Monthly Archives: May 2014

Impressions of the Pleistocene

In 1915, prominent American palaeontologist, Henry Fairfield Osborn, published Men of the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life, and Art. Drawing from his three-week-tour of archaeological sites across Paleolithic Europe, Osborn’s book integrated archaeology, geology and prehistory. Painstaking in its … Continue reading

Posted in Scientific Art | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Galloping across the steppes

Around 50 million years ago, long before the Epoch of the Twilight Beasts, a little mammal, Eohippus, scurried about in the forests of North America. This creature, about the size of an average dog, was the ancestor of the magnificent … Continue reading

Posted in Horse | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 51 Comments

The mouse-goat crocodile chimera

Lets be honest, size really does matter. Especially when it comes to being noticed. An ‘average sized’ creature would really make an impressive headline; ‘Mammoth discovered, the most average one yet’. Crowd pleasing adjectives such as ‘the biggest’, ‘the largest’, … Continue reading

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The one with the sabretooth

Smilodon is the genus of extinct sabretooth that everyone knows. Stocky, hugely muscled, with canines that protrude far below the jaw, it is the archetypal Pleistocene predator. It was a member of the machairodontinae, an extinct subfamily of the Felidae … Continue reading

Posted in Sabre tooth Cat | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 36 Comments

Mr Darwin’s lost sloth

Ground sloths are weird. The two-toed and three-toed varieties of memetic fame that we are left with only hint at the absurdity of different genera such as Eremotherium, Megalonyx, and Nothrotheriops: bear-sized to elephant-sized behemoths, covered in shaggy fur, and sporting … Continue reading

Posted in Ground Sloth | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Clan of the cave hyena

Their deathly hypnotic stare sends shivers down the spine. The long, strong neck gives these amazing creatures additional cause to be feared. Hyenas are infamous for their ferocious ways of hunting in packs (known as cackles, or clans), scavenging carcases and loudly, … Continue reading

Posted in Hyena | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments