Cynognathus (Patreon)

Another, another very old illustration for my Cynognathus Assemblage Zone project in permanent stasis. This is it, Cynognathus itself, a wolf-sized predator (about two metres in total length) of southern Pangaea during the Early Triassic. This would've been the main character, following a pair of adults attempting to rear offspring in a harsh environment.

This is one of the last large-sized predatory synapsids, before the age of reptiles dawned and ousted these guys for the next 180 million years. Already during this period it was no longer top dog, for it was second to the massive archosauriform Erythrosuchus in size. And beneath the sea were the ichthyosaurs, which had quickly reached immense sizes by this time.

I redid this later on because the patterning used here, didn't look realistic for an animal with fur and was too visually complicated. Maybe even if the story next comes to fruition I can start doing parades of interesting fossil formations to show what animals lived together (a spiritual continuation of the WWD remake parades).