Sprawling Horned Faces

From Chudinov 1965

Estemmenosuchus has a crown of horns. The crown of horns has been hypothesized to have been used for intraspecific signalling and display short of combat; combat with the horns was probably used as an absolute last resort by these animals. The reason that it would have been used as a last resort is that the horns were massive bone structures. Unlike antlers, horns are composed of bone and insult or injury to these structures can be much more traumatic to the animals than damage to antlers (injuries to antlers are serious of course though). The horns of Estemmenosuchus were composed of extremely thick outgrowths of the frontals and cause the skull to appear even more massive than it is. Known skulls of Estemmenosuchus are approximately 65 cm (26 in) in length. That is not the only thing that is large and unique about Estemmenosuchus though. This large therapsid (approximately 3 m  or 10 ft long) also had a sprawling posture; this is somewhat typical in therapsids and Permian reptiles as well. Some have used this sprawling posture as evidence for an herbivorous diet, saying that the sprawling posture enabled the animal to hold a large fermenting gut with more support than if it had a posture like cattle or a similar mammal; this seems less than ideal given what we know about extant mammals. The canines of Estemmenosuchus are used as evidence to a different, more omnivorous but not quite carnivorous, dietary regimen.