WTF Permian

The Permian is one of the most Hardcore Periods of life on Earth. We're here to Introduce You To It. 

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

I LOVE how you draw Anteosaurus. It can look scary half of the time, but gentle and friend shaped the other. Idk I guess I’m just a sucker for that kind of stuff, I adore it.

Thank you very much, the Middle Permian was truly a time of potato on potato violence!

[wtf-permian]

Hey everyone! So we were getting ready to run Permian March Madness on time this year. Got all the creatures together with minimal hassle, everything seemed to be going great. Unfortunately, a power outage over the weekend took out the electric fences and, uh, a few of the animals may have escaped. We rounded up the dicynodonts and temnospondyls pretty quickly, but the gorgon also got out and now he's, uh, kinda mad.

So Permian Madness will be delayed a little bit. Thank you for your understanding. And if you're near our HQ, keep an eye out.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

PSA

This is a Parasaur, a kind of early reptile not closely related to dinosaurs from 258 million years ago:

This is a Parasaurolophus, a kind of duck-billed dinosaur from 75 million years ago:

Now You Know! Thank you!

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

Another sketch brought to you by #paleostream

Anteosaurus, bane of the Permian. A titanic synapsid, build like a cress between bear and komodo dragon but the size of a rhino.

[haltraveler]

the skull is also unnervingly T. rex like in general shape

[wtf-permian]

Hey everyone,

As you might be able to infer by now, Permian March Madness will not be happening this year. You probably know that 2020 was one hell of a year. It was for us too. All of us have been, quite frankly, exhausted between our own personal workloads and the general state of things. So we weren’t able to arrange this in time. I hope y’all can understand.

As the whole end-of-the-world thing hopefully gets slightly better, we’ll be working hard to deliver Permian March Madness for 2022!

- The WTF Permian crew

[dailyfossil]

Scutosaurus 

Mounted specimen on display at the American Museum of Natural History, NYC. 

When: Late Permian (~252 million years ago)

Where: Russia

What: Scutosaurus is an extinct reptile. It lived during the end of the Permian, and was one of the giants of its time. It reached lengths of over 8 feet (~2.5 meters) and was massively built. This bulky form was a plant eater, and in a way was the cow of its time. Scutosaurus lived in what is now Russia, and during the Permian this land was a semi-arid expanse. Thus, it is thought the herbivorous Scutosaurus would have had to have a large range in order to find enough food to support its huge body. Its flattened teeth imply it was able to grind up branches and other plant material that was not exactly the most nutritious of options. Scutosaurus was most likely a slow moving form, protected by its large size and the many osteoderms that covered its skin. 

Scutosaurus  is not closely related to any living reptile. It is an anapsid reptile, which is a grade of stem taxa that fall outside of the modern clade of reptiles (turtles, crocodiles, lizards, and birds). At one point it was thought turtles fell into this variety of stem reptiles, but more and more evidence is placing them closer to other living reptiles. Scutosaurus, like most of its kin, went extinct in the massive end Permian extinction event. As the fauna rebounded in the Triassic, the niche of large plant eaters was filled with basal synapsids at first, but by the end of the Triassic massive plant eating dinosaurs started to appear and quickly dominated. 

[dailyfossil]

Diadectes

When: Early Permian (299-271 Million years ago)

Where: North America

What:  Diadectes is a large reptiliomorph. That means that it is on the line towards amniotes (reptiles and mammals), but is not quite there yet. Diadectes is closer than most reptilomorphs, and is found in many studies to be the sister taxonto the amniotes. It is thought to have been amphibious, but spending most of its time on land. The dentition of Diadectes clearly marks it as an herbivore; its front teeth were procumbent(they tilted forward) and its cheek teeth were blunted and fairly wide compared to other stem reptilomorphs. Diadectes was one of the first large terrestrial herbivores, though it was not the only one of its time. Edaphosaurus was a synapsid (‘mammal-like reptile’) contemporary of Diadectes. The herbivorous diet of these two taxa was attained convergently, as there was by this time a large amount of plant material covering the land. 

Diadectes looks very reptilian, and in fact some early studies placed it as a true reptile, but odds are the clade is belongs to is not directly ancestral to any of the amniotes. Though Diadectes with its large bulky form and size of  up to 9 feet (~3 meters) is convergent on later reptiles such as Scutosaurus, the first true reptiles were small lizard like insect eating forms, such as Hylonomus. 

Reconstruction by Matt Celeskey.

[lostbeasts]

Gorgonopsians of the Permian. (i don’t know who the artist is)

[lostbeasts]

Edaphosaurus. Carboniferous-Permian synapsid. It had a similar sail to Dimetrodon, showing convergent evolution. Their sails would have served the same purpose.

[harvestheart]

Small trilobite fossil (Pseudophillipsia artiensis) from the early Permian period, found in Krasnoufimsk Russia, and now displayed at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.

[paleoillustration]

Cotylorhynchus enjoying a “Permian sunset” by Ville Sinkkonen

[paleoillustration]

Tiarajudens by Mauricio Antón.

“adult individuals with full-sized tusks could not possibly open their mouths wide enough to bite with them!. So what was the use of their spectacular teeth?” Find out

[geozoic]

Douglas Henderson

Bradysaurus, Rubidgea 

[geozoic]

Ray Troll - Helicoprion

[antediluvianechoes]

Dimetrodon, Karl Huber, 2002

The synapsids shifted their lazy bulks, sails wobbling, bellies dragging against stone, still too tired to be more active. They always slept together, then separated for the day and hunted alone. When the sky went dim and the first stars emerged, they would gather again on the big stones, vie for the warmest sun-baked spots, croak and make throaty gurgles at each other, then slip into silent sleep and await the next orange-lined dawn.

[antediluvianechoes]

Moschops, Benjamin Chandler, 2014

Barrel-bodied and buck-toothed, he was not an attractive king. But his markings were strong, with bright stripes on his flanks and face, and in shoving matches he was undefeated. For these reasons, the pod followed him, the females welcoming, the other males submissive. His domain extended from the wood, through the meadow, to the edge of the lake country where anteosaurs lurked.

They were not alone. Bands of snorting Jonkeria, like lizard-pigs, strolled through the region, huffing and grunting, gnawing on pieces of dead things left near the forest, or harvesting the more delectable parts of weeds and roots. Little gorgonopsids, reptiles-cum-foxes, hopped through the underbrush, pulling amphibians from puddles or tails from lizards. They only needed to be watched during egg-laying season, when an unmonitored nest would lure them from their critter-catching games.

He had just one blemish: a scar on his right foreleg, a souvenir from a Titanosuchus attack three summers before. The hatchlings had grown into calves, mewling things that waddled indiscriminately between adults. They were mostly his children, though a few males had snuck quick screws with willing cows behind his back. The offspring of these pairings smelled different to him, unwelcome. He did not protect them. But his own kin he monitored with proud diligence. 

Uneasy sounds came from the edge of the pod. The Titanosuchus—a cougar in monitor lizard’s clothing—had slunk from the wood. It padded around the small herd, dragged tail shushing against foliage, fangs glistening in the evening light. The pod knew that the predator would never attack a full-grown Moschops, but a juvenile was manageable and tempting. The calves were nudged by adults to the far side of the herd, then nudged again when the therapsid circled around. 

The monarch followed the Titanosuchus, keeping step with the reptile-thing’s patrol. He hummed a warning, a deep tone that rolled from the chest. The predator replied with nothing, the only sounds it made were its body moving through the vegetation. 

A small window in the pod allowed a baying juvenile—one of the monarch’s own—to wander into the open. The Titanosuchus darted, and the monarch bolted after it, head low, feet stomping. The two clashed before the one could catch the calf, the Moschops’s bony head nearly flipping the puma-lizard while a heavy foot came down and cracked one of the predator’s ribs. The Titanosuchus hissed, yelped, wheeled with its mouth agape. One tusk sliced a gash on the monarch’s leg, deep enough to bleed, but not deep enough to debilitate. The Moschops steamrollered the predator again, and the Titanosuchus fled. 

The rest of the day his leg pinched when he walked. It would take some time for the gash to heal, but it did, leaving a shiny hair-thin line between the black scutes on his leg, the origin of which the Moschops king would never remember.

[scientificillustration]

Late Permian of Tanzania at the time of deposition of the Usili Formation.

Life restoration of Aenigmastropheus parringtoni (foreground), and herd of the dicynodont Endothiodon being pursued by a gorgonopsian. All these vertebrates were found together at the type locality of Aenigmastropheus parringtoni (locality B35). Drawing by Emilio López-Rolandi. 

See also: Emilio López-Rolandi on Deviantart and Emilio López-Rolandi Dinosaur Art

Source: The Origin and Early Evolution of Sauria: Reassessing the Permian Saurian Fossil Record and the Timing of the Crocodile-Lizard Divergence by Martín D. Ezcurra mail,Torsten M. Scheyer, Richard J. Butler PLoS ONE 9(2): e89165. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0089165