Talented Young Palaeoartists at Work

Dinosaur Fans Show Their Drawing Skills

One of the great mysteries surrounding dinosaurs and indeed, many prehistoric animals is that scientists cannot be sure about what colour they were. Despite in the case of the Dinosauria, over 180 years of intensive study, scientists still have very little data to work with. It is humbling to think that since nobody has ever seen a Tyrannosaurus rex in the flesh, or observed a herd of Triceratops rumbling by, that much of what we read in books published on dinosaurs is based on speculation, assumption and educated guesswork.

Drawing Dinosaurs

What we do know, for example, is that for some of the dinosaur’s closest relatives that are living today – the birds, colour is very important. Birds have in general excellent colour vision and a few minutes staring out of a window looking at the typical garden birds that visit a bird table soon confirms how many different colours these creatures can be.

When young dinosaur fans Alex (7) and Daniel (9) were waiting for their parcel of dinosaur goodies from Everything Dinosaur, we arranged for some of our prehistoric animal drawing materials to be emailed over so that they could get to work on telling us what colours dinosaurs were and what they think they looked like.

Being able to make a sketch of a fossil find or a pencil drawing is a very useful skill that comes in handy when studying the Earth Sciences, making a drawing means that you have to study the object very closely and this can help scientists learn more about it, in a way that simply taking a photograph does not do.

Alex and Daniel Getting Down to Some Serious Dinosaur Drawing

Picture credit: L. Geary

We have been told that Alex and Daniel are massive dinosaur fans, it is always a pleasure to hear from the next generation of dinosaur hunters, who knows, perhaps Alex and Daniel will one day work on their very own dinosaur fossil discoveries.

These young palaeontologists have promised to send us some examples of their dinosaur illustrating skills. We have a big noticeboard in our warehouse and we are looking forward to putting them on display so that everyone at Everything Dinosaur can admire their work. After all, since nobody has actually seen a dinosaur, Alex and Daniel are contributing in their own way to palaeontology by telling us what they think dinosaurs looked like.

A Dinosaur Drawing