Prehistoric Herbivores (2nd forgotten page)

I still have not played or designed a ruleset I like to use these miniatures in, but I love painting animal figures. I have ended up with quite a few miniatures of what I hope will be the density that ancient landscapes held, when I finally get them on the game table. 

Scrub Oxen, based on what I could find at the time they looked similar to Cape Buffalo.

Mammoths, they seem to have come in two colors a reddish brown and a lighter blonde. 

Mastodon, distant relative of Mammoths common in eastern North America.

American Moose or European Elk, same animal different names. Before a hunt and after, or are you walking up on predator meal. 

Generic Deer figure, larger than most white tail deer. So it can be a red or mule deer, or multiple types of prehistoric deer.

Giant Capibara of South America. This would have been a young one or a runt. 

I will try to start this back up again, but I get busy and forget to take good photos of my figures when I get them done. 

 

The Americas 3 (forgot to post these when done)

Predator Time

Well first up is one of the reasons Pronghorn are so fast, the American Cheetah.

Actually a relative of the Puma, They may have come in two sizes large and larger, the large ones being about the size of an existing Cheetah. Shot picture curtesy of Mike Demana.

An American Lion pride, so far nothing printed I know of gives them any coloring but that of a normal lion. Same for the European Cave Lion. Lion Linage didn't seem to vary much from the baseline of the family tree.

The Giant Jaguar found mostly in North America they were the size of modern lions, size increase just seemed to broaden their potential prey. 

The Puma, mountain lion, painter, panther, cougar... and those are just some of the North American names for them. Modern range is the artic to the tip of South America, rare in open grasslands, it is a fearless ambush predator to this day. They are still debating the family tree for these cats as even the extant ones show variation from area to area. The debate may have ended but I haven't read it yet.

The Lynx is second to the Puma in size, but still can bring down big game. They are bigger than Bobcats and hunt up to deer sized prey.

These are from one the RPG miniature lines, I painted them up to be Nimravids. These catlike carnivores co-existed with real cats for some time in the fossil record, there are even fossils showing they fought each other, probably over food. They could also fill in for some of the smaller Machairodont or extinct felid. Second picture curtesy of Mike Demana.

Now for the Machairodont, sabertoothed cat family. Some of this family ranged the world, but one lineage would become a dominate one here in North America. 

First up is one of the long tailed variety, this could also represent several of the non-smilodon dirk toothed cats.

   

Now for the smilodons, there are three subspecies of these cats. The S. gracilis is the smallest of the three and while there is evidence that all three lived in groups it is not known if these were smaller family groups or the pride like groups of the lions. The first picture is of my slender Smilodons. This one is part of my successful 3d printing, the cubs are in several of the groups come from my printer.

Next is several takes on S. fatalis, this one was the most common sabertooth in North America until the Holocene die off. they were lion sized cats that seem to have not competed directly with the North American Lion, I'm sure there were times they ran afoul of each other, but must have specialized in differing prey. The whole family group in picture 3 are from my 3d printer. had 3 others that didn't print correctly.

Next up we have the one most people think of the S. populator, this was the largest of the Smilodon and one of the largest cats of all time. They were a very large animal that probably ate whatever it wanted, seems to have hunted in family groups and has yet to make a confirmed appearance in North America. Two of the books I read stated that they may have evolved in North America, moved south with the Columbian exchange and been more successful in South America than in North America. I think these both are Reaper miniatures, the top one plastic and the bottom metal. The top picture is probably closer to true size, while the bottom closer to what was seen in  the 10,000 BC the movie, not quite that big in real life; at least not found that large yet.

And now the Bears. The top two pictures are ones that can be used as cubs. 

 

 The Americas 1

this post is mostly extent types but a couple of extinct ones made it in, well maybe more than a couple. And first up are the Bison, or as we call them Buffalo. The herd started small, 4-5 figures then I kept finding more at flea markets to add in. These have a nice variation in size and poses, calves to old bulls. But, this also means I have no idea who the makers are for most of these figures. Included in the herd is a large bull I am using as a Steppe buffalo bull, you can see in the second picture he is a little larger than the rest. 

The Long Horn Buffalo like the Steppe bison are extinct, but all three are related, with the Steppe considered ancestorial to the other two. The Bison Latifron (Long Horn  Bison) started out as the ones from Acheson creations, but they were much heavier built than the normal American Bison I had. So inspiration struck, their horns came separate from the bodies and so with some Green Stuff putty I made them some long horns instead. So a small group of three Bison Latifron can wander the table. The pictures of them are from a set I asked Mike Demana to do up for me.

Well for one of my scenarios for Song of Drums and Tomahawks I needed a dead large body animal.  The second one is my original, he came from a toy store, was close enough to the right size and took only a little changing to fit nicely on a base. I cut out some between the legs and off the back side so he would lay flatter, think it took some heat for the back legs. Was going to continue the next day on him as a project, but luckily was surfing the web and noticed in an old painting of buffalo hunters that some of the dead bulls had their legs sticking out and hanging in the air. So the cutting and heating ended and painting began, he finished up looking good. The upper buffalo can pass as a European Bison or a young American bull or a cow and works fine.

Next are the pronghorn, the only extent antelope  in the Americas and the fastest land animal in the Americas. They got fast for a reason and that reason will be shown in a later post.

My small herd of American horses, these are Acheson zebra figures filling in as the closest figures to look like them, may or may not have had tails like modern horses. But, probably had the standing manes like the  extent Przewalski’s wild horse, line back dun and gray(which I didn't use) seem to have been most common color.

But there weren't only medium sized horses running around, my version of Hagerman Horse or the American Zebra. There is debate over whether they were Horses or Zebra, so I went with horse color. If it turns out they had stripes I'll add them later (may anyway as they look to much like their smaller cousins). They were large Equids, and went extinct around the same time as the small cousins did in the Americas.

And since I can't seem to get clear of the extinct types in this post. Here is a pronghorn cousin (they think) and some camels. Camels evolved in the Americas along side the horse and migrated from there to Asia and was later introduced by Humans to Africa and Australia. The Antelope started as a toy Pronghorn from Hobby Lobby and then underwent some alterations. It was fairly simple to find a Large member of the family to copy. Take off the front forks of the head horns and add a nose horn. And we have giant Pronghorn relative. The Camels for now are inter-changeable in Africa, Asia, Americas or Australia. Looking for some to represent the northern species and the longer necked ones. I'll probably add Llama and the South American breeds later.

And now for some of the extinct, I know I said Extent, but these are the Giants that still have relatives around today.

Fist the Giant Beaver followed by his smaller cousin. Castoroides was the size of a black bear but seems to have been herbivorous like its later cousin in the next picture.

One of the Giant Armadillos, Doedicurus. Wonder if they jumped up when startled? One of the reasons you see so many dead present day armadillo along the roads down south, just like the little guy in front of the girl in the second picture. He is joined by squirrel, eagle, beaver, bobcat and Prairie dog.

There was a Giant Raccoon in North America once upon a time, probably omnivorous as his modern cousins and thought to have been displaced by bears. His small modern cousins are in second picture.

A couple of Giant sloths, no extent ones yet, but their big cousins look much more impressive. First one representing Glossotherium is mid-sized from Reaper Miniatures. The second one representing Megatherium was the largest and rivaled the Mammoths in size, it is from one of the Hobby Lobby toy lines.

Nest is a Peccary cousin, larger than his modern relative.

And what would a North American landscape be without Turkeys for those special days.

Well that's it for this post, next up are the predators or more just wildlife, or maybe both. Or maybe something else new and exciting. We'll see when I post it up.