Dimetrodon

© Jerry Lofaro/FineArtAmerica

Dimetrodon is an extinct synapsid, mammal-like reptile. It could reach 4.6 metres in length and could have weighted up to 250 kilograms. It was probably one of the apex predators, feeding on fish and tetrapods. The sail of Dimetrodon may have been used to stabilize its spine and to heat and cool its body as a form of the thermoregulation.

Although it is often thought of as a dinosaur, probably because of its large size and carnivorous habits, it lived at least 40 million years before the first dinosaurs appeared on Earth. In fact, it is much more closely related to the ancestors of mammals, although there is little mammal-like about its structure or habits.

Dimetrodon is a large quadrupedal animal with a sprawling posture like a modern crocodile, but unlike a modern crocodile, had a tall, narrow skull with huge canine teeth and a single opening on each side behind the eyes that marked it as a mammal-like reptile. Its most conspicuous feature is a tall ‘sail’ projecting from its back. The sail was composed of skin supported internally by greatly elongated bony spines growing from the tops of the vertebrae.

History of Discovery

The first specimen of Dimetrodon was described by E. D. Cope in 1878. Many more Dimetrodon specimens were collected in the subsequent years, and in the early 20th Century, another paleontologist, E. C. Case, described several more species. Beginning in the 1920s, the famous vertebrate paleontologist A. S. Romer began a multi-year collecting program in Texas, during which he amassed an enormous collection of Dimetrodon bones and skeletons, which became the basis for a classic work on pelycosaurs. As a result of the efforts of these three paleontologists, Dimetrodon is one of the best known of the early reptiles.


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