Something that could have been

text from porter robinson's "goodbye to a world"

every single animal in this comic is extinct. it's not too late for the ones that are left.

edit: thanks @mudcrabmassacre for the correction, smilodon fatalis did not in fact go extinct in 1023 AD. the actual prediction is around 10,000 years ago - I think i may have missed a zero or two.

Colorized Thylacines pt. 3

This 36x48” oil on canvas diptych is part of a series I’ve been working on based on the thylacine, also known as the “Tasmanian Tiger” or marsupial wolf.

One of my biggest interests has always been animals, and in particular the ones that humans have destroyed. Every lost or vanishing species is its own story, and as an illustrator theirs are the stories that I am the most invested in telling (hence the blog).

The thylacine is one of the classic examples of human-caused extinction: an utterly unique creature, deliberately exterminated due to a combination of greed, ignorance, hubris, and fear.

Scared or anxious marsupials have a habit of stretching their jaws in a display known as a yawn (you’ve probably seen memes of opossums that look like they’re yelling—it’s the same thing). This display was especially striking in the thylacine, which could open its jaw to over 90°. Some of the most famous photos of thylacines capture them in this attitude of fear.

Unfortunately for the thylacine, humans have more direct methods of dealing with the things that scare them.

The title of this pair of paintings is ‘When They Are Frightened, They Show Their Teeth’.

The overall series is called ‘Here Be Monsters’, as a nod to both the far-flung environs of the thylacine, and the behavior of those who intruded upon it.

Stay tuned for more.

Isabella Kirkland (American, b. 1954), Gone, 2004, oil paint and alkyd on canvas over panel, 48 × 36 inches.

"The sixty-three species depicted in Gone have all become extinct since the 1700s and the colonization of the New World."

a new thylacine! fingers crossed 🤞🏼 this one doesn’t crack

This was quite haunting to read.

The Island by Walton Ford

Hoopoe Starling. Extinct. Gefiederte Baukünstler. 1910.

Internet Archive

Animation practice with a thylacine doing one of their threat displays. I wanna make a music video with a friend about these guys.

(Post based off of a post from @scuddlez, art on the left made by Katrina Yarbro, fossil on the right called fighting dinosaurs)

Archaeopteryx 🪶

aka “Ancient Wing”

timeline of the evolution of the dog spanning over 50~ million years 🌿

(not 100% accurate but I tried my best)

-Top pictured is one of the Burrell photographs. Which were edited to be close ups to depict a 'thylacine in the wild' later debunked to be a captive thylacine.

-Middle pictured is the Wilfred batty thylacine which is the last recorded thylacine shot in the wild.

-Bottom pictured is the Beaumaris zoo family group.

An Account of the First Aërial Voyage in England – Vincent Lunardi // A Pictorial Atlas of Fossil Remains – Gideon Algernon Mantell, James Parkinson, Edmund Tyrell Artis // Potorous Platyops – John Gould // Thylacinus Cynocephalus, Juvenile – Joseph Wolf // Choeropus Castanotis – John Gould // Hippotragus Leucophaeus – Joseph Smit, Joseph Wolf // Hapalotis Albipipes – John Gould // Pyrenean Ibex – Richard Lydekker, Joseph Wolf // Eastern Elk – John James Audubon // Royigerygone Insularis – Gregory Macalister Matthews, Henrik Grönvold // Sceloglaux Albifacies – John Gerrard Keulemans // Leporillus Apicalis – John Gould // Columba Migratoria – John James Audubon, J. T. Bowen // Moho Apicalis – John Gerrard Keulmans // ...Familiar Place – Lucy Dacus

for @artists-ache 💙🌹 📖

1946 guidebook with now extinct American birds.