Painting the Giant Amphibian Antarctosuchus 

He’s the best of the best no doubt

Convergent evolution is awesome

Thanks! Hope you make some more new art!

YES. Can confirm.

I am not in Seattle, I did this painting while visiting family and sent the client the digital file. What is on display in the museum is a digital print of the painting as part of a large graphic panel discussing amphibian evolution. I hope you'll let me know what you think if you get a chance to check it out!

@@BrianEnghArt finally made it to the Burke Museum last weekend and saw your piece there, it was very cool, very natural looking, and along with a few paleo artists sketching theropods. Amphibians are often under represented, thank goodness they had a couple of exhibits on basil amphibians. Interesting decision on the cephalopod-like eyes, never thought of that before.

nice!

I actually went to the premiere of the refurbished building a couple years ago; I saw they had Tyler Keillor’s Lystrosaurus reconstruction you had featured on here on a while back. :)

The background music is by Historian Himself. Rumor has it that historian has several albums are in the works, but it takes himself approx 40000 years to actually finish an album so it may be some time before any new full albums are streamable online. In the meantime the stuff that's been released can be found here: historianhimself.bandcamp.com/ ru-vid.com

Oof, a lot to unpack here! But I will do my best! The TL:DR is that capitosaurs like Antarctosuchus almost certainly had ears in the "otic notch" of the skull, and temnospondyl evolution suggests that the auditory sense was an important part of the biology of many clades of temnos. To answer your first question about the look of the art: there are some large salamanders with semiaquatic life habits with pretty "froggy" facial features, such as the Pacific Giant Salamander (Dicamptodon). Unfortunately frog and Salamander skulls often give little indication of how much soft tissue actually surrounded their skulls, so we went with a "froggier" looking head with big bulging eyes because these giant temnospondyls may have hunted both aquatic and terrestrial prey, like many modern amphibians do, and of course modern crocodilians, and most of these animals have big bulging eyes to peek above the water surface & have a broad field of vision. So, the reconstruction has the soft tissue look that it does because of implied life-habit rather than simply copying things like modern Japanese Giant salamanders or hellbenders which actually have a pretty specific life habits and habitats that were likely pretty different than most giant temnospondyls. I actually reached out to Dr. Bryan Gee to ask about the hypothesis that the "otic notch" might represent a spiracle opening because I hadn't heard of that particular hypothesis. The reason I hadn't heard about it is because that hypothesis relates to more basal (fishier) tetrapods than derived temnospondyls like Antarctosuchus. Several pieces of literature (Sawin 1941, Schoch 2002, Schoch & Milner 2014, Clack et al 2016) describe the ear regions of numerous temnospondyls with a variety of ear conditions, and in most large temnospondyls the "otic notch" is almost certainly the embayment where the tympanum would be positioned as evidenced by numerous osteological indicators of ears, most notably semicircular canals leading to auditory capsule of the brain case. The back of Antarctosuchus' skull is not preserved, but the auditory capsules are ossified in a large specimens of the related capitosaur Mastodonsaurus, and our recon is based on those related taxa. The "otic notches" that you're referring to that might be spiracle openings are superficially similar looking notches in a similar place in the skull roof that are found in some basal tetrapods and in those very ancient critters it *might* be a spiracle but the homology of these notches to fishier forms is a bit uncertain and based only on the general position in the skull. Lots of living amphibians without particularly well-developed or externally visible ears can still hear, and many vocalize to attract mates. Even in temnospondyls with poorly developed ears they still may have had a functional sense of hearing below water or at the water line, as water is an excellent conductor of sound. The real question is _what_ were they doing with their ears. In the case of many modern amphibians the driving force of ear development is acutaly vocalization, usually for reproduction, but predator avoidance is also an important selective pressure. That being said, the relatively early (Permian) temnospondyl Balenerpeton is significant according to Schoch because it "first shows an external ear morphology approaching that seen in anurans, and the base of a typically temnospondyl-style stapes is present." Exactly how acute these various animals hearing was and how it functioned biologically is not well understood, and generally unknown soft tissues no doubt played an important role. Much much more study of the aural ecology and anatomy of extant amphibians is necessary before we can do anything more than speculate wildly. That said, it is interesting that even some temnospondyls had anuran-like auditory apparatus. Spiracles do not imply a lack of a sense of smell - sting rays and sharks and lots of fish with spiracles or the equivalent have great senses of smell. The spiracle is just a flow through point, water containing scent molecules still passes through the nostrils, circulates past the olfactory lobe where scents are collected & interpreted, and then the water goes out the spiracles. A well developed sense of smell is common in many animals which also have good lateral line & electrosensitivity. In fact I can't think of any with those senses that don't also have a good sense of smell. If you're really interested in the evolution and ecology of animal senses, there's definitely a huge number of living animals whose sensory biology is barely studied. You might consider a career in research in that direction. Definitely check out Clack et al 2016 - it's the most expansive and up to date piece of literature on ear evolution across multiple animal groups. phewff! that was probably the longest youtube comment in the history of life.

I do not have any spinosaur commissions currently in the works, but my first ever paleoart commission was actually depicting spinosaurus for a paper reviewing the known material by Tor Bertin which was published in 2010. You can see that illustration and read a blog post about it here: dontmesswithdinosaurs.com/?p=402

Albums will go up on www.historianhimself.bandcamp.com when they're ready.

@@BrianEnghArt ssiiiiiiick, god speed you legend

Like pretty much every modern day carnivore it probaby would have fed on a carcass if it came across one, but a lifestyle as a pure scavenger is not something to be expected from an animal like Allosaurus (and other large theropods in general). Most obligate scavengers are invertebrates while this way of life is quite uncommon in vertebrates. Additionally there is fossil evidence for the predatory behavior of Allosaurus represented by an injured pubic bone that bears a penetration mark. This pathology is thought to have been inflicted by a stegosaur (a potential prey item) with its spike-brandishing tail, hinting at an active predator-prey relationship between those two.

It's his own.

He makes his own music.

your username is Bigfartz 69 420