lumitykkimyssyNov 8, 2022
Mark Witton

A relevant blog post for this Mastodon platform: 'The "palaeontological folklore" of mastodon hair': an essay about the surprising LACK of fossil evidence for brown, shaggy hair in these elephant-like creatures. It turns out that there's no reason to assume mastodons were mammoth-like in appearance, and the brown, hairy mastodons you see everywhere are a #paleoart super-meme.

(Mastodon image by Charles Knight - one of my favourites from him).

http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-palaeontological-folklore-of.html

The "palaeontological folklore" of mastodon hair

The American mastodon Mammut americanum is one of the most iconic members of the North American megafauna. A frequent subject of museum disp...

Nov 8, 2022 at 10:19amWeb
Show threadChris RowanNov 8, 2022

@markwitton Very interesting! I love these stories of things “everyone knows” that turn out to actually be pretty poorly supported by actual evidence.

Of course, I was embarrassingly far into adulthood before I realised that mammoth and mastodon weren’t synonyms…

Show threadMark WittonNov 8, 2022
@allochthonous To be fair, "mastodon" and "mammoth" are pretty much synonymous in pop culture, they're very easy to mix up! It's been like this for centuries - actually to a problematic extent, if you're researching some specific aspects of palaeo/palaeoart history.
Show thread🐠Dr🦕Nick🐯Crumpton🦓Nov 9, 2022
@markwitton Fascinating stuff, Mark. Am I misremembering, or did you write a blog post about therizinosaurs being fluffy or not...
Show threadMark WittonNov 9, 2022
@nickcrumpton Not specifically on Therizinosaurus, but I wrote a more general piece on the thermoneutrality of large animals and, in the process, took a swipe at my older pieces of fuzzy giant dinosaurs: http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2019/10/megafuzz-under-microscope-how-credible.html. I tend to restore giant theropods with minimal fuzz now.
Megafuzz under the microscope: how credible are restorations of giant fluffy extinct animals?

Images of giant prehistoric animals covered in thick, fluffy coats are par for the course in modern palaeoart, including lots of my own (i...

Show thread🐠Dr🦕Nick🐯Crumpton🦓Nov 9, 2022
@markwitton THAT'S the one! Thanks Mark! I thought about this lods when I first read it. :)