Apatosaurus Alpha Female welcomes a new Juvenile into the Herd coloring page

 Welcome to my free coloring pages blog!

There are over 1200 free to view and print coloring pages. 

Today's new drawing is a juvenile Apatosaurus joining the herd.

Apatosaurus Alpha Female welcomes Juvenile into the Herd

If you have ever seen the excellent TV series called Walking With Dinosaurs you will remember the Sauropods laying their eggs in mass near a forest.  They then left their eggs to luck. .. like modern sea turtles do.  Then, later on, the juveniles who have survived to a certain size leave the forest and are welcome to join the herd.  (Notice that the drawing is set near the edge of the forest.)  Once a part of the herd with huge adults, the juveniles or sub-adults would have been far safer.  Adult Apatosaurs weighed around 22 tons and were around 75 feet long, or about 23 meters long.   This is much bigger than the size of the predators that preyed upon herbivores in the Jurassic Period.  Those predators would include Allosaurus and Torvosaurus. 

In the show the type of Sauropods is Diplodocus.  THIS drawing is of a heavier Sauropod called Apatosaurus.  It was commonly called Brontosaurus but it was discovered that it was named Apatosaurus first. . . so that name became official.  In Walking With Dinosaurs the females and young males make a herd and there is an Alpha Female.  This is how the modern  African elephants live.  Of course, the modern elephants care for their young from the start... and don't leave them to luck.  It is estimated that in modern sea turtles only one in a hundred survive to reproduce.  There was probably a similar mortality rate in young Sauropods.  By the way, this juvenile Apatosaurus would have been around the size of an adult African Elephant when it joined the Sauropod herd. 

Brontosaurus meant Thunder Lizard.  The thought was that it was so big that it sounded like thunder when it walked.  Apatosaurus means Deceptive Lizard because Marsh, the famous paleontologist who found it, thought that some of its bones looked deceptively like bones from a huge type of marine reptile called a Mosasaur.  

NOTE:  This drawing, in printable form, can be found by clicking on the button labeled:  Paleontology. Then scroll down to the bottom of the list to find the title of this new printable drawing.  New drawings are always at the bottom of the correct list on this blog.  Next, click on the title and the drawing will come up in printable form. By the way, the drawing is under the Paleontology button and in the part of the list labeled "Animals from the Mesozoic."

 Personal Note:  I also want to mention that my wife and I are in the middle of packing to move.  We are both older and having some major health issues so we are moving in with our eldest daughter.  Our adult kids (all our kids are adults and no longer kids) have been coming over to help us pack.  So has a niece and her husband.  I am not having much time to draw so I am drawing less and updating more.  Even the packing I am doing myself is causing me a lot of pain in my messed up trachea.  So, please be patient.  I will be drawing more often by next week.