Sculpting Dinosaur Skulls on my Tablet

[ThePhysicist]

Hi y'all, about a year ago I started digital sculpting on my tablet and began with some Devonian "shark" teeth, inspired by ones in my collection (see topic here).

 

Several months later after becoming more familiar with the process, I decided to try my hand at dinosaur skulls. In particular, I wanted to render the juvenile Tyrannosaurid, "Jane" (BMRP 2002.4.1) since regardless of your stance on the species, it's an important and cool fossil. Here I present my amateur first pass. My end goal is to have a 1:1 scale 3D print. 

 

 

And for you Tyranno-nerds, yes it accurately has incisiform premaxillary teeth with a lingual apicobasal ridge. To get the shape of all the teeth right, I referenced a couple in my collection. They were duplicated and squashed around to match the variation in morphology of the dentition.

 

 

I also uploaded the model for you to interact with; honest critiques are welcome as it's not a final version I feel is ready for full scale printing. Certain aspects of the anatomy, especially the hard-to-see interior portions are probably where most errors lie.

 

 

In December, I however did print a smaller scale to see how it looked:

 

 

The nice thing about digital sculpting is that I can copy the entire skull and very readily reshape it into a similar one. The natural choice is to do a young juvenile / baby T. rex. This is as much a hypothesis as it is art. I based it off of the Witmer Lab's more rigorous reconstruction of "Chomper", and a similarly-sized young Tarbosaurus (which was a close cousin of T. rex).

 

 

I again uploaded the model for your enjoyment / inspection:

 

 

Next, I decided to wander much farther from Tyrannosaurs and shape it into a Troodontid, Pectinodon bakkeri. Of course Pectinodon is only known from its teeth, so I at least got the shape of those right (again, based off of a fossil in my collection). The rest was inspired by the reconstructions of others, presumably informed by more completely-known Troodontids.

 

 

 

 And finally, a sneak peak of what I'll be working on, Acheroraptor temertyorum. This time it's from scratch since there are some things I want to do differently. 

 

 

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!

[Tidgy's Dad]

Very interesting. 

[Mahnmut]

Great sculpts!

That skull is astonishingly slender.

Best Regards,

J

[Doctor Mud]

5 hours ago, Mahnmut said:

Great sculpts!

That skull is astonishingly slender.

Best Regards,

J

I thought that too. But it is faithful to the original. I always thought of T. rex skulls as being broader. This one is a juvenile? I looked up this specimen and I think that’s the latest opinion.

is there any sexual dimorphism?

[jpc]

Nice work, but as an old guy who used to be computer-phobic, the very idea of sculpting on a computer confuses the heck out of me.  I can do a lot of stuff in 2d on the computer and even some 3d (like reading CT scans), but sculpting???  Again, nice work. 

[ThePhysicist]

9 hours ago, Mahnmut said:

Great sculpts!

That skull is astonishingly slender.

Best Regards,

J

Thank you! Luckily for "Jane" I managed to find enough references to get the general form right, though the lower jaw may be too slender.

^ http://dx.doi.org/10.2110/palo.2009.p09-056r

3 hours ago, Doctor Mud said:

I thought that too. But it is faithful to the original. I always thought of T. rex skulls as being broader. This one is a juvenile? I looked up this specimen and I think that’s the latest opinion.

is there any sexual dimorphism?

The current interpretation from histology is that it's a juvenile Tyrannosaurid in the ballpark of 13 years of age (https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax6250). I don't believe there are enough individuals with a known sex to realistically study possible sexual dimorphism. 

Edited June 1, 2023 by ThePhysicist

[ThePhysicist]

After almost a year of being preoccupied with other things, I finally have progress to show. I also believe I'm refining the process; with this skull the execution felt cleaner. I now have a base skull with most of the elements sculpted individually, making it easier to reshape them for other future theropod species (ideally).

 

This is perhaps the first scientifically-accurate 3D reconstruction of the skull of the Lancian dromaeosaurid, Acheroraptor temertyorum. Originally placed as a velociraptorine in its description publication by Evans et al. (2013), a more recent analysis placed it within Sauronitholestinae (Powers et al. (2021)). Using Fig. 20 in this most recent publication and other more complete dromaeosaurids as references, I digitally sculpted (and 3D printed) my amateur interpretation.

 

My artwork features apicobasal ridges on the teeth (noted as a unique character in its maxillary dentition), “Zapsalis”-morph premaxillary teeth (as found in Sauronitholestes, Currrie & Evans (2020)), and other details like foramina on the appropriate skull elements. I also subtley hinted at a tooth replacement pattern which gives alternating tooth lengths (noted in Evans et al. 2013). The result I believe is a plausible reconstruction of this geologically-youngest of dromaeosaurids.

 

References:

 

Evans, D.C., Larson, D.W. & Currie, P.J. A new dromaeosaurid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) with Asian affinities from the latest Cretaceous of North America. Naturwissenschaften 100, 1041–1049 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-013-1107-5

 

Mark J. Powers, Matteo Fabbri, Michael R. Doschak, Bhart-Anjan S. Bhullar, David C. Evans, Mark A. Norell & Philip J. Currie (2021) A new hypothesis of eudromaeosaurian evolution: CT scans assist in testing and constructing morphological characters, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 41:5, e2010087, DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2021.2010087

 

Currie, Philip J, and David C Evans. “Cranial Anatomy of New Specimens of Saurornitholestes langstoni (Dinosauria, Theropoda, Dromaeosauridae) from the Dinosaur Park Formation (Campanian) of Alberta.” Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) vol. 303,4 (2020): 691-715. doi:10.1002/ar.24241

 

The known elements are printed in a bronze color

 

 

 

 

 

Reconstruction in Powers et al. 2021

 

Link to the model on sketchfab (not sure how to embed it with TFF's new software, admins welcome to help out):

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/acheroraptor-skull-6f21cf2e1ed54ede9215c703253f05f4

 

Next, I'm considering a proper redo of Pectinodon, a generic young juvenile tyrannosaurid, and Deinonychus. 

[Alex92]

Really nice work!  I'm a fellow sculptor myself, nice to see different art styles!