Collection: Dimetrodon

Dimetrodon was quite the bizarre creature. It looked a lot like modern lizards but with a much more robust skull and of course its iconic sail on its back made of extended vertebrae covered and connected by skin. Although it is often thought of as a dinosaur it not only lived tens of millions of years before the first dinosaur, it is actually more closely related to us! Dimetrodon is a Synapsid, a group of vertebrates that includes mammals and the reptiles they directly evolved from. Because of this, Dimetrodon is often called a “mammal like reptile” which is actually a bit misleading since it was a reptile with very few mammal-like characteristics, just very closely related to the group of reptiles that would evolve into mammals. There were several species of Dimetrodon ranging from 2 to 15 feet when fully grown. The larger species would have been the apex predators of their ecosystem, for while 15 feet doesn’t sound to massive compared to other iconic prehistoric reptiles, in the days of the early Permian 290 million years ago a carnivore of that size was a rare occurrence and one of the first if not the first carnivore of that size to live on land. During that time, all continents were fused into the supercontinent Pangaea. At Pangaea’s heart were large swamps where Dimetrodon dominated feeding on large amphibians, venomous fresh water sharks, and pretty much anything smaller it could get its jaws on including others of its kind.