Thursday, June 18, 2009

The wee proboscideans of Flores...

s florensis insularis-1
Ah, the flores stegodon. How confusing those paleontologists have been. 
In the first national geographic article, the dwarf stegodon described as being contemporaneous with H floresiensis was stegodon sondaari. The problem was that this water-buffalo sized stegodon went extinct some 900,000 odd years ago. It was replaced by s. Florensis, a "medium to large" sized proboscidean - a size, I assume, to be close to that of your average asian elephant. Hundreds of thousands of years on Flores, however, did dwarf the stegodons, and the proboscidean that did live alongside h. Floresiensis was s. Florensis Insularis, a stegodon which, according to the one paper I could only read the abstract of, was 30% smaller then the ancestral s florensis, based off of the size of the juvenile molars found in the same layer as H floresiensis.

With all this shit in mind, this is my new dwarf stegodon - which, visually, I think is more dramatic a juxtaposition to have with h floresiensis. What do you think? 

1 comment:

Ian once did it said...

Just read the 20 page preview of Jan's Atomic Heart and I have to say I was blown away! Seriously, amazing stuff! I can't wait to read the whole thing. Anyway, love the work you're doing on here, reminds me a lot of Gipi and old ninja turtle comics. You know, the weird-violent ones, before they got all saturday morning cartoon. Trust me it was awesome. Keep making comics!

-Ian H