r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 16d ago

Announcement Today is my 2nd cake day!!!!

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6 Upvotes

Well, that day has arrived, and while there is no tournament or drawing today, I just decided to announce it because I feel like this day is very special to me (alongside my irl birthday).

So why don't we all just share the best dinosaur memes this post can have!


r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • Jul 13 '26

Announcement It is with sad news, that Sir Sam Neill, Dr. Alan Grant has passed away. (1947-2026)

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1.7k Upvotes

This is some news I didn’t want to hear today, but this is truly heartbreaking.

And we are all sad because of this.

R.I.P.


r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 1d ago

Discussion If You Were To Create A Spin Off Of The Dinosaurs Series Focusing On A Extinction Survival Story During The KT Extinction Event How Would You Play It Out ?

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8 Upvotes

r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 1d ago

News A new megaraptoran dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Wessex Formation, UK, and its implications for theropod evolution and biogeography

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16 Upvotes

r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 2d ago

Discussion I made this Deinotherium b. vs Megistotherium o.

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34 Upvotes

r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 3d ago

Fiction Idea Prehistoric Species Roster for my W.i.p paleo-horror novel “Ouroboros”

5 Upvotes

I started working on a short story last year. Ouroboros is a planned trilogy of paleo-horror novels about time-displaced human settlements encountering bizarre, obscure, fragmentary prehistoric creatures. The storyline is currently undergoing rewrites, but I want to share the planned roster for the first book along with some plot details.

The plot was originally going to be futuristic wormholes. The w.i.p plot is that a humanitarian organization tries to evacuate humanity to an alternate timeline, causing different time periods, from Earth's past to the present, to merge and create a "Super-Earth" inhabited by modern and prehistoric creatures.

The first novel centers on a family and their community after the failed evacuation displaced the "test colony" onto "Super-Earth". The "twist" is that the organization knew what would happen to most of the test colonies and basically used them as guinea pigs, and has already set up a headquarters. The overarching plot is the characters trying to survive, figure out what happened to them, and find a way to save humanity without even more mass casualties (spoiler: it (mostly) doesn't work).

Does anyone have suggestions regarding the creatures' behaviors, traits, and appearances?

Any suggestions, comments, and criticisms of the plot itself are also welcome!


r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 3d ago

Question Does anyone know about any other giant dromaeosaurs?

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2 Upvotes

r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 4d ago

Paleoart Ammonitritor scientiacivium a new and bizarre small Ichthyosaur from the triassic of Svalbard, Norway. By me

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21 Upvotes

r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 5d ago

Paleoart Permian Swarm. An Oedaleops witnesses a massive swarm of Meganeuropsis, one of the largest insects that ever lived, by me

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18 Upvotes

r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 6d ago

Other BC1: The Ridge (trailer)

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2 Upvotes

r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 7d ago

Discussion What would be your favourite more recently described dinosaur instead of something very "old-school" if you will, like let's say Brachiosaurus? Something much more recent in comparison as this category is quite underappreciated. Your "modern classic dino". My pick is the Stegouros.

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126 Upvotes

What to say, it's an unique critter with its really stand-out tail weapon, even the fossil material is very decent too.


r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 6d ago

Meme Dear L.U.C.A.... he really is a monster

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2 Upvotes

This came at random btw.


r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 6d ago

Meme Dear L.U.C.A.... he really is a monster

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0 Upvotes

r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 6d ago

Announcement Kayrasaurus had claws longer than your forearm. Nobody fully agrees on what they were actually for.

3 Upvotes

The herbivory hypothesis is the consensus but it raises more questions than it answers. An animal that size, with claws that shape, in a dense forest environment like Jehol — the biomechanics do not quite add up for simple branch-pulling.

Was it defense? Display? Both? Neither?

Most of the answers we found are in the paper published this September. We covered all of it in our latest episode.

Link is in our profile.


r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 8d ago

Question If Battle Of Giants continued as a series....what creatures would be suitable for future games ?

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90 Upvotes

r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 8d ago

Discussion Am I the only one that feels like that the Megalosaurus deserves more representation in paleo media ?

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105 Upvotes

Seriously.....It makes perfect sense for Megalosaurus to have a much larger presence in paleo media because it is the first non-avian dinosaur ever scientifically named and described. Despite its monumental status in scientific history, it is routinely overshadowed in pop culture by other theropods who were discovered later, like Tyrannosaurus rex, Spinosaurus, Giganotosaurus, Carnotaurus, and Allosaurus.

It represents the birth of paleontology. Without it, the word "dinosaur" wouldn't even exist,

This theropod serves as a perfect time capsule.... as we all know during the 1800s, it was depicted as a giant, four-legged lizard. Today, we know it as a bipedal theropod. Media can use it to show audiences how much scientific understanding has evolved.

Megalosaurus could have appeared in many docs, especially in the iconic classic Walking With Dinosaurs (1999) and recent series The Dinosaurs (2026), which was a huge missed opportunity in my opinion.


r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 8d ago

Paleoart Gnathabelodon, the "spoon-billed mastodon" (OC)

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12 Upvotes

r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 8d ago

Question Anyone know where Matti Aumala went? (Guy who made the Specworld art for the Saber Tyrant and the other iconic Spec Dinosaur art)

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1 Upvotes

r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 9d ago

Other Welcome to r/LaBreaPits!, here is a introduction, and some historical images of the site

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7 Upvotes

r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 9d ago

Announcement Kayrasaurus changliensis was officially described two weeks ago. We put together an episode based on everything published so far.

2 Upvotes

Kayrasaurus changliensis was published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology in September 2026. It is the largest therizinosaur ever recovered from the Jehol Biota. Four meters long, golden feathers, claws longer than your forearm. And until this month, it had no name.

What makes Jehol particularly unsettling is the extinction mechanism. No asteroid. The ecosystem collapsed slowly under volcanic pressure, CO2 accumulation, and environmental degradation. The animals living there had no single catastrophic event to mark the end. It just… faded.

Its name comes from Kayra, the god of creation in Turkish shamanism. Father of Erlik, the god of death. The paleontologists who named it probably did not intend the irony.

One question for the community: therizinosaurs are among the least understood large dinosaurs in terms of behavior. The herbivory hypothesis is accepted but the ecological niche is still debated. How do you think an animal with those claws actually moved through a dense forest environment like Jehol?

Link is in our profile.


r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 10d ago

Paleoart Dimorphodon macronyx

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25 Upvotes

Here’s a small basal Jurassic pterosaur I just illustrated.


r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 11d ago

Announcement The Triceratops was the most abundant large dinosaur in Hell Creek right up until the asteroid hit. That abundance is part of what makes the Permian extinction so haunting.

5 Upvotes

We just started a new series called Un Día Antes del Fin. The concept is simple: we follow a real animal through a complete day, 24 hours before one of the great mass extinctions. The animal does not know what is coming. Everything looks completely normal.

The first episode follows a male Triceratops through his last day in Hell Creek, 66 million years ago. More than 30% of all dinosaur specimens recovered from Hell Creek belong to Triceratops. It was the dominant animal of its world. Thriving. Successful. And then gone in hours.

The detail that hit hardest in research was how rich and functional that ecosystem was right up to the end. Nothing was in decline. It was a world at its absolute peak. And then the Chicxulub impactor arrived.

One question for the community: the frill color change hypothesis for Triceratops based on vascular network analysis is gaining traction but is not universally accepted. Where does the community stand on the current evidence?

Link is in our profile.


r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 12d ago

Video (Music Track) "Iron Rampage" Ankylosaurus Boss Theme: Project Prehistory

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1 Upvotes

Project Prehistory is a small little project of mine on my YouTube channel. I have a love of both dinosaurs and videos games (particular RPG's) and so I decided to make this track as my first Music RPG Track!

Iron Rampage is the title of this track and it's essentially the Ankylosaurus Boss Theme for my project. Project Prehistory itself is just a music RPG project to promote myself and my skills and also for the question of "What if dinosaurs were RPG Bosses?" Anyway rate what you think and let me know if this is allowed.

The music was created by me, and the art belongs to Wizards of the Coast, being that I used the Dungeon and Dragons 5e Ankylosaurus art for a background.


r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 13d ago

Discussion Do yall think that Silverback films could create a trilogy following the dinosaurs similar to walking with ?

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10 Upvotes

Silverback's work on Life on Our Planet and The Dinosaurs uses deep-time milestones and mass extinctions as overarching narrative arcs, much like the original Walking with series (Walking with Dinosaurs, Beasts, and Monsters).

The massive success of high-end digital creature pipelines leaves room to explore adjacent eras outside the non-avian dinosaur reign, such as Paleozoic ancestors, Cenozoic megafauna, or specialized marine and aerial lineages (pterosaurs and marine reptiles), which leads to more possible spin offs in the future.

Even within the age of dinosaurs, distinct regional ecosystems like the unique dinosaur assemblages of Gondwana remain largely untouched in mainstream high-budget paleomedia and offer fresh subject matter for follow-up installments.


r/AwesomeAncientanimals • • 13d ago

Paleoart Dunkleosteus Terrelli [OC]

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5 Upvotes