Remember that art show Scott & Raven & I put up a few weeks ago? Just scroll down, folks. My own contribution to the show involved drawing 49 skulls (actually more, I just left a bunch out), pasting them to black posterboard, sticking them to the wall, then running yarn around pins to show their relationships...which turned out to be pretty linear yet hard to make sense of. My intentions didn't match up with the reality of the situation for a number of reasons.
But I learned from it, which is what's ultimately important. Nick Gardner was right--the Crurotarsi side isn't well represented. For a future art show (perhaps exclusive to my own work), I want to beef up that side of the tree, but also toss in a bunch of dinosaur groups that I didn't include this time, like therizinosaurs, troodontids, Nigersaurus, etc. Anyway, the main area of effort will be on the Crurotarsi side of things, and I've already drawn about ten skulls, and as far as I can tell, they're all from different branches of the group. Here's an example:
It's Desmatosuchus haploceras! But that's not all. I've also done Neoaetosauroides engaeus, Erpetosuchus granti, Teratosaurus sileiacus, Arizonasaurus babbitti, Protosuchus richardsoni, Effigia okeeffeae, and Sarcosuchus imperator. That's in addition to the taxa I've already done: Isisfordia, Dakosaurus, and Pelagosaurus. I'm gonna need help coming up with more taxa, folks. A lot of my crurotarsian papers don't include skull reconstructions. I mean, there'll be a line drawing of the fossil itself, but not a picture of what the undistorted skull would look like (which is what I need). I'd like to include some crocs with mammalian dentition, too, but their papers are hard to find.
So help a brother out! I'll help get the word out about the strange, bizarre, and diverse crurotarsian side of the Archosauria! And hey, I take requests.
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Sebecus, Hamadasuchus or Montealtosuchus, Montsecosuchus, Iharkutosuchus, Mahajangasuchus, Mariliasuchus or Notosuchus, Stolokrosuchus, Araripesuchus (pick a species, any species), Goniopholis, Bernissartia, and then some extant taxa (e.g. Alligator mississippiensis, Gavialis, Crocodylus niloticus, Tomistoma). ;)
Just a couple comments: it is Desmatosuchus haplocerUs, not haplocerAs, and since the type specimen is actually pretty sketchy, Parker (2008) assigned most of the material to Desmatosuchus spuriensis, which has a good holotype (Case, 1922). Also, if your skull reconstruction is based on Small's (2002) paper, most of the material he described was assigned to a third species, D. smalli, by Parker (2005). That is therefore what your reconstruction is actually of (although the cranial differences between D. spuriensis and D. smalli are pretty minor).
Case, E.C. 1922. New reptiles and stegocephalians from the Upper Triassic of western Texas. Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication, no. 321. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington D.C., 84 pp.
Parker, W. G. 2005. A new species of the Late Triassic aetosaur Desmatosuchus (Archosauria, Pseudosuchia). Comptes Rendus Paleovol, vol. 4, pp. 327-240.
Parker, W. G. 2008. Description of new material of the aetosaur Desmatosuchus spurensis (Archosauria: Suchia) from the Chinle Formation of Arizona and a revision of the genus Desmatosuchus. PaleoBios 28:1-40.
Small, B. J. 2002. Cranial anatomy of Desmatosuchus haploceros (Reptilia: Archosauria: Stagonolepididae). In Norman, D.B., and Gower, D.J. (eds.), Archosaurian anatomy and paleontology. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, vol. 136, pp. 97-111
Thanks to both of you!
My head hurts now.
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