Scientific Illustration

lostbeasts:

Eusmilus, a nimravid (false sabretooth) from the Oligocene, had the weirdest skull ever…

(Restoration by Mauricio Anton.)

lostbeasts:

Pachyrukhos.
This was about as close as you can get to a rabbit without actually being one. It had long hind legs and feet, suggesting that it had a hopping method of locomotion. The skull is short with teeth adapted for feeding on nuts and tough plant material. It had large eyes and an ear structure that suggests it had long ears in life.

lostbeasts:

(drawing by ~batworker)

Chalicotherium.
Seeing as that other Chalicotherium picture got so much interest!! These are some of my favourite prehistoric animals, on account of just how weird they were.

They were odd-toed ungulates, with long clawed forelimbs and stouter hindlimbs, that lived during the Late Oligocene to Lower (early) Pliocene. They would have used their arms to pull down vegetation, which would have been processed by gum pads (in place of upper incisors) and low-crowned molars. Evidence of their hand bones suggest that they walked on their knuckles, like a gorilla.

There have been strange animal sightings in Africa, of creatures dubbed “Nandi bears”, that fit the description of Chalicotheres. Though it’s improbable that they are still living in Africa today, these reports are still interesting!

museumofnaturalhistory:

Squalodon Orca of the Oligocene 2012 (by Traumador)

(via )

kororaa:

Anthropornis is a genus of giant penguin that lived 37-45 million years ago, during the Late Eocene and the earliest part of the Oligocene. It reached 1.7 m (5 ft 7 in) in height and 90 kg (200 lb) in weight. Fossils of it have been found on Seymour Island off the coast of Antarctica and in New Zealand. By comparison, the largest modern penguin species, the Emperor Penguin, is just 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in) tall.

The type species, Anthropornis nordenskjoldi, had a bent joint in the wing, probably a carryover from flying ancestors.

I just noticed how unfortunately named this guy is. It sounds like a furry hentai site.

(via lostbeasts)

lostbeasts:

Arsinoitherium
source

lostbeasts:

Mastodon, by Charles R. Knight

lostbeasts:

A pair of Kairuku and Waipatia

Kairuku was a genus of huge penguins from the Oligocene epoch, estimated to have been around 5 feet tall. Waipatia was a whale.

art by Chris Gaskin

lostbeasts:

Meiolania

Prehistoric totoises that survived into the Holocene from the Oligocene- becoming extinct only around 2,000 years ago! They were around 8.2 feet in length.

dailyfossil:

Obdurodon

Skull on display at the American Museum of Natural History, NYC

Reconstruction by Anne Musser

When: Late Oligocene to Miocene (~25 to 12 Million years ago)

Where: Australia

What: Obdurodon is a fossil platypus, as is fairly obvious from a look at its skull. Though upon closer inspection there are some very important differences; Obdurodon had a larger bill than the living platypus and retained teeth as an adult. Modern adult platypus are toothless, shedding all their teeth as juveniles. These teeth are important as they help us place monotremes (platypus and the echidna are the modern representatives) into the mammal family tree. It is now the consensus that marsupials and placentals are more closely related to one another than either is to the monotremes, but there are a great deal of extinct groups of mammals that may fall between therians and the monotremes - such as the multituberculates. Fossils such as Obdurodon which are most assuredly related to modern monotremes, but preserve more primitive features, are critically important for this phylogenetic issue. So then why is it still an issue? All we have of Obdurodon is a skull, despite the full body reconstruction above, and while there are fossils of even older monotremes they are even more scrappy - just isolated teeth or jaw fragments (that still enjoy full body reconstructions…).  

How did Obdurodon live compared to the modern platypus? Well, the living form uses its bill in the water to help it sense prey, and as Obdurodon had an even larger bill, it seem likely it also was aquatic, though without a postcranial skeleton it is unknown if it had the same swimming and digging adaptions seen in its extant relatives.