u/Astrapionte

Some time in December, I had a dream of a cerrado-type ecosystem set in Late Pleistocene Bolivia. Julio Lacerda has been one of my favorite artists since the pandemic, and I had to get his expertise for my vision!

Set 21 KYA, it features a group of Eremotherium laurillardi moving about at dawn to begin their day of eating. On the flip side, a Notiomastodon platensis bull duo is also roaming and foraging! Other fauna include Blue-throated Macaws (which are endemic to Bolivia today), a Southern three-banded armadillo, Toco Toucan, a Giant Anteater and a dispersed flock of Hyacinth Macaws foraging on the ground!

Julio is definitely one of the GOAT’s.

You know how orcas, pilot whales and co. are called
"blackfish"? Well for black beaked whales, I'm proposing "blackbeaks"!! 👀

Sato's Beaked Whale (Berardius minimus), aka the Karasu (Japanese for "raven"). This species lives in the N Pacific and is considerably smaller than its congeners.

Stejneger's Beaked Whale (Mesoplodon stejnegeri) is the second-largest Mesoplodon species, reaching up to ~19 ft and weighing some 1-2+ tons. They are also called "saber-tooth whales", referring to their enlarged mandibular tusks that males use to fight each other (hence the scars) for female access.

Sowerby's Beaked Whale (Mesoplodon bidens) is what I like to nickname the "dolphin of the family" because they are very acrobatic - frequently breaching and spinning and all the things. Also because, unlike other beaked whales, their diet is comprised almost entirely of fish, with the occasional calamari.

Hubbs' Beaked Whale (Mesoplodon carlhubbsi) is another N Pacific species. The males are dark grey or black with a contrasting white "beanie" and tend to be very heavily scarred from fights.

Gray's Beaked Whale (Mesoplodon grayi) is a circumpolar species that even ventures as far south as Antarctica. They have a long beak and are one of the larger species of its genus, measuring 14-18 ft and weighing ~1-2 tons.

Ginkgo-toothed Beaked Whale (Mesoplodon ginkgodens) is named for its large, ginkgo leaf-shaped teeth; however, only the tips of the teeth erupt from the jaws. Males are tend to lack scars because the teeth are too small to make contact. Wonder how they compete for females? They are also usually covered in white cookiecutter shark wounds.

Deraniyagala's Beaked Whale (Mesoplodon hotaula) is an Indo-Pacific species and is very rare.

Andrews' Beaked Whale (Mesoplodon bowdoini) is a circumpolar species that has never been seen alive in the wild before.

Hector's Beaked Whale (Mesoplodon hectori) is one of the smallest BW species. It is also one of the least known. Most depcitions of males are based on Perrin's Beaked Whales, as the two were thought to be the same species. However, in 2002, a stranded male revealed the true colors of this whale - dark grey to black with a white beak and extensive scarring.

It represents the earliest record for Berardius and closest related to Sato's BW within the genus. It was around a similar size to it as well, if not a little smaller - around 18-23 ft or so. I wonder if it is a direct ancestor of either of the two Northern Hemisphere species?

It surely lived similar to its living, deep-diving cousins, diving to crushing depths to suck up small fish and squid! Here, I depicted them foraging on rattails (Bathygadidae) and lanternfish.

Today, I wanted to reward myself for studying hard all day for my finals, so I picked up a stylus, charged up that iPad and decided to draw a male and female ***Dagonodum mojnum***, a species of beaked whale from Denmark that lived more than 7 million years ago!

They are a basal beaked whale species. They had an extremely long, narrow "beak" (rostrum) lined with around 48 and 58 functional teeth in its upper and lower jaws, respectively, more comparable to a dolphin than most modern BW's. They also had two pairs of apical teeth (=tusks) at the tip of the lower jaw, possibly only in males; the teeth were found to be visibly worn, indicating they were probably using them for intraspecific combat - most likely male-male competition for female access. The rest of the teeth enabled them to efficiently catch slippery fish and squid.

They are suggested to have been a coastal species rather than a deep-sea specialist like its living relatives. They lived alongside the **Megalodon**, which definitely would've found them to be a nice snack.