Moschops oweni

Moschops is an extinct genus of therapsids that lived in the Guadalupian epoch, around 265–260 million years ago. They were heavily built plant eaters, and they may have lived partly in water, as hippopotamuses do. They had short, thick heads and might have competed by head-butting each other. Their elbow joints allowed them to walk with a more mammal-like gait rather than crawling. Their remains were found in the Karoo region of South Africa, belonging to the Tapinocephalus Assemblage Zone. Therapsids, such as Moschops, are synapsids, the dominant land animals in the Permian period, which ended 252 million years ago.

Moschops is a rare example of one of the few early mammal like reptiles that the general public are actually be aware of. This is in part due to its inclusion into most books about ancient animals, although a few people may actually remember watching the kids TV series ‘Moschops’ from the early 1980‘s.

At five meters Moschops was one of the largest herbivores of its day with only Jonkeria being a potential size rival. However it is not this large size that is the claim to fame for Moschops but its skull. The upper bone in the skull of Moschops was roughly ten centimetres thick, thicker than any other of the known animals of its day. One theory for this skull thickness is that Moschops took part in head butting, dominance contests. This does not mean that Moschops charged at one another, they most likely just walked up to face one another and then pushed with their heads.

Further support for the above theory comes from the overall morphology of the Moschops skeleton. The forelegs of Moschops carried the body higher than the rear limbs resulting in a sloping back. This would mean that a large proportion of the body mass was carried on the fore quarters and reinforced by the rear. This build probably means that dominance contests in Moschops were about projecting body weight forwards, possibly like sumo wrestlers do today in their matches.