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.