Hello, everyone!
We've been excitedly prepping for our new Cretaceous ecosystem. Our Creative Director, Caroline, has been calling up unsuspecting academics and asking them questions for a video game, to which some have been surprisingly open!
And now, we want your feedback!
Species Research Board
https://trello.com/b/VUR5yPJi/cretaceous-gobi-desert
First, we have put together a public Trello board with the species we are currently planning on using in the ecosystem. This is of course subject to change as research and gameplay testing continues.
If you all know of any resources about these species, especially harder-to-find ones like about plants and insects, please do share! There is open commenting and contribution on the board.
On the note of plants, we found when calling up researchers that the conditions that are suitable for excellent preservation of dinosaur bones are different than those that are good for plants. So you basically don't get a lot of plant information from the same places you get great dinosaur fossils. Which means generalizing information from similar ecosystems in other places.
In-progress model for the velociraptor!
We also have some specific questions for feedback.
Q1: What should we actually CALL THIS ecosystem?
We knew that if we were going to make a biodome based off of Cretaceous Mongolia or Flaming Cliffs, we would need to include velociraptor, arguably the most "famous" dinosaur of the region. Velociraptor fossils, along with protoceratops and oviraptor, have been found in the Djadochta geological formation in Southern Mongolia (also known as the Flaming Cliffs.) This region dates back to the Late Cretaceous period, around the Campanian and Maastrichtian ages (around 70-80 million years ago.)
Many of our other dinosaurs were found to the southwest, in what is known as the Nemegt geological formation, some 220 miles away. This is where fossils of therizinosaurus (aka "Danger Floof"), Tarbosaurus (the t-rex of the Gobi), and Opisthocoelicaudia (an enormous, long-necked dinosaur) have been located. All fossils were found in what is now the Gobi desert during the Late Cretaceous period, though there isn't sufficient fossil evidence to prove that all of these dinosaurs lived at exactly the same time or exactly the same place. The only irrefutable, fossilized proof that any of these dinosaurs interacted with one another lies in a fossil depicting a protoceratops locked in battle with a velociraptor--all other interactions between dinosaurs have been inferred or assumed.
All this is to say...we aren't sure what exactly to call this ecosystem! Not all species hail directly from the Flaming Cliffs region, but all did live in the Gobi Desert. The "Gobi Desert" was not a desert in the Cretaceous era, however, which makes it a bit awkward to use that descriptor. Not all species have been proven to have co-existed, though they all lived in the Cretaceous period in around the same area. How precise should we be with our ecosystem name?
Can we call it "Flaming Cliffs" because that's close enough? Should we call it "Gobi Desert," even though "desert" is an inaccurate word? Should we simply say "Mongolia," even though the Gobi Desert is a very specific region that may have had wildly different species from, say, Northern Mongolia in the Cretaceous era? We aren't sure!
Q2: What are your thoughts on the issues of color and, um, creative expression in making dinosaurs?
Some dinosaurs have rich information and even evidence about their color (see this article: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100127-dinosaur-feathers-colors-nature/ )
However, many don't have that much available when it comes to any preserved feather bits or other indicators of color. A lot of artists seem to stay more simple in their depictions, but there are some pieces of concept art of dinosaurs with incredibly bright and unexpected color palettes.
What are your thoughts on how we should handle this when there is no evidence of color (helping us find some for our dinosaurs would certainly be helpful!)? Stick with expectations of whatever is most common? Create a beautiful palette of our own creation and run with it? Something else?
(On this note, if anyone has found scientific research on the colors of any of our species, please post it!)