News Then Therapsids

In the somewhat recent past I  found myself thinking that perhaps we could use a name change here at Dinosaur of the Week. The fact of the matter is that we have covered a lot of dinosaurs and fossil animals in the past 7 years (give or take a week or two off a year for vacations and conferences we are talking about ~50 animals a year for 7 years) and the number of well known, well documented, and well represented dinosaurs have become rarer and rarer for us to cover. We could easily cover only dinosaurs, but there is a point, and we are very near it, where we will start to cover dinosaurs that are represented by singular fragments of singular bones and are highly hypothetical. In exploring other fossil animals we have extended the life of this blog beyond a few years and have been able to explore a much larger range of life on the history of this planet.

Why haven't we changed the name in all that time then? I have seriously considered it a number of times in the past year or two because I realize that we discuss much more than dinosaurs. There could be any number of good names: Fossil Animal of the Week, Extinct Animal of the Week, to name a few. So far I have decided that the fact that Dinosaur of the Week is acceptable as a name, though we could rebrand ourselves without losing an audience. The reason that I am reluctant to do so at the moment is that we have recently become more widely known. The site has been cited in scientific and educational presentations at conferences and it has been used in classrooms in public schools for an extended period of time. All of that said, should a name change occur, the change would be effected in the first week of the new year. This will give me time to make a final decision on a new name, how to rebrand the site, and to illustrate all of the necessary materials for the site. Now, on with the animal for this week:

©Roland Tanglao

Estemmenosuchus is a genus of Dinocephalian ("terrible headed") therapsid. Two species are known; E. uralensis Tchudinov, 1960 (type)and E. mirabilis Tchudinov, 1968. These two species are both known from the Perm region of Russia, an area near the Ural mountains in the center of the country. The name Estemmenosuchus means "Crowned crocodile" in Greek, but therapsids like these two species are actually mammals, and not at all related to crocodiles. A body measuring approximately 3 m (10 ft) that looked something like the body of sprawling hippopotamus was attached to this crowned reptilian looking head. Important questions remain: What are all of these growths made of? What were their purpose? What did this animal eat? What makes it a therapsid?