Early Paleogene Mammals of Colorado coloring pages

This is a free coloring pages blog.  Today I am posting drawings of early mammals of Colorado.  

There are no fees or cost to print the coloring pages.  Just click on the correct category button up top. 

Baioconodon

(Fern World)

Baioconodon was one of the earliest mammals to live during the age of mammals.  It lived right after the asteroid blasted the dinosaurs and killed all except for some of the dinos that had become birds.  This animal lived in Western North America.  It was found recently in Colorado, near Denver.  It was part of an amazing find by Dr. Tyler Lyson and his team.  He discovered a fossilized skull in the museum where he is curator.  It is the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  The skull was in a concretion.  It had been found by a volunteer earlier at a site near Denver.  Dr. Lyson and his team went to the site where this skull was found, at Corral Bluffs, near Denver and even closer to Colorado Springs... and they found a bunch of early mammal skulls in concretions.  Finding a number of early mammal skulls is a really really rare find.  Dr. Lyson and his team were looking right above the layer of clay that has meteorite iridium in it.  This shows the time that meteorite hit the Earth in what is now the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.  

By analyzing the plant fossils found in the area the team was able to determine what the main plants were living in the area.  They determined that with the world rebounding form the meteorite impact, the main plants at first were ferns.   So Baioconodon lived in a Fern World.  Baioconodon was quite small at only 6 kg or 13 lbs.  That is about what my Bichon Frise dog weighs.  

Baiconodon appeared to be an omnivore.  The world was recovering so eating whatever was available was a good survival technique.   

Carsioptychus 

(Primarily a Palm World)

Carsioptychus lived about 200,000 years after the meteorite impact.  It was somewhat larger.  It lived in a Palm World.  Palms were the most common plant.  There would have been some other types of plants too, but palm trees were the most common.   Carsioptychus weighed about 35 kg.  That would be 55 lbs.  The palms show that the flora was rebounding more.  Remember that most of the plants had been burned off by the meteorite strike.  Clearly the mammals were starting to fill the niche left empty by the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs.  The mammals were getting larger.

Taeniolabis

(Still mostly a Palm World)

Taeniolabis was from the next time period of this million year long recovery.  It was also larger than the previous mammals.  It weighed about 35 kg or 77 lbs.  That is as big as a German Shepherd dog.  Palms were probably still the most dominant plant but other angiosperms or flowering plants were making their way back and beginning to diversify.

Eoconodon

(Legume World)
(AKA Protein Bar World)

Eoconodon was even bigger than Taeniolabis.  Eoconodon lived 600,000 years after the Meteorite impact.  It weighed in at 48 kg or around 106 lbs.  This is about as big as a Rottweiler dog.  Clearly the niches were getting filled.  There was a type of plant that was found at this site in Colorado.  It was the earliest evidence of legumes ever found.  It was found by a volunteer who was a female high school student.  I think that is pretty cool.  Legumes are packed with protein.  Dr. Lyson says it was like protein bars for the herbivores.  Eoconodon had a pig-like snout for eating those protein packed legume pods.  The forests were recovering and so other plants besides ferns and palms were becoming important food sources.  The legumes really helped the animals grow in size.  

Another interesting point is that most of these animals seemed to be omnivores.  They had teeth that indicate an omnivorous diet.  It is possible that they ate insects, plants, lizards, and whatever else they could find.  

Dr. Lyson was a speaker at a lecture series we went to at BYU (Brigham Young University) last week and he taught us about these animals and how the ecosystem recovered after the dinosaurs were killed off by the meteorite strike.  There were other animals found at this fossil site where Dr. Lyson and his team made the discoveries.  I just chose to draw these four.   There are no birds drawn in the pictures because they did not find any bird skeletons.  Possibly the birds survived elsewhere on the planet and did not yet make it to this part of what is now Colorado during this recovery phase of Earth history.

There is a NOVA episode on PBS about this discovery.  It is called The Rise Of Mammals.

NOTE:  These drawings, in printable form, are found by clicking on the top buttons labeled . . . . . .

. . . . . Paleontology. . . . . . . or . . . . . . .All Printables. . . . .    Then scroll down to the bottomT. of the list for new drawings like these. 

Since this era started with the blast from the meteorite about 66 million years ago....
here is an older drawing of that event....

T. rex runs from the Pyroclastic Flow

Note:  Usually pyroclastic flows are from volcanoes... but maybe, if you were enough, a meteorite blasting into the surface of the Earth would make a pyroclastic flow.