Lycaenops: Beast of the Week

 This week we will be checking out a prehistoric creature that bears a striking resemblance to some modern-day animals.  Let's check out Lycaenops!

Watercolor life reconstruction of two Lycaenops angusticeps by Christopher DiPiazza.

Lycaenops was a meat-eating synapsid (wide group of animals that includes mammals) that lived in what is now South Africa during the Permian era, between 271 and 251 million years ago.  The genus name translates to "Wolf Face" because of it's relatively long snout and prominent canine-like fangs, which caused this creature to superficially resemble wolves, and other modern canids despite not being closely related.  From snout to tail, Lycaenops measured about three feet long, or a little under one meter.  There are several species within the genus, Lycaenops, which accounts for the relatively wide range of time in which this genus existed.

Lycaenops was part of a widely successful group of vertebrates that lived during the Permian, before the first dinosaurs, that are casually referred to as "mammal-like reptiles" even though they weren't mammals...and they weren't really true reptiles either.  They were somewhere in between and no living members exist today, which makes it even more difficult to visualize what they would have been like when alive.  Within this extremely expansive group, Lycaenops, was specifically a member of the gorgonopsid family.  These meat-eating synapsids all long, rectangular skulls with very long, curved fangs on the top and bottom jaws, in the same place that canines would be on some mammals, like dogs, bears, and cats.  This is an amazing example of convergent evolution, since these gorgonopsids were not directly related to any of these carnivorous mammals.  

Lycaenops ornatus skeletal mount on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Lycaenops probably specialized in hunting smaller prey.  The Permian was home to no shortage of small reptiles, amphibians, and other synapsids, so it is likely Lycaenops had a pretty expansive menu to choose from.  It's eye sockets are relatively large so it probably had decent vision, and its limbs were also pretty long in proportion to its body, which it appears to have carried under its body more so than many other reptiles and synapsids at the time, which had more sprawling postures, like today's lizards and crocodilians.  This combination of features probably gave Lycaenops its edge when pursuing meals when it was alive.  

It is important to keep in mind that Lycaenops lived right up to the very end of the Permian era, which is marked by a massive global extinction event, more destructive than the one that wiped out most of the dinosaurs millions of years later.  It was this extinction that actually leveled the playing field and allowed the dinosaurs to even evolve in the first place.  Because of this it is worth noting that Lycaenops and its relatives were extremely successful animals, and likely would have kept flourishing if it wasn't for that catastrophic event.  

References

Broom 1925 : On some carnivorous therapsids. Records of the Albany Museum, vol. 3, n. 4, p. 309–326.

Gebauer, E.V.I. (2007). Phylogeny and evolution of the Gorgonopsia with a special reference to the skull and skeleton of GPIT/RE/7113 ('Aelurognathus?' parringtoni(Ph.D. thesis). Tübingen: Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen. pp. 1–316.