I think I finished the giraffes. Iām not sure, I may tweak them a bit yet, but there wonāt be any major changes (unless I get my hands on any good references that will show me where I made mistakes).
Theyāre sort of to scale: sort of, because in most cases itās impossible to find good references, and, as I mentioned earlier, finding good info on sizes is also difficult. The best I could find for Bramatherium was: āsomewhat smaller than Sivatherium.ā, and for Shansitherium, it was āsmaller, with longer, more gracile* skull than Sivatherium.ā And Smatoherium was āabout the size of modern bull mooseā (or elk, if youāre in the UK), but it had ā1m long neckā, so Iām a bit more confident with Samotherium size.
Also to keep in mind: scrappy reference material: For Bohlinia, I literally had a piece of skull and the length of metetarsal, Palaotragus is also based only on a piece of skull, with modified Okapi skeleton for the rest of the body. The same with Giraffokeryx. Though in Palaeotragus case I also had the length of metatarsus to help with scaling. For Giraffokeryx the size is based on the skull length. At least I had a full skeletal reconstruction for Helladotherium, and with metatarsus length Iām quite confident, that one is accurate and to scale.
Shansitherium is based on several photos of its skeleton, but they were all distorted to some degree. I did my best to combine those, and get the proportions right, but thereās a possibility I made mistakes along the way.
Honestly, trying to find good references on extinct synapsids (whether mammalian or not), apart from the few āsuperstarsā is ridiculous. And even in cases of seemingly well known species, the lack of good references can be surprising.
That was supposed to be a fairly quick painting, but... it wasnāt. I also wasnāt sure how may extant giraffes to include here. Because some sources claim thereās only one, others that there are six, and others still that there are eight species. I gotĀ confused about which of those views to follow, so decided to stick with the traditional one species.
Iāll be adding this to me shop at some point, once Iām sure thereās no more tweaks to make.
*huh, my browser doesnāt know that word.















