Ziapelta sanjuanensis

Finally, a new piece! I was commissioned to reconstruct a new species of Ankylosaurid from Late Cretaceous New Mexico, and here it is in all it's firey glory. Ziapelta sanjuanensis is named for the sun symbol of the Zia people of New Mexico, which also appears in the New Mexico flag. This was inspired by the cervical (neck) half ring of osteoderms found in conjunction with the head, which abstractly resemble the rays of a sun. I chose to pay homage to that by including yellow and red tones in the actual animal, and I chose to mute them a little and focus them on the cervical osteoderms. We also wanted to steer away from both the poopy brown colours and dopey/dumpy anatomy that seem to permeate some ankylosaur reconstructions. Ankylosaur material is definitely not as common as some other dinosaur taxa (consider that only the head and neck of Ziapelta was found, so the body was based largely off of Ziapelta's closest relatives that are also more complete, namely northern North American Ankylosaurids.

The paper is open access if anyone would like to read it: www.plosone.org/article/info%3…

Edit: Uploaded a better scan!