Permian Park

[Ron Dass <radass@orion.neca.com>]

        One thing that got me going on this cynodont thing was last weekend
I was browsing my local Barnes & Noble when I ran into a book called "Dino-
saurs: A Global View" - big coffee table thing; if its still there this week
I'll probably buy it. In one of the early chapters is a painting by Mark 
Hallett of a trio of hairy, tiger striped Cynognathus tearing into the carcass
of another therapsid with the "naked, glandular skin" described in one of
Pieter's earlier posts.


        [BTW in all the posts about dino art the sculptors and model makers
seem to dominate. Little mention of painters like Hallett & Doug Henderson, 
who IMHO are the Carl Brenders and Robert Bateman of the Mesozoic. I don't 
know if anyone on this list is into wildlife art of the holocene, but trust
me this is a GOOD thing.]

        The cynogs lack the elegant ferocity of Velociraptor or the visceral
awe and terror of Tyranosaurus, in fact they are kind of squat and ugly. In 
spite of the furry covering, they look, well, reptilian. In spite of this, or
maybe because of it, they are far creepier than any dinosaur. Maybe its the 
combination of the familiar and the primitavely alien.

        It got me to thinking - the Permian would be a great place to visit
at Halloween. The whole period is like that. If the Jurassic has the feel of
an old Tarzan movie and the Cretaceous is like the wild west, then the terres-
rial vertebrate fauna of the Permian is like something created by Stephen
King. Pieter Depuydt's description of therapsid skin as smooth,
hairless,with many glands only adds to this image. I'm now stuck with the
image of Dimetrodon
and probably the cynogs as well as sweating, foul smelling beasts with naked,
pink, greasy skin. Now that's the stuff of nightmares! Some years ago, at the
old fossil verebrate hall in the AMNH, there was a skeletal mount and a
restoration of a creature called Moschops. It was far and away the ugliest 
beast I'd ever laid eyes on, in the way that a French bomber aircraft of the 
1930s was ugly, and yet strangely compelling. I was repelled by the thing, 
and yet, every time I visited that hall, which was often, I spent many 
minutes staring at it.

        I guess in my dreams the Villafranchian is home, the Jurassic and 
Cretaceous are places of adventure, and the Permian is where I meet my
nightmare ancestors. 

        Enough of this. Back to serious paleontology!


                                        Ron Dass