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!"

Back in time we go again, to perhaps my favourite period in the history of life: the Miocene! This epoch was the high point of the 'age of mammals', with perhaps twice as many species of large mammal as exist on the planet today. We look today at one of those, a kind of mammal completely vanished and so different from any modern species that we have difficulty telling how it lived. This is Tylocephalonyx skinneri, or 'Skinner's Thick-headed Claw'. Here we see a couple of big males sizing each other up. This was one of the Chalicotheres, a group most closely related to horses, rhinos and tapirs. Chalicotheres came in two kinds; the knuckle-walking Chalicotherines (which I hope to feature soon) and the more conventional Schizotherines, to which Tylocephalonyx belonged. I've already covered Moropus, which was its relative. But Tylocephalonyx was quite unlike Moropus in at least one way. It had a huge bump on its skull, as if it was in an old cartoon and had been bonked on the head with a hammer!

We haven't found enough fossil material yet to be sure if both males and females had this big knob on their heads. For now, we might assume it was mainly the males who had it, and that it had something to do with sex. It wouldn't have constituted a serious weapon to use against predators. Instead, maybe male tylocephalonyxes would bump their heads together, or bump each other in the ribs while standing side-to-side. While no modern mammal has such a knob-head, there are some other prehistoric creatures that did, including a kind of giraffe recently discovered, and going back further, the bone-headed dinosaurs or Pachycephalosaurs, and going back further still, the thick-headed Dinocephalians of the Permian period. Modern head-butting mammals are members of the Bovidae, specifically the goat and sheep tribe. But they use horns rather than thick skulls as weapons. Tylocephalonyx doesn't seem to have had special protective features to safeguard its brain and spine, and therefore likely didn't butt head-to-head with extreme force. It might have been more of a shoving or wrestling kind of thing, or side-butting. Or the knob on the head might have been entirely a decorative feature. Who knows what tastes the females had back in those days?

Tylocephalonyx lived in the middle Miocene, more or less sixteen to fourteen million years ago, in North America. It was fairly large, reaching 1.8 m/6' at the shoulder, and perhaps 600 kg/1300 lbs in bodyweight. Its teeth show that it was a leaf-eater who sometimes ingested twigs as well, as well as eating fruit and perhaps bark. In spite of its apparent peaceful, vegetarian lifestyle, it had big, curved claws on its front and back feet. These would have been better weapons against predators than its head knob. The claws could be 'retracted' or at least lifted up so they wouldn't scrape on the ground as it walked. They might have been used for self defense or perhaps for feeding: it could have dug in the ground for roots and tubers, or scratched off strips of bark. But it's considered most likely that it used its clawed forelimbs to reach up and grab tree boughs and pull them down to feed on the leaves and twigs. This would explain why the front limbs are so long – that would give them a better reach. The short hind limbs are sturdy and the pelvis extremely thick and strong. This suggests that they may have stood on their hind limbs while reaching up and grabbing vegetation and pulling it down to their mouths.

It's always a challenge to reconstruct ancient beings. In this case, I was quite puzzled how to reconstruct its face. Apart from the big bump on the head, it had a large open space where the muzzle would be. This might have meant a big, soft, fleshy, flexible snout. This and other chalicotheres didn't have teeth at the front of their jaws; they might have had long tongues which played a role in taking in food, somewhat like modern giraffes. Finally the colour scheme is my own. Ancient animals would have had unique colours and patterns, but they would still need to be functional. The dark side-stripe I gave these two males here might have functioned as a 'target' to aim at as they bumped each other with their heads. I really hope we can have time machines one day to travel back and see what all these things looked and lived like for real.

Willem

27.02.23 Front Page

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