#protocetids

[onlyscarcelyscaly]

A work very much in-progress, of the mid-sized, Middle Eocene protocetid Rodhocetus pivoting in its dive to take a gander at us

[onlyscarcelyscaly]

More progress on the Georgiacetus render. Responding to feedback from the Facebook paleoartist group I posted this to, I made a few changes. I've built up the nares a lot, corrected the shape of the lower mandible, conformed the inside of the mouth to the shape of its osteological correlates, made the teeth more pointed, added more detail to the lips, packed some more mass on just about everywhere, and made numerous other minor adjustments to the whole deal.

rendered in Sculptfab, SculptGL, 3D Builder, and Blender 2020

[onlyscarcelyscaly]

work in progress on the skull and subsequent fleshier bits of Georgiacetus, digitally rendered in Sculptfab and SculptGL. At some point I want to sculpt this physically/traditionally, with two of them sort of breaching the water together, so this is something of a practice run I guess. Digital sculpture August 2020

[netmassimo]

An article published in the journal "PLOS ONE" reports the identification of an ancient species of whale that was named Aegicetus gehennae. It lived about 35 million years ago, in the Eocene period, in an area that is now occupied by the Egyptian desert. A team of paleontologists examined a skeleton that's exceptionally complete for this type of animal and a second partial skeleton concluding that it was a species belonging to the protocetid family, cetaceans that were probably amphibians. This new species represents an intermediate stage between the most primitive whales, which used using their feet to swim, and the modern ones that swim using their tail, providing information on their evolution.