In Thursday’s post I mentioned that my first big Olduvai entry would be a visual history of Proboscideans in North America. In looking over what I was getting myself into, I of course discovered that there was no way I could draw and “colorize” (at least – more if you subdivide Gomphotherium at all) 15 different genera spanning 14+ million years of elephantness. Next time I review and research first, open mouth later.

There’s a whole bunch of things I know just enough about to be dangerous, but I’ve drawn lots of fossil proboscideans and I really can’t plead ignorance here. I’ve been lucky enough to get up-close and personal with both species of elephants alive today (in captivity) and I absolutely love them. I extend that love to mammoths and beyond because it seems I’m incapable of looking at extinct creatures as anything else but the living, breathing, animated marvels that they once were.

So on or about the 21st, I’ll post the proboscideans of the last couple North American Land Mammal Ages. Land Mammal Ages (LMAs from now on) are how paleontologists divide up the Cenozoic. Each has its distinctive faunal assemblages. The Rancholabrean(1) LMA began about 500,000 and ended only 10,000 years ago. It’s predecessor, the Irvingtonian(2) LMA, began about 1.9 million years ago. Both are within the Pleistocene epoch, so it’s not really going back that far, but it’s a start. We’ll worry about the earlier tuskers in the future and get around to explaining the correlations between the geologic epochs and the land mammal ages as we go. I hate it, but I’m going to have to do a chart. It’ll help keep things straight as I tend to bounce all over the place with my critters of interest.

There’s a considerable amount of wrinkled skin and hair to paint, so I’d better get busy. The post will feature all new artwork, but as a preview of sorts, here’s one of the animals to be included. This acrylic painting of Rhynchotherium (and child) is from a piece I did 6 or 7 years ago. I say from, because there was lot more background in the original image, but the animal itself was not painted much larger than you see in the linked close-up.

For a larger, more detailed image click here

Rhynchotherium (beak or snout beast) descended from earlier Gomphotheres that had entered North America in (Barstovian LMA) Miocene times (yes, definitely need a chart). Some of these animals eventually moved as far south as Central and South America, and evidence suggests that Rhynchotheres evolved there, dispersing back to the north, and lasting just long enough for me to have to include them in the coming post.

So many wrinkles…so little time.

1: The Rancholabrean LMA was named after the wonderful LaBrea site (the tar pits) in Los Angeles.

2: The Irvingtonian LMA was based on a quarried fossil site consisting of mammoths and other large grazers near Fremont, in the southeastern Bay Area of California. Highway 680 now covers it.