Time to indulge in wild speculation!

I watched this interesting documentary on dinosaur biomechanics that seemed to show that it was very unlikely that ceratopsians' skulls could withstand the stress of charging at opponents in the manner of rhinoceroses, and it got me to wondering how else ceratopsians might have used their horns. (And no, I don't believe they were purely display structures. Nature makes weapons to be used, and I'm not of the persuasion of writing off every unusual anatomical element as a display structure unless all other options are exhausted.)

The other day, I was watching a video of a bison using its horns to throw a tree (and that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you stay away from bison), and suddenly it occurred to me--what if ceratopsians used their brow horns to throw things instead of stab (for the most part)? A large animal like Tyrannosaurus getting lifted and thrown is going to hurt quite a lot, and I think large ceratopsians could manage that kind of thing with their massive builds.

I also think ceratopsians might have used their horns (especially their nose horns) more for shoving. I watched a video where a rhino was given a pumpkin, and it very adeptly used the flat of its horn to crush the pumpkin into edible chunks. Maybe ceratopsians did the same thing to fruiting bodies of plants, or used them in social shoving contests.

Just some thoughts.

 In the pint-sized pixel-world of the Game Boy Pokémon games, the NPCs have to really try to sell it to you that Kanto is actually geographically vast, and not, y'know, a place you can walk clear across in less than an hour.

Fun fact: Hyrule in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is roughly based on the geography of Kyoto, Japan, home of Nintendo headquarters. It's also a faithful to-scale reproduction of the Kyoto region in terms of size (as compared to Link). So next time you're making Link jog from one side of the map to the other out of boredom, realize that that's about how long it would take somebody (at least somebody in shape) to jog across Kyoto. Wild.

 Can't leave out the OG space mission!

I've been having a lot of fun with this series; I guess the overarching theme is the history of space exploration seen through the hypothetically sentient eyes of the plucky robots who have taught us so much about the universe. (Except sometimes they're ceiling fans.)

 I think it's really awesome how a lot of Chinese dinosaurs get Chinese taxonomic names, and a lot of them include the word long (dragon). Much more fitting than saurus (lizard); dinosaurs were pretty much as close to dragons as the history of life on Earth has ever gotten. 

I just wanted to play around with depicting a Chinese dino as it might appear in one of those historic bestiaries, especially since they often have the names to match. This is Zhenyuanlong, a dromaeosaur from the Yixian Formation.

I've heard speculation that finds of sauropods like Mamenchisaurus might have been what inspired the serpentine physiology of the Chinese dragon. Such a fun idea, and would bring the whole dragon thing full circle.

 Truly a moving sight.

 Stamps definitely won't get you any closer to the Pokémon League. Baseball cards, on the other other hand...

Speaking of, can we talk for a minute about the Pokémon TCG and the controversy surrounding all the card scalping that's been going on over the past few years? 

 I'm not actually sure how funny this is; it's just that every time I see the Mariner 4 spacecraft, all I can think is that it looks like a ceiling fan. 

And then I want an actual ceiling fan shaped like Mariner 4.

(Maybe there's one on Etsy.)

 I drew this to commemorate some... sort of milestone when Trainer Wants to Battle! had its original run. Unfortunately I completely forget what that milestone was. Some number of readers reached or something? Anyway. I still think this turned out pretty cute. This was Red's party at the time of making the illustration. I was going for quality, not quantity.

 I feel like the Scientists in Kanto are extremely shady. First they're messing around with the questionable practice of bringing back extinct taxa, and then one of them just hands a valuable museum specimen to the first 10-year-old to walk in the back door. Sounds like some under-the-table research to me.

Or, y'know, it's just a video game and I'm way overthinking it again.

 Has Jurassic Park taught these people nothing about bringing back extinct taxa?

Then again, this is the Pokémon universe and they have all sorts of crazy science stuff going on, like creating self-aware virtual life forms that can manifest physically, genetically modifying clones to be exponentially stronger than their progenitor, and engineering technology that projects a person's mind into a Pokémon. So maybe by now they've also learned to resurrect fossils responsibly.

 Thought I'd switch it up from Mars for a bit, and give some love to older space missions! Including the ones that... didn't quite perform nominally and probably ended up running into the Great Galactic Ghoul.

 I'll take "draw" every time! :)

 One last piece of Fossil Friday fan art (for now)! We were talking about Anzu wyliei one week, and someone asked why it had such long arms. MaggieJo suggested maybe they were for hugging, and then she wanted to see two Anzu hugging. I love oviraptorosaurs, so I jumped right on that idea. 

 This NPC line always kind of puzzled me, because it's this old guy claiming Lt. Surge was his superior officer. But Surge looks at least twenty years younger than this dude.

Also, the military doesn't even seem to be a thing in the Pokémon universe. So I'm not sure what Surge is even a lieutenant in anymore.

He probably gave himself that title just to sound cool.

Also, I had a lot of fun in these comics giving the Gentleman trainer class basically a Cthulu moustache. You never see a Gentleman's mouth. Maybe they don't have mouths. You're welcome for that mental image.

 Pretty sure this is an accurate representation of Phoenix's mission.

I had way too much fun coming up with some questionably edible flavors.

 Like I said: a fake moustache solves everything.

 My buddies at Virtual Fossil Friday have been giving me so many fun paleoart ideas lately! We'll get going on a subject and then MaggieJo Widdicombe will say "somebody draw that", and honestly I don't have much else going on, so I've been keeping a list and working through them as fast as I can.

The other week, she and Ashley Hall were super excited because a freshwater mosasaur has recently been found in Cretaceous fossil deposits in Montana. This is really interesting because mosasaurs have traditionally been thought of as marine animals, but apparently some made the move to fresh water. MaggieJo said it would be terrifying to be boating down a river and see a mosasaur lurking right beside you, and then wanted someone to depict that. Your friendly neighborhood paleoartist is on the case!

I had a lot of fun with this painting. Looked up lots of references of Amazon River dolphins, which are adorable. Also I fully support mosasaurs with forked tongues. Partly this is because they were closely related to snakes, which have forked tongues, so it makes sense. And is cute.

 I'm always amused by references to the real world in early Pokémon media. As the franchise progressed, Game Freak began to emphasize that the Pokémon universe is a completely different place than Earth (although geographically and culturally very similar), even to the point of gradually phasing out real-world animals and strongly implying that Pokémon are the only non-human creatures on the planet. But in the early days, before the lore was really solidified, it seemed more like the Pokémon universe was this alternate reality "Earth, but with Pokémon". It kind of makes me wonder what would have happened if Game Freak had continued in that creative direction.

But clearly Lt. Surge is from Unova

 I came up with this one at 3 am when I couldn't sleep. I'm glad something good came out of that night.

I'm also glad it was still funny the next day.

Also, I know the Easter egg on the side panel is nigh-illegible, but I just couldn't bring myself to omit it once I'd thought of it. Consider it an extra for those who bother to zoom in.

 What, you think Pokémon work for free?