#basilosaurus

[scrumpygoat]

made a companion piece for my basilosaurus tattoo >:3c

[opabinia--regalis]

the complete transition from basal whippomorphs to ambulocetids to basilosaurids to modern whales!

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

Result from the Wadi al Hitan #paleostream! The "valley of the whales" as it is better known is a classic locality from the late Eocene of Egypt. Most famously it is place filled with the remains of early whales, Archaeoceti, but it's less straight forward as a piece than one...

might think. Since the early 20th century people have recorded fossils from the Wadi and in 2005 it was dedicated a World Heritage Site. Besides Basilosaurus and Dorudon the remains of early sirenians and proboscideans and among the more important finds but the largest...

part of the fauna is probably in the sharks and rays. Keen eyes will notice that some prominent taxa are missing here. This is mostly due to the stratigraphy of the Wadi being an absolute nightmare.While single members are relatively well defined, how they relate to each other...

and into what formations they fit depends a lot on the author. Subsequently we near exclusively used the Temple member here, which includes most of the famous stuff. During the Eocene this part of Africa was largely covered by shallow seas, fringed by mangroves...

this created a paradise for water loving mammals but the sharks clearly dominate. Large marine snakes are also known from the Wadi but from different localities. This size chart was put together by me as well as Discord member Avery with the inverts by Discord member Gnath

[hurglewurm]

some mysterious sea beasts

[artyofaardvark]

“Lady of the Shore”

Bet Tumblr is gonna kill the quality of this guy

Speedpaint below!

Been wanting to make a piebald basilosaurus character for a while! I’ve given her the nickname “Lady of the Shore” but I’m not sure what her actual name will be :’]

Any suggestions welcome!

Little elephant thing I forgot the name of is crossing the channel to head to another feeding ground. Poor thing is unaware of the ancient whale swimming just a few yards from him. The whale, on the other hand, has noticed him.

Close ups:

I really struggled with backgrounds on this. I need to do some studies because oml backgrounds/anything involving water kill me :’]

Used my basilosaurus model and the static entelodont of shame to stage the critters and get the size difference down. Probably shouldn’t rely on 3D models as much as I do but I made them and I’m lazy so eh

Speedpaint:

[peregrinethegryphon]

Speaking of PCOS getting renamed, let’s take a moment to celebrate that medical scientists are actually allowed to change the names of their discoveries, because paleontologists can’t fucking relate.

Sorry, why did you name this whale “King Lizard”? They thought it was a reptile when they first discovered it? Ok well can’t you change it? No?

Hey why is this clade called “False Crocodiles” when it contains all crocodiles? Oh, it used to be classified differently and only included an offshoot of crocodile-like animals, but now it includes the entire crocodile branch of the archosaur family tree? So, now all crocodiles are false crocodiles? Uh huh. ok. great.

[artofgerald]

The mascots! Do you have a favorite one? Personally, I like Ambrose the most. 👀

[chillyfeetsteak]

grabs your whale by the tail and swings it around til it gets real long and looks like this