Some pics from our bike ride along the dyke yesterday… more about the hyper grass snake in a later post. Still getting accustomed to the Canon G3X (it’s tough to view in bright daylight) but giving some fantastic pics.

update, with attempt at more plausible ear. Not happy with looks yet… need to look a bit more reptilian, methinks. Much obliged for further guidance!

so… questions to Rubidgeinae teeth: Christian, if you could clarify?
Here are quick paint-overs… do these guys have palatal teeth? Your paper shows them, would just like to make sure before modeling them in. Also… what do we know about the teeth on the jaw? I only have other illustrations to go on for them, they are absent in the papers I’ve seen. And if there are no molar-type teeth for crushing towards the back of the mouth where forces would make that feasible, does this mean they tore off and swallowed flesh? No processing of bones, etc? Were those massive skulls muscled only for attack / demobilization with primarily front portion of snout? (Would perhaps explain that somewhat unique ‘chin’.)

Also made a quick sketch of what the open mouth would look like:

So I’m modeling a gorgonopsid for Christian Kammerer. A bunch of them, actually. And I’ve started with a biomechanical model. Not a skeleton. Skeletons are a lot of work, but there are more convincing arguments to come up with an abstracted model of the skeleton… we often do not have skeletons, or they have to be reconstructed from shards, from deformed shapes, etc. So I want a model that communicates that this is an abstracted form, and let’s me get on to work.

My plan is to then create a generic base gorgonopsid ‘meat’ mesh, and adapt that for each of the species. Of course, I’m not very knowledgeable about therapsids, so… questions:

• is this halfway reasonable? It would be good to get any critique of generic pose, limb sprawl, proportions etc now or early.
• The limbs are really hacked, but are they acceptable? Are these guys plantigrade?
• I’d like to show the mouth somehow, not for RAWR, but because we only really have the heads of these guys and they are bizarre. Did they really have palatal teeth?
• Which is your favorite? Dinogorgon and Smilesaurus are badass, but I’m thinking I’ll start with a more plain vanilla Rubidgeinae

Feedback welcome!