S W A M P D R A G O N
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Sunday, August 23, 2026
Saturday, August 22, 2026
Reptile
A T O P O D E N T A T U S
This is one of those I see it but I don't believe it moments.
What advantage is there in having a hammerhead snout
for a mouth? The mass extinction of life at the end of
the Permian, left entire ecosystems drained of the normal
pushback provided by others. Before, you had to fight
for everything you needed. Just taking up space
required conflict with those around you.
Mass extinction has emptied the streets.
You can stroll into Macy's when you like
and take off with what you want. Every day.
Genetically speaking, animal designs developed
in this type of environment that would not
survive the normal competitive stresses
of just existing. These extraordinary times
brought about both innovators as well as
a healthy batch of quacks.
The process of genetics is driven by blindness.
Its course is set only by trial and error.
T A N Y S T R O P H E U S
Genetic design gives clues to the animal's context -
its environment. In this instance, an advantage
was gained by having a neck more than half the
length of its own body. Is this ungainly length used
to reach vegetation high up or does it make grabbing
fish easier when hovering from above?
How do you keep this animal from falling on its face
when out of water? The bones of the neck are hollow
to save weight. To counterbalance the head and neck
the animal has an enormous pelvis with massive
hind legs and a long tail. These are steps taken to
prop up a fundamentally unstable design.
This line of genetics was doomed once the right
species of predator was introduced into its
environment. Carnivores learned to target
the neck, because decapitation was a relatively
easy way to bring the animal down.
Extravagance comes with built-in vulnerability.
P L E S I O S A U R
Here is a classic marine design from the Triassic period.
The plesiosaur survived tens of millions of years, well
into the Jurassic period that followed. Pictured above
is a spectacular fossil from the time preceding the
Age of Dinosaurs. Look at the enormous fins.
They are limbs strengthened with solid bone.
The flipper becomes an oar, one of four,
paddling the animal swiftly through its
watery realm. The tail serves as the rudder.
making its maneuvers sharp enough to
capture elusive prey.
The fin's skeletal structure starts with a single large
bone that divides into several digits, each having
multiple joints to give the fin nuance in its sweep
through water. This sophisticated design enabled
the plesiosaur to maneuver like a sea lion,
or even a dragonfly as needed.
Here was our apex predator of the seas.
S P I N O S A U R U S
Crocodile jaw. Predator. About the height of a
two story home. Neural spines extend five feet
into the air. Could be used for thermoregulation,
much as the ear of an African elephant is used
to disperse heat into the surrounding air
or to absorb energy from the early morning sun.
The hind legs are longer but the front limbs
are more massive, with large pronounced digits
armed with claws. The large vertical tail propels
the animal when swimming.
It's the Creature from the Triassic Swamps.
S P I N O S A U R I D S
The Spinosaurus family gathered together,
all from the same lineage but each from
a different period in time. The crocodile
grin is iconic to this family of species.
In runs on two legs, using its tail for balance.
The shorter forearms are designed for grasping.
Among this group is the Spinosaurus with
the five foot neural crest, splashed with color
imaged by the artist. The use of vibrant color
usually means one of two things: either it is
meant to lure a mate or to be identified as a
member of a particular species.
It's a tribal thing.
T A W A H A L L A E
It's Late Triassic, 215 million years ago,
the first dinosaurs to show up in the
fossil record. The Tawa, Hopi language
for Sun God, was discovered in New Mexico,
Land of Enchantment.
The specimen illustrated here is about the
size of a large dog, thirty-five pounds,
and walks on two legs. Its reptilian head
could well be the basis for the skull of a
modern day raptor, like that of a hawk.
The Tawa had a highly efficient respiratory system
much like the one used by the birds we see daily.
It is possible this early dinosaur had already
come to use feathers for insulation.
These factors don't make this animal a bird
but it is evidence of bird characteristics
found in the earliest known species of dinosaurs.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, August 16, 2026
Saturday, August 15, 2026
Triassic
S A U R I C H T H Y S
The Triassic Period began roughly 250 million years ago,
amidst the ruin left by the mass extinction that occurred
at the end of the Permian. Most of this planet's species
gone forever. Others survived. Their offspring, born into
a chaos that lasted the next few million years, the time
it took for life on Earth to recover.
M A S T O D O N T O S A U R U S
The world's biggest amphibian of all time.
A two ton salamander just crawled out of your lake.
The animal was aquatic, living its life mostly submerged.
What's the tip off? We've got a four thousand pound
pickled piece of luggage being paddled up an incline,
on four puny legs. It's a squirmy snail's pace, at best.
Nonetheless, the animal was a hall of famer of its day.
Our mastodon had a fishlike lateral line system,
sensitive to vibration and water pressure changes.
This enabled the animal to stalk its prey even in
the murkiest of waters.
T R I A D O B A T R A C H U S
Madagascar, 250 million years ago.
Here is our ancestor to the frog.
A diamond in the rough.
It has that flat, broad frog head.
The hind legs have that unique frog stance.
The forearms are ready to buffer a hard landing.
But you're not going to get an explosive spring
from these sadly undersized legs.
And the torso is too big. It's a salamander
with fourteen vertebrae versus as few as
four in the modern, compact frog.
The Triassic frog is still a generic.
Its simple philosophy:
stay hydrated.
L Y S T R O S A U R U S
Plant eater. Mammal-like reptile. Resilient.
Survivor of the Permian mass extinction.
The legs sprawl like most any primitive vertebrate.
The Triassic climate can be both extreme and
volatile. This animal burrows to escape the heat.
It has barrel-chested lung capacity in order
to survive low oxygen situations.
The environment was high mortality.
The favored biological response to this
adversity is to grow up fast and breed early.
There are no individual star performances here.
It's a numbers game with this population.
Make sure you've punched your ticket before
you leave.
C Y N O G N A T H U S
The Middle Triassic apex predator. Wolf size.
Does that skull not remind you of a mammal?
Here is our first look at a future dog or lion's head.
Get a load of those legs. Nearly directly under
the body. Built for speed and power.
Fossil hunters have found this animal's identical
remains in both South Africa and South America.
They were the identical terrestrial species and
yet they were separated by three thousand miles
of the Atlantic. Continental drift supplied the
explanation.
The Earth's crust is not static.
The continents sit atop large plates that collide,
reform and intermingle over the hundreds of
millions of years, a process normally too slow
for us to take notice. Mount Everest grows
about an inch higher every year because
India is slowly colliding into Asia.
Come on. Who would believe that?
D I A D E M O D O N
This guy is about our oldest ancestral mammal,
the stepping stone separating reptiles from mammals.
It eats most anything edible. Your dental work
comes with incisors, two pair of canines, and now with
premolars for slicing and crushing. And they fit
perfectly when you close your mouth. With
the needle teeth of reptiles it is sometimes
hit or miss whether you can close your mouth,
at all. Imagine. Now you can chew the toughest
plants or crunch the biggest bone, thanks to your
massive, powerful jaws and state of the art dentures.
The Diademodon comes complete with an opposing
first digit for better grasping, a highly sensitized nose
and a sophisticated middle ear for excellent hearing.
The animal is the first step in moving from primitive
reptile into the path towards becoming a mammal.
Still, the success of this mammalian progress
was pushed from center stage by an even
bigger story - the dramatic rise of the reptile.
The Triassic would launch entire new branches
of animals into extravagant variations.
It would be a time of behemoths and powered
flight. Cunning would become a predator's tool.
Here would be the introduction into the
Age of Dinosaurs.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, August 9, 2026
Saturday, August 8, 2026
Permian
D I M E T R O D E N
The creature with the vertebrate sail is a
reptilian ancestor to modern day mammals and
preceded the dinosaurs by about 40 million years.
Ancient mammals came to dominate the Permian,
a fifty million year stretch that would lead into
the Triassic era and the Age of Dinosaurs.
E R Y O P S
Every bit a reptile except it doesn't lay shelled eggs.
Its legs extended from the side of the body, its belly
nearly dragging the ground, much like the modern
day crocodile does when walking across the land.
This large, ungainly amphibian was also a poor swimmer.
Unable to run down its prey on both land or water
the animal relied upon ambush to capture its meal,
as does the crocodile. They each sport a snout
long enough to contain a very large mouth,
lined with teeth - the better to grab you with
from out of nowhere.
G O R G O N O P S I A N
Here was the apex predator of the middle to
late Permian. This was the Sabertoothed Tiger
of its time, able to run down its prey using
powerful legs that dropped nearly straight
down from its body. Finally, an animal built
to run.
The Gorgonopsian, (Gorgon - a dreaded monster
from Greek mythology) had a mammalian mouth
with various teeth for specific tasks - incisors for
cutting, canines for piercing and molar-like teeth
for crushing. Despite this sophisticated dental work,
the animal was forced to swallow its food whole
because it lacked a secondary palette, a boney
structure that separated the breathing passages
from the mouth. The animal could not breath
while chewing or even just holding its food
in its mouth.
P A N G E A
The various landmasses of the Earth collected into
one supercontinent that stretched from the pole
in the north to the one in the south. The planet was
now divided into one land, surrounded by one ocean.
The interior of this enormous landmass baked
under constant sun, as it was outside the reach
of rains coming off the ocean.
The supercontinent Pangea began breaking
apart during the latter part of the Permian.
This period ended with countless volcanic
eruptions that resulted in a cataclysmic
global impact.
Lava covered the land for thousands of miles.
Volcanic ash and toxic gases filled the Earth's
atmosphere, spawning a global warming.
Acid rain poisoned the water. Marine life
suffocated as oceans lost oxygen.
Of the planet's five mass extinctions, this one,
the Great Dying, was the worst.
Ninety percent of the ocean's species gone.
Seventy percent of terrestrial life disappeared.
Ancient mammals no longer dominated the land.
The way was clear for the Age of Dinosaurs.
G Y M N O S P E R M
The facts of life... birds, bees and the telling
of plant sex. The male plant generates
pollen grains that are distributed by wind
to the flowers of female plants.
Egg and pollen merge, forming an embryo
containing the genetic instructions supplied
by its two parent plants. A new edition of life
is developing within its protective shell.
We have a seed.
S U M I N I A
That looks like fur growing from this animal.
Now it's beginning to look like a mammal.
What about hearing? Terrestrial animals
retain their fish style of hearing. No ears.
Not yet a priority.
The animal above looks like a beginner at tree climbing.
Its claws lack the length needed to dig into bark.
The feet have digits long like fingers but they show
little evidence of having the power to grip.
Balance may be the one climbing characteristic
it has already reasonably accomplished.
It has the teeth of a predator but how capable
is it for hunting prey out on a limb?
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, August 2, 2026
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