Thursday, September 4, 2014

Reunited: Pleistocene Texas

I actually forgot I made a lot of paintings featuring animals that have been individually featured on here for Prehistoric Animal of the Week.  Today we will be reuniting some mammals!  Remember Bison latifrons from last month? 


How about Neochoerus


Well if you read each of my posts about them you would have noticed that they actually coexisted with each other.  Nowadays, capybaras, known from tropical regions, and bison, known from dryer, cooler areas, wouldn't really seem to go together, but these two did thousands of years ago!  Here they are in the full painting.  There are also prehistoric muskox in the background, and a dinosaur and the giant prehistoric beaver, called Castoroides, in the foreground. 


If you go by these animals' modern relatives, the proportions in this painting are going to seem off.  Remember, however, these creatures were different!  The capybaras were man-sized (six feet), the bison had a seven-foot wide skull (including the horns), and the beaver was about eight feet long. 

This painting was commissioned to me for the Dallas Paleo Society's Occasional Papers and will be the cover for volume 11.


1 comment:

  1. This is an awesome work!
    Congratulations for the cover, it's more than well deserved.

    Love this piece! :D

    ReplyDelete