A Couple of Weirdos

I present here, for your viewing pleasure a pair of diplocaulus. In case you are not in the know (and exactly what sheltered-from-long-extinct-amphibians rock have you been living under anyway?) they are some long extinct amphibians. They were really big in North America about 300 to 250 million years ago. In life they were something like 3 feet long. Of course, there were different species of diplocaulus and they came in different shapes and sizes. I'm just trying to give you the general idea. You dig? You can see a few more of my diplocaulus here and here.

I've drawn mine in two ways. One of them has frilly gills like ordinary larval salamanders do today, the other does not. I have absolutely no idea if diplocaulus had this arrangement or not. Please cut me some slack as I neglected to get my paleo-herpetological PhD in between getting my art degrees and raising a family. Sheesh, you guys are a demanding bunch.

I simply love the outlandish and seeming wildly impractical boomerang heads on these guys. There are all sorts of theories as to exactly what was going on with the headgear, but I don't really care what the reason is. I'm just glad that something like this was real.