STL Science Center

STL Science Center

16 October 2017

Ugly Animals Get All the Love

Whenever a fossil animal is bizarre enough to be a little scary or to be called ugly outright it appears to gather an awful lot of attention in the media and within the general population. Estemmenosuchus is an animal that exemplifies this sort of massive interest across the lines of professional and amateur as well as including the typically disinterested portion of the population. Despite knowledge of the animal and its respected, if not well known, existence in the fossil record, it has not made am impact in the animation or documentary community that typically brings dinosaurs and other fossil animals to life. A Permian Monsters exhibit was once outfitted with an animatronic Estemmenosuchus and Gondwana Studios captured the statue in motion and displaying all the small conical teeth it was installed bearing. Seeing an interpretation in action is important to understanding how scientists envision this animal moving around its environment, regardless of the actual motions that this statue is engaged in (what I mean here is that it is roaring and moving its head around perfectly well, but there is no locomotion aspect to the animatronics). Maybe someone should have suggested this rather intriguing animal for a role in the Walking with Monsters series from 2005. It would have been contemporary with other Permian animals like Gorgonops, Dimetrodon, and  Edaphosaurus, to name a few. Perhaps this age will be revisited by television and film, but until then the movies for Estemmenosuchus are sadly lacking overall.

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