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!"

This time I have for you another prehistoric critter, indeed we might call it a Golden Oldie! This is called an Anoplotherium. Heh heh I didn't intend for it to come out quite as golden as that: I didn't want to give my ancient critter a striking coat pattern, but wanted a colour that would contrast nicely with the blue and the green of the background so I tried out giving it a rich orange-reddish coat colour ... in the event it ended up looking more golden-yellow as you can see. But why not? Even today we have an ungulate, the Golden Takin, with a very rich golden coat. It is sometimes thought to have inspired the old Greek legends of the Golden Fleece.

But back to the old Anoplotherium. This critter lived about 40-33 million years ago, that is in the Eocene to early Oligocene. (The big dinosaurs died out around 65 million years ago.) Though sometimes said to be an early relative of camels and llamas, it is actually so old that it's probably about equally distantly related to all or most modern artiodactyls. Anoplotheres were found in Europe ... indeed they were among the first of all prehistoric mammals to be found, having been described in 1804 already. At that point, science didn't know much about prehistory; Charles Darwin was still five years from being born! Dinosaurs weren't yet known either; most fossils known then were of shells or ancient marine creatures. Gradually over the nineteenth century scientists started understanding about ancient creatures. Other prehistoric mammals such as palaeotheres (early relatives of horses) were discovered, and by the 1820's a few kinds of dinosaur were known as well. Scientists slowly began to puzzle out how old these things were, and why they were so different from what we have today.

People were fascinated by these old things right from the start. The nineteenth century produced much speculation on how they looked and how they lived. One man who did much to popularize ancient things was the sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. From the limited information available, consulting with some of the top British scientists of the time, he made statues of them for the Crystal Palace in London. These were unveiled in 1856. There were ichtyosaurs – ancient marine reptiles – dinosaurs like Iguanodon and Megalosaurus; and also our friends the Anoplotheres! He reconstructed the dinosaurs wildly inaccurately compared with how we believe they looked today – he portrayed them as lizard-like things walking on all fours while today we consider them to have been more bird-like and walking on their hind legs, their tail stretched out to balance them. Still, his reconstructions were accurate for the time and are still fascinating to look at.

His anoplotheres, however, look much closer to the real thing. His statues show sheep-sized creatures with long tails and rather camel-like heads. Although we cannot be quite sure what their faces looked like, they might have looked camel-like indeed. Today we know this old thing better than most, since the fossils we have include very well-preserved entire specimens, with skulls and bodies intact. Anoplotheriums were fairly unspecialized plant-eaters with long, low skulls and a 'full' dentition, meaning they had all their incisors (front teeth); canines ('fangs') – although these were not noticeably longer than the other teeth; pre-molars and molars (cheek teeth), numbering 44 teeth in total, with no teeth lost from their more primitive ancestors. There was no gap between any of the teeth, such as many modern browsers or grazers have between their front and cheek teeth. This indicates a general diet. Unable to chew tough plants like grass (of which there wasn't much growing back then anyways), Anoplotherium would have browsed soft leaves and eaten fruit whenever it could get it. It might even have taken some animal food, like the modern duikers do. Anoplotheres must have been forest dwellers since most of Europe (and the world) back then was covered in lush forest, even regions in the arctic circle having sported what must have looked like tropical or subtropical rainforest, the climate having been much warmer than it is today.

The rest of Anoplotherium's body was a bit more specialized. It had reduced toes. Unlike early mammals with five clawed toes on their front and hind feet both, anoplotheres had only two main toes per foot, with small hooves at the tips. Some of them had additional small but apparently flexible inner toes. (This led to an outdated theory that they had webbed feet and might have been capable swimmers living in marshes and swamps.) The foot bones were somewhat lengthened, and they walked only on their toe-tips rather than the soles of their feet. In this they were already quite similar to most modern hoofed mammals. Although overall their legs were comparatively short, they might have been able to run quite fast, though not nearly as fast as the long-limbed antelopes and horses of today. Unlike modern cattle, deer or antelopes, they had long, strong tails. Indeed, along with strong and wide hips, these may have allowed the anoplotheres to rear up on their hind legs and reach browse at a height of 2 m or more. Most other browsing mammals around those ancient forests would not have been able to reach browse that high. Anoplotheres had flexible elbows and shoulder joints too, meaning they could use their forelimbs as well to a limited extent to gather food. They ranged from sheep to pig sized, making them fairly large for the time. If you saw an Anoplotherium today, it would not look that weird. It would look like a somewhat pig-like, dog-like, sheep-like thing.

There are of course things we still don't know about these old beasties. The exact shape of the face and snout, for instance, and the size and shape of the ears, though I think it likely they were small. Also, just how long its coat was, and what colours or pattern it had. My reconstruction therefore involves a lot of speculation!

Unfortunately, anoplotheres soon went extinct, leaving no modern descendants. Other larger and/or more specialized hoofed mammals soon replaced them. A few kinds again evolved the ability to stand on their hind legs while browsing. The chalicotheres were relatives of horses and rhinos, but looked very different. Some of them had greatly lengthened forelimbs, with claws at their toe tips, so they could snag and pull down leafy branches to eat. The ground sloths of the Americas, though not hoofed mammals, also could rear up, or even walk on their hind limbs. Some of them grew gigantic to boot, which allowed them to reach leaves as high as a giraffe can. Today these great browsers are extinct too, but we have one remaining small browser, the Gerenuk antelope, which is able to stand on its hind legs, balancing superbly well, and use its long neck and forelimbs to get at the high leaves. It is about the same size as an Anoplotherium, but much more long-limbed and slender. It is indeed able to run very fast if necessary.

Though quite well known to science, Anoplotherium is almost entirely unknown to most non-scientists, even people with an interest in prehistory. This is an injustice! These old things are very valuable for giving us a glimpse into the past when the hooved mammals that today fill our forests and plains started to evolve into their great diversit of forms. These ancient critters are also a reminder that some body forms, and some ways of life, can be remarkably persistent.

Colours of Wildlife Archive

Willem

17.11.14 Front Page

Back Issue Page