• Draconic NEO@mander.xyzEnglish
    3·
    7 小时前

    I think that many of the people who do depictions of prehistoric creatures lack imagination so they do the bare minimum they possibly could to “imagine” the skeleton as a living creature. Imagination is absolutely required to get a good depiction of them that looks lifelike and not creepy and unrealistic.

    • emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1·
      19 分钟前

      I mean if i had never seen a hippo before i would argue that the artists depiction looks more realistic than the actual hippo does. Theyre freaky cartoonish looking things that don’t really loon like any other animals, certainly not one of the most dangerous animals in existence.

    • frezik@midwest.socialEnglish
      4·
      7 小时前

      Any which way they go with it would be a guess based on limited information. They’re most likely going to be wrong, and if they were exactly right, we wouldn’t know it.

      • FundMECFSOPEnglish
        2·
        7 小时前

        Honestly they should probably do like 2-3 potential pictures side by side so readers are aware of the uncertainty.

    • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.netEnglish
      2·
      7 小时前

      Scrolled down to make sure someone had mentioned this! Fantastic and professional spotlight on the potential follies and pitfalls of paleontological art. And if you want to do some Lovecraft-level psychic damage to yourself, the same artist from that book has a “speculative evolution” sci fi art book called All Tomorrows in which they envision the multifarious biological forms that humans are forcibly evolved into by a malicious alien race 1 billion years from now. If you’ve ever read those Scary Stories books by Alvin Schwartz and felt uneasy seeing Stephen Gammell’s illustrations, C.M. Kosemen’s sketches conjure a similar same vibe.

        • Phoenicianpirate@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          7 小时前

          Yes. How fucking embarrassing would it be for the first artist to set the standard of the t-rex as this intimidating best only for into look like a phat chicken…

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        7·
        1 天前

        the irony of it all is that t-rex specifically seems to have been naked, and i mean naked as in it literally just had a bunch of regular skin like a plucked bird.

      • JasonDJ@lemmy.zipEnglish
        6·
        1 天前

        I think the same thing whenever I watch my hens go out hunting.

        The most terrifying is watching them jump on top of a 5ft fence from the ground. Scale that up to T-Rex size. Fucking nightmare fuel.

        • Sas [she/her]@beehaw.orgEnglish
          2·
          20 小时前

          Funnily enough jump height doesn’t scale proportionally to body size and the big t-rex would probably still just be able to jump like 5ft

      • qyron@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        14·
        2 天前

        Great-great-great-great-great-grandmother chicken.

        And most probably females would be bigger than males and hold territories.