Prehistoric Showdown: Dimetrodon vs Eyrops!

Описание: Round 1: Bite!

#Eryops “Drawn-out face” megacephalus “mega head” (Cope, 1877) reached nearly 10’ long and over 400 lbs. Its 2’ skull was loaded with sharp teeth (think giant, angry frog head) and had teeth in the palate that helped to hold slippery prey. It lived in water most of its life but had the musculature to come ashore and wreak some havoc. It was a giant for its day. I like to think sometimes they just wanted a change of diet. Fish, fish, fish, amphibians. Why not some synapsid or dicynodont/therapsid every now and then?

#Dimetrodon “two measures of tooth” (Cope, 1877, man that guy got around!) lived alongside Eryops. Equal to or greater than Eryops in size (some Dimetrodon reached over 13’ in length and nearly 600 lbs!) it would have been a threat to a lone Eryops with its powerful bite full of flesh-separating teeth. A battle between the two taxa would have been most epic, with the two low-slung predators, each with their own strengths, reasonably matched.

Eryops is a #temnospondyl that lived in the #Permian from 300-280 mya in #Texas and New Mexico. Dimetrodon is a #sphenacodontid #synapsid that lived at the same time and place.

Eryops limbs are well-developed and powerful, check out its massive shoulder blades (!), suggesting it spent quite a bit of time on land itself rather than simply lounging in the water. I love its hands and feet, it has the primitive condition of 5 fingers and 5 toes. Once the Hox gene settled on 5, that became the vertebrate norm.

Being a fan of vertebrae, I enjoy its tall(ish) neural spines, it gave it some muscle attachment and perhaps a nice, thick ridge to have had some kind of display?

This “meerkat-ing” view is courtesy of getting low at the Denver Musuem of Nature and Science.

#FossilCrates