Artist: Bernard Long (biography)
Medium: Gouache on Board
Size: 11" x 7" (280mm x 190mm)
Date: 1982

This is the unique original Gouache painting by Bernard Long.

Often described as hippopotamus-like because of its heavily built quadrupedal body,? ?Desmostylus is a peculiar mammal.?

Palaeontologists are still unsure how Desmostylus is related to other mammals with theories covering a wide range of options from being related to elephants,? ?to hippopotamuses to just being a separate side branch of mammals that left no modern descendants.

Desmostylus is widely believed to have been a semi aquatic animal in that it regularly entered the water,? ?but would return to land to rest.? The remains of Desmostylus are known from across most of the northern Pacific Rim from Japan and Russia to the west coast of the United States.

Published in the book Prehistoric Animals by Long and Rupert Oliver.