It's always bothered me that drawings of therapsids don't have ears. It bothered me enough I did some poking around to understand why. Apparently, most seem confident that having ears is a mammal thing?
It's interesting that seeing an animal similar to a mammal without one feels... off.
Over mammalian evolution bones from the jaw lost their function and turned into the middle ear. Having sticking out ears goes with having the bones for some reason.
So, no cute ears for Lystrosaurus.
https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/113585916467892487
@futurebird why would you be drawing therapists… oh. Time to finish drinking my ☕️ first.
@futurebird When it comes to Lystrosaurus, its external ears are still very much part of the lower jaw. Large cat like pinnae poking out of the lower jaw just look silly.
@futurebird One reason I had always argued against therapsid pinnae, is that it looked like monotremes did not have pinnae. However I was wrong, echidnas do have short pinnae (somewhat hidden […]
2024-12-03 futurebird ┃ edited ┃ 5💬
It's interesting to me that as mammals who seem to be losing our ears bit by bit (and who can no longer move them in any meaningful way) we still read the ear movements of other mammals with […]
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