Prionosuchus, one of the longest amphibians ever, and unlikely a skilled walker #temnospondyl #permian #palaeozoic #amphibian #earthhistory

Paleontologists have identified a gigantic new species of mosasaur, Tylosaurus rex, that grew up to 13.2 meters long and had serrated teeth. Image credit: Alderon Games / Path of Titans. www.sci.news/paleontology... #fossils #paleontology

The second episode of Surviving Earth premieres tonight on NBC! But before that I want to share with you more concept designs I did for various animals from last week’s episode. If you know me you can imagine how excited I was to design Triassic species for this show! #paleoart #sciart #conceptart

btw. you can also get a quick run down of this phase by @ppaleoartist.bsky.social who also did most of the maps for this project! www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t6I...

Result from the Tiaojishan Formation stream, or rather Yanliao biota stream. This incredible assemblage was on my mind from the very start of doing these pieces, not just because it has tons of fascinating critters but because a big portion of the vertebrates here appear...

enter: the new lobopodian Oreinorema the paper which described this animal made some very bold claims about its anatomy and phylogenetic position. others have questioned these interpretations after looking at the scans used. as always more research is needed

420 Million years before the reign of Mamdani, two Acutiramus wake up from their daylight slumber as thousands are Eurypterus begin to invade the shallow, warm waters of New York. This is the Fiddlers Green or Bertie Formation, a Silurian lagerstätte known for its eurypterids🧵

🚨NEW STUDY DROP🚨 Very fragmentary Unenlagiid theropod is named, Kank australis, from Maastrichtian Chorillo Formation of Patagonia. This is one of the very few named from Southern Patagonia. It had very airy neck bones! 🎨: PaleoGDY + Connor Ashbridge

Yesterday I started on #paleostream a new series: #PocketPrehistry, in which I draw extinct animals in life size on postcard formats, meaning the animals can't be much longer than 15 cm max! Here the first 3 results Scalacurvichthys, Arcticodactylus, Iberomesornis with Eoalulavis, Kreischeria...

Result from the Florissant Formation #paleostream! While it doesn't look like this this has been one of the most intensely researched pieces of the whole series, but more on that later. On this a late summer evening a Megacerops steps onto a clearing to take a sip from a...

New #paleoart of the Welsh theropod Dracoraptor hanigani, restored with appropriately neotheropodan features. UK marine sediments have a glut of small Jurassic theropods, with Dracoraptor one of the best-known. #sciart Like this image? You can own a copy! www.markwitton.co.uk/product-page...

Quite a few people have asked me to put the Cabrières lagerstätte from the Ordovician of France on our wheel for a while. I refused so far because, well, I already did it as a commission ;) Cabrières is a fascinating biota, a fuge amount of macro algae might hint at...

I just tidied up my bookshelf, and I have to say it once again: I really love @joschuaknuppe.bsky.social books. I'm already looking forward to the next one.

Result from the Burgess Shale #paleostream! This piece turned into one of the busiest yet, and yet we only scratch the surface here! Burgess Shale is a fossil bearing deposit high up in the Canadian Rockies and is sometimes called the "most important fossil locality of all time"

Result from the Pisco Formation, please leave all your angry comments below! The Miocene of the Pisco basin is an absolute insane hot spot for marine life, over the course of millions of years the sediments recorded dozens of large mammals, especially whales...

A detailed scan of a fossil therapsid embryo reveals the oldest egg belonging to a mammalian ancestor. Image credit: Sophie Vrard, CC BY theconversation.com/embryo-fossi... #fossils #paleontology

Result from the Zechstein sea #paleostream! This famous deposit from the late Permian of Central Europe (mostly Germany) has a special place in paleontology history and incidentally has a locality not even a km from where I sit right now.

Here the result of the Escuminac Formation #paleostream! These deposits from the Devonian of Canada offer a glimpse into a coastal fish community with some absolute bangers and historical favorites. But it doesn't come without it challenges.

New fossils from the Ediacaran Period show that some animal groups are older than we thought. Image credit: Xiaodong Wang www.sciencenews.org/article/foss... #fossils #paleontology

Still alive as work on Book 7 enters the last few days, though I am quite sleep-deprived. And which joker organised daylight savings so close to my deadline? Thanks, jerk. Here's some #paleoart of the Jurassic pterosaur Balaenognathus soaring over dinoflagellates, the source of their pink bodies.

Result from the Pleistocene Sicily #paleostream! This piece was a fascinating up and down to construct and to research. While certainly iconic our understanding of these faunas is not complete and misinformation and memes plaster ones way. Center of this piece...

Result of the Wellington Formation #paleostream! People like to think of the Carboniferous as the time of the giant insects but they actually reached their peak in the early Permian. And here in Kansas we find the largest: Meganeuropsis, which in our case in going after a...

🚨 It's finally out! 🚨 A new bizarre harvestman from Eocene Baltic amber, named Balticolasma wunderlichi! This wonderful little guy was quite the challenge to work on as I don't do inverts that often...

Result from the Sulphur Mountain Formation #paleostream! This formation made it onto the wheel as it is the last refuge of the last eugeneodonts, the group that gave us Helicoprion. Most prominently we have here Fadenia, a late surviving durophagous member of this group...

www.palaeonavix.org/index.php/bi... #octopod #palaeontology #artandscience

Result from the Wadi al Hitan #paleostream! The "valley of the whales" as it is better known is a classic locality from the late Eocene of Egypt. Most famously it is place filled with the remains of early whales, Archaeoceti, but it's less straight forward as a piece than one...

...and a visit to the lands and seas of the Silurian. These were a ton of fun to work on and represent my biggest set of 2D works to date. I've yet to see them printed in person, but maybe one day. Lots of discussion about how they came to be in my Patreon post.

At #Patreon, I've been discussing my 2024 #paleoart murals for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History: www.patreon.com/markwitton. They include a life-size Allosaurus, Cambrian faunas, Yixian pterosaurs, birds and insects, Cleveland Shale strata and fishes... #FossilFriday #sciart #paleontology

If you want to support a museum and get a pretty cool book, I recommend this book illustrated by @joschuaknuppe.bsky.social. Lots of really good info, I just hope that it’s easier for people to get their hands on relatively soon.

I finally got my hands on "Die Welt der Plesiosaurier" from LWL. Huge congrats to @dinosven.bsky.social Achim Schwemann & @joschuaknuppe.bsky.social. I am excited to read through this! if you can get your hands on it I highly recommend getting it. its wonderful sofar!

Now with a closer look at the concept art that I made ;) I am very happy and proud I could be part of the process and hope I can contribute a little more in the future in similar productions ^^

#Paleontology #NaturalHistory #ArtAndScience

Result from the Koobi Fora #paleostream! This region on the east side of modern day Lake Turkana in Kenya is a treasure trove for fossils of the early Pleistocene and is most famous for many early human remains, with up to 6 species present throughout the layers...

Here the result of the Ein Yabrud quarry #paleostream. An important locality from the Cretaceous of Palestine. While mostly famous for it's marine snakes and early mosasauroids, beautiful fish fossils and rich invertebrate fauna are completing this picture!

It's true -- a 10th Anniversary special edition, with substantial new content! #dinosaurs #books

Well... the thing is out. Spinosaurus mirabilis, here we go again! #paleoart #sciart #spinosaurus

And here there result of the Naracoorte #paleostream! This classic Australian megafauna assemblage is a well preserved treasure trove in South Australia that gives us a glimpse at a fauna just before the arrival of humans. Subsequently a large portion of the...

Apteribis, an extinct species of ibis that once inhabited the Hawaiian Islands, occupied a niche similar to that of the New Zealand kiwi: a nocturnal, flightless bird that relies on tactile cues from its beak to detect prey. www.sci.news/paleontology... #fossils #paleontology

Because of Valentine's Day we had today a Flower Flocking #paleostream, covering different kinds of fossil angiosperms! Florissantia, Lovellea, Leguminocarpum and Sagaria!

Results from the #paleostream! Borealopelta, Haolong, Moschorhinus and Sauropia

Meet Tyrannoroter heberti, a newly described species that was one of the largest, most feared land animals of its time – at least, if you were a fern. www.sciencealert.com/newly-discov... #fossils #paleontology

And here the result of the MOTH locality #paleostream! This incredible site from the early Devonian of Canada preserves an alien fish fauna drawn by preschoolers. As with other pieces from this series we can't actually show where these animals were preserved. The anoxic...

I finally got @joschuaknuppe.bsky.social book on Europasaurus and even created a Bluesky account just for it :) I really like it, the illustrations are extremely good, and I'm already looking forward to the next book of this kind ^^

Yes, yes - we know - Iguanodon, Iguanodontid, etc - but we couldn't help ourselves (original reconstruction by Fabio Manucci)