I like drawing dinosaurs

These are 6 drawings I made for the Naturalis biodiversity center: Some event killed at least 5 Triceratops together. We have that fossil and it's quite an odd one: the bones are well preserved but completely shuffled. I made these drawings to illustrate how that fossil might've come to be. I depicted a possible cause of death in a scenario open to interpretation where they could have drowned or gotten stuck.

We're thinking that maybe these Triceratops could have been struck by lightning and that's how we got so many, of different ages, in a single "grave". So I set out to depict that strike as well. All in all we're not quite sure what killed them, just what happened after:

After death the bodies were mostly buried or inaccessible to scavengers, leaving the bones well preserved. A Shampsosaurus is also depicted in this image, as fossil remains of this animal have been found at the digsite as well.

Overtime the meaty material rotted away.

A crevasse splay, a natural dam break of sorts, has smashed apart and scattered the remains. This happened twice, once from each side of the bones' location.

The bones ended up buried by the mud and debris from the crevasse splay, mixed together for over 66 million years before being found. The fossils will be shown at the Naturalis museum in Leiden where they are now being prepared.
I hope you enjoyed this little journey back in time!