From the AMNH archives, the real reason Permian pelycosaurs had sails.
This sketch of Dimetrodon, Edaphosaurus, and Naosaurus by Edward Drinker Cope is....really adorable, actually.
Hall of Paleontology, Houston Museum of Natural Science (Part 1)
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New and old DIMETRODON reconstruction
In 1965 the University of Chicago donated its entire geology collection to the Field Museum of Natural History. The donation included a unique assortment of Permian tetrapods, many of them holotypes, from the red beds of western Texas. Many of these fossil mounts are still displayed unaltered today.
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Naming Dimetrodon after the big horking sail on its back would have been too obvious.
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Synapsid of the Day: Dimetrodon giganhomogenus by philip72
Dimetrodon “Two Measures of Teeth” Family: Sphenacodontinae Time: Early Permian (295-272 million y.a.) Location: Southwestern United States Size (Length): 1.7-4.6 (5.6-15.1ft) Notes: Not a dinosaur.
Source: philip72.deviantart.com
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The Dimetrodon Vs. Eryops exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in Denver, Colorado, United States.
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A mounted Dimetrodon skeleton. Photos taken in 2005 at the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde in Karlsruhe, Germany. Dimetrodon is often mistaken for a dinosaur, but it pre-dates the earliest known dinosaurs by about 40 million years — and it’s actually more closely related to mammals.
Although its large sail is often explained as a heat-regulating structure, recent studies suggest it might have had a role in sexual selection.
this mount has a rather stubby tail, is it outdated?
This is D. limbatus, the same species:
The tail does look strangely short but part of it could be perspective.
Apparently the tail was assumed to be pretty short until a decent amount of caudal vertebrae were described in 1927, so I’m guessing it is outdated. Nice mount otherwise though.
Looks like it's all or mostly cast/sculpted, FWIW
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The Brain Scoop: Dimetrodon is Not a Dinosaur
It’s here!
I’m so proud of this episode, primarily because I was terrified of approaching this topic. I knew close to nothing about evolutionary relationships, phylogenetics. Didn’t have a clue what it meant to be a synapsid, or that Dimetrodon wasn’t a reptile before March 27th when Ken Angielczyk, our Curator of Paleomammalogy, sent me his paper: Dimetrodon is Not a Dinosaur, and it totally blew my mind.
The parts of my show that you don’t get to see are the many times I end up making a fool of myself in front of true experts, fumbling around to make sense of concepts in conversations with the very people who wrote them. But the great thing about embarrassment, for me at least, is that I find it completely motivating. So motivating that I launched a tumblr of the same name and now I’m involved in a crazed crusade to stop mismarketed toys that I truly believe have negative impacts on our understanding of early non-mammalian diversity.
Maybe I’m totally delusional but I think with a little bit of fact-checking and a commitment to accuracy we can provide educational opportunities pretty much everywhere. Perhaps it isn’t such a big deal that “dinosaur” is a blanket, catch-all term to describe any and all prehistoric life - but I’m convinced we’d all appreciate our early ancestral relatives a bit more if we had a more thorough understanding of how those lifeforms came to be.
So, join me in this campaign for knowledge; submit your photos of Dimetrodon and other prehistoric life loosely lumped in with those creatures that existed more than 60 million years later, and let’s make the world a more informed place.
Meet a Mount #24: NMNH Dimetrodon
Taxon: Dimetrodon gigas
Specimen Number: USNM 8635
Year Created: 1917
Dimensions: 6 ft 9 in (with abbreviated tail)
The Dimetrodon on display at the National Museum of Natural History was part of a donation of Permian fossils courtesy of Charles and Levi Sternberg. The Sternbergs had collected the fossils at Craddock Bone Bed, near Seymour, Texas, between 1909 and 1915. While mostly disarticulated, the Craddock fossils exhibited nearly perfect preservation and were easily removed from the soft red clay in which they were found.
The mount was constructed by T.J. Horne under the direction of curator Charles Gilmore. Most of the skeleton came from a single individual, but a handful of bones, most notably the sacrum and pelvis, came from another, smaller Dimetrodon. No caudal vertebrae were available, so Gilmore and Horne sculpted a short, stubby tail that is now known to be inaccurate. In contast to the pelycosaur mounts at the American Museum and the Field Museum, the Smithsonian Dimetrodon has its mouth open, which according to Gilmore “gives the animal an appearance of angrily defying one who has suddently blocked his path.”
The Dimetrodon is still on display today, unaltered except for the addition of a longer tail.