Feigning Cats and Dogs

After a two-month hiatus, here are some recent ProCreate drawings. The earliest canids and felids didn't emerge till 40 and 25 million years ago, respectively. They were preceded by, and in some cases lived alongside, unrelated, now-extinct mammal groups with similar adaptations. In the Paleocene (66-56 MYA), there were the mesonychids -- ironically cousins of the ungulates, or hoofed mammals.

Ankalagon is one of the oldest and largest known mesonychids, hailing from mid-Paleocene New Mexico. Named after a vicious dragon from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion (the prequel to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), I based my drawing of this beast on the more complete Synoplotherium and on a melanistic leopard (albeit with different spots and as nod to the fact that Tolkien's dragon was black).

Later in the Paleocene came the oxyaenids, a more cat-like group of predators. Patriofelis was a leopard-sized member of this family from the Late Eocene of Wyoming and Oregon. This digital painting is a colored version on a much earlier 24" x 18" sketch, with markings and coloring based loosely on lions, thylacines, and red pandas (the later of which, like Patriofelis, is arboreal).

The dog-like hyaenodonts emerged around the same time as the oxyaenids, and for a long-time were grouped together with them in a nebulous group called the Creodonts. Unlike the oxyaenids, these non-hyena relative survived past the Eocene extinction (c. 34 MYA) and as late the end of the Miocene (about 5 MYA). Hyaenodon is the group's namesake and best-known member. My sketch and subsequent painting are based on Hyaenodon horridus, a wolf-sized species from the Early Oligocene of North America. I based its coloration on the tiger-like coat of  some mastiffs, which Hyaenodon have an impressive bite force.

Cretaceous-Paleocene Cartography

To help the reader appreciate the prehistoric world (and to make sure that I've chosen too many species from North America), each chapter of my book will open with a mollewide (oblong) world map, with the featured species numbered. My main source are Dr. Ron Blakey's paleomaps, which can be found at www2.nau.edu/rcb7/RCB.html. Here are the first five:

1) Mid-Cretaceous 

(Cenomanian to mid-Turonian epochs, 100-90 MYA)

2) Early Late Cretaceous

(mid-Turonian to Campanian epochs, 89-81 MYA)

3) Middle Late Cretaceous

(early to late Campanian epoch, 80-73 MYA)

4) Latest Cretaceous

(Maastrichtian epoch, 72-66 MYA)

5) Paleocene epoch (65-56 MYA)

I won't reveal which species each number denotes, since they are subject to change as I go through each chapter. I will admit, however, that deliberately chose a certain color for each map's continents (or in the case of the second map, its oceans): 

Map 1 is a light, dull green, alluding to our hazy understanding of its creatures, at least up until the mid-1990s. 

Map 2 is dominated by bright blue oceans, since all but one of the chapter's featured species lived in or near the ocean. 

Map 3 is a deep green, given the overwhelming number of dinosaurs and other species known from the Campanian (and as a contrast to Map 1).

Map 4 is a dark gray, depicting a scorched Earth during the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous. The red blotch in India represents the Deccan Traps, while the red ring in the Gulf of Mexico is the Chicxulub crater, where the fatal meteor (or was it an asteroid?) struck around 66 million years ago.

Map 5 is bright green, since the planet was a hothouse jungle during the Paleocene.

Elephant Ancestors

More book sketches. This time, from the iPad:

Phosphatherium

Phiomia

Gomphotherium

Procreating

As an early birthday present, my parents very generously got me a new iPad and digital stylus. I was recently convinced that to make my paleo-art marketable, I would need to transition into digital illustration, so I purchased the program Procreate, which I have been playing with for the past few weeks. I've been working largely on mock-ups for a book that I have been working on for a year. Naturally, the topic of this book will be dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, but I will keep the format and details of it mum for now. Enjoy!

Icebergs and Ichthyosaurs

 Xiphactinus

Trunks, Tusks, and Talons

Lately, I've taken a break from Mesozoic fauna to work on a large project focusing on the past 100 million years. Therefore, many of my recent drawings have focused on Cenozoic creatures, specifically proboscideans (elephants, mammoths, mastodons, and their close relatives) and South American creatures from the mid-Miocene.

 

Phosphatherium 

(55 million year old proboscidean from Morocco)

 Phiomia  

(35 million year old proboscidean from Egypt)

 Jousting bull Gomphotherium, draft 1

(based on Gomphotherium productum,

a 13 million year old species from New Mexico) 

 Theosodon family (draft 1)

A native South American mammal related to the later, better-known Macrauchenia (hence why the necks are too long).

 Theosodon family (draft 2)

 Sitting individual's neck is still too long.

 Theosodon family (draft 2, colored)

Markings based mainly on tapirs (including the horizontal stripes on the juvenile), but colors inspired by the maned wolf. 

Sketch of Kelenken, one of the largest known phorusrhacids, or "terror birds". The head alone is over 2 ft (60 cm) long!

 Digital painting of Kelenken (in progress)

The Natural History Museum, Part 5: The Recently Extinct

 The dodo, then and now

 The great auk

 Great moa skeleton

 Moa reconstruction

 Steller's sea cow (front)

 Steller's sea cow (side)

The Natural History Museum, Part 4: The Rise of Mammals

Mesonyx

 Andrewsarchus skull (nearly 3 feet long!)

 Arsinoitherium

 Clockwise: Deinotherium skull, Moeritherium model, Phiomia skull, and Gomphotherium skull. 

(Chronological order: Moeritherium, Phiomia, Deinotherium, Gomphotherium)

 Clockwise: Moropus skeleton, Megacerops skull, Hyracotherium model.

(Chronological order: Hyracotherium, Megacerops, Moropus)

 Paleoparadoxia (front)

Paleoparadoxia (side)