Troll_Man
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WWD: Lisowicia bojani
🕑 Added 2023-04-13 08:47:55 +0000 UTCNow this one is the Placerias counterpart, the Polish dicynodont Lisowicia, from the same fossil formation as Smok (and was almost certainly preyed upon it when young, known from corpolites of Smok containing crushed dicynodont bones). WWD presented Placerias as the last-living dicynodont, which was true at the time, but since then later surviving dicynodonts have been found, such as this, which lived about 10 million years later, and the South African Pentasaurus.
Now, you should immediately notice one major difference: size. Lisowicia was gargantuan, both for its time period and as a dicynodont; at an estimated weight of up to seven metric tonnes, it was on par with a large African elephant in mass, making it by far the largest known synapsid to exist before the evolution of whales in the Eocene. Actually, it's significantly heavier than the 4-ton Plateosaurus, so that does ruin the introduction of the prosauropods in the episode's end as mighty, untouchable titans a bit. Technically speaking, it's not actually known to have coexisted with prosauropods despite its very close proximity to contemporary fossil formations with prosauropods and there's the possibility it lived in an environment (somehow) isolated from them, but I've gone with the still reasonable alternate interpretation it did live with prosauropods and we just haven't found them.
Other than that, it's pretty similar to Placerias, as it was very closely related. One error WWD made in its Placerias depiction was giving them tusks; unlike most dicynodonts, Placerias and its relatives did not have tusks. They had tusk-like protrusions that jutted directly from the skull known as caniniform processes. In Placerias, the tusks were tiny and vestigial, and hidden behind the processes, but Lisowicia was completely toothless. One minor difference between Lisowicia and all other dicynodonts species are that its forelimbs are held directly under the body like in mammals and dinosaurs, rather than sprawled out, probably an adaptation to help support its massive weight. Also, giant piles of fossilized Lisowicia poop indicates that it was social and defecated communally, similar to many modern mammals.
Coincidentally, by replacing Placerias with Lisowicia and Coelophysis with Liliensternus, the size difference between the two roughly remains the same, since both are about six times heavier than the original species.
Comments
Jack
This is such a cool series! I love seeing how far the science has come and your take on it
