Courageous Didelphodon vs Raptor Profiles in Courage

 

Welcome to my free coloring pages blog. 

I have not posted for a few days because I am recovering from surgery. 

But here are my latest drawings.  They are of a courageous early mammal 

defending itself from a raptor dinosaur.

So these are the first drawings in a short series of drawings that I'm calling:

"Profiles in Courage!"

Courageous Didelphodon vs Raptor

Brave Didelphodon takes on a Troodon Raptor

My son wanted a drawing that shows courage.  I immediately thought of Didelphodon.  I expect that Didelphodon was as brave and courageous as a Honey Badger. Honey Badgers will face off against a lion.  I will be drawing a Honey Badger soon. 

Didelphodin was an early mammal who lived in the Cretaceous Period in North America.  It was about 1 foot long and weighed about 11 lbs. making it one of the largest mammals of its time.  That is 0.3 meters long and 5 kg in mass. Didelphodon vorax had canine teeth and was built stocky like a badger.  It had an incredible bite force for a mammal its size.  It had a powerful head and powerful jaws.  It also seems to have been a pure predator with no ability to eat plant matter.  It probably ate carrion and, smaller mammals, and could eat shelled creatures like snails and possibly clams and other shellfish and of course insects, spiders, & scorpions along with other hard-exoskeleton Arthropods.  Didelphodon was a marsupial mammal and was similar to a modern possum, only with a more robust skull and much more powerful jaws. 

I can easily picture this mammal dealing with raptor dinosaurs and it being successful at defending itself from them.  This would take a tremendous amount of courage.  Didelphodon could burrow and make dens as well.  This made them able to survive the "end of the dinosaur world" meteor-caused extinction event.  

Much evidence has been uncovered in the past several years on raptor dinosaurs.  They may have all had feathers.  There is some evidence that some raptor species had larger teeth as well.  Raptors, like the Dromeosaurs, were among the most intelligent of dinosaurs.  Troodon, as seen in the second drawing, was a Dromeosaur.  It is thought to possibly the MOST intelligent of the dinosaurs. 

The Pterosaur in the background is a Pteranodon.  It was a common type of flying reptile of the Cretaceous Period.  Pteranodons wingspread are known to have grown up to 8 feet or 26 meters.  Many Pteranodon fossils have been found in land that was the bottom of the ocean, far from land, when the Pterosaur died.  It is thought that they may have died during migration.  Many of those fossils are found in Kansas, South Dakota, Wyoming, Alabama and other states in the USA.  

If you are wondering about the grass, there is recent evidence that grass evolved and was eaten by dinosaurs of the Late Cretaceous.  Paleontologists USED to think grass arose after the dinosaurs but grass seeds of 5 different species of grass was found in duck-bill or Hadrosaur dinosaur droppings.  We call those fossilized feces coprolite.  If you are wondering about the flowering plants or the flowers on the bushes, pollen has also been found that actually predates the dinosaurs.  So we now know that dinosaurs lived with flowering plants that attracted insects AND with grass, which is a wind-pollinated flowering plant.  

NOTE:  These drawings, in printable form, are found by clicking on the button labeled "Paleontology" and scrolling down to the bottom of the Mesozoic section.  It is also possible to print the picture by clicking on the drawing on this page and copying it.  Then paste it into a drawing program or into a world processing program like Microsoft Word.  Then you can resize it and print it.