Pig Footed Bandicoot

I tested the welder last night and it still works that is good.

Art

put another coat of silicone on the sphinx

Animal

The pig footed bandicoot (Chaeropus ecaudatus) is in my opinion the most under appreciated of the recently extinct mammals. It was a small herbivorous marsupial with a long snout, a bulky body and extremely tiny fragile legs with hooves. It was about the size of a kitten. Recently they seem to have gotten their first cryptozoologist when someone thought they heard their mating call in an AC/DC video.

photo of stuffed specimen's odd feet

Sloan's Urania

We have a lot of packing to do. I'm also going to probably have to give up a lot of the found objects I've gathered in the studio. Hopefully I will find some people that could use boxes of high quality garbage.

Art

still carving the rabbit

Hopefully bisque firing the rabbit and soldier fly

Animal

Sloan's Urania (Urania sloanus) was a day flying moth with interference based colors similar in appearance to the Lolonandriana I mentioned a while ago. It was native to Jamaica and has not been seen since 1895. It is thought that it was wiped out as the Jamaican low land forests were cleared for farm land. Currently only one preserved specimen of the moth exists in the Peale collection at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. It was named after the Muse Urania that specialized in astronomy and astrology.

Dunkleosteus

Sadly the catfish does not seem to have turned out.

Art

paint the cricket

Animal

Drawing by Frederik Spindler

When I worked at Taylor Studios the company that made museum exhibits, they kind of had a prehistoric totem animal, it was on everything. That animal was the Dunkleosteus, a giant Devonian fish about the size of a school bus. It is notable for having the strongest jaw strength of any animal and eating funny looking sharks. There was a large mural of it in the hall, and a picture of one they had sculpted on the truck. It was in the brochure and on the website. They had a skull in the office and molds in back. I have personally cleaned lugged and organized on a shelf their silicone dunkleosteus love. I'm not sure why the obsession but Taylor studios really likes the Dunkleosteus I really think more companies need an inexplicable prehistoric totem animal.

Devil Toad

Studying for the Network +

Art

glaze the rest of the cory cat

begin assembly on the cricket

Animal

The devil toad (Beelzebufo ampinga) was a giant toad that existed durning the Cretaceous Period in what is now Madagascar. It was about 16 inches long and was thought to have weighed over 10lbs and is thought to have been the largest frog that has existed. It's closest living relatives are the horned frogs such as the Pacman frog (Ceratophry cranwelli). It is speculated that they were terrestrial and like their living relatives quite aggressive.

Synthetoceras tricornatus

It looks like I will be taking my network + on 6/22. 

After the exotic feline rescue center we went to Mammoth Cave and Crystal Onyx cave. I felt very rushed through Mammoth cave, did see a cute grey bat though. Crystal Onyx cave while smaller was very impressive and had a lot of formations. It also was a prehistoric burial ground though the bodies were not in an accessible area. The tour guide was pleasantly snarky and seemed to very interested in geology (and was somewhat put out that we were not particularly knowledgeable on the subject).

Art

goal for the week 7hrs

make clay

work on the figure with the anubis mask

Animal

drawing by Arthur Weasley

Synthetoceras tricornatus was an artiodactyl (relative of camels) that inhabited North America during the Miocene. The males had a large "Y"shaped horn as well as enlarged canines. These were probably used in territorial disputes. It is thought that the horns may have been covered in tough skin.

Twin head-tailed monster

Animal 

Photo by fossilmike

Dicranurus monstrosus or since Dicranurus translates to twin head-tail, the twin-head tailed monster was a lower Devonian trilobite with an unusual array of spines. It looks a bit like the shadow ships from Babylon 5 except with ram horns. It is thought that the spines may have been for defense against early jawed fish such as smaller relatives of the Dunkleosteus. The spines also may have been useful for holding the trilobite out of the mud. They were found between Euramerica and Gondwanaland. Most of the fossils of this species today are found in Morocco. They are very popular with trilobite collectors

Leedsichthys problematicus

Art

Goal for the week 15hrs

Today

finish the sphinx

make clay

put first coat of silicone on the sphinx

work on figure with anubis mask

Animal

Drawing by Dmitry Bogdanov

Leedsichthys problematicus was a giant fish filter feeding fish from the middle Jurassic. They current estimate is that they could grow to around 72 feet in length. They seem to have been fairly capable of defending themselves as individuals have been found with healed Leopleurodon bites. Like the bicher I mentioned early this week, Leedsichthys too was most cartilaginous with some bone. It got the name problematicus due to the fact that it has so many small bones and large chunks of the structure tend not to be preserved due to their being made of cartilage making the skeleton difficult to assemble. In a recent dig in Peterborough where they recovered a large fairly complete skeleton they excavated over 2100 bones.

The Golden Toad

Art

Goal for the week-not happening 

Today 

Work on the sphinx

Animal

The coming climate change is likely to be causing quite a few extinctions, the golden toad (Bufo periglenes) has the honor of being the first extinction definitely attributable to global warming. They bred in mass in small pools in the cloud forests of Costa Rica. The effects of an effects of El Niño-Southern Oscillation caused these pools to dry up for several years killing all of the toad's young. They have not been seen since 1989.

Iberomesornis romerali

Today was sort of mind numbing at work. It should be slowing down with finals wrapping up. Maybe I will try to get out of the house tonight. Stuart and I got into a strangely long conversation about clove cigarette smell last night. I do have kind of a weird story regarding that. I was walking to the ceramics lab  during the period when I was getting my BA and it was way out in the middle of no-where in some metal shacks near the agriculture departments test fields and livestock. It was just dark and there was no breeze and I was on a road between a large empty field and a tiny cemetery. I hit this patch of clove cigarette smell on the middle of the road that was about ten feet in diameter and intensely strong like someone had smoked a whole pack of them. It was very concentrated to this one little spot. There was no one around and it really was not a good place to have done so no where to sit it was just in this big empty field no where near the entrance to the cemetery and not inside it at all. It was kind of a mystery did someone just stop in the middle of this road smoke multiple cloves then move on, stop smoke a bunch of cigarettes and drop a bottle of essential oil, invisible goth? I probably need better mysteries.

Art

still off

Animal

Iberomesornis romerali was an enantiornithine bird from the early Cretaceous that was found in Spain in 1985. It was about the size of a sparrow and while it retained a few unbirdlike characteristics like wing claws and teeth it was capable of true flight. Enantiornithine birds are also different from modern birds also in that their shoulder bones have a concave-convex configuration that is the inverse of modern birds.

Falkland island Fox

Art

goal for the week 15.5 hrs

Today

work on the sphinx

Animal

While I'm on depressing island wildlife. The Falkland island Fox (Dusicyon australis) was the only native land mammal of the Falkland islands and the only member of its genus, it is also the first canine driven to extinction in modern times. It is thought that it may be related to the coyote and perhaps even could have been the coyote's progenitor. There are many theories as to how it got to the Falkland islands. They were noted to be tame and curious which may be why its genus name Dusicyon means "foolish dog" it was not uncommon for trappers to lure them close with a piece of meat and then stab them to death. Settlers regarded them as a threat to their sheep and began a campaign of poisoning and trapping which wiped all of them out. The last Falkland island fox was shot in 1876, they were completely extinct 169 years after their initial discovery.

Giant Sea Scorpion

I'm nearly done cataloging all of the channels the company I work for offers at all of the sites with video. They basically had me confirm the station of every channel at about 50 or 60 sites from a slingbox. It was odd that they are having me do this as I have not really watched television consistently for about 8 or 9 years so I'm not really familiar with the shows and I'm really bad with celebrities for movie identification. I was kind of horrified to find that there is an entire reality show based station, perhaps more then one. Also something weird happened to the Learning Channel, they don't seem to do documentaries anymore.

Art

Goal for the week 13hrs

Today work on the dragon  

Animal

Stuart had somehow not heard about the giant 8ft prehistoric sea scorpions (Jaekelopterus rhenaniae) they found somewhat recently. So, I thought that I would do those today, then I discovered there were no usable pictures. Finally I got frustrated and decided it would be faster to draw one only to find that there is considerable disagreement as far as how many legs and body segments reconstructions of sea scorpions seem to have. I gave up and drew something that I thought looked kind of like that sea scorpion. The giant sea scorpion was found in Germany and seems to be mostly known from a claw fossil. The rock around the claw suggests that it lived in brackish areas. They may well be the largest invertebrates or at least one of them. It is thought that they would not have been able to support it's weight on land and so would not have been able to leave the water.

Pituriapis doylei

Art

Goal for the week 12hrs

Today

Sphinx

Animal 

Drawing by Stanton F. Fink

Pituriapis doylei is a jawless fish that lived in Devonian estuaries in what is now Australia.   Very little is known about it's body aside from the fact that it had pectoral fins as it is known most from the head shield that gives it's kind of sawfish-like shape. Given it's shape with that long rostral process that might have had some sort of sensory function and it and the position of it's mouth on the bottom I'm going to take a wild guess that it ate bottom dwelling invertebrates. I've not really found anything speculating on it's behavior. The genus was named Pituri an Australian Aboriginal nicotine-based drug that can put one into a hypnotic state. 

Elginia mirabilis

The cockroach living room is still outside my place of work though I notice people have been changing the position of the furniture. 

Art

goal for the week 14 hours

Today

work on the dragon

Animal 

drawing by Arthur Weasley photo by .:sandman

Elginia mirabilis was a small pareiasaur (about 2ft long) from Scotland during the Permian. Pareiasaurs are anapsid reptiles that may well be related to the things that became turtles. Turtles and anapsid reptiles have similar skull types and there is a debate as to whether turtles originated from this very early group or converged to having similar skull type. They have yet to find a lot of transitional turtle fossils aside from the 220 million year old Odontochelys. Elginia mirabilis was though to have been an herbivore and its impressive horns and bony plates were thought to be mostly for display. At the time Scotland likely would have been a desert so it might have been well adapted for dry conditions. It probably was not blue but how would you know.

North American Teratorn

There are a lot of things going on this weeks so it has been a really bad art week.

Art

stuff

Animal

photo of a California Condor (which should have a very similar build) by bsterling that was then heavily modified.

The North American Teratorn (Teratornis merriami) was the largest flying bird man ever saw they went extinct around the end of the last ice age. While with it's 12ft wingspan it was not the largest flying bird that ever was it was still fairly impressive and it was thought that after went extinct stories about it endured as a supernatural creature. There are theories that it was the origin of the thunderbirds. Thunderbirds are large intelligent bird shaped spirits that can control storms and thunder you find in a lot of forms of them in the mythology of a number of Native American tribes. In Wisconsin there is a lake called Devil's lake (Tawacunchukdah) that I'm very fond of that gets tied into the thunderbirds (Wakunja) mythology of the Winnebago. It was supposed to have been a site where the underwater pumas and the thunderbirds had a fight and threw a lot of large rocks and lighting at each other. I got to spend quite a bit of time a kid crawling around on the spent weapons of old gods there. The Cowichan also had a thunderbird (Tzinquaw) that had a fight with a water spirit this one in the form of an Orca. The Sioux had thunderbird had wiped out the Unktehila a dangerous reptilian water monster,  so there seems to be a bit of theme thunderbirds and water spirits not getting along. Not that there were not other giant birds in mythology that were not thunderbirds but may have been influenced by Teratornis. The Miwok had a giant man-eating bird named Yellokin that was eventually killed by eagle and turned into trees by coyote. The Passamaquoddy had a giant bird Wuchowsen that created wind with it's wings.  Cryptozoologists also love these guys, there are occasionally stories about modern giant bird sightings, though many ornithologists point out if there were physical living Teratorns running around the small army (84 million according to a survey in 2000) of American bird watchers probably would have noticed.

Therizinosaurus cheloniformis

Art

Goal for the week 12hrs

Animal

Photo by Akma

Therizinosaurus cheloniformis was a theropod from the maniraptoran clade that evolved into sort of a dinosaur version of a giant ground sloth. The first remains of this animal were found in Mongolia in 1954. Their body is large and slow and seems well suited for sitting. They were thought to use their giant meter long claws to help pull leaves to their mouth. It is also theorized that they used the large claws for defense.  An alternate theory for the giant claws is that they were more like a giant ant eater and used them to tear open termite mounds.  They were thought to be over 20 feet long and weigh around 1000lbs. When the claws of this group of dinosaurs were first found they were thought to belong to a giant turtle. 

Hesperonis regalis

I'm shifting schedules a little I think. I'm going to try to get a longer block of work in at night and sleep during the day.

Art

Goal for the week 14.5 hours

Today

make clay

work on the sphinx

Animal

Photo by unforth

Hesperonis regalis was a prehistoric flightless aquatic bird from the late Cretaceous it was found in the marine limestone from Kansas. It was found in the late 19th center and was an important early find in avian paleontology. It had teeth in it's beak which it used to hold down prey and lobed toes that acted like webbing. Early depictions showed them standing upright like penguins but it is unlikely that they could do that, they may not have been able to walk on land at all. It is thought that they got around on land by sliding on their belly it is also thought that they were migratory as more juveniles were found in northern sites.

Video with CGI Hesperonis

Odobenocetops

Art

goal for the week 12.75 hrs

today

work on the guy with the Anubis mask

Animal

drawing by Pavel Riha

Odobenocetops (Odobenocetops peruvianus) was a relative of modern Narwhals and Beluga whales. This very early member of the dolphin superfamily was found off the coast of Peru about 4 million years ago. While it has a very walrus-like head this is an example of convergent evolution it is not actually related to walruses.  It has been suggested that it sucked bivalves out of their shells in a manner similar to a walrus. Like a walrus it had tusks it is thought that the tusk were either some sort of sensory organ or that they were part courtship process. The tusks on either side of it's head were uneven the right tusk being twice as long as the left. It is not uncommon for toothed whales to have asymmetrical skulls this being just a very extreme example. It is thought that asymmetrical skulls were part of the development of sonar. Odobenocetops peruvianus did not have sonar so far as paleontologists can tell it was probably not needed to catch bivalves. 

Hallucigenia sparsa

I'm having to make all of this clay because I was really dumb and let my 6 year old Grolleg porcelain dry out. Sketches are done, made some porcelain, guess I'm really ready to get started. 

Art

goal for the week 6 hrs

Today

make more clay

Start making parts of the figure with the Anubis mask

get a little more modeling clay for the sphinx figure sculpt

Animal

drawing by Stanton F. Fink

Hallucigenia sparsa was a tiny (about 1 inch long) middle Cambrian invertebrate that was found in the Burgess Shale of British Columbia. I was discovered in 1979 by Conway Morris and dubbed Hallucigenia because it was so oddly put together. Morris depicted the animal as having a double row of spines that it walked on and a single row of feeding tentacles along its back. See the linked picture below. Critics pointed out to Morris that there were no known animals that walked on spines but Morris pointed out that he had found only a single row of tentacles on the animals back and these would not have made effective legs. In the late 1980's a dentist that had become a paleontologist named Lars Ramskold got permission from the curator of the Walcott Collection to excavate for a second set of tentacles to see if they could have acted as legs. This permission was very odd as this fossil was exceptionally rare and it was amazing that they would allow this sort of excavation which would damage it. Lars excavated and found the second set of legs, they then were able to flip the creature over and the little hooked tentacle legs were like other animals they had seen before in the line of ancestors of the velvet worms. Some of the ancestors of the velvet worms also had spines.

The rejected Conway Morris way to put Hallucigenia sparsa together

Animation of the way Hallucigenia was thought to have walked

Galapagos damsel

I did not quite finish the boxes this weekend but I am nearly done. I also found out this weekend that 2 of my large pieces at Cinema Gallery have sold and the gallery is going to expect some new work soon. I've got some old stuff I can tide them over with but I should probably push the new set higher up on my priorities.

Art

goal for the week 19.75 hrs

today 

work on ideas for new fine art pieces

sand boxes

Animal

drawing by Edmund Heller and Robert E. Snodgrass 1903

The Galapagos damsel (Azurina eupalama) was a 6 inch damsel that lived in the reefs around the Galapagos and Cocos islands. It was a planktivore and in turn it and a fish in a similar niche Chromis atrilobata were an important source of food for the blue-footed booby. It went extinct in 1982 due to warming of the water as an effect of El Nino. The warming water eliminated the plankton production around the islands for a year and the fish being a planktivore starved. The last sightings of the Galapagos damsel were in 1983 and the fish is now thought to be extinct. Chromis atrilobata survived as it feeds on a greater variety of prey and has a larger range.

Here is a picture of the living fish from the 80's

Elasmotherium sibircum

Yesterday was productive I can see an end to the boxes what need sanding. I might finish this weekend. 

Art

goal for the week 17.25 hrs

today 

sanding

Animal

Elasmotherium, autor - Bogdanov,2006

Mythology

A prehistoric Eurasian rhino (Elasmotherium sibircum) has gotten linked into unicorn mythology.  Willy Ley a German scientist better known for his work in rockets got into cryptozoology a bit on the side and suggested, among other things, that the unicorn legend may have come from a population of Elasmotherium surviving into historical times. As evidence he cites the account of Ahmad Idn Fadlan an ambassador from the ruler of Zaragoza who left Baghdad in 921 and traveled far to the north.  Ahmad Idn Fadlan wrote an account of a people he called the Rus, that were very probably the Vikings, somewhere in the accounts of his travels he also wrote about a strange beast with a single horn and how the people hunted it. This account Willy Ley is attributing to that Elasmotherium population. I can't find any evidence that Ahmad Idn Fadlan's account got mixed into the legend of the Karkadann, a ferocious middle eastern unicorn. The Karkadann being what that account would probably most resemble, but I also have not found any depictions of the Karkadann from prior to 921 so I suppose it is possible the account was an influence, though other rhinos seem more likely. 

Karkadan from a Persian manuscript