Thylacosmilus Sketches By Jay Matternes





These are some sketches of the South American marsupial sabertooth, thylacosmilus carnifex by Jay Matternes. Since I've been posting artwork of marsupial carnivores lately (perhaps I should have a blog devoted to just those), I've searched out some others that I also remember growing up with. This one is from the volume of Time Life Nature Library on South America. I remember this and the other Time Life books I used to get out of the public library, but which I never owned until now. You gotta love ebay! I just got this and one on Africa, having remembered the artwork in these two volumes of extinct animals. 


These sketches of the animal and how it might have moved were unfortunately not included in the recent tome showcasing Matternes art, but only focused on his most famous mural-like paintings. 



The sketch of the musculature, showing the smaller, related animal seems to be a small species of Borhyena, possibly Prothylacinus, an ancestral form of the borhyeanids, that looked very like an ancestor of the related thylacines of Australia.
























 

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