Notes:

Artist's description:

Almost needless to say maniraptor!Cutie Mark Crusaders are the same species as their siblings/counterparts, or at least closely related; Apple Bloom is a flightless eudromaeosaur, Sweetie Belle a caenagnathid oviraptorosaur, and Scootaloo a microraptorine.

An amusing thought crossed my mind while drawing this. There aren't supposed to be serious explanations behind the coloration of the characters – I just based them off the ones in the original show, after all – but I still found myself thinking that the bright red and yellow on Apple Bloom was very unusual for an obligate carnivore, as these feather colors require carotenoids, which are found in fruit, fish, and some arthropods but not usually in tetrapod flesh. My first thought was that she enjoyed eating fish, but then I remembered that the Apple family farms herbivorous animals (which would be Mesozoic dinosaurs in My Little Maniraptor), and that some carnivorous birds today feed on herbivore droppings to gain carotenoids… (Not suggesting that as a serious idea, but amusing all the same.)

Sweetie Belle having very underdeveloped secondary feathers is based on the lack of secondary feathers in young Similicaudipteryx.

Scootaloo, being a flying species, has proportionately larger wings than the other two, but her wings are still not large enough to sustain flight yet. Like the original Scootaloo, she uses them to propel her scooter instead. And yes, she rides her scooter perched on the handlebars. I don't even know if that's physically possible, but it's cool anyway. I do have to doubt the utility of that helmet; the ponies in the original show have rather flat faces (as do we), but a helmet like that wouldn't prevent a broken snout for a long-snouted maniraptor. But then it's not like all the objects the ponies in the original show use are well tailored to pony anatomy to begin with.