u/Arcxus

Sorry for the bad photos lmao this is my first time messing with figure repainting as a concept

Some design notes: The main thing I tried to pay attention to is correctly placing the skull of G. carolinii in reference to its spine. I don't particularily like the "head hanging off look" some past skeletal mounts have had, especially since that style of neck/head reconstruction has been amended with the discovery of Meraxes gigas.

Some people like to give G. carolinii a bony ridge along the back, but I think the neural spines on its vertebrae were more likely for muscle attachment points than a ridge like Acrocanthosaurus could have had. I also specifically referenced the 2025 Dan Folkes skeletal, which is (ignoring the dentary giga drama), one of the most recent "official" published skeletals -- though it does away with the historical "hunched" look that pop culture depictions like to exagerate (think the JW: Dominion "Joker" giga). Less movie monster, more lizard xD

Lastly, the one thing I did change from depictions shown in this sub is the robusticity of the ankle; many artists like to stylize carcharodontids with thinner, graceful feet, but looking at the bone itself and the weight/size of the animal, even if the legs work via tendons alone, the supporting tissue needs to be thicker. The known trackways for Acrocanthosaurus also show a pretty fat and padded foot, even accounting for the mud deforming; if G. carolinii could even manage a fast walk/trot, cushioning would have been so important in preventing cartilage wear and tear, and we know that charcharodontids could live from 30-60 years

(Our feet/legs are pretty padded, and even then, we usually hit knee pain, sprains, or fascitis by the mid-40s :P Not looking forward to that, haha)

Listen that color pattern is a stunner. Also if anyone wants the s. aegyptiacus comparison, it's the one prior :)

Sole notes: S. mirabilis has a more gracile body, is obviously smaller (likely more so than I've shown here haha), has proportionally longer tibia (you can see the knees sit higher) and proportionally longer legs.

The crocodilian inspired scalation is based on S. mirabilis having a relatively cooler environmental range, whereas S. aegyptiacus probably needed as much heat loss as possible xD

I also gave S. aegyptiacus a more robust chest and neck; S. mirabilis has the smaller head.

EDIT #1 (to sum some comments): Regarding the sails, we don't actually have sail data for S. mirabilis so I extrapolated based on existing spinosaur material and that one floating theory that mirabilis is the basal version and aegyptiacus the more derived.

Regarding S. mirabilis appearing a little long (tm) in the torso, that's because I shortened the sail somewhat (going off the above) from what the Serreno paper shows (there's an overlay in the comments). I also tried to.... adapt the rigidly straight spine commonly shown in skeletal models into something more befitting of a moving animal; for something with such a heavy tail, to presumably use it to swim, that spine cannot be a rod.

Lastly, both get nicely padded feet because otherwise arthritis would set in really quick on an 8-9 ton animal xD

EDIT #2: Colored S. mirabilis is posted! Go give her some love haha I revamped on the JP3 palette <3 (and also I fixed all the species name formatting lmaoo sorry to all who got ragebaited by that)

Continuing this series of nighttime doodles haha.

This coloration makes zero sense beyond looking cool; I wanted to do what the prehistoric planet rex has as patterning but using Argentinian Tegu colors — purely because I'm a fan of the little fat lizards xD

Everyone was really nice about the spinosaurus I posted 💖 I would like to share another, tho these are the only finished ones I have haha

One day, I will have a figure for this too ✨️

Sketch included as proof it ain't AI but pls don't repost tyy 😭🙏🏾

I based it off the skeletal art on dinopedia but I can't find who the OG artist was. The goal was to add realistic soft tissue, musculature, and fun coloration ✨️ (the patterns are based off ball python ones haha)

One day when I'm rich I'll commission someone for a figure 🤞🏽 that's the plan :D