Oreosaurs

So-called not because they live in mountains, but because their semicircular serrated mandibles and black-and-white coloring remind me of Oreo cookies. (I tried the oreodont joke on Emile a while back, and ~Khylov just tried it on me the other day. Nobody ever laughs.) The design is based on a sewing tool that caught my eye, something for marking patterns onto fabric. It’s very simple, just a serrated wheel mounted on a little plastic handle, but I found the shape quite evocative, and the wheel reminiscent of Helicoprion jaws.

I do picture these creatures as part of the Counterdino ecosystem, but I’m embarrassed to admit that I have no idea from whom they evolved or what kind of decadent lifestyle they lead, not even whether they are herbivores or carnivores. They could be derived sauropods, hadrosaurs, or even spinosaurs. Perhaps they aren’t dinosaurs at all--by the time I got to the second one, they were looking more and more aquatic to me (maybe because of the positioning of the eyes?), and I broadened their list of potential ancestors to include crocodilians, phytosaurs, and nothosaurs. Perhaps they are even two unrelated creatures converging on a similar body design.