Dynamognathus

Something a friend just pointed out that would make management of this species a bit unique: these “Panthers” probably lay clutches of eggs.

A black-and-white pencil sketch depicting a cross-section of the ground where a large Kerguelen “Panther” has been caught in a foothold trap. The trap is attached by a chain to two crossed pieces of metal rebar embedded in the ground, and surrounding these poles the ground has been worn down into a very shallow depression in what is called a “trap circle”. The large carnivore with its front paw held in the trap looks a bit like an earless big cat with large incisors, but is actually a carnivorous Tritylodont. A stick-figure person is standing just outside the trap circle to the left, looking at the “Panther”. As these traps are made to restrain rather than seriously injure caught animals, this individual may simply be relocated away from people and livestock.

Wildlife management is difficult, doubly so with large carnivores (partly because it’s also people management). No different when the “panther” in question is a 200+ pound non-mammalian Cynodont on a subantarctic island. A modern scene from my Kerguelen spec-evo project. #specevo #tritylodont

Kaimeran Perissodactyl Opportunities Brontotheriidae 1. 31 mya Harvest a. Entirely speculative, latest surviving genera are the late-Eocene Embolotherium (in Asia) and Megacerops + Protitanops (in North America) Equoidea 1. 31 mya Ha...

Perissodactyl Harvest Opportunities by @dynamoterror.bsky.social: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

A bit late but here are my flocking drawings from last Friday: Incisivosaurus, Haikouichthys, Denversaurus, and Chasmataspis #paleostream #paleoart #sciart

This past year was so epic in terms of Cenozoic discoveries

Scale chart of various Cenozoic animals described in 2025. Scale bar is 1 meter

Scale chart of various Cenozoic animals described in 2025. Scale bar is 1 meter

Scale chart of various Cenozoic animals described in 2025. Scale bar is 1 meter

Our belated #Cenozoicrewind2025 wrap up! As always thanks for following along, here's to a big 2026!

#paleoart #sciart #fossilfriday

Certified Little Guy™

HONSE

Horses of some familiar colors:

A photograph of a tiny, pale purple and white Field Pansy flower amongst smaller green plants and the tan, dry stems of bermudagrass. A close-up photo in a suburban lawn.

A close-up bird’s eye view of four Field Pansies growing next to each other in a suburban lawn, their pale purple flowers standing out amongst the tan and green foliage of other tiny forbs and grasses.

Something that brought me a smile recently, the Field Pansies in my yard have returned. In this little slice of suburbia, these native violets briefly appear and bloom each year as winter transitions to spring. #spring #flowers #botany #nativeplants

Oh wow

Indeed, these would be pretty prickly animals. They’re a mix of scales and osteoderms but I may experiment with other keratin bits.

This paper is an amazing overview of the population, and they’re fascinating!

A photograph of two pencil sketches on a piece of white paper, taken at a bit of a skewed angle. Both sketches are lateral-view depictions of armored herbivorous dinosaurs, with the sketch at the top of the photo depicting a small, slender, bipedal species while the sketch below it represents a massive, robust quadruped with elaborate horns. Both are fictional concepts for a speculative-evolution project focusing on an alternative natural history of the Kerguelen plateau.

How it started vs how it was when the French found it

Quick sketches of some thyreophorans for a WIP personal speculative-evolution project, focusing on the ecosystems of an un-sunken Kerguelen plateau. #specevo #dinosaurs

Gulf Coast canids: A wetland coyote ecotype shaped by red wolf introgression Morphology and behavior are fundamental components of ecology because phenotypic variation influences the distribution and abundance of species, interspecific interactions, and community assemblages.....

Excited to see these results published! For anyone who has been curious about what is going on with canids in the Gulf Coast, and what they are, this is an excellent and comprehensive assessment: esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Beautiful!

A new species of scrub-ox joins North America's Ovibovine diversity during the Pleistocene!

Formerly classified as a species of Euceratherium, it is now known as Speleotherium logani.

This is gorgeous!

The ontogeny of Smilodon fatalis- illustrating the unique life history of a saber-toothed cat's development.

A young chipmunk, its head slightly cocked to the side, poses on a moss-covered rock, bathed in the warm sunlight of late morning.

A sooty grouse, a wild bird reminiscent of a cross between a chicken and a dove, pauses briefly on a rock as it works its way up a hillside.

A young marmot stands on its back legs while grazing on the lush grass of an alpine meadow.

A pika caught mid-yawn, stretching its paw toward the camera and flashing its prominent front teeth.

More late summer gems from the North Cascades

A pika sits on a mossy rock.

Tighter crop of the same pika, focusing on its head.

An even tighter crop, focusing more on the pika's eye.

An extremely tight crop of the pika's eye, emphasizing their reflection of an early morning mountain scene.

"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?"

Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.

YouTube video by Keenan Taylor's Tales of Kaimere Year of the Horse Episode I: Natural History of Perissodactyls in Kaimere

An overview of perissodactyl natural history in the known world and beyond: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BeM...

The tiny sample size of extant rhinos and horses that we have today are extremely derived from the basic ungulate condition in their own ways, and it’s not like manes leave a correlate on bones so stuff like that is a huge untapped well of speculation in artistic depictions.

Tapirs still retain a pretty large rhinarium and are closer to rhinos than horses are, so it’s reasonable that Rhinocerotids and Equus convergently lost it. Only one tapir (T. terrestris) has a tiny mane, and some large bovids convergently have manes, so it’s hardly ancestral to perissodactyls.

A rough black-and-white pencil sketch of the early equine Merychippus in a running pose with its head held high. Its snout is drawn to resemble that of a deer rather than a modern horse, it has no mane, and it has a duiker-like tail. An oval-shaped bulge on its snout between the eye and the nostril hints at the deep pocket (preorbital fossae) in nearly all non-Equus equid skulls, still mysterious in function but potentially housing a unique sort of scent gland.

Quick sketch of everyone’s beloved Merychippus, though not as it’s often depicted. These and other early Equines were far-removed in phylogeny, morphology, and ecology from the genus Equus, and thus, why give it a mane or rhinarium-less snout? #YearoftheHorse #miocene #paleoart #sciart

🐎Protohippus gidleyi lived millions of years ago in Alabama!

This three-toed, ancient horse shows early adaptations to grasslands. Its worn teeth helped
grind plants, and its fossils tell the story of horse evolution in our state.

#aumnh #auburnuniversity #YearOfTheHorse #FossilFriday

EQUUS OVODOVI OMG

A selection of Pleistocene Perissodactyls:

Morphological assessment of the Common Barn Owl Tyto alba (Strigiformes: Tytonidae) supports three species | Zootaxa

Morphological assessment of the Common Barn Owl Tyto alba (Strigiformes: Tytonidae) supports three species: mapress.com/zt/article/v...