A new post by W. Scott Persons over at the Art Evolved blog is an excellent overview of why most artists, even the pros, have been getting dinosaur tails completely wrong since the Dinosaur Renaissance. It makes me feel a little better to know I was in the company of Mark Hallett and other titans of paleoart when I'd simply make up cool-looking tail musculature in my older drawings with no regard for anatomy...
You can read the post here.
I shall forthwith draw the appropriate theropods with more junk in the trunk.
ReplyDeleteYou can accurately reconstruct the mass of the caudofemoralis if you know the width of the transverse processes and how far down the tail they extend. In most theropods, they only extend to caudal 15, but the width varies. In crocodilians and monitor lizards (both caudally propelled swimmers), the transverse processes run most of the length of the tail and are quite wide. So using crocodilians and monitors as a model for theropod tail width is not accurate.
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