Extinct Creatures-- Ctenosauriscus (Patreon)

This is our final Triassic Weirdo, Ctenosauriscus. It was an archosaur from the early Triassic that had a huge sail on its back. This is not to be confused with Dimetrodon, a very famous sail-backed mammal-like reptile-- Dimetrodon lived many millions of years before Ctenosauriscus, and it's an ancestor of ours! Meanwhile, Ctenosauriscus is an archosaur, and therefore more closely related to crocs and dinosaurs.

The way I've drawn the sail here is how I usually prefer to draw large sail-backed creatures: with a fair amount of meat in between the spines. There are some small reptiles with sails in our time, and they usually have just a thin membrane between the spines, but I'm not sure what it would look like on a larger creature. In mammals, there are big animals that have tall spines on at least part of the back, but they're for muscle attachment so they usually wind up looking more like big humps with the flesh on em. Bison are a good example!

However, a big ol sail like this probably wasn't all for muscle attachment, so who knows what it looked like. But hey, if I draw them meaty, I don't have to draw more details B)  As for the purpose of a big sail on an animal's back, that's something that's always being debated. Our best bet is that it was used as a display, like a big billboard they carried around to send messages to other animals, whether that was "I Am Big, Back Off" "I am hot, mate with me" or even "hello fellow creature of my species". In cases like this, I really wish we had time machines, just so we could go back and see these things in action.

Anyway, it was a really cool animal!

So I'll see you next week for a new paleo post. This time maybe I'll do some invertebrates.... thank you all again for your support, it means the world to me!