Lego: The Building Blocks Of Simulated Life

An introduction to Lego might seem totally unnecessary, but in the event that this blog outlives the famous brick system, here's a tweet's worth of description for future readers:

@Lego is a line of plastic construction #toys consisting of colourful interlocking plastic bricks, gears, figurines and various other parts.

There you go. A description so concise, even a world leader couldn't fail to stick with it to the end. But Lego is more than that. Lego is manufactured by real Vikings and for a good few years it barely sported any English on its packaging. Even so, it's taken a surprisingly strong hold in English-speaking countries, eventually shedding the remnants of its continental look, and making every third set a Disney-controlled-Hollywood-movie tie-in (and then there's all the DC stuff). Old duffers like me yearn for a time when there were fewer unique pieces, but you can't fight evolution, and Lego doesn't fight market changes.

Luckily, Lego whizz, Warren Elsmore, was on hand to remind us that Lego can still be more than just Star Wars and lazy, gender-specific faux pas.

Dinosaurs: The Universal Language For Cool

Before a chance visit to Preston's Harris Museum & Art Gallery last week, I'd not heard of Warren Elsmore (he tweets here). Everything I now know has been gleaned from the web, and it's clear that he's not built (BUILT!) his Lego career just so he can fill the world with dinosaurs. And that's okay. Dinosaurs aren't everybody's cup of stuff, and making a living out of them is hard work. Warren has turned his engineery talents to several disparate areas, which are all incredible and covered in detail at his site, but what got my palaeosenses tingling is his current touring exhibition, 'Brick Dinos'.

The Dinosaurs Take Preston

Now, it's almost a given that something with dinosaur in the title, and intended for general consumption, will actually feature a fairly broad array of dinosaur and non-dinosaur palaeontological critters. Practically nothing else rolls off the tongue, and as any marketing consultant will tell you, buzz words work (even if they make experts twitch).

Ammonite. A good fossil is worth its weight in Lego. (Copyright © Warren Elsmore; photo: Gareth Monger)

Warren's 'palaeoLego' displays themselves were placed within a couple of decent-sized galleries, and could be divided, broadly, into two types. A dozen or more glass cases held dioramas and replica specimens, such as plant and ammonite fossils. The dioramas resembled regular kits in terms of scale. I could almost have imagined that these were off-the-shelf Lego kits - and that's not to suggest that there was anything run-of-the-mill about them, simply that were very-well conceived and honestly looked as if Lego's designers had signed them off. And that should come as no surprise, since Lego bricks is what Warren's famous for.

A pair of seagoing "pterosaurs" - presumably Pteranodon. Honestly, those two kids' smiles were totally genuine! (Copyright © Warren Elsmore; photo: Gareth Monger)

Naturally, there's a resolution issue here. There's a bottom end to the scale, and the only real way to introduce palaeontologist-pleasing detail is to go big. You don't really get to include integumentary structures such as feathers when you're working in Lego. That doesn't mean Warren doesn't try. His ornithomimid - I think it was Struthiomimus - certainly had some attractive downy fluff cascading down its sides.

Struthio-/Galli- + mimus. (Copyright © Warren Elsmore; photo: Gareth Monger)

As this was a flying visit and I didn't know the exhibition was happening, I didn't take many notes, so I honestly don't recall whether this was Struthiomimus or Gallimimus. And that illustrates the resolution issue. The level of detail attainable at this size is limited, so this could be any ornithomimid. On the other hand, this isn't an exercise in scientific accuracy, so who cares? And it is nice to see a non-avian theropod, as part of a pop culture exhibit, adorned with feathers.

(Speaking of feathers, there was also an Archaeopteryx, but it wasn't very convincing, even bearing in mind it was made in Lego - so I didn't bother to photograph it. Again, it's a resolution issue. Bricks are just too, well, bricky to convincingly depict an animal famous for its avian-esque qualities. Also, it seemed to have a short tail.)

Tyrannosaurus. (Copyright © Warren Elsmore; photo: Gareth Monger)

It would be weird if there wasn't a hulking great Tyrannosaurus in this display, so it was no great surprise to find one skulking around in the Lego scrubland of one of the glass cases. This one raised smiles with its bloodied kill's remains strewn across the ground. Oh, and look those manus! No bunny hands here! Hats off to them for getting that right.

Ankylosaurus grazes next to a seasonally-dry riverbed. (Oops - it's not dry.) (Copyright © Warren Elsmore; photo: Gareth Monger)

It's worth drawing attention to the landscapes in Warren's sets. There's no Cretaceous hothouse tropiness going on. No baked deserts with an obligatory backdrop of lava-spewing volcanoes. The leaflet boasts that Warren worked closely with a palaeontologist, and that's evident. These are Lego renderings of living animals and it shows. These are not '60s caricatures of cold-blooded, tail-dragging lizards, smashing their heads into rocks and fighting each other because they don't know how to do anything else. I walked in vaguely curious, but ultimately not expecting much, and I came out wanting to blog about it.

Sauropods (Diplodocus?) drink at, perhaps, the edge of a lake. (Copyright © Warren Elsmore; photo: Gareth Monger)

The Big Stuff

The second type of display, after the dioramas, is the full-scale sculpture. Understandably, there weren't as many of these, and how do you decide which dinosaur to tackle? And, importantly, where do you draw the line when it comes to size? Cleverly, a large diorama into which one places a medium-sized dinosaur is still an imposing sculpture! Masiakasaurus is an interesting theropod from Madagascar with weird, sticky-outy teeth which suggest that it may have gone after fish and other small animals.

Not everybody wants to get to know Masiakasaurus. (Copyright © Warren Elsmore; photo: Gareth Monger.)

Most palaeo workers agree that too small a selection of palaeontological animals get too big a share of the attention. That most of those animals are dinosaurs is also a massive bugbear for palaeo workers. Dinosaurs are the 1%. If you asked a hundred different palaeontologists to nominate an extinct animal to feature in this diorama, you'd receive a thousand different nominations - and you might get a dinosaur among the mammal teeth. But this isn't SVPCA, it's the Harris in Preston, and its target audience includes an enormous number of kids, all desperate to rattle off every dinosaur name they know in front of proud parents.

Despite this, it's still fun to see something a little more 'out there' than the usual 'T-REX', or mis-scaled Velociraptor, even if it is another theropod. Masiakasaurus isn't your usual theropod, at least not at the sharp end, and it's nice to see that extra effort went into avoiding a dinosaurian cliche.

Given that this was the only full-size Lego model of a theropod in the display, I would have loved to have seen an attempt to add some sort of feathery coat, perhaps not fully-veined feathers given its position on the theropod family tree relative to those more closely related to birds, but some hint. Or maybe, given that Warren clearly isn't adverse to the idea of feathered dinosaurs, his consultant nudged him away from that headache.

Another "pterosaur", presumably a female Pteranodon. Seriously, why don't the pterosaurs get to use their generic names? That happened in the WWD movie, too. (Copyright © Warren Elsmore; photo: Gareth Monger.)

Again, I feel like I'm nitpicking. An important aspect to displaying dinosaurs is conveying their size - especially the larger examples - and this is something you don't necessarily get from their skeletons, since they are reduced to hollow, lightweight frameworks, with museum lighting reaching through a complex of negative space. A solid, fleshed reconstruction takes us that bit further, and we can appreciate the mass of an animal, even if it is demonstrated in Lego, minus a bit of fluff.

During my short visit, I saw children awed, and occasionally scared, by Warren's incredible models. Interactive displays and activities enabled visitors to fully engage, and an art competition will extend the enjoyment that bit longer for one lucky visitor. If you're in the Northwest, you've got 'til September 17th (2017) to see this exhibition, after which it goes extinct, though perhaps not forever. For more information, go here or here.

Picky Palaeo People

Tropy Palaeo-Cliché

There are plenty of palaeoart examples of Rhamphorhynchus skim-feeding in the style of the extant tern-like bird, Rynchops. It's understandable - after all, Rhamphorhynchus is a seagoing pterosaur with a mouthful of forward-pointing teeth, occasionally preserved with the remains of its fishy meals within it. Factor that stuff together, and it's easy to imagine Rhamphorhynchus zipping along just above the surface of some shallow Jurassic sea, thrusting forward with its mandible slicing the water's surface, and snatching morsels of food as it finds them.

Humphries and Chums' 'Just Say No!' Campaign

In a 2007 paper investigating the possibilities of pterosaurs engaging in skim-feeding, Humphries et al found few adaptations towards this method of prey-capture, with the skull lacking the types of reinforcement seen in Rynchops. Read the paper here. Despite the refutation of the idea, it's a persistent one in palaeoart, probably in part because it makes for attractive images. Thanks to Humphries et al, this is probably as close as I dare get to showing a rhamph skimming:

Rhamphorhynchus experiments with skim-feeding, remembers why it doesn't. (Copyright © 2015 Gareth Monger)

Anyway, none of that is what you'd call new news - I just wanted to draw a cartoon of a pterosaur.

References:

Humphries S, Bonser RHC, Witton MP, Martill DM (2007) Did Pterosaurs Feed by Skimming? Physical Modelling and Anatomical Evaluation of an Unusual Feeding Method. PLoS Biol 5(8): e204. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050204

The palaeontology community's members are all in therapy, thanks to Jurassic World's insistence on filling a(n ENORMOUS) fictional theme park with some of the worst reconstructions of Mesozoic reptiles known to man. The TetZoo guys didn't even make it to the end of their own review*, with Darren Naish weeping uncontrollably after only fifteen minutes, and transmission being cut seconds after what can only be described as a muffled thud. Listeners were left to make up their own minds as to what had transpired, with many speculating that they'd just heard Naish's mercy killing at the hands of John Conway. The Love In The Time Of Chasmosaurs blog clearly comprises a masochistic crew, who offered up not one but two reviews on JW. (And they just added a third about an hour ago.)

The point is, you don't have to look too far to find a palaeo community review for this year's main Summer blockbuster. Jurassic World has attracted much attention since people began speculating as to how they might depict some of the film's key creatures. It's nearly two decades since John Hammond demonstrated how you should NEVER EVER run a zoo and, in that time, dinosaur reconstruction has evolved at an unimaginable rate. Would Jurassic World reflect this? Would we get feathered 'raptors'? Would they possess the correct wrists described by Dr Alan Grant RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FIRST MOVIE? And, most importantly, would their T. rex still move around the park, one earthquake-causing footstep at a time, taken every thirty seconds? ("T. rex doesn't want to be fed, it wants to hunt!" Not gonna happen. Not when everything within a couple of miles knows you're coming.)

Chris Pratt's character taunts Jurassic World's Velociraptors by demonstrating the range of motion they should be able to achieve with their arms. (Copyright © 2015 Universal Pictures.)

By now you already know the answers. You've either seen the film or read the reviews, so in the interest of avoiding repetition, I'll spare you a long and damning run-through of how bad they got it. Jurassic World was, for me, an enjoyable monster romp - a worthy sequel to Jurassic Park. I got giddy sat at home, waiting to leave for the cinema. I got chills hearing the music. And I nearly wet myself during the tag-team end battle. But it's not a film about dinosaurs. It is, however, a love letter to the first film, as demonstrated by numerous references and nods to Jurassic Park. It also flicks the Vs at the less-well-loved Jurassic Park III, if only by having the first film's T. rex smash through a mounted Spinosaurus skeleton during the final reel. And remember how the JP3 promo art made use of a triple claw-gash to form the III? The only reason I could see for Improbable Indominus rex having four manual digits was so that Universal could use the same trick for this fourth instalment. Pfft.  Yes, it's daft, overblown, and it makes scientists cry. But it's fun and noisy and holds children's attention for the duration.

These are the take-home points of the Jurassic Park series:

• Revived Mesozoic animals will, upon their release, always, ALWAYS go bat-shit crazy and attack every human in sight, irrespective of their general temperament when confined, or whether they're piscivorous, carnivorous or veggie-saurus, Lex, veggie-saurus!
• Large theropods will announce their approach with impact-tremor footsteps. They will then stand and roar, I guess because they're sporting types, and think it fair to offer their intended prey a chance of escape.
• A hunting dinosaur has no concern for its own wellbeing. It will happily smash through buildings, walls, perimeter fences and steel doors in order to catch prey. It will go to any and all lengths to catch a person, inconvenience be damned. It has no concept of 'too much effort'. (Extinction hypothesis?)
• Indominus rex was originally engineered as a means to retrieve broken-down gyrospheres, hence its enormous gape. Probably.
• Jurassic Park films would all end after only ten minutes if ANYBODY had conducted a decent risk assessment analysis. Ergo, in the JP universe, people are really, really stupid.

So will the Summer of 2015 go down in history as the moment when film & television decided that palaeontology ≠ sexy? Not quite.

Before they took a blood shower: Dr. Luke Gamble at front and, left to right, Matthew T. Mossbrucker, Dr. Steve Brusatte and Dr. Tori Herridge. (Copyright © 1996-2015 National Geographic Channel.)

Thank the flips for National Geographic's 'T. rex Autopsy'. If you've not seen it, the premise is a straight-forward one: make a fully-furnished Tyrannosaurus rex corpse, hire a team of palaeontologists and vets, and set them to work dissecting it. Obviously turning that into a reality was anything but simple, as palaeontologist and adviser-to-the-show Dave Hone explains (here). And they do a brilliant job. The dissection team does not behave as if its members are crawling over a special effect. They do their level best to convince the viewers - and themselves - that the animal is real. For the most part they pull it off, too. Excepting the odd, faked, reflexive cough at smells we know aren't there, their reactions at having been presented with a 'real' non-avian dinosaur are a joy to watch. My seventeen-year-old daughter arrived home partway through the programme; gawping confusedly at the television screen, she enquired as to where on earth the makers got hold of a fully-fleshed dinosaur. That's how good it is. Of course, if you're looking for the tells which betray the animal's synthetic construction, they're there, well hidden. But who cares? Disbelief is easily - and wilfully - suspended.  Hats are tipped at those who conceived, designed, and executed this remarkable piece of television. It more than makes up for those well-documented missed opportunities of Jurassic World.


*Of course TetZoo did the whole interview. Listen to it - its very entertaining.

I can't recall when I first heard about 'quad-launching' as a serious suggestion for pterosaurs getting airborne, (I was under a rock, palaeontologically-speaking, between '06 and '12) though Mark Witton's excellent 'Pterosaurs - Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy' was the first time I remember anyone going to any effort to depict it pictorially. Indeed, all of his book's pterosaurs are shown mid-launch for their profile images, as if Mark is making a concerted effort to familiarise readers with the concept. Most of the other books on my shelves tend to hedge their bets, offering up a selection of methods, including (but not limited to) dropping from elevated perches, facing into the wind and spreading their wings, and taking a run up whilst flapping.

My biggest problem with quad-launching was that I found it hard to visualise. I've never seen anything get airborne like that. Given that birds are obligate bipeds and their legs are not connected to their wings by a continuous flight surface, they are free to either jump into the air, as with pigeons, or propel the animal along the ground with an energetic run-up, like swans and geese. Many palaeontologists agree that pterosaurs were obligate quadrupeds and that their fore-limbs and hind-limbs were, in life, connected by the wing membrane. Birds are, therefore, a poor analogue for launching pterosaurs, and it is for these, and other anatomical reasons, that palaeontologists believe that pterosaurs' primary launch method probably involved a highly-energetic 'push up'.

A recent post at Pterosaur Heresies again demonstrates its author's frustrations with the problems he sees with the forelimb launch mechanism. The article points out that vampire bats achieve a considerable height from an initial leap before they perform a single flap, and that pterosaurs would be unlikely to achieve such a feat. In a bid to attempt to understand bats taking off from the ground (only a few species can do this) I looked at video footage of a fringed myotis taking off. Adams et al, in their 2012 paper, looked at how bats use their uropatagium to facilitate launch, and made available the following video:


There are four video links in the online paper, showing launches from various angles. In order to get a better idea of what's going on, I rendered the bat as a very-basic stick figure, traced from screenshots of the first online video. The wings' tracings show the stroke, and the head shows the positions of the animal relative to the ground.

Sequence showing a bat (Myotis thysanodes) taking off from the ground, mapped from screen-shots of film footage. This section of the sequence totals around two-and-a-half seconds. (Sequence drawn by author, traced from footage available with Admas, Snode & Shaw 2012.)

In the next image, the seven stages are overlaid in order to get a slightly clearer view - though I think both diagrams are useful when taken in together. The bat accelerates quickly, with its wings in contact with the ground in stage 1-3 (in 1 and 2, they are still flush to the floor). In stage 4 it begins the upstroke, is preparing for its first proper downstroke at 5, and has achieved that downstroke by stage 7. It's already flying and is only a few inches off the ground. My understanding, at least for M. thysanodes, is that when it jumps its inertia carries it a little higher than it would appear when standing with its arms stretched out beneath it, but it's enough to get the first flap in, and by then it's already airborne.

The same bat's take-off sequence, overlaid in order to better show the small area required for a successful launch. Black numbers denote head positions during launch; red numbers denote left wingtip positions. (Sequence drawn by author, traced from footage available with Admas, Snode & Shaw 2012.)

About a year ago I began work on a graphic novel showing the birth, life and death of Nyctosaurus. I may have underestimated how long this would take to put together, so it's still filed under 'ongoing'. But in order to understand quad-launching, I put together a couple of graphics showing an adult Nyctosaurus getting airborne, both of which inspired the bat graphics:

Overlaid launch sequence for a male Nyctosaurus gracilis. (Copyright © 2014 Gareth Monger)

And the looong version:

Launch sequence for Nyctosaurus. Nicked from my deviantART profile, hence the whole lo-res thing. Copyright © 2014 Gareth Monger)

So there you go. Now that I've done the bat thing, I might refine the Nyctosaurus graphics. I might even put together a cel animation at some point. There's nothing overly scientific in all that, however it might prove useful for those of you out there who are into your leather-flappers and pterosaurs.


References:

Adams RA, Snode ER, Shaw JB (2012) Flapping Tail Membrane in Bats Produces Potentially Important Thrust during Horizontal Takeoffs and Very Slow Flight. PLoS ONE 7(2): e32074. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0032074

Elgin, R.A., Hone, D.W.E., and Frey, E. 2011. The extent of the pterosaur flight membrane. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 56 (1): 99–111.

Those crazy, crazy theropods. If there's one thing palaeontology has showed us about dinosaurs, it's that you shouldn't get used to their popular reconstructions because, sooner or later, something will turn up that'll really screw with your mind. And it's not like these events are necessarily rare; Deinocheirus and Spinosaurus got make-overs in the last couple of years, and they're both pretty high-profile.

Less high-profile are the Scansoriopterygidae, small, feathered, theropodan dinosaurs with the long arms you'd expect of an arboreal, aerial-capable dinosaur, but with an immensely-long third digit. A popular notion is that this digit was an adaptation to an arboreal lifestyle, enabling the creature to wrap its arm around tree trunks and branches, like naturalist David Bellamy, just, y' know, sharing the love.

B-b-but - what's this? A new paper by Xu, Zheng, et al, announces the discovery of a new scansoriopterygid, Yi qi, preserving not only the long fingers and feathers, but also a new, hitherto unseen structure. A long bony, or cartilaginous, rod projects backwards from each wrist, and patches of membrane suggest a set-up not totally unlike that of bats or pterosaurs. Or dragons, but I didn't say that. There's still some debate as to how the proximal margins of the wing chord may articulate, i.e., does it merge with the thoraic region or something else. And what is the true arrangement of the manual elements, in particular, the rear-pointing 'prong', referred to in the paper as the styliform element? They offer up a couple of possible arrangements, such as something superficially bat-like, and a set-up where the styliform elements are directed inwards, towards the body, helping to maintain a narrower chord. If this animal did indeed undertake powered flight, it's not too difficult to imagine it 'scooping' the air with its membranous hands, as bats do. Bats' hands' 'palms' form a sort of concave shape as they fly, which looks like a sort of arial butterfly stroke. Their fingers are fully jointed, enabling them to alter the shapes of their manus as required, resulting in a rather effective wing. The paper offers up three potential arrangements for Yi qi's 'wings', the two more plausible (to me) of which are shown here:

Two of three different arrangements proposed in Xu, Zhen, et al (2015), showing a proximally-pointing styliform element running parallel to the forearm (left), and the same feature, free of the forearm, pointing posteriorly and supporting a much-deeper membrane. (Illustrated by Gareth Monger; modified from Xu, Zhen, et al 2015.)

With regards the styliform element, I wonder if, rather than being curved in a horizontal plane (as restored, left) it instead curved ventrally (right), helping to maintain the aerofoil section - and a bat-like scoop. Some time after death, and prior to fossilisation, it has tipped over, rotating approximately 90 degrees, and settling in an unnatural position (left). Compression of the bones and associated remains during preservation could be masking the true shape of this apparently-unique element, but some lateral compression in life would make structural sense in terms of giving it strength during a downstroke. But that's all speculation.

In the paper, the wing reconstructions (shown in dorsal view) show the hind limbs of the animal trailing behind it. Although the main point of the graphic is to demonstrate the possible extent of the membrane, a trailing position for the hind limbs is unlikely; it pushes the centre of gravity back, and increases turbulence. For a volant theropod, it would seem unlikely that it would extend its legs behind it if they're not supporting part of a flight surface, and it also seems unlikely that a volant animal would rely on a narrow wing as suggested in the left-hand diagram. The right-hand diagram shows a deep chord, within which the (estimated) centre of gravity comfortably sits, when the legs are brought up, underneath the body, and out of the airflow.

Speculative illustration showing possible extent of contour feathers on Yi qi, and a possible centre of gravity. Note that the animal brings its legs in under itself, out of the airflow and therefore reduces turbulence. This also maintains a more-central centre of gravity. (Copyright © 2015 Gareth Monger)

Where the trailing edge of the membrane attaches (e.g., the body, or the hind limb) is not clear. Flying dinosaurs which use feathered wings benefit from legs which are independent of the wings. They can run into the airflow to achieve lift-off, or they can jump into the air, with the wings already committed to the flight strokes and not involved in the jump (compare pterosaur quad-launching). Having a skin membrane attached to the leg might be problematic since the legs (if not held out behind) would need to be elevated in order to maintain a level flight surface, and not one which partially faces into the airflow. However, that brings the leg and the membrane attached to it forward, reducing the tautness of membranous wing. Bearing that in mind, one might expect the membrane to attach on the body, somewhere in front of the hip, and not to the leg. The styliform element could work as a means by which the animal adjusts the tautness of the membrane, in a similar way to how a pterosaur is thought to do so with its apparent ankle attachment. Without that extra strut, the animal might enjoy less control and increased flutter in the membranes.

Yi qi in flight. (Copyright © 2015 Gareth Monger)

One of the key questions raised by this is why would a theropod go the route of developing a membranous flight surface when so much experimentation with flight (and there seems to be a lot of it!) is concerned with forming a continuous flight surface from elongated feathers? A major difference between scansoriopterygids and other, flighted, theropods is their elongated third digit. As suggested earlier on, it could be that this is an adaptation towards an arboreal lifestyle, enabling the animal to climb trees and other steep surfaces more easily. And it could be that selective pressures favoured the extension of the postpatagium instead of the feathers present on the arms. Whatever the case, feathers for flight persisted, and the theropodan flight membrane proved an evolutionary dead-end. Hopefully, additional specimens will come to light, adding to our understanding of this weirdo dinosaur.

Many thanks go to Mike Boyd for enabling me to write this particular article.

This micro-project was born out of one of those Facebook art challenges which I tried (and failed) to ignore, and for which I was nominated by Bob Art Models's Bob Follen (remember him from this post?) and Palaeoplushies's Rebecca Groom. The 'rules' of this particular Facebook challenge were pretty simple: produce three pieces of art for five days. That was it. It didn't specify whether they were to be new pieces, or whether they had to be posted over five consecutive days.

It started well enough as I paved the way to its inevitable non-completion with the usual good intentions. In fact, it's not abandoned, just hard to complete, what with everything else I've got going on. Given that I've got a fairly sizeable pterosaur project in the works, I figured it would make sense to stay close to this subject, and I was inspired to try my hand at portraying pterosaur embryos as close as possible to how extant animal embryos are.

It started with a quick mooch around Google, looking at photos of embryos of familiar animals, to get an idea of general bauplans. Most people are used to the proportions of young animals, with their disproportionately large eyes and heads, and comparatively short bodies and small limbs, but embryonic animals, depending upon their stage of development, can look altogether different to how they will appear at the time of their birth. Indeed, in the early stages, many disparate lineages' embryos may look broadly similar to one another. The diagram below shows representatives of the major vertebrate groups.

A selection of early-stage embryos, representing the major vertebrate groups. (Copyright © 2015 Gareth Monger)

You'll no doubt have seen versions of this line-up. I've opted to cut out most of the internal detailing so common to this style of diagram since I'm only dealing with external features in the pterosaur embryos I'm illustrating. It's easy to appreciate the broad similarities in this selection. The embryos, although perhaps not quite the same age, are at a very similar developmental stage, which shows how vertebrates follow a similar pattern of development in their earliest stages before they begin to specialise. As you can probably appreciate, there's not much point in producing a speculative, days-old pterosaur embryo to add into the above line-up as it won't look significantly different enough to add anything to the subject. The extant maniraptor in that diagram doesn't exactly scream 'DINOSAUR!', or at least not to this non-embryologist.

Today, the only flying vertebrates are birds and bats, and since only bats and pterosaurs share a membranous wing, I chose to look at bat embryos. Of course, bats and pterosaurs are not particularly closely related, having both developed flight apparatus independently, separated by an enormous chunk of time. (View this illustrated lineage at Phylopic to see just how distantly-related they are.) The framework on which they support their wing membranes is different, too, with pterosaurs using an enormously-elongated fourth finger and an internal network of aktinofibrils to stiffen the wing, while bats support a comparatively loose membrane on an enormous, five-fingered hand. Presumably this is the trade-off: pterosaurs have a skeletal scaffold reduced to a single spar, but there's more going on in the membrane and the skeletal mechanism by which they fold the wing away may not be as effective as that of at least some bats.

Embryos of the black mastiff bat (Molossus rufus), showing various stages of forelimb development. Compare 1's short manual digits with those of 2 and 3. (Copyright: Dorit Hockman. Used with permission)

This photo of three black mastiff bat embryos, courtesy of award-winning Dorit Hockman, a junior research fellow at Oxford, shows clearly the embryo pups' 'hands' and dactylopatagia (interdigital wing membranes) which are relatively small compared to those of newborn pups. Roll back several days in these animals' development, and at some point the animals' limbs will appear somewhat unspecialised, without any suggestion of the flighted animal to come. It was this intermediacy which I wanted to explore in my pterosaur embryo illustrations.

There's probably not too much that bat embryology tells us about pterosaurs; after all, bats are altricial and, although relatively well-developed at birth, are unable to fly until they are several weeks old, so there is a period of development and growth during this period. Some exceptionally well-preserved pterosaur fossils suggest that they are precocial, to the point that they can probably even fly within a very short time of hatching. It's reasonable to expect this to be reflected in the anatomy of their embryos and that their embryos go through a stage of rapid development before hatching, at which point they are essentially miniature adults. Unfortunately, early-stage embryo skeletons comprise a lot of cartilage which doesn't often fossilise well anyway, hence the speculative nature of illustrating pterosaur embryos.

A relatively-quick digital 'sketch' of a pterodactyloid embryo, with large head, closed eyes and stubby wings. 10a scalpel blade for scale. (Copyright © 2015 Gareth Monger)

It's difficult to make any scientific claims as to the accuracy of these illustrations, given the lack of direct evidence, which is why I tend towards filing these under 'speculative palaeoillustration'. That's also why I don't feel comfortable tying these down to too specific a taxon, leaving it as loose as 'pterodactyloid'. Other than full-term pterosaur foetuses illustrated to support fossil finds, there doesn't appear to be much in the way of palaeoart for prenatal pterosaurs. It's probable that, owing to the lack of any physical evidence, and the fact that the embryonic/foetal stage is comparatively brief, it's simply not important enough to necessitate producing illustrations of an animal at a point in its development where nothing would see it anyway, particularly when the adult reconstructions are being reviewed and refreshed as frequently as they are.

Another generalised pterodactyloid pterosaur embryo, with wing-digit and brachiopatagium beginning to develop. (Copyright © 2015 Gareth Monger)

So, in short, I don't think this is necessarily a critical aspect of palaeoart, but as science and scientific art, including photography, creeps further and further into our lives, whether that be online or through television or in print, the previously-hidden lives of vertebrates become more familiar to us. It makes some sense for palaeoartists to let themselves be influenced by this.

Biggest of thanks go to Dorit Hockman for letting me use her photograph of the bat embryos, which greatly influenced the final look of my pterosaur embryos. View her professional profile here.

Rhamphorhynchus and Pterodactylus riding air currents. (©2013 Gareth Monger.)

Rhamphorhynchus sporting perhaps-unlikely spots/roundels. But they look pretty. (©2013 Gareth Monger.)

Tyria jacobaeae by Sander van der Molen (under CC BY 2.5)

Hi, and thanks for checking in on my blog. I daren't say anything too earth-shattering here, as this is my first post, but I'll say enough so as to introduce myself and let you know my master plan or, as homage to recent Doctor Who developments, 'Mistress Plan'.

I graduated in BA (Hons) Scientific & Natural History Illustration in 2002, having spent a good deal of it drawing, painting and modelling Mesozoic reptiles. It was during this time that I also began illustrating commercially, but I'll save those details for a CV page in the near future. Suffice to say that I've continued to illustrate, occasionally for money, but recent months have seen me change direction slightly. Whilst straightforward one-offs, or occasionally batches for publishers, are great, there simply isn't that much work out there for the would-be full-time palaeoartist and it is for that reason that I'm going the self-publishing route. And this time I'm not jacking in the day job. I've done that before. It didn't end well.

So, I'm writing a book, doing it all myself. I don't have to hunt down that rarest of things: a palaeontology book project without an illustrator. This is actually my second book. The first was a compilation of email correspondence between me and a real-life email scammer. It came about by accident, after I sent a throw-away reply from a redundant email account to one of those dodgy emails from someone in Burkina Faso. Inexplicably, the exchange continued for several weeks and, at the suggestion of a couple of people following the updates on Facebook, I threw it together and uploaded it to a print-on-demand service, here.

It was one of those annoying little distractions, but it was a good learning experience. As far as books go, it won't share shelf space with Dickens, but you might find it next to The Heart Felt Letters. My current project is palaeontologically themed, focusing on those famous cousins of the dinosaurs, the pterosaurs - hence the name of this blog. Now, there are many excellent overview-style books, such as the slightly-dated Wellnhofer's Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Pterosaurs or Mark Witton's must-have Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy, and I am keen not to repeat that format. So I can't cover pterosaurs as a whole, but I can pick one and tell its story.

And tell its story I will, literally. And graphically. Imagine a wildlife documentary, set in the Late Cretaceous but storyboarded as per a graphic novel. That's what I'm aiming for. And the star? Nyctosaurus gracilis, which is a smallish pterosaur, closely related to the giant Pteranodon. Like Pteranodon, it possessed a crest, though Nyctosaurus's crest is proportionally much larger; the distance from its beak tip to the top of the crest is approximately equal to the length of one of its wings. It looks weird. Weird and magnificent and perfectly adapted to a life on the wing. Uniquely (as far as we know) it had lost manual digits I, II and III, retaining only the long wing finger, and even this was reduced to three phalanges. Crazy head gear and crazy wings. Surely the perfect candidate for a graphic novel about the life story of a pterosaur?

The book's already well underway, suffering the usual bumps in the road which life likes to throw at worthwhile projects. The next stage is the tough bit: getting on with it.

Nyctosaurus: Life and Death of a Late Cretaceous Pterosaur is scheduled for release some time in 2014, and hopefully before Flugsaurier '15.  It will be published by Ecen Books.