The Triceratops project
In the past few months I've been working on 5 illustrations for the Naturalis Biodiversity Center as part of my final year's internship. I've been working together with Anne Schulp and Jimmy de Rooij from the Dino lab in Leiden to depict the story of the 5 Triceratops the museum is preparing right now. The museum uncovered a unique fossil bed that includes at least 5 Triceratops horridus of different ages. The animals died and have been buried quickly before a set of crevasse splays shuffled up the bones after which they got fossilized, leaving a bonebed of well preserved but completely mixed bonebed of almost exclusively Triceratops bones.
Some event killed at least 5 Triceratops together. I depicted that in a scenario open to interpretation where they could have drowned or gotten stuck.
After death the bodies were mostly buried or inaccessible to scavengers, leaving the bones well preserved. A Shampsosaurus is also depicted in this image, as fossil remains of this animal have been found at the digsite as well.
Overtime the meaty material rotted away.
A crevasse splay, a natural dam break of sorts, has smashed apart and scattered the remains. This happened twice, once from each side of the bones' location.
The bones ended up buried, mixed together for over 66 million years before being found. The fossils will be shown at the Naturalis museum in Leiden where they are now being prepared.
Another possible end for the animals could have been a lightning strike, so as a final illustration I depicted that was well.