Last Days of the Dinosaurs - Tyrannosaurus Rex (Patreon)

I got the go-ahead to share the illustrations I've done for Riley Black's new book, The Last Days of the Dinosaurs!

I thought it would be fun to show the final illustration along with the sketches and a bunch of the reference pictures I used to make it! This is my first paleoart book, so I wanted to do my very best to get these critters as accurate as possible!

The first is Tyrannosaurus Rex! Can't do a book about North American Cretaceous dinosaurs without mentioning the good ol' T. rex! The life-sized model of SUE in the Field Museum was obviously my primary reference, but with a little extra fluff!

The presence of feathers on T. rex is still highly debated! While no T. rex fossils with feather impressions have been found, there are a lot of feather impressions from dinosaurs closely related to T. rex, which gives it a pretty good chance that T. rex also had some feathering. There have been some fossilized skin impressions of T. rex found that were devoid of feathers, but the skin was from the underside of the animal, so that doesn't rule out that it didn't have feathers SOMEWHERE on it.

So if you see depictions of T. rex with or without feathers, know that either version is just as valid until we find fossils that say otherwise!

I'm going to post a bunch fo these in the upcoming days, so keep an eye out!