Sail-back Tail
Summary: Deep in the heart of Texas in the Red Beds, Arroyo Formation, 280 million years ago during the Early Permian Period. A Male Dimetrodon rests on top of the hierarchy of his group. He witnesses the lifestyle of his fellow Dimetrodons sleeping, resting, swimming, fishing, and raising their young, and when night comes they go hunting, alongside the other creatures that inhabit the swamps, but now he must put up with a new challenger who wants his position.
Cast: Dimetrodon (Focus), Acheloma, Cacops, Captorhinus, Casea, Diadectes, Diplocalus, Edaphosaurus, Eryops, Micraroter, Platyhystrix, Secodontosaurus, Seymouria, Varanops, and Xenacanthus decheni.
It begins in the hall of mammals area of the museum as Thomas Tran is seen behind an exhibit display. "Here in the hall of mammals, give us a glimpse of how mammals evolved to dominate the earth giving the rise of mammals including us humans like the ones behind me like the Llama, Zebra, Dugong, Sumatran Tiger, and Polar Bear. They started their reign when they started as small mammals living in the shadows of the dinosaurs, but before that, they started much earlier. In the Paleozoic era, a group of animals diverged from the reptiles and became a new group; they were stem-mammals, particularly a family known as Synapsids. Despite their reptilian characteristics, they have characteristics of those of mammals. Unlike other amniotes, they have a single temporal fenestra, an opening low in the skull roof behind each eye orbit, leaving a bony arch beneath each. Among the most famous and familiar is this particular Synapsid." He brings out a cast model of a sail-back lizard-like creature. "Dimetrodon, This creature is often associated with dinosaurs, but it's not a dinosaur as it lived before the dinosaurs and isn't a dinosaur, more closely related to mammals. It lived in North America during the Permian period in wetlands, the top predator of its day. It's known for its sail back which would have been used to display towards rivals and attract females. But what kind of animals was it?"
. . . . .
Dawn rises over the Wild West of Texas 280 years ago, the Arroyo Formation. Before the cowboys and Native Americans in the Permian, it was more wild, rugged, and weird compared to the modern day. The landscape was mostly of arid shrublands and swamp floodplains, the largest mountains with the tops covered with snow since it's during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age which began in the early Devonian. Surprisingly, this place is home to many creatures.
A sail back is seen with neural spines covered with skin tissues with visible spine tops. It was colorful with bright markings. This strange structure is part of an unusual creature, a Male Dimetrodon sleeping on top of a hill. This dominant male has been ruler of this stretch of the swamp for generations, fought off many challengers, and had many offspring.
Most of the Dimetrodons are quite sluggish today normally they are nocturnal hunters hunting in the cover of darkness. Like many modern-day predators, the sail-backed Dimetrodon must have taken plenty of hours to rest to conserve energy and digest its food from last night. Some adults basked on the banks of the waterways, piles of large rocks, others were basking and wallowing in the water, relaxing and cooling off. The younger adolescents hide in the dense cover of the forest often up in the branches of the trees to avoid the larger adults as they are cannibalistic.
On the other side of the waterways is a nursery crèche of adult female Dimetrodon mothers carrying and watching their young offspring. The young play by chasing each other around, finding small prey like insects and small animals, and wrestling with one another to perfect their hunting and fighting skills. Some mothers are nursing their young; their scaly skin with some bristle hair filaments is moist which would work like sweat glands to cool the skin surfaces during a hot day. But for this mother, her side glands are swollen that secrete white n nutritious substance milk to feed her offspring, monotremes including platypus and echidnas do this to feed their young. She is very protective of her young and will attack any predator that comes too close.
Walking past them is an Acheloma, an extinct genus of temnospondyl, it was a terrestrial land predator, but it's not interested in Dimetrodon young. He passes by a frog-eye creature sitting on a rock in the water, a Cacops. This temnospondyl lives like a frog and even hunts like a frog; they have a tympanic membrane in the form of a large, smooth, unornamented flange in the otic notch that bears faint striations inferred to have been the sites of attachment. Among modern amniotes, sensory perception requires a specialized middle ear that collects airborne sounds through a tympanic membrane and delivers the vibrations to the inner ear via multiple structures, including the stapes enabling it to hear airborne sounds.
It was sitting next to a group of small herbivorous Casea, a caseid synapsid. Casea represents one of the first large and highly successful herbivores among terrestrial reptiles. They have barrel shape massive rib cage bodies to contain the stomach to process the vegetation. Nearby, pair of male Caseas are fighting over the right to mate with the females in the area. The two Casea rear up a bit and start wrestling each other with their front limbs, trying to push each other over. After several minutes passed, the older male shoved and pushed the younger male away as it ran off. It got grabbed by a long tongue belonging to the Cacops, and thousands of tiny teeth in its jaws punctured through its quarry as it swallowed and blinked its eyes to swallow.
The Acheloma is hunting a small lizard-like captorhinid reptile, a Captorhinus. It most likely compromised the smallest carnivore guild among early Permian predators feeding on small prey. The Acheloma slowly stalks the Captorhinus and then lunges after it, giving chase to the small lizard-like creature as it bursts in an instant. The Acheloma grabs the creature by the tail, but the Captorhinus has a trick up its feet, it detaches its tail allowing it to escape. The Acheloma is focused on feasting on the wiggling tail as the Captorhinus hides in a log as it makes its escape; luckily the tail will grow back.
Meanwhile, another synapsid is looking for food, a Varanops, a large pelycosaur, around the size of the modern monitor lizard. It was about 1.2 m (3.9 ft.) long and had large limbs and sharp, backward-curving teeth. It was one of many agile, voracious predators among pelycosaurs. Even though it was significantly large for its time, Varanops was very small compared to the dinosaurs that came much later along with the other inhabitants. The Varanops finds what it's looking for, this lizard-like amphibian is Seymour. It was very well-adapted to life on land, a transitional fossil because it has many reptilian features—so many that Seymouria was first thought to be a primitive reptile, but they're young and start their life in water. The general body shape plan resembles that of early reptiles such as captorhinids, and certain adaptations of the limbs, hip, and skull were also similar to that of early reptiles, rather than any species of modern or extinct amphibians known at the time like strongly-built limbs and backbone. This one is raiding an abandoned nest and feasting on eggs, but it has attracted the attention of the Varanops who charges at the amphibian and starts chasing it into a burrow, the Varanops follows inside and the shuffle can only be heard inside the den. The Varanops emerges with the Seymouria in its jaws.
In the arid shrub lands where herds of herbivores like the Diadectes, their broad, blunt cheek teeth grind up the food and with a partial secondary palate, meant it could chew its food and breathe at the same time, something many even more advanced reptiles were unable to do. Alongside them are another herd of sail-backs, Edaphosaurus. Unlike Dimetrodon, they were plant-eating herbivores, its distinctive dorsal sail composed of tall spines studded with bony knobs. They are the natural prey for predators like Dimetrodons. Crawling among the herd are Platyhystrix, since here are preyed upon by predators they rely on large animals like Edaphosaurus for protection and in return eat the bugs disturbed by their feet and off their backs. Unlike Edaphosaurus and Dimetrodon, Platyhystrix is not a synapsid, temnospondyl amphibian, a near relative to Cacops, and they also have a sail on its back. The sails could be used for thermoregulation and another purpose is to intimidate rivals and attract mates.
Some of the herbivores have come to take a drink at the waterways disturbing those who were resting on the banks. Among them is a bask of Eyrops terrestrial amphibious temnospondyls, they lived in lowland habitats in and around ponds, streams, and rivers, and the arrangement and shape of their teeth suggest that they probably ate mostly large fish and aquatic tetrapods. The torso of Eryops was relatively stiff and the tail stout, which would have made them poor swimmers. While they probably fed on fish, adult Eryops must have spent most of their time on land. Like most amphibians, they start their life in water, Eryops would have grown slowly and gradually from aquatic larvae, but they did not go through a major metamorphosis like many modern amphibians. While adults probably lived in ponds and rivers or ventured onto their banks, juvenile Eryops may have lived in swamps, which may have offered more shelter from predators and even other Eyrops. Another semi-aquatic predator is another sail back synapsid, Secodontosaurus. It has a long narrow snout with needle-sharp teeth similar to a crocodile. This jaw would have been used to catch fish or for hunting prey hiding in burrows.
Even in the waterways, there is life in the water hiding in the sediment bottom floor is a Diplocaulus, known for its boomerang head flanges which help the animal burrow into the sediment the sides of the flanges were stretched with skin flaps to the rest of the body and acted as a hydrofoil, allowing the animal to more easily control how water flows over its head. Burrowing into the sediment makes it a silent ambush predator and hiding from other predators like Dimetrodon fossils have been found in the skulls with bite marks made by Dimetrodon.
Among the other aquatic inhabitants are Micraroters, Microsaur amphibians, which belong to a group that has short tails and small legs, but were otherwise quite varied in form. Some species within the group were lizard-like animals that were relatively well-adapted to living on dry land, burrowing underground, and others that, retained their gills into adult life, and never leave the water. Another inhabitant is the primitive shark, Xenacanthus. They appeared in the late Devonian and will last to the Late Triassic. This freshwater shark measures about one meter (3.3 feet) in length, and never longer than 2 m (6.6 ft.). The dorsal fin is ribbon-like and it runs the entire length of the back and around the tail, where it joins with the anal fin. This arrangement resembles that of modern conger eels, and Xenacanthus probably swam similarly. The distinctive spine of the shark is projected from the back of the head and gave the genus its name, "Foreign Spine". The spine could be used as a form of defense against predators like Dimetrodon.
Night has fallen and most of the creatures have fallen asleep, but to some, it's a time to hunt that's what the Dimetrodons and Secodontosaurus have been waiting for. The Secodontosaurs patrol the waterways and banks propping the burrows for small amphibians and synapsis. The herd of Edaphosaurus and Diadectes were gathered together with the young in the center of the herd. In the outskirts, the Male Dimetrodon leads the hunting party using the cover of darkness and the herbivores' poor eyesight on a black night. These sail-back predators have the advantage, they mostly go after the young and weak members of the herd, reaching them is another problem with the adults forming an impenetrable barrier of bodies and sail-back humps around them.
The Dimetrodons start bellowing, hissing, and screaming which sounds like a human screaming, to disorient the herd. The herd being woken up bellowed and hissed as they protected their young as the Dimetrodons circled the herd. It all takes from one individual to make a run and soon the entire herd follows. As they spirited away, the Dimetrodons pursued the herd until they found a straggler, a weak young adult Edaphosaurus. As they circled their quarry, the Dimetrodons took their turns biting from all sides of its body. Before the Adult male ends his life by biting the throat as the synapsis feast on the body.
The Next morning, the rest of the body have been eaten by the adults and it was now being scavenged by young juvenile Dimetrodons, Achelomas, Eyrops, Secodontosaurus, Varanops, and Seymouria, despite some squabbles between different species, nothing goes to waste.
While some of the Dimetrodons bask in the sun and laze about in the water to conserve their energy and digest their food. The Adult males are busy courting, they are bellowing in the water creating ripples on the water this is followed by the symphony of Dimetrodons and showing off the brightly colored marking sail-back humps. The Adult male has been following this female for a while, but a challenger appears, they circle and hiss at one another. The two males start doing push-ups to look larger and more intimidating and assess each other's physical size and strength. But with none of them backing down, it turns into a wrestling brawl. The Two males charged before grabbing each other with their front legs and shoving with their chests, one male slamming the other one to the ground and so forth. The males even bite one another on the heads and necks as they fight. Then the male grabs the challenger's throat and bites him as he shoves him to the ground. The adult male finishes it off by killing his rival and leaving his body, soon other Dimetrodons gather to cannibalize the body.
The Male Dimetrodon returns to his hill with his mate to rest alongside her. Soon they will produce a clutch of 24-30 eggs after mating, they look into the sun setting on the lone star. This has been his 'Sail-Back Tail; about, Two hundred and eighty million years later, they will be long ago, but they will leave distant descendants, the mammals which dominate the earth after the dinosaurs, and among those mammals will be humans, who will look back one day like the cowboys that will ride out into the sunset.
Trivia/References
All Your Yesterdays'/Olmagon
-The Dimetrodons wallowing in the water being lazy, sleepy predators to conserve energy and digest last night's meal is based on the artwork, "Lazy Dimetrodons" by Fabio Manucci.
-The Female Dimetrodons nursing their young from glands like monotremes like platypuses is based on the artwork, "Texan Mama: Dimetrodon" by Mike Keesey.
-The wrestling male Caseas is based on an artwork, "Dueling Cotylorhynchus" by Joshua Knuppe as well as an Olmagon Artwork, "Permian Pinhead."
-The Diplocaulus hiding in the sand like a stingray is based on an artwork titled "Diplocaulus, an Amphibian Stingray" by Mitchell Seymour.
Speculative Behaviors/Fossil Evidence
-We have evidence of Diplocaulus and Xenacanthus being preyed on by Dimetrodons.
-The Mating and offspring-caring behaviors in the Dimetrodons come from American Alligators.
-Cacops having thousands of teeth is based on fossil evidence and the frog tongue is speculative.
-The Captorhinus shedding its tail to escape from predators is based on evidence.
-The Dimetrodon fight scene, juveniles hiding in the brush and trees, and cannibalism is based on komodo dragons.
-The Dimetrodon screams sound like human screams come from Jurassic World: Dominion and the mammal ancestry from the synapsids.
-The night hunt scene is based on evidence that Dimetrodon was a nocturnal hunter and based on a lion pride in Botswana that hunts young elephants.
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The Next Story is "The Original Victorian" focusing on a young male Iguanodon growing up to become the herd leader.
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