Leaellyn’s Floof in the Frost

Cheep cheep!

On a cold, wintry night down under, 110 million years ago, the snow falls upon the woodlands and mountains below. Out of the snow, scurries a little white fluffball, covered head to toe to tail in fluff. As he scampers, he stops at an overhang and looks down over his winter wonderland, glazed by the colourful lights of the aurora above.

Leaellynasaura amicagraphica was an interesting ornithischian dinosaur. It lived in Australia during the Early Cretaceous, which during this time was further south and connected to Antarctica. Although the Antarctic Circle was warmer at the time, with sunlit summers half of the year, the region was still ravaged by freezing, dark winters with the sun never rising rest of the year. As for Leaellynasaura itself, one of its most notable features known is its tail allegedly three times as long as the rest of its body. However, the specimen with that tail sadly can’t confidently be assigned to the species, having no overlap with the holotype. As we don’t have any material of a tail from a definite Leaellynasaura specimen though, it’s up to speculation. Here, the tail is hidden under the great piles of fluff, so it is up to your interpretation how long it is here. With this fluff, I also depicted this cutie as a ptarmigan-like fluffball, inspired by my favourite artist, John Conway’s reconstruction for the great palaeoart book All Yesterdays, with completely white "feathers" as a winter plumage to camouflage within the snow. We now know from some fossils that ornithischians had feather-like filaments, and in these cold southern lands, it’s very plausible Leaellynasaura had them too. Of course one of my favourite dinosaurs.

Lil' floofies. By John Conway.

To all of you admiring this piece, have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!