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I've been reading through Dougal Dixon's After Man, and although it's an iconic speculative evolutionary work I have several bones to pick with it. 🤔

The rodent carnivores are cool, but the artists attempt to make the iconic front teeth into both the incisors and carnivores teeth of modern large predators. I'm not sure how teeth in this shape would even fit together when the mouth closes? Rodent teeth are like a beak and wear down relatively evenly, I though it would make more sense to take them in a 3-pronged hawk-beak direction.

There were also a lot of the illustrations look like the artist drew a real animal and pasted on the requisite new parts (like a rabbit head on a deer, like the rabbuck here).  On some of them it looks downright plasticky, like the oak-leaf toad's camouflage. I attempted to redraw the toad too, but it was a 3 minute car doodle with no reference so I fear it's not the greatest.



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Anonymous

Yeah between the patagonian mara and thylacoleo nature already developed these two, to some extent

Jay Eaton

Oh, I hadn't heard of the mara before! What a superb animal, I love their butt stripe.

Kat Heron Baron

Your rendition of a carnivorous rodent's dental anatomy strikes me as similar to the extinct Thylacoleo carnifex, which had very reduced canines despite a carnivorous lifestyle. T. carnifex has some fun pre-molar modification to boot, almost cable-cutter-like in (probable) application! Also, not your fault, but I'm laughing at Dougal Dixon naming his rabbit-headed cervids "Rabbucks" when male rabbits are already called bucks.

Jay Eaton

Oh my god thank you for telling me about this animal. What bizarre dentition for a mammal!