Afternoon Jog


I realized a while ago that, while I have done quite a few dinosaurs, I've never done a Dimetrodon before.
Just to be clear, this is absolutely not a dinosaur. It was a therapsid, an ancient ancestor to modern mammals. About 250 million years ago, this would have been the top predator of what would become North America. Its measly six-foot length may be petty now, but that was larger than all but a handful of animals got by then. When its three-foot-high sail was turned towards the sun, it would supply its body with warmth and energy that it otherwise couldn't generate on its own. This allowed it to run at racehorse-level bursts of speed, charging at prey before it had the chance to respond. Then came the namesake: incisors at the tip of the jaw would carve chunks of meat off, while crushing molars at the back broke it down to a digestible level.
It may be obsolete now that every large carnivore today has developed a similar system, but they all have this monster to thank.
Now I'm starting to sound old...

Rendered in Photoshop

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