An unexpected synapsid

This wasn’t the pelycosaur you were searching for? I know after my prior post many of you are looking forward to Edaphosaurus, and it’s coming, I swear! But first I had cause to tackle Sphenacodon, so I figured why not push it out to the world first.

To start with the obvious, Sphenacodon isn’t a dinosaur, or even on the evolutionary branch headed towards dinosaurs (or crocodilians, or lizards, ichthyosaurs or tuataras….). It’s very much on the branch that includes us mammals. A close relative of Dimetrodon, it would have played a similar apex-predator role in its environment, although Sphenacodon is found in somewhat less soggy environments (seriously, Dimetrodon is found almost exclusively in swamps, please stop depicting it in semi-arid environments!).

That’s all for now, but in addition to Edaphosaurus, some big changes are coming to SkeletalDrawing.com over the next several weeks, so stay tuned for a more usable website (especially for mobile users).

Cheers!