Mystery Painting by Mark Hallett

 

This is a pic I found online a long time ago, and I used on my post about marsupial carnivores in South America. I don't know if even if it exists anywhere online other than that these days. It is obviously a painting by paleoartist Mark Hallett. He is one of my favorite paleoartists, but like Matternes, much of his work is not available. It shows a thrylacosmilus, the marsupial version of a saber-tooth cat, leaping on the back of a toxodont (I don't recognize the species). it also appears to show some out of place horses in the background. Plus, there's a rabbit in the foreground, neither of which I think would be present in S. America during this time. Certainly not horses! They would only have arrived after the Panama landbridge connected the two continents. The picture is slightly out of focus, so I may not have identified those animals correctly, however. Thoatherium was a horse-like creature that evolved parallel to them, preyed on by the marsupials and terror birds. Just as the trunked diprotodont pyrotherium took the place of placental mastodons. The toxodon was sort of like a rhino, particularly the species shown here, even though I can't identify it exactly. Does anyone know anything else regarding the picture itself. Was it ever published in any magazine ever?

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