Renato Santos
banner
dracontes.bsky.social
Renato Santos
@dracontes.bsky.social
1K followers 160 following 350 posts
Portuguese. Atheist. Queer. Furry. Bachelor's in Biology, minor in Earth Sciences. Amateur at paleontology. Amateur at art. Palaeos.com custodian. DA gallery: https://www.deviantart.com/dracontes (He/Him; 41; Algarve, Portugal | 🏳️‍🌈 🇵🇹 )
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Reposted by Renato Santos
#Iguanodon was formally named 200 years ago today in 1825. The second dinosaur to be named after Megalosaurus, and one of three genera originally used to define Dinosauria.
Small blessing in a way: my first name seems to be rare enough the happenstance hasn't come up in a way I've noticed or remembered.

(Idly searched Google's news feed just now and it's mostly soccer players.)
Hey @wotcmatt.bsky.social just to be sure: the interaction between Aminatou, Veil Piercer & Room enchantments regarding miracle cost works the same as determining flashback cost for Fire//Ice in graveyard with Lier, Disciple of the Drowned on battlefield, right? (CR 702.1b)

Thanks for your time🙂
Stark to see Musk stating towards the end his intent to dispassionately manage his fellow human as a trophy hunting entrepreneur manages big game: more meat for capitalism's grinder, more creativity to claim credit for.

He believes himself a savior. He's rather another blight on humanity.
Hi. Elon Musk is not very good at things – running companies, managing the government's money, parenting, gaming, etc. And he thinks you're so fucking stupid that you won't even notice.
Elon Musk Thinks You Are So F**king Stupid - SOME MORE NEWS
YouTube video by Some More News
youtu.be
Reposted by Renato Santos
Bird nests made from anti-bird spikes?! 🤯

Hi, I'm a nest researcher 👋 and new here on BlueSky, sharing the craziest #bird nests I've ever found. 👀 Today, I’m sharing my discovery of rebellious birds that build nests out of anti-bird spikes. And honestly, it's like telling a joke...

A thread. 🧵
An interesting variation: Mongooses (including meerkats) have horizontal pupils as well.

I suppose the small size of these predators allowed larger predators to be an important selective pressure.
Reposted by Renato Santos
There's a petition to ban conversion practices (targeting LGBTQIA+ people) in the European Union. We need one million signatures, and we currently have 180,000+. If you live in Europe (even if you don't), spread the word ! 🌈🔥✊

eci.ec.europa.eu/043/public/#...
European Citizens' Initiative
Give your support !
eci.ec.europa.eu
Included in my furry resumé:

- Not as much the cartoon people angle as the creature feature one
- Indulged frankly furry forays even before I knew what a furry was
- So much lurking
- So much time to figure myself out: the queer in me, especially
- A good amount of relevant, moldering WIPs
Included in my furry resumé:

- Not actually one myself but have been furry adjacent online for like 20 years
- Do animal/creature art more than anything else
- Do use nonhuman creatures to represent myself online
- Most of my customer base are furries
- Neurospicy
- A little queer
Included in my furry resumé:

- Over 10 years of drawing primarily animals and anthropomorphic animals
- Gets called a furry without identifying as such
- Has drawn multiple human characters as some form of animal instead
- Loves the artist alley atmosphere
- Cool with 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️
- Will share snacks
That was the one I came here to mention: around 15 years ago, I had to take my time wrapping my head around the fact something so weird existed.

In any case, here's a video from way back then by @mbarinews.bsky.social .
Macropinna microstoma: A deep-sea fish with a transparent head and tubular eyes
YouTube video by MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)
www.youtube.com
Might as well have a look...

Yeah, I've fairly consistent with it, carrying the habit over from my last posts on Twitter. It's very convenient for sourcing images, beyond all the other useful aspects 🙂
Described in some detail in The Amber Spyglass, part of Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trllogy, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dar...

The books certainly have my recommendation as a good read 🙂
His Dark Materials - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
IIRC, "vertebrates" in the mulefa world have a lozenge layout to their body: a limb at each corner. So just the middle limb you see above has a counterpart on the other side.

A chaser: the swans someone mentioned below have wings at either end of the body and use those as sails.
I've felt it more, I'll admit.

It's good though to find a level engagement that doesn't lead to burnout. Knowing how the literature goes, I usually wait for the review papers.
Don't you just. love dinosaurs
Years ago I tried, similarly, to do #art more consistently: jotting a scribble & working it as pareidolia suggests. The problem is Photoshop allows a lot of refinement & I was then neck deep in my undergrad degree.

In other news, doing this with MS Paint's calligraphy brush only was challenging.
Changing things up a bit to keep it interesting on MS Paint: this time with the menu's first brush.

Also committing to the bit, as it were, trying to recall as much ray-finned fish anatomy as I could. Probably not enough to make sense, but these are quicker drawings to get back on the #art horse.
Oh, I wasn't too late to the party on the layer count then. Though, fortunately, it seems I missed it so far regarding genAI. (Likely localization to Portugal holding things up.)
Exploring MS Paint more as far as brushes are concerned. This time, something calling back to Barlowe's Darwin IV & a perennial aesthetic fallback, Allosaurus.

Tentative takeaways:
- Layers in MS Paint are useful but not dependable
- I might just enjoy this foray into #art with limited implements
The rub is MS Paint may now have layers to ease workflow but AFAIK it can't save them so it's not like I can tarry for long in laying things out being at the mercy of, among other things, power outages.
Did you know MS Paint has layers? I didn't until a few months or so ago.
So today I picked up an abstract scribble I saved (as one does). Duplicated/reflected layers until the overlap suggested... some sort of ruminant? Then I cleaned it up with the charcoal brush just enough for visual interest.
Idle curiosity had me look into what the Inostrancev part of Inostrancevia means: "Foreigners" in Russian (see declension table on Wiktionary link).

Now, with the impression surnames were earned as nicknames by the populace early on, I wonder how insular a community has to be for such a sobriquet.
иностранец - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
en.wiktionary.org
Reposted by Renato Santos
A reminder that David Peters is a serial purveyor of nonsense, that he shouldn't be taken seriously, and that he is toxic and leading a highly negative campaign of constant criticism. ResearchGate have been alerted to this issue but have yet to take action. Please see... tetzoo.com/blog/2020/7/...
Why the World Has to Ignore David Peters and ReptileEvolution.com — Tetrapod Zoology
And so it is that I must once more write about the great eternal menace of our age: David Peters.
tetzoo.com
Explain your username

As a longtime fan of dragons & their inspirations, I checked DeviantArt in 2004 to see if "dragon" was in use. It was. So I used my knowledge of Latin & Greek by way of taxonomy to coin a word (I wasn't aware had already been coined).

While we're at it, relevant #art of mine.
Considering Portugal & Spain's territorial history as once part of Arabic-speaking states, it'd be difficult not use loan words, borrowing inshallah as "oxalá"/"ojalá" or names of places like the Algarve, where I live.

Then again, US-centric surveys do routinely put into question whether I'm white.