Thank you! The muscles were quite time consuming, but the skeletal was actually pretty quick! It helps to have a lot of good references.

Homotherium and Smilodon were the last known surviving members of this lineage, going extinct in the late Pleistocene.

Homotherium belongs to the cat subfamily Machairodontinae, which split from the lineage of all living cats about 20 million years ago. Another well-known Machairodont is Smilodon, the saber-toothed cat (not a tiger!)

The colors are based on the Field Museum's exhibit illustration. It's one of my favorite Archaeopteryx colorations!

But I've had this idea in my head since the Chicago specimen was first revealed so I'm going off of announced order.

While this specimen is technically not the 13th to be formally described, it was #13 at the time it was announced by the Field Museum. Before it could be published, another very fragmentary specimen was described that took the #13 spot.

You're welcome, glad you like him!! I'm glad he arrived safe!

Thank you!!

In addition to the chondroderms, the flipper also has horizontal ridges and a flexible "winglet" on its tip. Together these adaptations would have reduced acoustic and hydrodynamic disturbance, making Temnodontosaurus a stealthy deep-water predator.