science illustration – Nix Illustration

Spectember 2023 #06: Some Big Reptiles

An anonymous request asked for a “large ankylosaur-like herbivorous notosuchian“:

A shaded sketch of a speculative ankylosaur-like animal related to modern crocodilians. It has a chunky body covered in interlocking armor plates, with a row of spikes down each side of its body and a longer pair of upward-pointing spikes on the bulbous tip of its tail. It has four squat legs, also armored, with hoof-like claws, and a short wide snout with large forward-facing nostrils.

Mitafosuchus pachysomatus is descended from Simosuchus-like notosuchians in Madagascar that survived through the K-T extinction.

Highly convergent with the now-extinct ankylosaurs, it’s a 5m long (~16’4″) squat tank-like herbivore with hoof-like claws, and a wide short snout used for grazing on low vegetation. Heavy interlocking osteoderm amor covers most of its body, protecting it against the big carnivorous crocodyliformes that also still survive in this version of Cenozoic Madagascar.

Another anon wanted to see a “giant warm blooded lizard”:

A shaded sketch of a speculative giant lizard descended from tegu. It has a small head with a slender snout, a crest on its head and a small pair of horns behind its eyes. Its neck is long and thick with a hanging fleshy dewlap, a chunky body with a sloping back, four legs in a semi-upright stance, and a long thick tail.

Atopohippus zestamenus is a descendant of invasive Argentine giant tegu lizards that became established on an island archipelago. At 2m tall (~6’6″) and around 6m long (~20′) it’s an example of island gigantism, and occupies a high-browsing-herbivore ecological niche similar to giant tortoises and prosauropods.

Its ancestors’ seasonal endothermy has become full endothermy in this species, partly due to young individuals having a very rapid growth rate and metabolism – their main defense against the predators on their island home (primarily carnivorous tegu-descendants and large birds of prey) is to simply get to a big body size as fast as they possibly can.

Spectember 2023 #05: Shiny Mammal

Someone who identified themself only as “Hanna” requested a “mammal that’s shiny and iridescent like some insects and spiders”:

A shaded sketch of a speculative semiaquatic hairy armadillo. It has a wide armor carapace with a green-blue-purple iridescent sheen, a pig-like snout, wide paddle-like hands and feet, and a short tail.

Lustrophractus hannae is a relative of modern hairy armadillos that has adapted for a semiaquatic lifestyle.

About 40cm long (~16″), its unusually shiny carapace originally evolved thanks to its ancestors’ burrowing habits. Much like golden moles and some snakes, these armadillos’ scutes and hairs developed microridges that reduced friction and repelled dirt particles, with the side effect of becoming strikingly iridescent – and, conveniently, also rather water repellent, enabling Lustrophractus’ lineage to take up aquatic omnivorous foraging habits.

The iridescence also serves a defensive function, using a bright flash of color to startle and confuse predators.

Spectember 2023 #04: Some Aukward Birds

An anonymous submitter asked for a “penguin/auk-like relative of Pelagornis“:

A shaded sketch of a speculative flightless seabird related to the extinct "pseudotooth" bird Pelagornis. It has a long slender beak with serrated tooth-like edges, a penguin-like body, flipper-like wings, large webbed feet, and a stumpy tail.

Odontopinguinus vomitus represents an unusal early branch of the pelagornithids that didn’t take up long-distance soaring, instead specializing for a pursuit diving lifestyle convergently similar to that of the contemporaneous early penguins, and the later auks and plotopterids.

About 1.2m tall (~4′), it has a more slender spear-like beak than its relatives, with forward-pointing pseudotooth serrations. Like other pelagornithids these “teeth” are fairly fragile, so it feeds primarily on soft-bodied fish and squid, pursuing them underwater with wing-propelled underwater “flight”.

Much like procellariiformes they’re also rather stinky birds, producing musky preen oil and projectile vomiting foul-smelling stomach contents at threats and rivals.

And another anon wanted to see a “big flightless marine duck”:

A shaded sketch of a speculative flightless marine duck. It has a goose-like beak with protruding comb-like structures at the sides (giving it the superficial appearance of having teeth), a long neck, a long loon-like body with vestigial folded wings, large cormorant-like webbed feet position far back, and a short tail.

Thalassonetta anambulatus is descended from the already mostly-flightless steamer ducks. At around 2m long (6’6″) it’s massive for a waterfowl, with vestigial wings and large webbed feet used to propel itself while diving.

With its rather elongated and heavy body and loon-like leg configuration it’s no longer able to walk on land – and it’s actually almost fully aquatic, only awkwardly hauling out into isolated island beaches to molt and breed.

It feeds mainly on molluscs, crustaceans, and other marine invertebrates, using the large lamellae in its bill to strain them out of soft seafloor sediments.

Spectember 2023 #03: Raptorial Isopod

Modzilla07 asked for a “eurypterid or anomalocarid-esque isopod”:

A shaded sketch of a speculative swimming predatory isopod. Its shaped similarly to an extinct sea scorpion with a streamlines segmented body that ends in a fin-like horizontal tail fan. It has short antennae, a large pair of spiny grabbing front appendages similar to an anomalocarid, large compound eyes on short thick stalks, and two pairs of its legs are modified into long paddle-like structures.

Agriopterus modzillaseptenorum is descended from scavenger-predator intertidal cirolanids. At about 10cm long (~4″) it’s a giant compared to most other isopods, but not nearly as big as some of the radiodonts and eurypterids it convergently resembles.

Adapted for a free-swimming lifestyle, its second pair of antennae have been modified into spiny raptorial appendages and its first two pairs of legs have become flat swimming paddles. It’s a voracious little predator, usually snatching small fast-moving prey from the water and raking up soft-bodied animals from the seafloor – but groups will sometimes opportunistically swarm on much larger dead, dying, or injured targets.

Spectember 2023 #02: Carnivorous Ungulates

An anonymous submitter asked for a “derived carnivorous, pack-hunting agriochoerid“:

A shaded sketch of a speculative predatory early ungulate. It has a cat-like body, long and low-slung with clawed feet and a long slender tail. Its head looks like a mix between a cat and a camel, with a fleshy cleft lip, forward-facing eyes, leaf-shaped ears, and a mouth full of sharp pointy teeth. It's depicted in two poses: on the left climbing up a tree trunk, and on the right standing and baring its fangs.

Felichoerus ochlos is fairly similar-looking to its herbivorous relatives, but this cat-sized agriochoerid comes from a lineage that initially specialized in eating fleshy fruits – and then shifted towards eating actual flesh.

With its long cat-like body, forward-facing eyes, clawed digits, and flexible limbs, it’s a capable tree climber. Groups of this animal practice cooperative hunting, with one member chasing arboreal prey down to the ground for the rest to mob.

And another anon wanted to see an “obligate carnivore bovine”:

(I see what you did there. A literal carnotaurus!)

A shaded sketch of a speculative predatory bovine. It has a muscular body with humped shoulders and cloven hoofed feet, a thick neck, and a large cow-like head. Two individuals are depicted, a standing long-horned bull and a sitting short-horned cow. The cow has a chunk missing from one ear and has her mouth open to display her sharp teeth.

The bulltcher (Carnovitulus grassator) is a sheep-sized descendant of small buffalo that gradually took up more and more omnivorous diets, eventually becoming somewhat entelodont-like opportunists. This particular species has shifted over into hypercarnivory, occupying a predator niche in an ecosystem lacking other types of carnivorous mammal.

Like their ancestors they still lack upper front teeth, and instead have modified their dental pad into an almost beak-like tough keratinized structure that their sharp lower teeth can slice and self-sharpen against.

These animals live in small matriarchal herds, with bulls usually hanging around on the edges of the group to protect from threats. Bulls have larger backwards-pointing horns, used to compete with each other for mates – but the size of these structures on their skulls results in them having slightly less powerful jaw muscles than cows.

Herds hunt cooperatively, pursuing and harassing larger prey until it can be brought down and torn apart.

Spectember 2023 #01: Kiwi Alvarezsaur

It’s #Spectember time again!

I’m still trying to work through that big pile of speculative evolution concepts from a few years ago, so I’m hoping to make this month sort of a “lightning round” to finally clear out the backlog.

(I’m not going to set a definite posting schedule this year because things are pretty chaotic right now. But I’ll try to fit in as many as I can!)

So let’s start off with a concept from an anonymous submitter, who requested a “kiwi/sengi niche alverezsaur”:

A shaded sketch of a speculative dinosaur. It has a long narrow snout, small eyes, and whiskery facial feathers like a kiwi bird, a round fuzzy body, short chunky arms with large hooked thumb claws, long slender legs, and a long tail with a tufted fan at the tip.

Khamartaia dolabella is similar in size and build to Shuvuuia, about 1m in length (3’3″), with slender legs and stumpy arms with massive thumb claws. Unlike its close relatives, however, it has small eyes and fairly poor vision, relying more on its other senses to forage around during the darkness of night.

It has an acute sense of smell, and its long narrow snout is full of highly touch-sensitive nerves, allowing it to probe around for invertebrate prey in soil, undergrowth, and cracks and crevices. Its chunky thumb claws are used to dig up burrows and to tear through bark to access deeper insect nests.

It mainly relies on its long legs to sprint away from threats, although with its poor eyesight these escapes are often rather ungainly.

Hupehsuchus

Hupehsuchians were small marine reptiles closely related to ichthyosaurs, known only from the Early Triassic of southwestern China about 249-247 million years ago. They had toothless snouts, streamlined bodies, paddle-like limbs, and long flattened tails, along with a unique pattern of armor along their backs made up of overlapping layers of bony osteoderms.

Hupehsuchus nanchangensis was a mid-sized member of the group, about 1m long (3’3″). Newly-discovered fossils of its skull show that its long flattened snout had a distinctive gap between the bones (similar to the platypus-like snout seen in its relative Eretmorhipis) with an overall shape surprisingly convergent with that of modern baleen whales – suggesting that this hupehsuchian may have been a similar sort of filter-feeder.

A diagram comparing Hupehsuchus' skull to that of a modern baleen whale. — *Hupehsuchus skull compared to a modern minke whale*
From fig 2 & fig 3 of Fang et al (2023). First filter feeding in the Early Triassic: cranial morphological convergence between *Hupehsuchus* and baleen whales. *BMC Ecol Evo* 23, 36. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-023-02143-9

Grooves in the bones along the outer edges of its upper jaws may be evidence of filtering structures similar to baleen, although with no soft-tissue preservation we don’t know exactly what this would have looked like. Its slender flexible lower jaws probably also supported a large expandable throat pouch, allowing it to filter plankton out of larger volumes of water.

Perucetus

While last week’s Tutcetus was the smallest known basilosaurid whale, another recently-announced member of that group was almost the complete opposite.

Perucetus colossus was a chonker. An absolute unit of a whale.

Living during the Eocene (~38 million years ago) in shallow marine waters covering what is now the coast of Peru, this ancient whale is known from several vertebrae, ribs, and parts of its pelvis. As a result its full size is uncertain, but based on the proportions of other basilosaurids it was probably somewhere around 17-20m long (~56′-66′) – similar in length to the larger specimens of Basilosaurus.

However, it had much thicker denser bones, even more so than those of its close relative Antaecetus, suggesting that its full body mass was much higher than the rather slender Basilosaurus – and possibly heavier than even modern blue whales despite being shorter in overall length.

Perucetus’ thickened vertebrae were also fairly inflexible in most directions, indicating it was a sirenian-like slow swimmer with limited maneuverability – but it did have a surprisingly good ability to bend its body downwards. Without skull material it’s unclear what its diet was like, but it may have been a suction-feeder hoovering up seafloor prey like modern grey whales or walruses.

I’ve reconstructed it here with a speculative bristly fleshy downturned snout inspired by the weird skull of Makaracetus, an earlier whale that may have also been a walrus-like bottom-feeder.

Tutcetus

Tutcetus rayanensis was a whale that lived in warm shallow tropical seas covering what is now Egypt during the Eocene, about 41 million years ago.

It was an early member of the “basilosaurids“, a grouping made up of multiple early cetacean lineages (an “evolutionary grade“) representing some of the first fully aquatic forms. Like other members of this group it probably would have had a rather long and slender body shape – but unlike most of its relatives Tutcetus was comparatively tiny, estimated to only have been around 2.5m long (~8’2″).

The fusion of the skull bones in the one known fossil specimen indicate it was almost fully grown at the time of its death, and the pattern of tooth replacement suggests this small basilosaurid species matured very rapidly – a sort of “live fast, die young” life strategy.

Tutcetus’ small size and early demise also inspired its genus name, with “Tut” referencing the teenage Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

Crystal Palace Field Trip Part 3: Walking With Victorian Beasts

[Previously: the Jurassic and Cretaceous]

The final section of the Crystal Palace Dinosaur trail brings us to the Cenozoic, and a selection of ancient mammals.

A photograph of the Crystal Palace palaeotheres, depicted as tapir-like animals. A smaller one on the left is in a sitting pose, while a larger one on the right is in a walking pose. — Image from 2009 by Loz Pycock (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Originally represented by three statues, there are two surviving originals of the Eocene-aged palaeotheres depicting Plagiolophus minor (the smaller sitting one) and Palaeotherium medium (the larger standing one).

The sitting palaeothere unfortunately lost its head sometime in the late 20^th century, and the image above shows it with a modern fiberglass replacement. Then around 2014/2015 the new head was knocked off again, and has not yet been reattached – partly due to a recent discovery that it wasn’t actually accurate to the sculpture’s original design. Instead there are plans to eventually restore it with a much more faithful head.

These early odd-toed ungulates were already known from near-complete skeletons in the 1850s, and are depicted here as tapir-like animals with short trunks based on the scientific opinion of the time. We now think their heads would have looked more horse-like, without trunks, but otherwise they’re not too far off modern reconstructions.

There was also something exciting nearby:

A photograph of the restored Crystal Palace Palaeotherium magnum statue. It's a chunky animal with a trunked tapir-like head, wrinkly skin, and a rhino-like body.

The recently-recreated Palaeotherium magnum!

This sculpture went missing sometime after the 1950s, and its existence was almost completely forgotten until archive images of it were discovered a few years ago. Funds were raised to create a replica as accurate to the original as possible, and in summer 2023 (just a month before the date of my visit) this larger palaeothere species finally rejoined its companions in the park.

Compared to the other palaeotheres this one is weird, though. Much chonkier, wrinkly, and with big eyes and an almost cartoonish tubular trunk. It seems to have taken a lot of anatomical inspiration from animals like rhinos and elephants, since in the mid-1800s odd-toed ungulates were grouped together with “pachyderms“.

An illustration comparing the Crystal Palace depiction of Palaeotherium magnum with a modern interpretation. The retro version is a chunky animal with a trunked tapir-like head and rhino-like body. The modern version is more horse-like, with slender legs and three-toed hoofed feet.