#stemmammal

Work in progress underpainting for Edaphosaurus pogonias, the "pavement lizard."🤣

Edaphosaurus is an extinct species of Synapsid that lived from the Late carboniferous to the Early Permian (303.4 to 272.5 Million years ago). Though one might confuse this animal with it's more famous contemporary, Dimetrodon, they differ in some very important ways:

  For one the E. pogonias had a smaller more heavily built sail with the vertebral spines featuring numerous crossbars that aided in supporting the structure. Two, while Dimetrodon was an apex carnivore, Edaphosaurus was herbiverous, it's mouth featuring small peg-like teeth batteries as well as large tooth plates that it likely used to mash plant matter.

Cynodont t-shirt

Non-mammalian cynodonts like Thrinaxodon may look like mammals, but they weren't quite there yet. If you are really into mammal evolution you can get this funky little critter on a t-shirt!

sulc.us/cynodont

Ophiacodon t-shirt

Despite having what you could call a “lizard” body plan Ophiacodon was an early synapsid, the group that would eventually evolve into mammals.

sulc.us/ophiaco

Dimetrodon unisex t-shirt

Dimetrodon was a predatory non-mammalian synapsid from the early Permian, and definitely not a dinosaur. Design by Greco Westermann