Dracula's Kingdom

I’ve wanted to draw this for quite a while but decided to save it til Halloween was near. And oh look DA’s team made some Creature Week thing and I’m supposed to draw a winged beast, perfect. Well dammit I couldn’t get it done in time and now they have changed the Creature Week challenge, but screw it I still want a badge and I’ve already drawn it. A part of me regrets that dead Rapidash from yesterday. 

66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period the sun starts to set as the apex predator of the area tears its kill apart. While theropod dinosaurs are the top predators in most Maastrichtian ecosystems, here on Hateg Island, a large island in what is now Romania and no longer an island, all the theropods (and dinosaurs in general) are pretty small due to Foster’s Rule and the land here is dominated by pterosaurs. A gigantic azhdarchid pterosaur, Dracula, has killed a full grown Paludititan nalatzensis, a titanosaur sauropod. While titanosaurs include the earth’s largest ever land animals, all the species on Hateg only grow 6 meters long like this one, and are prey to Dracula, with a wingspan above 10 meters and standing a bit taller than a giraffe when on all fours. 

“Dracula” is the nickname for an undescribed azhdarchid known from some fossil remains, including a huge jaw, found in Transylvania. The pterosaur was probably among the largest flying animals ever, in a size class comparable to Quetzalcoatlus, Hatzegopteryx and Arambourgiania (say why does no one give a damn about the last one?), maybe being largest of them all. A reconstruction of Dracula is now on display in a museum in Bavaria, Germany, but according to this there quite a few problems with it. “Wait, a large azhdarchid from Hateg.... ain’t that Hatzegopteryx thambema?” Well actually similarities between the two have been noted and Dracula is possibly a specimen of Hatzegopteryx, which kinda makes sense since an isolated island ecosystem seems unlikely to be able to support more than one species of gigantic predatory pterosaur, especially if they directly competed with each other. Also I chose Paludititan to feature instead of Magyarosaurus because no one gives a damn about it, while the other has got quite some attention (I mean, both Planet Dinosaur and Dinosaur Planet had it). 

Colours of Paludititan based on the barnacle goose (I mean let’s consider goose-coloured sauropods, they’re both long-necked herbivorous dinosaurs). And those of Dracula are a combination of all sorts of stuff like Sutekh from Doctor Who, Gliscor from Pokemon, the black stork and this backpack. Yes, a goddamn backpack. I’ve seen quite a few people on the subway with that specific one.