Hairy Museum of Natural History

In which I play “catch-up” for a few sites overlooked in my absence (note the partially-updated blogroll to the left). Today I’ll point out some excellent posts from the past few months dealing with different aspects of the Permian:

First up, Will at The Dragon’s Tales has had a couple of great articles on two of the more charismatic groups from the latter days of the Paleozoic: the carnivorous, sabre-toothed gorgonopsians and the herbivorous, tusk-beaked dicynodonts. Plus, he notes that there are some fantastic restorations of Permian vertebrates showing up on Wikipedia.

Speaking of dicynodonts, The Lord Geekington, mentions the ubiquitous Permo-Triassic straddler Lystrosaurus in his review of aquatic habits in stem-group synapsids. At the other end (that is, the beginning) of the Permian, he also discusses the potentially piscivorous pelycosaur Ophiacodon.

Finally, I recently came across the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s Prehistoric CSI blog, whose archives are chock full of fossil finds from Seymour, Texas—a treasure trove of Early Permian vertebrates—with videos and photos, and field sketches by Dr. Robert Bakker.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Permian, Reptiles, Synapsids, Tetrapods.