Creature Feature: Sinonyx.

I admit it: I've been a bad girl and been doing more extinct creatures than stuff one can find in the current era.Any extinct creatures besides dinosaurs, saber-tooth tigers, and mammoths tend to get shoved to the side- or even combined in the same era. *GAG.* Pardon my favoritism towards the lesser-known beings that dwell in the depths of your nightmares...and actually existed, of course.



Enter mesonychids. Oh, how I love mesonychids at this blog. Sinonyx up there was one of the first, and was found in China. It lived around 56 million years ago. Like all mesonychids, it was a rare example of a hooved carnivore. It probably lived along shorelines, snapping up fish and whatever other forms of meat it could find.

Sinonyx was a little badass. It was about the size of the modern wolf and similarly built for stamina and speed. It had hooves, so it was probably a little faster than a wolf, even though the two animals were roughly the same size. This was small for a mesonychid, but still a threat.

Found here, please don't sue.

Two words: Those JAWS! Sinonyx had a huge skull in proportion to its body, much like a pit bull (no offense pitty lovers) or Tasmanian devil. Unfortunately, every aspect of that skull was geared toward jaw power; the skull housed an extremely tiny brain.


Sinonyx was, debatably, one of the first cetaceans-to-be. There's a lot of subtle detail that goes into defending that this particular mesonychid as a whale relative, but the best and most easily-explained piece of evidence is that insane jaw. It's very long and narrow, just like the jaw of a dolphin or killer whale. There are more subtle things (like earbones) that make people think Sinonyx was the first real step towards whales.

Also, that name. Seriously, tell me that that name doesn't sound like it should belong to the fursona of a teen trying to be goth and cooler than they actually are. In all seriousness? It means "Chinese claw." Still a cool name for a metal band or something, which I would totally listen to if they used the animal as their mascot.

Bio-Art: Fossil Fighters.

Is that the most badass way to start a week of entries or what?

For the past week or so, I've been hooked on the sequel to the above game: Fossil Fighters Champions. I was a total addict for the first Fossil Fighters, too. In a nutshell, the whole premise of the game is digging up fossils, reviving superpowered dinosaurs, and then pitting them against each other in death matches. It's cracktastic.

If you are familiar with Japanese 'mon' series, two should immediately come to mind: Pokemon and Dinosaur King. Yes, this is another one of those infamous monster fighting games from Japan. If one fused the basic idea of Dinosaur King with the bright colors of Pokemon, one would get something like Fossil Fighters...but not quite.

If Tefflaceras is indeed a thing, I'm sure it didn't have wings like that. Also, Ancient Fairy Dragon just got competition.

Fossil Fighters blows both Pokemon and Dinosaur King out of the water. The stories for both games, although a bit predictable in places, are amazingly dark for kids' games (one involves David Icke's reptoids; another, necromancy)  and have nice little twists that I never saw coming. The element system is simple, the battle mechanics strategic (beware of rotating moves!), and the attacks, while a mite unrealistic (although dinosaurs just snapping at each other WOULD get old after a while) are pretty darn cool. The game was popular enough to spawn a sequel, Super Fossil Fighters/Fossil Fighters Champions, which featured a few new mechanics and online play.

The Vivosaur (we have to be fair: plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, and ancient mammals aren't dinosaurs) designs were among the best little Easter eggs of the game for me. The designs often have to do with the meaning of the dinosaur's name, which, as a linguist, is a real treat. For example, "Krona," a giant mosasaur, has Roman numerals on its body like a clock (think "chronological," "chronic," etc.). Coatlus, based off of Quetzalcoatlus and my favorite Vivosaur in the first game, is modeled after its namesake feathered serpent deity. Krypto, who only appears in FFC/Super, is modeled after Anubis, the Egyptian god of mummification (i.e. crypts). I could go on with this. There are a lot of in-jokes being ignored.

Crysosaurus has ice on it in this game? Noooo...really?

I cannot think of a better way for kids (and anyone else) to learn about ancient fauna. Aside from dinosaurs, the original Fossil Fighters also had prehistoric mammals like Andarch (Andrewsarchus) and the rather bizarre Jara (a tapejarid pterosaur). Fossil Fighters Champions has ventured into invertebrates, fish, and synapsids. There are several times I have gone "that's a thing?" at something in Fossil Fighters, only to go online and find out that, yes, things like slingshot deer actually existed. The series overall contains 90% real paleos and 10% "fun" creatures, such as chickens and aliens. Hardcore paleontologists will be impressed with you after playing this game - just don't ask if T.rex ever had a Harley-ish paintjob. The answer is no.

So, is it worth giving a try? If you've ever enjoyed Pokemon and/or loved dinosaurs, you betcha. The storylines are more carefully thought-out than anything Pokemon has ever concocted. Some of the dinosaurs are really creative; you'll laugh when you see the ankh on the Ankylosaurus. Effort and heart went into these games, and if they improve your hand-eye coordination and paleo knowledge, so much the better. The graphics are much better in FFC/Super, especially in the cut scenes, but there are some elements of the first game that I still love. If Pokemon falls to the ancient behemoths of Fossil Fighters, all I'll have to say is "it's about damn time." This is a must-see for any fan of video games with a love of prehistoric creatures.

Prehistoric Mammal Week: Mesonyx

Look under Andrewsarchus's tags for a bit. Wondering why I put 'artiodactyl' there? Y'know, under a carnivore?

Weeeelllllll...

This is not a wolf. Stay away from its kill, furries.

At one time, there was such a thing as a hoofed carnivore.  Although the favorite among most people seems to be Andrewsarchus, the genus Mesonyx shows a more typical hoofed carnivore, sporting four small hooves instead of claws on each toe. Mesonyx lived during the Eocene, a time when there were enough cool mammals to get their own week. Fossils of it have been found in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

Here's a small exercise in case you do not understand the true terror of a hoofed carnivore: Go to a farm (or Google) and pay a visit to a cow or pig. Now imagine said cow or pig using extremely powerful jaws to bite your neck, and you were too slow to run away because plantigrade feet really suck for that. Your feet are lame compared to those of a hoofed animal, which Mesonyx ate on a regular basis. Those not-wolf teeth would get you for that reason alone.

Hooved carnivorids went extinct simply by being Darwinized out. You can still see their modern relatives...

 

...at Sea World.

Whales and dolphins are the closest relatives we have to Mesonyx.  As time went on, Mesonyx's relatives became more and more water-worthy to pursue their fishy diets. Flipper's great great granddaddy could have torn you a new one easily.





Every whale from dolphins to orcas to the largest mammal alive at the current moment came from a wolf-like carnivore with hooves. Some whales and dolphins occasionally wind up with vestigial legs as a reminder. Evolution does some weird-ass things. This is one of them.

Prehistoric Mammal Week: Andrewsarchus.

When you're a paleontologist, squeamishness around skulls is not an option. Skulls tell you a lot. Was it a mammal based on the earbones and jaw? Did it eat plants, meat, or both? What were its strongest senses? How much space did it have for its brain? Hell, it's possible to theorize what an animal looked like based on the skull alone.



That's exactly what happened to Andrewsarchus mongoliensis. All we have from Andrewsarchus is one skull found in Mongolia, forever preserved in the American Museum of Natural History. It is three feet (approx. a meter) long from the tip of its snout to the base of its head. From that skull alone, we can tell that it was a mammalian carnivore.

A very big mammalian carnivore.

Andrewsarchus was the biggest mammalian carnivore that ever walked the earth. From the skull we have, we can guess that it was probably 6 feet high and 11 feet long from snout to pelvis. This is not counting how much it weighed. We would need a more complete skeleton to determine its build and weight.

The jaws of Andrewsarchus may have been the strongest of any mammal. Although not adapted for shearing, its jaws were capable of crushing bone, mollusc shells, and turtle shells. If we later find that it ate plants as well as meat, Andrewsarchus may have led a lifestyle similar to entelodonts - the 'terminator pigs' or 'hell pigs.' It lived around the same time as the brontotheres (Eocene), and probably ate them dead or alive.

Who's afraid of the Big Bad Not-Wolf?

Andrewsarchus probably had hoof-like paws as well. How do we know this? Wellll, stay tuned; tomorrow's beast will provide the answer to how we know a lot about Andrewsarchus, despite only having a skull...

...on a side note, this guy (under the name Andarch) was one of the authoress's favorite Vivosaurs to use in Fossil Fighters. Please help her get a 3DS by donating to the tip jar or clicking on the ads. This has been the first shameless plug on the blog aside from the tip jar itself, so it's not like we're nagging.