Aug 2, 2023
On a rainy Devonian day, a Tiktaalik father guards his eggs in a small forest river. Meanwhile, his hunting mate has her eye on a Bothriolepis. Another Bothriolepis is eating something buried in the river sediment, drawing the attention of a Coccosteus.
I've wanted to draw Tiktaalik for a while. It's easily the most depicted creature of the Devonian, but it always seems to get shown boldly pulling itself onto the land. While that was of course extremely important in hindsight, surely they spent much more of their time living quite happily underwater. So here's some interesting behaviour some lungfish do: the dads guard their eggs after they're lain in water plants.