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I think that many of the people who do depictions of prehistoric creatures lack imagination so they do the bare minimum they possibly could to "imagine" the skeleton as a living creature. Imagination is absolutely required to get a good depiction of them that looks lifelike and not creepy and unrealistic.
I mean if i had never seen a hippo before i would argue that the artists depiction looks more realistic than the actual hippo does. Theyre freaky cartoonish looking things that don't really loon like any other animals, certainly not one of the most dangerous animals in existence.
Any which way they go with it would be a guess based on limited information. They're most likely going to be wrong, and if they were exactly right, we wouldn't know it.
Honestly they should probably do like 2-3 potential pictures side by side so readers are aware of the uncertainty.
That's a good idea, have several different interpretations.
Of course it'll be wrong, my point is to try making it look more like a living thing than a living skeleton. When comparing skin wrapped designs to living creatures (even mythical ones) they just look wrong. Most creatures don't look shrink wrapped. Really imagining what prehistoric animals is more art than science, you use science to try and know roughly what they looked like but that'll only get you so far, you need to use imagination or creativity.
I mean we can create depictions of mythical animals that have never lived and will never live, why not use some of that skill to try and depict prehistoric creatures in a way that's more life-like, because the shrink wrap technique isn't more accurate, it's lazy, not believable, and also aesthetically unappealing.
Shrink wrap was the most accurate at the time, especially accounting for reptiles, which were the original inspiration for said technique.
And since most soft tissue doesn't fossilize, they were doing the best they could with the tools they had.
And while they were often wrong, I would like to see you try to guess what the animals looked like, based on skull alone, and compare your accuracy against the people you're calling lazy, probably from the comfort of your own toilet.