Erlikosaurus andrewsi
"Andrews' Erlik lizard "

Above is a profile view of the therizinosaurid (a type of segnosaur) Erlikosaurus. Though it is known from the most complete, well-preserved skull of its kind, there is a good deal of debate over how the heads of these animals would have appeared in life, and having looked at all the arguments, this is my own take on it. Pores and ridges indicate the presence of a beak covering the tip of the snout - one piece of evidence previously used to place segnosaurs in the ornithiscia. However, beaks now seem to be a common characteristic evolved independently numerous times among archosaurs, especially herbivores. Feathers are common to all maniraptors, but due to it's gigantic size, my Erlikosaurus only has a light fuzz on it's head and neck, with longer feathers down the back and a display crest atop the head. This conforms with what we know about therizinosaur feathers from relative Beipiaosaurus; their feather coat was comprised of two main types, a short, dense covering of down-like, double-branched feathers and a longer covering of single-filament, quill-like feathers. An herbovire, Erliksaurus had leaf-shaped teeth lining their jaws. However, they are inset to a much higher degree than other theropods, indicating the presence of some kind of cheek structure. Since they lacked facial muscles, dinosaur cheeks were probably not large and fleshy like those of mammals. Instead, most reconstruct them as flaps of muscle inset to the jaw, so the line of the mouth remains visible. The jaws are covered in typical dinosaurian scales. Facial markings after Brunnen-G.

Erlikosaurus was named by Altangerel Perle in 1980. It lived in Mongolia during the Cenemonian through possibly Santonian ages of the Late Cretaceous. The community of animals coexisting at this time is fairly well known. Erlikosaurus would have lived along side dinosaurs like Achillobator, the small horned dinosaur Graciliceratops, the tyrannosaur Alectrosaurus, and the other therizinosaurs Segnosaurus and Enigmosaurus.

For more on Erlikosaurus, see the Wikipedia article I helped edit.

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Image Details:
Media: Graphite, digital coloring in Adobe Photoshop CS using WACOM Graphire 3
License:
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