Megaloceros - Starlux called this figure the "Cerf géant." It's obviously meant to be the Irish elk, Megaloceros. It's a good-looking figure. Starlux saved themselves a boatload of grief by posing the figure with his head turned toward stage right, but I think mostly in packaging rather than fabrication. He looks like he was molded in two parts and glued together. The second part comprises the antlers, ears, and top and back of the head. Both parts, the body and antlers, were cast in conventional two-part molds. With this construction, just about any pose should have been possible. But packaging would have been a bear if the antlers had been posed side-to-side. Megaloceros was a late Pleistocene deer, found throughout Europe and as far afield as China, but named for large numbers of skeletons found in Irish bogs. His height was 10 feet (3 meters), and his antlers spread to 11 feet (3,3 m). If he was really a true deer, he would have shed those horns annually. Synthetoceras - The Starlux plastic is so stiff that the figures can't have any undercuts at all, which makes molding difficult. By turning this figure's head slightly, Starlux was able to make him in a two piece (left - right) mold. This is one of Starlux's best-looking figures. Synthetoceras tricornatus was deer-sized although more closely related to the camels. He is native to the upper Miocene and lower Pliocene of Texas. 
Deinotherium - A strange elephant, but not a difficult molding job. A simple two-piece (left-right) mold was adequate. Deinotherium has been found in eastern Europe, India, and Africa. He had no upper-jaw tusks. Despite the strange orientation of the lower-jaw tusks, Deinotherium must have been well-suited to some ecological niche, as he managed to persist for some 20 million years, from the Miocene into the Pleistocene. And he was big even for an elephant, at about 13 feet (4 m) in height. Platybelodon - A really strange elephant, from a simple two-piece mold. Besides the two shovel-like tusks on the lower jaw, Platybelodon had a pair of short, and more conventional, tusks on the upper jaw. The Starlux figure has these uppers painted on the sides of the trunk, but they look to me to be a bit too long. Platybelodon ranged through Africa, eastern Europe and Mongolia. He was closely related to the North American Amebelodon. Both were some 10 feet (3 m) tall and lived during the upper Miocene. 
Anancus - Starlux called this figure a "Mastodonte," a generic mastodont. But with those tusks he can hardly be considered typical. He looks to me to be an Anancus, a mastodont of the family Gomphotheriidae. Unless things have gone and changed again, there are two families of mastodonts and one of elephants. Family Elephantidae consists of the modern elephants and the mammoths. The defining differences between mastodonts and elepants/mammoths are the shapes of the grinding surfaces of the teeth. The obvious items - the tusks - don't really come into it. Starlux compromised on materials here - the tusks are of a different plastic than the rest of the figure, much more flexible stuff. Big blobs of glue attach them to the figure - 
Anancus roamed forests throughout Europe and Asia during the upper Miocene and lower Pliocene. His height was some 10 feet (3 m). The tusks were 10 to 13 feet long. Mammuthus - According to Starlux, this is simply a "Mammouth." But he's obviously the classic Ice Age mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius. His tusks are of the same softer plastic as the tusks of Anancus, glued in place, so the body could be made in a simple two-piece mold. I have a couple of these, and the glue job is much neater than that on my Anancus. This was one of the earliest figures in the Starlux prehistoric lineup, and was apparently meant to be sold with some of the cavemen, specifically the five listed as Mammoth Hunters ("Chasser de mammouths"). Starlux seem to have overdone it a bit on the tusks. M. primigenius had curved tusks, all right, but I've never seen any curved that much. Starlux later replaced this early figure with one sporting much straighter tusks - too straight, I suspect. I've rummaged through the Realm of Rubber Dinosaurs vaults, but if I have a specimen of the later Starlux Mammuthus, I'm afraid it's gone somewhat astray. But here's a scan of someone else's, trawled from eBay - 
Mammuthus primigenius, despite the common meaning of the word "mammoth," wasn't all that big for an elephant, at some 9 feet tall. He inhabited the upper Pleistocene of Europe, Asia and North America, finally disappearing a mere 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. 
Megatherium - Starlux has chosen the standard standing pose, much like that depicted by Charles Knight and later by Louis Marx. The Starlux tongue is good - I'm surprised it hasn't broken off yet. The proper three claws of each forefoot are present. When upright, Megatherium must have walked somewhat on the sides of his feet, and Starlux has done a reasonable job of showing that. However, I think that overall the figure doesn't look heavy enough. I expect a bit more of a Baby Huey look to Megatherium. This figure was made in a very complex multi-part mold - I haven't figured out all the parts yet, but it must have been expensive. Megatherium, the largest of the ground sloths, reached 20 feet (6 m) in length. Most remains are from Patagonia, though some are found as far north as Bolivia and Peru. Dates are Pleistocene to Modern, as some of these vast creatures seem to have survived until a few thousand years ago. Ursus is the Pleistocene and Holocene (Recent) bear - a nice simple figure from a nice simple mold. Considering how many skeletons of these bears are found curled up in caves, the most characteristic fossil Ursus pose might perhaps be curled up, asleep. The genus Ursus includes the modern black, brown, and polar bears. Starlux called this figure the "Ours des cavernes," or cave bear. That would be Ursus spelaeus, the cave bear of the European Pleistocene. Bone specimens often appear today on the fossil market as Ursus uralensis, but I don't know the basis for the distinction from U. spelaeus except that they come from caves in the Urals rather than the Alps. Both of these Pleistocene bears look pretty much identical to me. Anyone who can distinguish between these and the modern brown bear U. arctos solely on the basis of skeletal evidence has my skeptical admiration. Bear systematics are more unsettled than they should be, considering how much time they've had to sort it all out - Ursus arctos was described 'way back in 1758, by Linnaeus himself. These two figures are a good reminder of how radical the Invicta breakthrough - constant scale for all their prehistorics - really was. Megatherium was about three times as long as U. spelaeus, a fact you would never realize just looking at the Starlux figures. 
Eohippus was a denizen of the early Eocene of North American and Europe, and is the earliest known direct ancestor of modern Equus. He was named Hyracotherium, or "hyrax-like beast," by Richard Owen in 1840. Sir Richard apparently wasn't as impressed as some by his beast's horse-like features. The hyrax is a friendly little animal, of several species, native to Africa. Although, somewhat improbably, classified with elephants and manatees, the hyrax looks like an upmarket hamster. At left is one enjoying a nice little rest on a comfy rock, and at right is a bloodthirsty pack of the little devils. 
Circa 1876, Othniel Charles Marsh published a paper describing some of his numerous finds of fossil horses in Nebraska and the Dakotas. In that paper, he named (but apparently did not describe) Eohippus. That remains the more common name, and there's no doubt that as a name, "dawn horse" beats "hyrax-like beast" handily. But Hyracotherium is the real Linnean name of the genus. There were several species, but evolution of this lineage during the Eocene was slow - our little proto-horses didn't change much for some 20 million years, except for their teeth, which don't show prominently in our Rubber Dinos. But the major evolutionary changes in equine dentition didn't occur until after the advent of grasses, long after Hyracotherium had vanished. The Starlux figure doesn't render the feet with sufficent detail to count toes. Hyracotherium had four toes on his front feet, and three on his hind feet, with little hooflets for toenails. However, his foot was more like a dog's paw than a modern horse foot, which is little more than a single toe. Taken all together, Hyracotherium really didn't look all that much like a horse - perhaps Sir Richard Owen was on to something, after all. Besides being much smaller than Equus, Hyracotherium's back was more arched, his neck and skull were much shorter, and his tail was longer. I suspect that the Starlux version looks a bit too much like a modern horse. Here is Charles Knight's version. He may have been the first to depict Hyracotherium with stripes, following the rationale that many modern browsing animals are so decorated, while grazing animals typically - with some glaring exceptions, like zebras - are not. Browsers nibble on fruits and leaves in the forest, grazers munch grass. - 
The Starlux figure was made in a simple two-piece mold. |