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Prehistoric Griffin

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Description

Done for :iconmyths-and-legends:'s Griffin Contest! The point of the contest was to design a griffin made of any avian or feline, so I decided to make a prehistoric themed griffin. Since birds are thought to be just modern day versions of theropods, I thought that I would choose a feathered dinosaur (a Yutyrannus in this case) for the bird half and a saber toothed cat for the feline half. This griffin was designed to fit into the same world as my Sun Griffin does, so the history doesn't exactly match up to our world's history.

Prehistoric Griffin:
  • 2 meters (6.6 feet) tall
  • 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) long
  • 4 meter (13 foot) wingspan
  • Blue, black & brown, Helps camouflage at night
  • Rosetted dots are shiny, helps break up silhouette in the dark 

About the Prehistoric Griffin:
When the world was young and a race of ancient beings decided to use it to make life, one of the final creatures that was made was the griffin, which was made from the remnants of an enormous bird-like creature and a mammal which was being saved for a later date. Or at least that's what any griffin would tell you if you asked them how they came to be. Whether this is true or not is of course unknown, but what is known is that all modern day griffins are descendants from the Prehistoric Griffin. It was a nocturnal creature that dwelt in jungles and was one of the most adapt predator of its kind. It had an extra pair of appendages which were the prototype for wings, they were much too small for flight but could be used to cling on to large prey, climbing and as their wings evolved to become bigger, gliding and eventually flight.

When hunting they often would hide among the foliage and puff out their feathers and the crest on their heads in order to make them appear as leaves, and their fur possessed spots which gave off a shine which mimicked leaves so that their victims would not be able to make out their silhouettes so easily and-combined with their dark coloration-helped them to camouflage in the night. Its back legs were extremely powerful and helped it to jump great distances for pouncing and eventual flight. However, the rule that a griffin will stop growing once its feline part would stop growing still applied to this ancient griffin, so it only grew to be only slightly larger than the size of a saber toothed cat rather than the size of Yutyrannus. Also, despite having great speed it had low endurance and could only sprint short distances before tiring. This caused them to need to live in groups in order to catch prey, which is thought to be the reason why many griffins today are thought to live in small colonies.       

What happened to this beast is unknown, most agree that it simply adapted into different environments to produce the griffins we know today, but whether this happened naturally through evolution or through the DNA manipulation of a higher power is unknown. The closest we have to a Prehistoric Griffin is the Night Sky Griffin, which has the same dark coloration as its ancestor.   

Done Using Prismacolor Pencils
Image size
3263x2225px 4.54 MB
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Comments5
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chaosqueen122's avatar
Wow awesome concept :D I love how you did the feathers.