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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸

@paleobyliam.bsky.social

4.4K followers 510 following 530 posts

Chicago-based paleoartist. He/him. Email for commissions/inquiries at [email protected]

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · Nov 24

I'm Liam Elward, paleoartist looking for work in scientific illustration & paleontology. Specializing in detailed, well-researched digital paintings of extinct & extant organisms.
portfolio: www.artstation.com/prehistoryby...
email: [email protected]
#paleoart

Digital painting showing a fiery, apocalyptic landscape somewhere in North America, several months after the Chicxulub Impact. Two partridge-like birds forage in the foreground, illuminated by the orange flow of distant wildfires. Looming above waves/piles of carcasses & logs is the charred skull of the iconic horned dinosaur Triceratops.

Reconstruction of the pycnodont fish Scalacurvichthys naishi in the style of classic scientific illustration plates.

Digital paintings of the trilobite Gabriceraurus, the gastropod Trochonema, the crinoid Iocrinus, the cystoid Pleurocystites, the nautiloid Plectoceras, the bryozoan Constellaria, & the brachiopods Hiscobeccus & Platystrophia in a poster format on a white background.

Digital painting of the huge ceratopsian dinosaur Titanoceratops ouranos foraging in the swampy jungles of what is now New Mexico, some 75 million years ago.

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Reposted by Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸

Paleopunn @paleoman007.bsky.social · 3d

Parasaurolophus carcass

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 4d

Some aspects of this Teleocrater #paleoart I'm still fairly proud of are the coloration with the brighter red tail (display? aposematism?) which I thought worked well against the green, & the shading. But god those bushes could use some work. I was on a pretty tight timeline & this was 1 of many

Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 4d

This remains a huge highlight for my career that I'm still humbled by & grateful for. Being so new to #paleoart, some things were tricky for me that I think are evident - this was the first time I had attempted painting without pencil outlines in the final product, & I was still new to backgrounds

Photo of an exhibit panel at the Field Museum showing the above illustration against a cream-yellow-white background with text. To the right of the illustration is a fossil cast of one of Teleocrater's hindlimbs, missing the distalmost elements of the toes.

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 4d

Since #Croctober has just kicked off, here's an older illustration of the VERY distant relative to crocodilians, the Triassic archosaur Teleocrater. I made this illustration in 2019, just 2 years into my career, for the Field Museum of Natural History's Evolving Planet exhibition
#sciart #paleoart

Digital painting showing a long, lizard-like reptile running up a rocky slope against a white background. The animal is red with black markings, and loosely painted vegetation pokes between the rocks the animal is clambering over.

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Reposted by Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸

Literally Miguel 🇻🇪 @literallymiguel.bsky.social · 7d

Proceratosaurus babies looking up to momma

( #paleoart for Beast studio's upcoming project!)

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Reposted by Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸

jvpvertpaleo.bsky.social @jvpvertpaleo.bsky.social · 4d

Oh hai! We're here now! Follow us for the latest articles published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology!

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 5d

Looks like the Diplodocoidea volume has reached its goal! Proud to be a backer of sauropod research & looking forward to reading
experiment.com/projects/rea...

Reassessing the evolutionary family tree and biogeography of the iconic sauropod group Diplodocoidea

We are working on a special open-access volume dedicated to the famed diplodocoid sauropods (like Diplodocus). We aim to publish several papers describing their anatomy, osteology, evolutionary relati...

experiment.com

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Reposted by Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸

Marcos K. Pinheiro / "Marcos Wyvern" (Marcosaurus) @mmarcosaurus.bsky.social · 5d

youtube.com/shorts/DKQ1u...

Ever wanted to go inside a dinosaur lab? 🦖 #NationalGeographic #Paleontology

YouTube video by National Geographic

youtube.com

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 5d

Pencil sketch of the tail club of Shunosaurus with the proposed arrangement of spike osteoderms. I've depicted them as fairly conservative & low, drawing inspiration from the tail scutes of crocodilians. Starting with basics before experimenting #paleoart #sciart

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

I addressed sauropod researchers but this could be a topic for any paleontologist, perhaps @victoriaarbour.bsky.social or a colleague given her extensive experience researching tail clubs in other dinos. I'd be happy to help or contribute art/diagrams :)

Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

The SVPOW blog posts do mention that the distal caudals of eusauropods like Shunosaurus are rather complex in comparison to those of diplodocoids, with clearly developed neural spines. That may have been the extent of osteological adaptation

Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

Also big glaring obvious aspect of a hypothetical review would be comparison to other dinosaur tail clubs and tail clubs or club-like structures (expansions/fusions of distalmost caudal vertebrae) in extant animals

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

Main points:
-Review of basics on sauropod tail clubs would be very useful!
-It's not entirely clear to paleoartists which sauropods had clubs & what they looked like
-Clubs never depicted as anything other than defense against predators
-Clubs never depicted being used as a non-weapon

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

The above crane-inspired hypothesis is not exactly scientific, just pure paleoartist speculation FYI. But I think these features in sauropods are fascinating & deserve more discussion & depiction. They remind me of the provenance of sails/tall neural spines in Mesozoic Africa

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

An idea I have yet to sketch - what if these fused distal caudals anchored some sort of soft tissue display structure? Sometimes nondescript bony lumps anchor extravagant displays, as in the African grey-crowned crane.

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

I like
@hodarinundu.bsky.social's depiction of bioluminescent "clubs" in Omeisaurus used as a signaling device between adults & juveniles - a novel hypothesis! More speculation needed in #paleoart with these club structures in my opinion

A group of Omeisaurus uses bioluminiscence for communication, the adults holding the light organ at the end of their tails like lanterns to guide any straggling juveniles. The juveniles have their own light organs too, with which they signal the adults so they won´t step on them.

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

Xing et al. proposed an interesting hypothesis of the club in Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis as a sensory apparatus, which makes sense to me considering the particular shape (thin, almost plate like) & the gigantic proportions of this animal onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Structure, Orientation and Finite Element Analysis of the Tail Club of Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis

The structure and orientation of the posterior extremity (tail club) of the caudal vertebrae of Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis Young and Chao, 1972 from the Upper Jurassic Shangshaximiao Formation has b...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

As far as I know the idea of them being used against members of the same species (like antlers) hasn't been mentioned in the literature or depicted in #paleoart - why not?

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

Also worth noting if these spikes are definitely associated with the club, that to me doesn't automatically mean they were used primarily or exclusively for defense. Reptiles LOOOVE using spikes for display! Also hasn't been much if any speculation on keratin or soft tissue coverage

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

In Shunosaurus, the S. lii monograph figures the club with the associated spikes. However I unfortunately don't have a pdf that shows photos of the specimens, & the illustrations in the monograph are of questionable reliability. For example, the toes on the skeletal are in reverse order

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

A "review" of #paleoart depictions of sauropods with these clubs to me shows that a review would be a great help. They're almost always depicted as defensive weapons, with Shunosaurus wacking Yangchuanosaurus the most common depiction of these "clubs" in action

Shunosaurus using tail club for defense (Mark Hallett)

Shunosaurus striking theropod w/ tail club (Todd Marshall)

Shunosaurus defending its young from some basal Sinraptorid theropods (“Schezuanosaurus zigonensis?”) [Engh]

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

A crash course on the tail club of Shunosaurus via the lovely folks at SVPOW: svpow.com/2010/06/11/w...

What’s the deal with your wacky tail-club, Shunosaurus?

In a comment on an earlier article, What’s the deal with your wacky postparapophyses, Shunosaurus?, brian engh asked: What’s the deal with most Shunosaur “life restorations” showing spikes on the t…

svpow.com

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

For those unfamiliar this is what these clubs look like in various sauropods: that of Shunosaurus is apparently associated w/ 2 osteoderm spikes, & note how narrow that of M. hochuanensis is

The Discovery of the Bony Tail Club of Sauropods (Zhiming, 1989) Figure 1

The Middle Jurassic dinosaur fauna from Dashanpu, Zigong, Sichuam, vol. 1- sauropod dinosaur (I); Shunosaurus [Zhang 1988] Figure 39

The Discovery of the Bony Tail Club of Sauropods (Zhiming, 1989) Figure 2

Structure, Orientation and Finite Element Analysis of the Tail Club of Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis (Xing et al. 2009) Figure 1

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

Gonna start by saying it looks like in Kareem et al. 2024 there may be just what I'm looking for - if anyone would be kind enough to send me a pdf I'd greatly appreciate it! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸 @paleobyliam.bsky.social · 6d

SAUROPOD RESEARCHERS: A review of reported "tail clubs", their morphology & hypothesized function(s) would be very useful. They seem to exist in Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis, Omeisaurus, Shunosaurus, Kotasaurus & related taxa. I think this would be a valuable contribution to the literature

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