What If We Drew Modern Animals Like Dinosaurs?

Some dinosaurs are burned into the public's mind, but we must never forget that they are approximations, educated guesses about their appearance and general characteristics. In fact, the mistakes made during the illustration process are very important, and an interesting way to visualize them is to draw modern animals using the same techniques. C.M. Kosemen helps us recognize the differences.

If I mention the T-Rex, the brontosaurus, and the velociraptor, you almost automatically have an idea of their shape, size, and strength. The intervention of cinema and countless documentaries did nothing but reinforce those parameters, but the situation of dinosaurs is similar to what happens with maps: we only have imperfect models at our disposal. In fact, some illustrations contain very serious errors. Where does science end and art begin?

Modern Animals, Drawn as Dinosaurs

C.M. Kosemen is a Turkish artist and researcher who published a book in 2012 (along with John Conway and Darren Naish) that explores certain speculative visions about dinosaur illustrations and other prehistoric animals. The most advanced artistic works depend directly on the discoveries made by paleontologists, who dedicate entire decades to compiling information based on fossils that are often incomplete.

However, the position of Kosemen and his colleagues is that mainstream dinosaur art does not represent them as real creatures, and artists should take more references from modern animals. The reason is simple: traditional dinosaur models do not consider factors like fat or soft tissue. Kosemen indicates that the "armor" in the style of a pangolin or an armadillo in a herbivorous dinosaur would not be preserved in its fossils, leaving aside a very important detail.

The researcher also believes that dinosaur heads are one of the most serious points. They all have strange smiles and show nearly complete teeth, when in real life animals possess lips, gums, and facial fat that change the profile and cover the teeth. Furthermore, the size of both the head and the claws tends to be exaggerated.

If you want to know more, you can visit the official page or Kosemen's profile on Instagram, where his work goes beyond dinosaurs. As an alternative, his book is available in Kindle format at a very reasonable price.

Source: Atlas Obscura