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dewlap β Tapir _ Chalicothere
Published: 2008-05-15 10:19:26 +0000 UTC; Views: 21494; Favourites: 293; Downloads: 578
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Tapir & ChalicothereRelated content
Comments: 41
Awesome piece of art! How big is the scale bar?
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Wow, this is a nice painting. Watercolour? Nice work on the Chalicotherium.
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How much do you know about Chalicotheres? I really don't know much, but would love to learn more 
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Chalicotheres are herbivores related to horses and rhinos. They were found in North America, Asia, Europe and Africa. Their teeth shaped like a "chalice" when worn and perhaps hence the name. As to when they become extinct that depends on which species you were referring to; for example if you are talking aboutΒ Tylocephalonyx then they die out about 15 million years ago in North America while Chalicotherium became extinct approximately 8 million years ago in Europe.Β
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Ok. So was the latest date 8 million years ago in Europe, or did the group survive elsewhere in Europe?
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The last member of the Chalicothere family (Ancylotherium hennigi) lived in Africa and went extinct about 13,000 years ago, at about the end of the Pleistocene. The last European species (Anisodon) died out in the early Pliocene. I hope this clears things up.
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Ah, thankyou for enlightening me
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Ahh, modern and prehistoric perissodactyls. I would LOVE to have a pet chalichotherium.
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Thanks, I'm glad you like it.
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I really love Chalicotheres i imagine them more like a panda bear in fact is weird but i think they could have move and live really like them
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Maybe they do maybe they don't, at the moment I don't think there is an extensive study published about its behaviors yet.
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yeah tahts true i mean is a really interestring animal really strange and unique
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the asociation with pandas would be because of the little damage their teeths apear to have in the fossils. that, added to the fact of the marks on the back part of their hipbone could mean they stood sitting a long time while choosing the most flesh leaves such as pandas do. hope this was of some use, doing some research myself for my animal anatomy course
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I like how equine the head looks; it helps to picture the perissodactyl identity of chalicotherids.
I never pictured a tapir and a chalicothere side by side, great idea!
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Imagine saddling up and riding it?
I agree, this is so awesome, it's great to see their comparison XD
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Thanks,this sketch is for an article about the evolution of the perissodactyl group. The purpose of this drawing is to show the weird and wonderful forms that this group has achieved. I'm glad you like the sketch.
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i like the perception of chalicothere knew what it was straight away.
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It's drawings and art like this that really put things in perspective. Very cool work.
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Thanks
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Chalicothere is quite an unusual animal, it looks like a combination of a horse and a gorilla.
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I must agree, chalicotheres are some pretty odd critters. What gets me is that they've got claws...they look out of place. But then again, Andrewsarchus, one of the most formidable mammalian carnivores of all time---had hooves *shrug*. I always find it interesting to see what kind of weird animals pop up in the fossil record
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They (chalicotheres) are quite unique looking animals. I suppose since their proportion are pretty much like a gorilla, they are probably moving around like one (gorilla) too. As for their giant claws, well I suppose these claws are very much similar to the giant anteaters' (Myrmecophaga tridactyla from central/south America) and it is likely that the chalicotheres held up their claws, walk on their knuckles to keep their claws sharp like the giant anteaters. The chalicotheres claws were used for pulling down branches, digging for roots/tubers (altough their dentition did not show the kind of wear from eating tough materials...).
Andrewsarchus... I wonder what its proper body proportion is really like... since all we have is its skull
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hmm---ok, you got me there. What I meant to say was, because from my sources Andrewsarchus was placed in an order of carnivores closely related to modern ungulates, and other of its supposed relatives had hooves, it was hypothesized that Andrewsarchus also had hoof-like feet. Not sure how accurate that is >_<. Kinda how the discover of feathers on a few dinosaurs suddenly leads paleontologists to slap a lotta feathers on many other dinosaurs by association :3. I'd have to agree on the motion of chalicotheres, I can't imagine how else a critter with those claws and such long arms relative to its hind legs could get around.
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Don't get me wrong, I do agree with you on Andrewsarchus (ungulate) have hooves but what I was trying to say from my last post is that perhaps if we have found the whole animal (which is almost impossible...), and have the correct proportions of different elements then maybe these hooves might not looked out of place (but than again I could be totally wrong...
As in regard to these feathered dinosaurs popping up in the recent year, well the notion of dinosaurs having feathers is not entirely "new". There are artists/palaeontologists who have drawn dinosaurs with feathers prior to all these new feathered dinosaur discoveries. Perhaps this idea was originated in the 70s, there was an article in the Scientific American by Robert Bakker titled "Dinosaur Renaissance" which he has a feathered Coelophysis (If I remember correctly...) as one of the illustrations for his article. However at the time he received quite a lot of criticism from a lot of scientists telling him that these animals should be having scales instead of feathers. Greg Paul who used to work with Bakker also has done a lot of paintings and drawings of these feathered creatures and also been getting a lot of negative critics too...
Nowaday, it is almost like the norm to draw feathers on almost any avian theropods (although I think probably some ornithischians might also have some kind of "proto-feathers" or quills on them too).
One last thing, some chalicotherids like Ancylotherium (schizotherines -a subfamily of the chalicotherids) has developed retractable claws (different from the cats of course
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Hehe---my first instinct there was to defend myself, difficult to converse with other paleontology freaks without getting yelled at for being inaccurate >_<.
And you've got me there, dinosaurs+feathers=old concept, but what I meant is that it's only recently become widely accepted. I think the discovery and study of animals like Deinonychus (with John Ostrom in particular,) and later dromeosaurs really helped move the concept along. I can imagine how looking at the fossils of a lithe, lightweight, so very birdlike animal like a dromeosaur could shatter the image of dinosaurs as being slow of wit and motion, and cold-blooded.
I heard someone talking about how it was unlikely that dinosaurs above a certain weight probably didn't have feathers (I'm pretty sure it was between half a ton and a ton, but once again this is approximation.) Makes sense to me, taking a look at large mammals like pachyderms, hippos, water buffalo, and rhinoceroses (rhinoceri? lol.) I suppose the logic behind this is that because larger organisms take longer to cool down than smaller organisms, bigger dinosaurs would probably need less and less plumage, if any. I've seen pictures depicting babies of large theropods like tyrannosaurs with fuzzy down like bird chicks, and adults with typical reptillian skin.
Bakker=quite possibly the coolest person ever. I loved Raptor Red, and this quote of his was interesting. βNature is a drama. It is the most ripping yarn ever written. You've got life and death and sex and betrayal and the best way to approach it is through individual animals."
-Robert T. Bakker
You don't say? Very cool, I didn't know that. Makes sense o'course, that retractile claws would evolve more than once, I just can't recall too many cases other than cats.
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You do know that Ostrom's Deinonychus paper was published in 1969, right...
The idea of feathered dinosaur gains momentum during the end of the 90s... unfortunately the idea wasn't originate from a dromeosaur, it is from the discovery of a Compsognathidae from China (Sinosauropteryx prima). Integuments were found along the length of its body (of course integuments have been reported prior to this paper but they weren't as complete as this found). The link between the dromeosaurs and birds comes a bit later... (Quill knobs, uncinate process, furcula... the list goes on and on)
I do agree with you on the relationship between size and whether an animal would have body covering (due to surface area, I have talk about this too from another drawing from my gallery, it is either from the "albertosaurus" or the "velociraptor" one, I think... , it is in one of them...). So I am not going to repeat myself here, since I'm a very slow typist.
Half a ton, a ton... well I suppose there is always exception, I wonder how heavy is a fully grown woolly mammoth or a woolly rhino...?? (random comment...
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Ok, you win, you've done your homework obviously ^_^ lol. Well, perhaps not feathered dinos, but Ostrom's ideas about dinosaurs being warm blooded and active no doubt made it easier to accept the concept of feathered dinosaurs. After all, most warm blooded creatures have some form of insulation to aid in maintaining a constant temperature. And I'm not talking about any official declarations of the dromeosaurs and the birds being related (as I'm clearly not as well-read on the subject as you are>_<
Well, if I were to guess on one of the two I'd say whoever complained was probably complaining about the Albertosaurus, seeing as raptors are among the most avian of the theropods (and most widely recognized as having feathers.) Hmmm---fair enough, the megafauna of the Ice Age were fuzzy. But they were faced with a daunting problem most dinosaurs probably didn't; freezing temperatures. I don't see too many dinosaurs of wooly rhino size or larger being in need of much insulation, given the ideas we currently have about climate during the Mesozoic. Though, I do recall some Polar dinos in Walking With Dinosaurs---some kind of proto-feathers would have benefitted even the larger animals.
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I was just merely trying to reply to your response on the images of feathered dinosaurs. Of course I do completely agreeing with you on the warm-blooded dinosaurs idea but it was the way that you said it I found it odd...
You are getting me wrong, I wasn't defending either way of whether big (over a ton) dinosaurs would be insulated or not. I was just saying there are exceptions to the statement that you made on the size and body covering
Whether there is a rule on sizes and insulation,... perhaps. Ok let's not talk about mammoth or rhino, what about a giraffe? Males can get over a ton (One US short ton (2000lbs) equals approximately 907.2 kilograms.)Perhaps I haven't looked thoroughly I haven't come across a "hairless" giraffe yet...
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hehe..I see where you're coming from, that was an exaggeration on my part. I realize that people had been talking about evidence of feathered dinos for a while, but not everyone agreed on it. What I meant when I said "suddenly" was a reference to the findings in Liaoning (sp?), in which there was this sudden abundance of dinosaur fossils that obviously, without doubt demonstrated that the creatures had feathers in life, which solidified the claims made previously.
I probably am getting you wrong haha. I get very defensive when talking about paleontology, used to being berated for my lack of omniscience >_<. The giraffe comment is interesting, now that you mention it. It's true, giraffes are about as large (if not as heavy) as elephants, and yet they have short fur. That could be simply because elephants, hippos, and rhinos have a layer of fat to insulate them, and giraffes don't. Seems like it's a case-by-case, environment-by-environment thing to me, there's no definite rule I suppose.
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I see you've toned down / changed your statement now (...Kinda how the discover of feathers on a few dinosaurs suddenly leads paleontologists to slap a lotta feathers on many other dinosaurs by association... which is quite an objective statement. Personally I would say this happened earlier than these discoveries. It is true that these discoveries solidified the claim of feathered dinosaurs (but that wasn't what you said at the beginning...) However this wasn't the primary reason why scientists associate feathers with dinosaurs because I can see that there were many illustrations on feathered dinosaurs produced prior to these claims/discoveries... and finally, I doubt that everyone is agreeing on this claim/feathered dinosaurs even now... 
I don't know, why would you think that there is no fatty layer underneath the skin of a giraffe? They have a different body type to the rest of the animals from your list but I'm quite positive that they do have some kind of fatty deposit underneath their skin too. It is just logical to think that no matter how skinny an animal is there would still be some kind of fat deposit beneath its skin, besides giraffes have long legs which makes them looked even skinnier... maybe their fat distributions are different from the other animals that you mentioned but giraffes should still have some fat somewhere below their skin.
Would you mind telling me where did you reference that from (that giraffe has not fat layer under its skin to insulate it from the environment)? I'm curious to know.
If this conversation gets into talking about fatty tissues then I really have do some homework... (I hope it wouldn't...
Rhino, elephants, hippos and giraffes... they all have different body fat distributions. Perhaps the percentages of fatty tissue compare to weight varies between different dinosaur families as well. Hence some/some parts could be scaly or feathery... you are right there is no black and white to this question.
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"Kinda how the discover of feathers on a few dinosaurs suddenly leads paleontologists to slap a lotta feathers on many other dinosaurs by association..." This was more of an attempt at humor through exaggeration than a serious expression of my knowledge on the subject :humor:.
I see I need to be very specific or else I look like a sophomoric fool >_< lol. As for the giraffe comment, I by no means intend to assert that giraffes are completely without a fatty layer, all healthy animals I can think of off the top of my head have some kind of fatty layer.
What I meant by the giraffe comment was that through my own casual, unprofessional observations (which I in no way claim to be of any academic or official merit) of animals of a more slender build like the giraffe, antelope, deer etc...And animals like elephants, rhinoceros, tapir and hippopotami.
I noticed that the latter animals did not have much fur/hair, and I guessed that there was a correlation between their greater amount of fatty tissue and this lack of hair. So from there I guessed that smaller or more slender animals would have depended on hair or some other bodily covering because they had less fat.
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Ha ha I see...
Perhaps, also giraffes probably have smaller body surface area. I was using giraffe because you were saying mammoth and woolly rhinos don't really count due to fact that they lived in colder climate (Mammoth and woolly rhino probably have similar if not more fatty tissue compare to their modern cousins). To answer is question sufficiently we will need to look at their habitats, body shapes, physiology of the animal, mass, maybe more... but NOT just WEIGHT... as your statement from previous post.
Funny you talk about fatty deposit. I was looking at the "animal anatomy for artist" book by Eliot Goldfinger (as you can see it wasn't a very serious book) last night what I noticed is that elephants, rhinos and hippos don't really have that much more fatty deposit under their skins compare to giraffes' (Please note: the thickness of the outline compare to their skeletal structure, I know you are probably going to say they are stylized diagrams but not actual photos... but hey I suppose that would be the closes that I would see one being dissected at least visually, since I have no contacts at the zoo...
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>_< giving up now haha.
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It was nice chatting you, and from your comments I get to go back to read some of the old books that were sitting on my bookshelves for ages. It was quite enjoyable.
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it also looks pretty depressed by this fact. This is a great drawing of awesome animals.
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