Tarbosaurus bataar

Toa Halcyon · January 24, 2015

Edit: Never noticed that the images were just links...that was weird.

Just like before, this is based off of a real dinosaur. Here's the wiki for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarbosaurus

Tyrannosaurs were among the most successful groups of dinosaurs on the planet. Confirmed to have feathers, and having spread influence throughout much of the northern hemisphere, no group of dinosaurs their size could outcompete them, forcing the long-established Carnosaurs to either go extinct or follow their traditional prey south into continents like Africa and South America. Their kind had their early beginnings in the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous as small coelurosaurs in Asia, but began to grow in size quickly, and before long they became one of the most profound dinosaurs to date.

Tarbosaurus bataar is T.Rex's Mongolian cousin. Both lived roughly around the same time, and appeared so similar many thought that they were the exact same animal. Despite this, Tarbosaurus is just different from Tyrannosaurus that they are considered different species, albeit Tarbosaurus only has one species under its genus; Bataar. In terms of size, Tarbosaurus comes just under Tyrannosaurus, between 10-12 meters in length (33-39 feet), but they were still formidable enough to become the dominant predators in their region in the Gobi Desert, likely hunting the local ornithischian cuisine; the Saurolophus; which traveled to and from the desert in migrating herds. Despite how big it was, most of the Gobi was safe from these monsters due to the fact that most creatures that lived there were too small to be worth chasing, such as the local Velociraptor and their favorite food the Protoceratops.

Like all Tyrannosaurs, Tarbosaurus likely had a very powerful bite; everything lay within its massive skull, a trait that made the Tyrannosaurs unique and deadly killers. Unlike Carnosaurs, whose focus was to tear big holes in their prey and make them bleed to death, Tyrannosaurs could actually crush bone, leading for some paleontologists to assume that they could have been glorified turkey vultures instead of hunters. Regardless of how they ate, it is known fact that wherever a Tyrannosaur fossil showed up in the Cretaceous rock, very few predators it size would be in the area for long, as nothing could compete with that giant eating machine.

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Whoever designed the Dragon Bolt head without bothering to think of ways for it to work without the weird Brain Attack bug is on my hit list. Took forever to figure out how to set the head up, but I'm pretty proud of the way it turned out. I initially was trying to think of a cool Dinosaur that would fight my Suchomimus MoC from earlier in 1x1 combat stop motion, and wound up settling for the Tyrannosaur that was within its relative size range. It's going to be fun to set up, though a pain since I'm going to be using a blue sheet of paper and a blue shirt on a cardboard box to act as my stage, and as you can see...Tarby over here is kind of...blue...yeah. Need to rethink my setup methinks.

Probably the best part about this build is that it poses really well...I'm not even kidding. Most of my old pieces are so worn out that things move really loosely, which is great for well-loved toys and action figures but rather terrible for a stop motion subject.