Sunday, October 24, 2010

Xenopermian Hovasaur


You'll get more on the Xenopermian soon, but I wanted to throw this up to prove it's not dead. This is a derived hovasaur that doesn't have a name yet. I'll admit that the dorsal sails are inspired by Concavenator, but I think they work just fine here. This guy was actually pretty tough to get right--when you evolve a hovasaur, it starts looking like a mosasaur, so the challenge was to come up with something that was still feasible but different than, say, Platecarpus. I think I've done that here, although it still requires tweaking. I'm working on a skeletal now, and it's coming along pretty well.
Other Xenopermian critters on my backlog: More barbouronopsids, mainly, but also more work on the dicynodonts and a few other surprises.

4 comments:

Nick said...

1. The head looks horribly emaciated.
2. I'd expect as well in a fully marine taxon that the skull bars should be more robust, not so gracile.
3. Further, there should be no evident external ear opening. "Younginiforms" and other early reptiles do not have those.
4. I really think the mosasaur bias is a bit extreme, I'd expect hovasaurs to be FW bottom cruisers given their general anatomy.

Will Baird said...

"FW bottom cruisers"?

Anonymous said...

What about Thallatovaranus?

Zach said...

Thanks for the comments, Nick. I'll make the changes accordingly. When you say bottom feeders, do you mean grubbing up things like placodonts do, or something else?