Pre-Spec Weirdness

These drawings are something I bet not a lot of people have seen, at least in totality. Before the Speculative Dinosaur Project team was put together I had this idea for a fun little book called The Dinosaurs of the Ice Age, which would feature an alternate Earth where dinosaurs had survived and continued to evolve throughout the Cenozoic. As the name implies, it would have showcased the megafauna of the last ice age.

These weirdo dinosaurs almost all got axed at the beginning of Spec because they were just not that realistic or well thought out. The owlosaurs relied on the assumption of a protobeak and the wadersaurs didn't make much sense when neornithes was around. I honestly didn't even know knuckle-walking was impossible for therizinosaurs back then. The climbing oviraptorid actually made it in the form of carpos, but the aye-aye raptor turned from speculation to reality when Scansoriopteryx was found. Nature knows how to throw curveballs.