Eoraptor from Dinosaur Train fan art

Eoraptor from Dinosaur Train

I have been watching Dinosaur Train with my granddaughter.  She loves the show.  She is only 2 1/2 and yet she loves dinosaurs.  It is a very well done show.  They are no longer making new episodes but there are about 7 seasons of excellent educational programming.  Yesterday we watched an episode about Eoraptor.  Eoraptor was one of the very first dinosaurs.  They are small Theropod dinosaurs. . . in fact, they are quite possibly the ancestor to Allosaurus and T. rex and other Theropods.  Maybe they are even the deep ancestor to the other bipedal dinosaurs like the Hadrosaurs or duck-billed dinosaurs.  

My granddaughter liked the female Eoraptor I drew from the TV...but then she wanted a "Daddy" raptor, so I drew a male with a chick.  The drawing shows a more robust male.  This might be a mistake because we think that the large female Theropods like T. rex were larger and more robust than the females.  However, some species of animals DO have larger and generally more robust males.   Robust means more heavily built with thicker bones and larger frame.   

Eoraptor Male with Chick

As far s the stripes and spots, modern reptiles come with a variety of patterns so I liked how they drew the Eoraptor in Dinosaur Train.  Neither of my drawings of Eoraptor are exactly like the way they drew the dino in the TV show, but they are similar.  

The climate in the Triassic . . . it was a rather dry period in Earth's history.  It included only 10-20 inches of rain per year over much of the Earth's surface.  There were also heat waves with extreme heat and probably less rain or drought conditions.  This is called a semi-arid climate.  Thus I drew a rather desert-like climate in the second drawing. 

There were ferns and pines and ginkgo trees and perhaps bushes as well.   There is new evidence that there were flowering plants even way back in the Triassic Period 200 million years ago.  The tree that looks like a palm tree is a cycad tree.

The volcano in the first drawing is not a mistake either.  At the end of the Triassic an upsurge in volcanic activity killed off many species but not these early dinosaurs.   In fact, the extinction event killed off many species so that the dinosaurs could flourish.  The dinosaurs quickly evolved into a wide variety of forms to fill the empty niches.