Dunkleosteus Mugs

Dinichthys terrelli illustration, dunkleoteus tshirt

Prehistoric dunkleosteus design

And there came to me in a dream one of epic proportions with an armored head and skin as hard as a rock...

Ain't no rule says an extinct Devonian armored fish can't play basketball! SLAM!

A giant placoderm fish that haunted the Late Devonian oceans

The Dunk runs the ocean. The OG horror of the deep.

Dunkleosteus was a 19.7 foot super-predator that used a lethal combination of suction and a wicked bite to cut through everything unlucky enough to cross it’s path, armor or no. Like many fish living today, D.terrelli most likely would swim close to unsuspecting prey and suck water into it’s mouth along with it’s victim. Instead of teeth, Dunkleosteus possessed a set of bony plates that were an extension of it’s own dermal armor. These places were self sharpening and would shear through most other armored fish with little trouble and was aided by a four-bar linkage mechanism that allowed it to open and close it’s jaws on the top and bottom at incredibly high speeds.

Reconstruction of various Cleveland Shale arthrodires, including Titanichthys (top), Selenosteus (eating a shark), adult and juvenile Dunkleosteus terrelli (center), and Gorgonichthys (bottom). From the Famennian Epoch of the Late Devonian.

A cute Dunkleosteus! Cute design fitting for people who loves prehistoric animals. It can also be given as a Birthday or Christmas gift. Design is fitting in time for Dinosaur Day (June 1) and National Fossil Day (October 13)!

New research suggests Dunkleosteus was a bit smaller than we thought

Dunkleosteus skull silhouette

Dunkleosteus

Those jaws though!!!

Dunkleosteus

Treasure guard...and of course it's not a fossil fish(actually fossil dunkleosteus is treasure ), but if you look down in the illustration-you will see him in the shadow.

Late in the Devonian, some 382 to 358 million years ago, around the same time when the first vertebrates were crawling their way onto land, a massive predator called the ocean it’s home. The size of a modern day Orca, Dunkleosteus was a fish unlike any alive today. It belonged to a group of fish called placoderms, all of which possessed heavily armored bodies, to combat this Dunkleosteus had a brutal adaptation, instead of teeth, the plate like parts of it’s armored skull extended down into cleaver like blades that self-sharpened every time it shut it’s mouth.

Bothriolepis, Xenacanthus, Tiktaalik, Doryaspis Walliserops, Orthacanthus, Dunkleosteus, Drepanaspis Pteraspis, Stethacanthus, Scaumenacia and Ammonite

The Dunkleosteus was an ancient armored shark from the late Devonian Period. Fossilized skulls have been found but not much in the way of bodily remains because their body skeletons were of a softer tissue that didn't fossilize well so there's some speculation about what the rest of their bodies looked like. Most artists' renderings show Dunkleosteus' hind region modeled after smaller arthrodires, such as Coccosteus, which had preserved hind sections. I've chosen to draw Dunkleosteus with a Coelacanth body morphology because, scientifically speaking, Coelecanth bodies are waaaaaaaaay more awesomer looking.