Arctic raptor

This is a digital piece of paleoart depicting an artic raptor. This piece is meant to challenge our preconception of dinosaurs. We always imagine them in warm, tropical, desert climates, but new discoveries show that they existed in arctic climates as well. Which really isn’t all that surprising, because we now know that dinosaurs were more birdlike than reptilelike: with feathers and down, and partially warmblooded. If birds can exist in the coldest climates on earth today (like Penguins in the Antartic) then dinosaurs could have existed in colder climates as well.

The depicted dinosaur is directly inspired by our modern understanding of a Utahraptor, although Utahraptors only existed in warm climates. Even though an arctic raptor species hasn’t been discovered yet, I thought it would be a good idea to depict such an iconic dinosaur in a snowy landscape exactly to get across the point.