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Archaeotherium mortoni "ancient beast" muscular study Click here to see the skeleton of Archaeotherium Archaeotherium mortoni was one of the earliest and largest species of the Archaeotherium genus. It lived during the North American Oligocene epoch about 35 million years ago. Its bones have been found in the White River Badlands of South Dakota. Like the larger Daeodon, it was a member of the Entelodontidae, a family whose remains are known from Europe and Asia as well as North America. Archaeotherium appeared before Daeodon in the geologic record, and it was smaller, roughly cow - sized, standing at about five feet at the shoulder. Entelodonts are now considered to have been more carnivorous than previously thought, click here to read an interesting article on this subject. Other than the huge grotesque skull, the axial (trunk) and apendicular (limbs) skeleton of Archaeotherium follows the basic artiodactyl body plan, which helped me to correlate the approximate superficial muscle types and densities for this reconstruction. The muscles that operated the jaws are fairly straight forward to reconstruct in terms of placement and approximate size. However, the facial muscles anterior (in front of) the orbits are more difficult to reconstruct with absolute certainty because there are no living analogs for Archaeotherium. For this painting I referenced pig and deer anatomy, along with some educated guesswork to infer the type and position for these muscles. Archaeotherium has very large, well developed neural spines on its thoracic vertebrae, which gave it a tall hump between the shoulders much like a bison. These spines, along with the scapula (shoulder blade with its cartilage cap) and a prominent occipital crest at the base of the skull, served as origins and insertions for broad expanses of the splenius, rhomboideus, trapezius and cleidomastoid muscles, which help to make up the bulk of the neck and shoulder region. This gave incredible head tossing power to these animals. And with heads that huge, they needed it! |