Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"

Once more we head back to the past. In a previous article, I spoke about the weird Astrapotheres, which were some of the strange and unique mammals that lived in South America while it was an island continent, separated by sea from the continent of North America (but for much of the time actually connected with the now-desolate continent of Antarctica). The thingy we're looking at today is Pyrotherium romeroi, 'Romero's Fire Beast'. It got this name because the first fossils of it were found in Patagonia, Argentina, preserved in the ashes of ancient volcanoes. These fragments were found by an army officer, Antonio Romero, who sent it to famed palaeontologist Florentino Ameghino, who in turn named it in 1888. Romero included in the same box some fossils of dinosaurs which he had also found, causing Ameghino to believe that the Pyrotherium bones were from the Cretaceous! They were actually from much later, well after the extinction of the dinosaurs – the Late Oligocene period, about 28.4-23 million years ago.

Pyrotherium romeroi was a big critter, about 3 m/10' in length, but low-slung and only about 1.5 m/5' at the shoulder. It was very heavily built, and likely weighed well over a ton. A smaller species, Pyrotherium macfaddeni, was found in Bolivia. At first, they were thought to be ancestors of elephants. They turned out to be only very distantly related to elephants. They were also compared with the large group of South American endemic ungulates, the Notoungulata, and with the astrapotheres, but were decided to not be very close to these either. They are presently given an order of their own, the Pyrotheria. Of the entire group, only a few genera are known.

Pyrotherium is known from well-preserved skull material and also vertebrae and limb bones. It had short, thick legs and walked with the soles of its feet flat on the ground, unlike modern ungulates (including elephants) that walk on the tips of their toes. It definitely was not a fast animal. At the time, it was one of the largest beasts of South America; it likely had no enemies as an adult, although sparassodonts (enigmatic South American predatory mammals) and Terror Birds might have predated on its juveniles.

Like Astrapotherium, Pyrotherium also had tusk-like teeth. They differed in being the front (or incisor) teeth, rather than the eye (canine) teeth. In its upper jaw, Pyrotherium had four lengthened front teeth, that were squeezed tightly together, instead of being separated like the 'tusks' of the astrapotheres, and those of modern elephants for that matter. Its shortened nasal bones suggest that it, too, had a trunk-like proboscis. This would have had to go over the tusks rather than fitting in between them. There were only two tusks in the lower jaw, pointing forward. Pyrotherium had very broad, grinding cheek teeth, with a very narrow palate between them. It certainly was a herbivore, likely browsing on low shrubs and herbs and using its tusks to uproot bulbs, tubers and tasty roots. Its thick limb bones, as well as the setting in which its fossils were discovered, suggest that it lived mainly on land rather than being semi-aquatic.

And that's basically it. We really could use some new and better fossil material of this strange old beast, to figure out just what its closest relatives were, how it lived, and why it went extinct. I will in future articles treat more of the unique South Americans.

Willem

16.03.20 Front Page

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