I’m sure all kids have a favourite dinosaur. When I was about 5, while all my friends were jumping on the T-Rex bandwagon, I had to be different and decided that Dimetrodon would be my favourite. It had a bunch of things going for it – it was a carnivore (have you ever heard of anyone choosing a herbivore as their favourite dinosaur?) and it also had that huge heat exchanging sail attached to its back. How could you possibly think any other dinosaur was cooler?
Later, I was disappointed to discover that it wasn’t, technically, a dinosaur but I reckon any huge, prehistoric reptile should count so it remained in my stable of cool fossil discoveries.
This particular Dimetrodon is a model in the marvelous new paleontology hall in the Houston Museum of Natural Science. I was struck by the detail in the sail so here’s a somewhat abstract shot showing part of it.