I am super stoked about this one. My paleoart is featured in a paper by Dr. Casey Holliday et al, identifying a vascular structure in crocodilians, dinosaurs, and other archosaurs which thermal imagery suggests has important thermoregulatory functions.

ThermalDaspletoFinal-Crop2Web

This new paleoart is based on thermal data from modern archosaurs, and shows what it might have looked like if you were pointing a thermal imaging camera at a Daspletosaurus gaurding its kill from two encroaching Deinosuchus first thing in the morning in the late Cretaceous Aguja Formation:

You can read the full scientific paper here:
The Frontoparietal Fossa and Dorsotemporal Fenestra of Archosaurs and Their Significance for Interpretations of Vascular and Muscular Anatomy in Dinosaurs

I also created this youtube video explaining the project in more detail.

Looking forward to see more #ThermalPaleoart from the paleoart community.

Here’s a Guanlong showing how this same vascular structure may be linked to the evolution and vascular nourishment of bizarre dinosaurian headgear:
Thermal Guanlong paint Web

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