Showing posts with label omnivorous. Show all posts
Showing posts with label omnivorous. Show all posts

Thursday, March 6, 2008

The Manticore Corps

In the Squawk Role-Playing Game, Manticores are intelligent ceratopsian dinosaurs. While most ceratopsians, like Psittacosaurus and Triceratops are stocky quadrupeds, Manticores are gracile bipeds with long limbs and very long tails. Manticores lack the long horns of some of the larger ceratopsians, and they have a proportionally longer neck shield than any other ceratopsian.
Manticore legs are adapted for running, with only three toes on each foot. The hands are four-fingered manipulators with opposable inner and outer digits. The long tail is a specialized weapon with the tip partially fused into a hard, sharp weapon.
The manticore idea is based on creature ideas from RPGs we made before Squawk. Manticores weren't always dinosaurs (and they weren't always called manticores - the original name was unpronounceable by humans.) The beak is a recent addition to make manticores more like their ceratopsian cousins. As the picture above shows, we have been toying with the idea of giving manticores elongated protective scales.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Do U Has Basilisk?

Sometimes my drawings just don't come out like I plan.

This drawing shows some anatomical details, such as teeth, posture, hips, muscles, and ribs which are hidden in many other Basilisk drawings.

The addition of clothing made this Basilisk a little too anthropomorphic. Notice that the sandals only support the toes and ball of the foot. I gave this Basilisk toe-less socks but Basilisks are runners who might have blunt claws like an ostrich, so they could wear full socks and even shoes with toes.

Here's what the primitive ancestors of the Basilisk might have looked like, and a reconstruction of psittacosaurus with the newly discovered "quills" which are similar to the Basilisk's spines, but longer but have only been found on part of the tail. Notice the similar structures on an iguana (but also notice how the iguana's scales are very different. Overlapping scales like the onese on the iguana's arms - typical of snakes and lizards - have not been found on dinosaurs.) Speaking of Psittacosaurus, Mark Witton has good reasons to think ceratopsians ate more than just vegetables.