Life in the Line

....I was told that my drawings have life. A rare sort of energy that is so scarce and precious in scientific illustration. It is ironic that my drawings seem so alive because it is born of suffering and destruction of the psychic kind.

And I know that brutal honestly can destroy one's life.

There are people out there who believe that science and art cannot mix. That science is a dry boring diorama. It's a pity really, when you are just a child you are not supposed to know who you are. They try to shape you, cut your arms off and bind you into their definition of greatness. There are people out there in the public schooling system, call themselves teachers, that have forgotten how to dream. To them dreams are childish things to be quashed by the hard realities of adult life...that includes any remaining desire to be a vertebrate palaeontologist.

Do something useful. Earn some money. Get a real job. Forget the pursuit of knowledge for wisdom's' sake alone. I continued to draw dinosaurs instead of people.

So I had to burn at the stake for my heresy for my impractical dreams and my uneconomical ambitions.

Diprotodon optatum

This animal has the distinction of being the largest marsupial known, living or extinct. It weighted well over a ton and was comparable in size to a rhinoceros. The largest specimens are 3 meters long and 2 metres tall at the shoulder. Although they resembled wombats, they are not direct ancestors of them, belonging to a different subfamily; the Diprotodontidae. The Vombatidae, which is the family that modern wombats belong to, have rootless, evergrowing teeth. The Diprotodonids had rooted teeth with lower crowns, designed to browse on more succulent foliage than the roots and grasses that wombats make more use of. The structure f the nasal bones has been the source of much speculation; some think that it may have had a short trunk, others think the nasal bones resemble those of a wombats and it had a nose like theirs. I'll have to judge for myself in the future.

Diprotodon remains have been found in proximity to the Pleistocene deposits of the inland lakes of inland Australia. These creatures were one of many animals that did not make it to the present day; probably being victims of the drying climate and possibly a change in the vegetation assemblage due to the firestick farming practices of the Aboriginals. It is very likely that Diprotodon was known to the earliest people of this land and was the inspiration of the bunyip legends. It became extinct about 30,000 BP.

When I think of Diprotodon, I think of thirst. Imagine a weary lumbering beast approaching his local lake once so fertile, teeming with lungfish and crocodiles. Only to find a hypersaline puddle with salt so concentrated that it burns and cracks the parched soles of their massive feet. These animals were the equivalent of elephants in their time and elephants need to drink every day. Imagine the last drink beside the sparkling gypsum crystals of forboding beauty. Imagine the agonised eyes sunken with starvation and the drawn, gaunt face drawing up the last particles of moisture from the spreading dust of the desert.

Simosthenurus

I think I did this drawing in 2006. I know these things are a bit old now, but I don't have enough time to scan off my later drawings at the moment. I really should be studying but I find this little journal a fulfilling catharsis in my dreary life...

Anyhow, this is a profile of Simosthenurus sp. that I did directly from a photo of a skull that I found in Vickers-Rich and Rich's Wildlife of Gondwana. This book has been a useful companion for me as I don't have good access to specimens. Yes, so I sketched the skull and layered the muscles on as well as I understood it. If you look at it closely, you can still see the outline of the zygomatic arch, teeth, diastema and the end of the nasal bones where they adjoin the rhinarium. It is also possible to view where I have blocked out the temporalis and masseter muscles as well as the whisker pads.

Simosthenurus ("short-nosed strong-tailed beast") was a sthenurine; a member of an extinct lineage of browsing kangaroos. They are characterised by short, deep muzzles, high-crowned molars with complex crenulated enamel, short robust tails and often they only had one well developed toe (digit 4) on their hind feet. Their bones suggest that they were also heavily built, I might enjoy drawing one of these on steroids! They were often quite gigantic, larger than modern kangaroos. Procoptodon goliah could have been up to three metres tall and is the largest kangaroo known. Simosthenurus itself could have weighed about 100 kilograms; larger than any living kangaroo. It is thought that sthenurines were amongst the first macropods to move out into the woodlands that were replacing the rainforests as Australia dried out in response to the Ice Ages. The short jaws probably gave them a stronger bite, allowing them to masticate tougher vegetation and the monodactylism could be a convergence with horses. It might have allowed them to hop around at higher speeds. Both Procoptodon and Simosthenurus lived during the Late Pleistocene; about 1 mya to 500,000 BP.

Tasmaniosaurus triassicus

This beastie is the oldest archosaur known from Australia. Actually his remains were only found a short distance from the university where I study everything I desire with the exception of palaeontology! Tasmaniosaurus was probably the top predator of its time in the Triassic swamps of Hobart. In appearance it would have probably resembled a crocodile and I have modelled its flesh on saltwater crocodile soft anatomy. I was probably about a metre long and had a similar lifestyle; feeding on the amphibians and heavily scaled fish of its environment. It is believed to be a member of the Proterosuchidae and thought to be a relative of Chasmatosaurus that inhabited Africa and China.

I did this drawing with the possibility that I may have to get into contact with John A. Long, a well-known palaeontologist in Australia who works the Devonian Gogo Formation near Broome in Western Australia. At that point I didn't know where to go for my Honours Project and doing the drawing helped me digest my thoughts. I have several of John Long's books and I did this drawing based on a reconstruction of a skull I found in his Dinosaurs of Australia and New Zealand and other animals of the Mesozoic Era.

The Dreaming

I float, as I have drifted and dwelt in the amorphous places between the cracks of the human world. The Shadowlands. My birthright dark and dim. Filled with sensual pleasures, swirling purple and suptuous velvet sanguinous hue envelope me in warm pleasure.

You were there once. You were there, my brother. Knew everything. Was a part of everything.
I guess it is no more. The computer, so bright and solid. Renders imagination obsolete.

The Shadowlands. They forbid the sanctuary of forgetting. I feel that pain, stabs me everyday.

The Shadowlands talons wide and grasping, yellow eyes burning. Hunger. Calling you home. Hissing. Whispering.

I have no home, only the comforting familiarity of an ancient agony. A shattered trust. A meloncholic romance. The final threads of life that define me. They are the Shadowlands.

The Shadowlands are my essence. My only home. The only constant. The depression will come and save you when everyone has forsaken you for dead.

*********

The skeletal face framed by leonine mane as swarthy as the deepest midnight flashes with its own electricity. Eyes of fire infected with vitality. Making cracks in the Shadowland so the light can come in. 'Come to my home.' He purrs. His paw has grip like a tyre tread. 'We are going home.' His pinions lift and billow, shields from an indifferent universe. 'Let me remind you of the older dream you already knew.....'