Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Paléoart: Synapsides. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Paléoart: Synapsides. Afficher tous les articles
Dimetrodon (D DesignHub)
Meet the dinosaur that wasn't. This is Dimetrodon, the Pioneer of Predation. Long before T. rex, this creature wrote the first rulebook for being a top land predator.
In the Permian Period, over 280 million years ago, Dimetrodon was a revolutionary. It was a synapsid—a member of the lineage that leads to mammals. Its innovations were groundbreaking:
The First Complex Teeth: Its name means "two measures of teeth." It had differentiated canines, incisors, and shearing teeth, a first for large land animals and the blueprint for every mammalian smile since.
The Advanced Posture: Its legs were positioned more underneath its body than the sprawling reptiles of its time, granting it more efficient, powerful movement.
The Thermal Edge: That iconic sail likely acted as a solar panel, allowing it to warm up fast and remain active when other animals were sluggish.
Dimetrodon didn't just live in its world; it invented the rules that would govern land ecosystems for millions of years. It's not a dinosaur—it's the architect of the world dinosaurs would inherit.
Dimetrodon (artbyjrc)
Species: Lepospondyl Diplocaulus (possibly magnicornis).
Fossil: Multiple individuals including full skeletons, amongst burrows plus unrelated shed teeth.
Age: Red Beds (Wichita Group), Early Permian.
Location: North Texas, USA.
Stats: Diplocaulus adult up to 1 metre in length.
Dimetrodon adult range between 2 and 3.5 metres in length, depending on species.
Extra info: Bonebed contains a large number of dismembered Diplocaulus skeletons and evidence of burrows. It is thought that the amphibians burrowed into the mudbed to aestivate during the long dry season. The only intact skeletons were eight juvenile specimens in one communal burrow, with all curled around so that tail tip met snout. Evidence of predation is indicated in three individuals at the top of the cluster, all with the anterior end of the snout missing. Shed teeth are attributable to the apex predator Dimetrodon. It is hypothesised that after locating burrows, the predator dug down so that it could grab the immobile prey by the snout. Additionally a juvenile Eryops was also located nearby.
Ophiacodons (NTamura)
Ophiacodon (qui signifie « dent de serpent ») est un genre éteint de synapsides appartenant à la famille des Ophiacodontidae qui vivaient du Carbonifère supérieur au Permien précoce en Amérique du Nord et en Europe. Le genre a été nommé avec son espèce type Ophiacodon mirus par le paléontologue Othniel Charles Marsh en 1878 et comprend actuellement cinq autres espèces. En tant que membre des Ophiacodontidae, Ophiacodon est l'un des synapsides les plus basaux et est proche de la ligne évolutionnaire menant aux mammifères.
Dimetrodon et Secodontosaurus (Julius Csotonyi)
Dimetrodon and Secodontosaurus in Permian North America.
by Julius Csotonyi
Edaphosaurus (Gabriel Ugueto)
First image is a excellent illustration by the very talented artist Gabriel Ugueto. Long ago on a foggy morning during the Early Permian Period, a pair of Edaphosaurus cruciger are slowly waking up to the sun's rise. Easily one of the more recognizable edaphosaurid synapsids, despite that this genus is often presented in the shadow cast by the much more famous Dimetrodon. Edaphosaurus was first named and described by Edward Drinker Cope in 1882, Edaphosaurus pogonias (type species). With E. pogonias included fives species are currently accepted, the other four are; E. cruciger (Cope, 1878) although Cope originally described it as a species of Dimetrodon, E. novomexicanus (Williston and Case, 1913), E. boanerges (Romer and Price, 1940), and E. colohistion (Berman, 1979). Edaphosaurus means "pavement lizard", derived from Greek edaphos ("ground"; also "pavement") and sauros ("lizard"). The naming is due to Edaphosaurus's dense clusters of teeth on both the upper and lower jaws. Now because of the other meanings for the Greek word edaphos, such as "soil, earth, ground, land, and base", it is often inaccurately translated as "earth lizard", "ground lizard", or "foundation lizard". The type species name pogonias (Greek) means "bearded", which refers to the enlarged inward sloping chin on the lower jaw.
Classified as Animalia, Chordata, Synapsida, Sphenacomorpha, and Edaphosauridae. Fossil remains of Edaphosaurus have been found in West Virginia, Ohio, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and originally Texas, USA. A few fragmentary remains that have been attributed to Edaphosaurus have been discovered in eastern Germany (central Europe) as well. It lived during the Late Carboniferous to Early Permian Periods, from the Pennsylvanian to Cisuralian Epochs (Gzhelian to Kungurian Ages 303.4 - 272.5 MYA). Depending on the species Edaphosaurus could reach 0.5 to 3.5 meters (1.6 to 11.5 feet) long and weigh over 300 kilograms (660 lbs). With Edaphosaurus cruciger being the largest species in size. The skull of Edaphosaurus is surprisingly small when compared to the size of the body, but unlike it's relative Dimetrodon, Edaphosaurus was at the opposite end being a herbivore specialising in low growing vegetation. They would have had a capacious gut, along with symbiotic bacteria to aid in breaking down cellulose and other indigestible plant material. The sail that is on their backs are near impossible not to talk about, it was basically a growth of thin tissue, perhaps only skin thin, supported by elongated neural spines.
They were shorter than the sail of Dimetrodon, but were heavier, and bear numerous small crossbars. Edaphosaurus along with it's close relatives evolved their tall dorsal sails independently of other sail-back animals, like members of the Sphenacodontidae family such as Dimetrodon and Secodontosaurus that lived at the same time, an unusual example of parallel evolution. The function for their sail is debated, one popular theory is thermoregulation that in lay terms means control of body temperature. This is not accepted by all however, studies done on these tall neural spines have now put doubt on this theory. Plausibly the sail for Edaphosaurus was used for display, this would include Edaphosaurus being able to recognize other individual Edaphosaurus from other genera sail-backed members of Eupelycosauria, Dimetrodon for example. They could possibly recognize different species of their own genus (each species having its own pattern/color set), and even signalling to attract a mate. It could also be possible that the sail may have grown more intense at certain times of the year, like the approach of the breeding season. Ultimately the precise function of the sail is still open for debate, it could have fulfilled more than just one purpose. Within popular culture Edaphosaurus appeared in a 2005 three-part nature documentary television miniseries titled Walking with Monsters: Life Before Dinosaurs. Second image is a skeletal mount of Edaphosaurus pogonias, displayed at the Field Museum of Natural History, located in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
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