da_bish wrote:Not a warthog, sadly. More closely related to hippos and cetaceans
I know general morphology isn't always a reliable indicator of relatedness, and a lay-squirt like me has no authority on the subject; but before that recent shift I thought that Daeodon (the largest known entelodont, previously Dinohyus) had a fairly hippo-like skull. More so than pig-like, anyway. Scratched my head over why so many reconstructed it with a black, shiny dog nose, too.
(Fun exercise: do a google image search for 'daeodon' and have a look at what should be, oh... the sixteenth result.)
Still, it's better than the WWB version! There's a bit of a backlash in popular palaeoart against what's called the 'shrink-wrapped' look which has dominated dinosaur art for the last 2-3 decades, where the minimum of flesh and skin is laid over a dinosaur's skeleton, and almost every bony strut and process in the skull is starkly visible. (Palaeoartists do like to show their working out) There's even less justification to do it with prehistoric mammals (mammals have a truckload of facial muscles), but that seems like what the WWB guys did with their generic entelodont! The head is almost reptilian.
Alex: not to rain on your parade even more, but get him to have a look at those forelegs too. They seem to be different lengths. I'd say something about the carriage and musculature of the forelegs too; but that might be pushing it.
I should probably finish off by saying that, don't get me wrong, it is nice to see entelodonts appearing on the gaming mini scene.
