Eobasileus
Temporal range: Bridgerian to Uintan
A skull from the Field Museum
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: †Dinocerata
Family: †Uintatheriidae
Subfamily: †Uintatheriinae
Genus: †Eobasileus
Cope, 1872
Species:
†E. cornutus
Binomial name
†Eobasileus cornutus
Cope, 1872
Synonyms

Uintatherium cornutus

Eobasileus cornutus ("horned dawn-king"[1][a]) was a prehistoric species of dinocerate mammal.

Description

Life reconstruction of E. cornutus
Skeletal reconstruction of E. cornutus from 1886
Comparison of Eobasileus (left) and Uintatherium (right)

With a skull about 1 meter (3.3 ft) in length, and standing some 2.1 metres (6.9 ft) tall at the shoulder,[3] with a weight estimated to be around 2,500 kilograms (5,500 lb),[4] Eobasileus was the largest uintathere. It looked much like the related Uintatherium. Like Uintatherium, it had three pairs of blunt horns on its skull, possibly covered with skin like the ossicones of a giraffe. The frontal pair may have been composed of keratin, like the horn(s) of a rhinoceros. Eobasileus also had a pair of tusks shielded by bony protrusions of the lower jaw.[5]

A dispute over Eobasileus specifically and the uintatheres more generally helped to spark the Bone Wars between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh.[6] Cope, Marsh, and Joseph Leidy independently discovered specimens from related species—though Cope and Marsh believed they had each discovered the same species—in the Fort Bridger area, leading to disputes over naming rights for the animals and a series of increasingly hostile letters to various scientific journals.[7] In 1873, for example, Marsh wrote "Cope has endeavored to secure priority by sharp practice, and failed…Prof. Cope's errors will continue to invite correction, but these, like his blunders, are hydra-headed, and life is really too short to spend valuable time in such an ungracious task, especially as in the present case Prof. Cope has not even returned thanks for the correction of nearly half a hundred errors…"[8] The American Naturalist declined to print this letter as a scientific article, but did publish it as an appendix; Marsh paid for its inclusion in the journal.[9]

References

  1. ^ Cope, Edward Drinker (August 1873). "The Monster of Mammoth Buttes". In Thompson, Robert Ellis; Newton, William Wilberforce; Kendall, Otis H. (eds.). Penn Monthly. University Press Company. pp. 521–34.
  2. ^ Cope, 1873: p. 529
  3. ^ The fossil book : a record of prehistoric life. Vickers-Rich, Patricia. (Dover ed.). Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. 1996. pp. 555. ISBN 0486293718. OCLC 35033613.((cite book)): CS1 maint: others (link)
  4. ^ Turnbull, William D. (2002). The mammalian faunas of the Washakie Formation, Eocene age, of southern Wyoming. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Chicago, Ill. : Field Museum of Natural History. pp. 118.
  5. ^ Palmer, D., ed. (1999). The Marshall Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals. London: Marshall Editions. p. 235. ISBN 1-84028-152-9.
  6. ^ "Crucible of the Bone Wars - The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University". ansp.org. Retrieved 2019-05-05.
  7. ^ Prothero, Donald R. (2002). Horns, tusks, and flippers : the evolution of hoofed mammals. Schoch, Robert M. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 11–12. ISBN 0801871352. OCLC 49681344.
  8. ^ Prothero, 2002, p. 12
  9. ^ Wheeler, Walter H. (1961). "Revision of the Uintatheres" (PDF). Bulletin of the Peabody Museum of Natural History. Bulletin 14: 5.
  1. ^ In reference to a specimen he considered to be representative of a different species, Cope said, "King of living things at that dawn of tertiary time, I named him Eobasilius, and the species from its peculiar horns, Eosbasilius pressicornus."[2]


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