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What About That Head?
The head of Paraceratherium on the cover of that book yesterday got me thinking. What does the head of a giant rhinoceros ancestor look like exactly? Is it fantastical to have elephantine ears? The...
View ArticleStar of the Show
After having more than a few handfuls of information written about Paraceratherium and an entire episode of the Walking With Series about one of them, this magnificently large mammal has certainly...
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Rhinos or Horses?
Though not a rhinoceros and much more closely related to horses, Megacerops was a very rhinoceros-like relative of horses and is therefore a bit confusing on first glance. Known more popularly as...
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What Is on Your Nose?
Menodus (junior synonym to Megacerops), Field Museum, Chicago. Megacerops has a pair of horn-like protuberances on the rostral end of the skull. In the mounted specimen from the Field Museum, shown...
View ArticleMegacerops For Kids
Megacerops, under either that name or Brontotherium is a popular fossil mammal. Multiple sites exist that host lists or paragraphs of facts. About continues to use the more popular Brontotherium on...
View ArticleBrontotherium Walking
Walking with Beasts features a battle that is pretty interesting to watch. The confrontation is between Brontotherium (as they are calling it in the show) and Andrewsarchus, an animal known from an...
View Article1905, A Big Year
1905 was a big year for Megacerops. Richard S. Lull, of the Massachusetts Agricultural College (presently UMass Amherst), published his description and plates of a fossil he named Megacerops tyleri in...
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Ribs and Noses
©Dmitry BogdanovMegacerops is, as we have seen, very open faced, skeletally, on the rostral end of the animal. In life, of course, this is not the case at all. That open area is filled with the nasal...
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Well Known Ice Age Beasts
CollectA MegaceropsThe fact that Megacerops is so well known that there are a fair number of popular outlets that enhance its popular culture reach. There are toys and references in books, though not...
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Therapsids and Other Early Mammals
©Dmitry BogdanovBecause of the last month's adventure into the history of the rhinoceros (and the intermediate horse/rhinoceros Megacerops) I have decided that we need to look, as we have done at least...
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Wrestling Bulldogs
Robert Broom's 1926 reconstructionIn a rather interesting turn of events in paleontology, Moschops has not changed much in stature since the original reconstructions by Robert Broom. Broom's mounted...
View ArticleStrange Kid's Shows
In 1983 the British produced a claymation show called Moschops about a Moschops and his friends. Words can hardly describe what that show was, but there are those that swear by it out there on the...
View ArticleJim Trainor, Not A Documentarian
Jim Trainor's short film The Moschops is the only short film in his fake "Highlights of the Permian Era" series. The science that exists in it is not the worst science out there, believe it or not, but...
View ArticleDiscussing Moschops
In 1936 Frank Byrne of Kansas State University named and describedMoschoides which turned out to be a junior synonym of Moschops. It is funny in that Byrne specifically mentions in the first paragraph...
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Calf Face of the Cape
There are four recognized species, though two are considered recognized but doubtful, of Moschops. The heavily ossified skull of Moschops is a defining feature of the animal that may, some speculate,...
View ArticleMighty Moschops
Moschops is a well known unknown beast. That is very confusing, I know. When I have to say that about an animal, what I mean is that no one knows the name of the animal but they have seen the image,...
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Breathing and Chewing
Few people stop and marvel at the wonder of being able to chew and breathe at the same time. The ability to breathe while holding food or water in the mouth has evolved a few times in the history of...
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Streamlined Digger
Thrinaxodon was built for digging and hiding. The small near-mammal was thin and cylindrical (as far as any tetrapod can be cylindrical anyway) and had a head that was elongated rostrocaudally. This...
View ArticleHear and See the Near-Mammal
The fact pages abound for Thrinaxodon. Part of the popularity is in its inherent "cute factor" and the other part lies in its nearness to mammals. Whatever makes it popular, it allows us more of a...
View ArticleTurning to Other Sources
As we have done many times, we have to go to a similar but different species to see anything like what the animal we are discussing in a documentary. Thankfully, the small near-reptile category of...
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