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!"

I hope you forgive me for staying with the prehistoric beasties a while longer. We're still on the Notoungulates, that enigmatic group of South American hoofed mammal relatives. Their ancestors (which at the time were small rat-like mammals) entered South America either in the late Cretaceous, when the non-avian dinosaurs were still around, or just after the big extinction, in the Palaeocene epoch. South America became disconnected from North America at that time, with only a connection to Antarctica persisting for a while. Thus, for almost all of the Quaternary (also known as the Age of Mammals), the notoungulates were evolving separately in South America, turning out a slew of entirely unique species. We've already Interatheriines and the Pachyrukhines, which all belong to the Typotheres. (The other branch is the Toxodonts, of which I've already reconstructed a few and will soon do several more.) Now we get to another family of the Typotheres, namely the Mesotheriidae. These included the largest of the typotheres. Typotheres were generally rather rodent-like, often having a pair of large, ever-growing front incisors. Our first critter, Trachytherus alloxus, was about the size of a wombat, perhaps reaching 20-30 kg, and likely lived in a similar way, using its strong legs and claws to dig with, for food and/or for shelter. Its fossils were found over much of South America, and date from the Late Oligocene to the Early Miocene, 28-17.5 million years ago, making it one of the basal mesotheriids.

Our final typothere, Mesotherium cristatum, was the last member of the family, living from the early to the middle Pleistocene, going extinct about 200 000 years ago, well before humans reached the continent. It was the largest known typothere, being from 50 to 100 kg in weight. It had powerful, broad upper incisors, and a fairly wide snout. It likely ate a lot of grass, but might have supplemented this by cropping other kinds of vegetation, or roots and tubers. It evidently was a good burrower, and may excavated dens for sheltering in. 'Mesotherium' means 'middle beast' and the name was given because its discoverers, in the mid-19th Century, thought it was an animal intermediate between rodents and ungulates. It was later named Typotherium or 'typical beast' again because of its mix of features, as if it were the 'type' from which a variety of mammals evolved later on. Its genus name later reverted back to the original, but its second name continues to apply to the Typotheria suborder.

We've finished now with the Typotheres (except for a few very archaic types I'd like to share but haven't yet found detailed enough skeletal references for), and will next look at some of the notoungulates from the other group, the Toxodonts. These included the largest of the notoungulates, some of which only went extinct very recently.

Willem

19.02.24 Front Page

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