter – trust me, I don’t need less of a filter between my occasional stupidity and the world – but for all the rest of you, keep an eye on #Aquilops and, if you’re a heartless jerk, #Aquilopsburrito.

Have more Aquilops stuff I haven’t covered but should? The comment field is open.

References

• Farke, A.A., Maxwell, W.D., Cifelli, R.L., and Wedel, M.J. 2014. A ceratopsian dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Western North America, and the biogeography of Neoceratopsia. PLoS ONE 9(12): e112055. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0112055
• Vinther, J., Nicholls, R., Lautenschlager, S., Pittman, M., Kaye, T.G., Rayfield, E., Mayr, G., and Cuthill, I.C. 2016. 3D camouflage in an ornithischian dinosaur. Current Biology 26(18): 2456-2462.