Christmas is all well and good, but it doesn't half take up a lot of time, which can be a bugger if you're already busy with what seems like 100 other things. With this in mind, I won't dawdle and will simply wish everyone best wishes for the Christmas and New Year holidays, and direct you to the hastily-created image above. Inspired by a set of starlings noted outside our kitchen window a few weeks ago, it depicts four
Darwinopterus modularis huddling together for warmth, with puffed-up pycnofibres, on a snowy tree branch. Did
Darwinopterus ever see snow? Perhaps: the
Darwinopterus-yielding
Tiaojishan Formation seems to have been in a warm temperate biome, so the odd excursion into temperatures conducive to snow may not be impossible. I have a post planned on more definitively cold-weather Mesozoic animals, and a more developed painting to go with it, but that will have to wait a bit. Happy holidays all!
