HOME | DD

Description
Barylambda was a pantodont mammal, one of the first groups to get really big after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago. To me, pantodonts look sort of uncannily similar to the last large synapsids that dominated global ecosystems at the end of the Permian period--it's almost as if mammals put their evolution on pause during the Age of Reptiles, and picked right back up where they left off. (Of course, that's not actually what happened--pantodonts, and today's mammals, are the descendants of the small rodent-like cynodonts that survived the Great Dying.)

Barylambda was a bear-sized herbivore with a long, heavy tail that it may have used as a prop for rearing up. The males had large canine teeth for intraspecific competition; this is a male in a threat display.

The thermal-camera colors don't really mean anything; it's just for fun!

Description
Barylambda was a pantodont mammal, one of the first groups to get really big after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago. To me, pantodonts look sort of uncannily similar to the last large synapsids that dominated global ecosystems at the end of the Permian period--it's almost as if mammals put their evolution on pause during the Age of Reptiles, and picked right back up where they left off. (Of course, that's not actually what happened--pantodonts, and today's mammals, are the descendants of the small rodent-like cynodonts that survived the Great Dying.)

Barylambda was a bear-sized herbivore with a long, heavy tail that it may have used as a prop for rearing up. The males had large canine teeth for intraspecific competition; this is a male in a threat display.

The thermal-camera colors don't really mean anything; it's just for fun!