The cruel and pouched dagger, another grisly species name for another amazing animal. Finally, I was planning on having a sun-set scene, rich with the mellow yellows and oranges of dusk, but I thought that might a) obfuscate the depiction/colour scheme of the subject, and b) be too hard for a n00b meister like myself.Īnother 'Thylaco' (pouched) + 'smilus' (Greek, dagger) + atrox (Latin, cruel/frightful). I instead changed the lion's pose into a protective one, like a dog snarling over its bowl of dried pellets. ![]() This was supposed to go into the final, but I accidentally positioned the jaws too wide for this. On the above-right mock-up, I had the right lion pulling a layer of muscle from the kangaroo's ribcage. I incorporated this with my lions, since I wanted that same adorable vulnerability to the Australian sun. Looking at quolls, they have fair, pinkish, almost delicate noses, ears, and hands. I quite liked the idea of the sooty eyemask and tail, so I factored that in in my mock-up, but looking at the final, I kind of forgot about it, sadly. Their coat isn't one-flush colour, but a salt and pepper set up. I didn't want a plain old grey coat, so I tried to make it a little rusty like kangaroos and many other marsupials. And - unlike the tigers - this depiction had stripes that extended not just up the rump, but also up the spine to the shoulders.Ībove-left is my colour scheme mock-up. I therefore decided to pop stripes on 'em. A big head and big arms were pretty characteristic of marsupial lions, so I eschewed the experts opinion and fancied the painting as a marsupial lion, and not tiger. I particularly liked the depiction and noticed the prominent head and cocked forearm. Experts think it likely depicts a Tasmanian tiger, which previously roamed the entire continent. In 2009 there was a cave painting found in the outback that depicts a large predatory marsupial. Lines and spots are popular choices for carnivores. It is thought that the marsupial lion was a stalking predator, and thus would have needed a coat to break up its outline. I instead looked to marsupials with similar lifestyles and habitats: quolls, and Tasmanian tigers and devils. Though interesting, it's not particularly helpful in choosing the markings or coat type the animals may have had in their life time. Though this is just speculation, a quick squiz around YouTube reveals that predators use their bodies for extraordinary and unpredictable applications, so I wouldn't be surprised if the tail prop was a reality.Īs mentioned, marsupial lions are most closely related to the group of marsupials which includes kangaroos and wombats. It's speculated they used their tails as a temporary 'prop', allowing the lion to rear up and gain extra height for stretched strikes. ![]() The vertebrae, backbone components, in the lions' tail, too, have joints similar to those of kangaroos. They may have used these thumbs as digital ice picks, hooking into large unyielding prey while the jaws hacked away. To justify their Latin name even further, the front paws of marsupial lions had thumbs which were semi-opposable and hooked. They either look like persistent milk teeth or are just gaps. Interestingly, the canine teeth of marsupial lions are so reduced, they're almost absent. It's thought these were used by the lion to pluck hunks of muscle from their prey during a take-down, inflicting death from blood loss and trauma.Ī typical 'placental' carnivore like a tiger or wolf would kill their prey with their canine teeth - the pointy ones fetishised by vampirophiles. The marsupial lion's incisors - the front 'rat-like' teeth - jutted out from the mouth, almost beak-like. Ancestors of the marsupial lion, it seems, had such grinding teeth, but over the course of evolving into meat-eating terrors, these molars adapted into blades that sliced through flesh instead. Herbivores use their molars - large, flattened teeth inside their cheeks - to shear and grind up fibrous plant material. It's thought that the marsupial lion's ancestors were themselves herbivorous. Pretty amazing for a marsupial just 75 cm tall and 150 cm long. Though they are extinct, their closest modern relatives are herbivorous marsupials like wombats and kangaroos. ![]() A 100 kg marsupial lion would have had a bite as strong as a 250 kg African lion. In fact, relative to their size, the marsupial lion is estimated to have had the strongest bite of any mammal ever. They were the pit bull equivalent of the marsupial world: squat, robust, and carrying jaw power like secateurs. The marsupial lion stalked Australian grasses around 50 000 years ago and would likely have co-existed with Indigenous Australians. ![]() Yes, that is a pretty gnarly species name: the pouched lion that executes. Thylaco (from Greek thylakos, meaning pouch) + leo (Latin, lion) + carnifex (Latin, butcher or executioner).
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