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Description
WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE SO FRAGMENTARY!!!!!

Also, Hippooink

Andrewsarchus was described by Henry Fairfield Osborn. Only the skull was found, but it was HUGE. 83.4 cm in length to be exact. Osborn decided to scale the creature to find out its size. He thought that the skull belonged to an mesonychid, a family of carnivorous mammals that were ungulates, or hoofed animals. Osborn's calculations put Andrewsarchus as the largest carnivore to walk the Earth since the dinosaurs. This idea has been accepted for many years, and made its way in public endorsement and TV shows like Walking With Beasts. Then in late 2000's, Andrewsarchus was found to show very little affinities with mesonychids, and were instead placed in the family Cetancodontamorpha, a family that also inlcudes entelodonts, anthracotheres, hippos, and ,yes, whales.

And since then this is what we have learned about Andrewsarchus
-It's big
-It's a cetancodontamorph
......
Yeah, that's about it......
Since all we have is a SINGLE skull from a SINGLE individual, the appearance of Andrewsarchus remains almost a complete mystery. Heck, we don't even know what it ate. The only skull doesn't preserve the canines, and there are other factors as well (more on that later). The fact we only have a single skull just ticks me off since this is such a cool animal. (I bet that someone is gonna find post-cranial of Andrewsarchus just like they did with Spinosaurus and Deinocheirus) We can however guess with some certainty as to what this creature may have looked like.

First off: Size. Osborn said that Andrewsarchus was the largest land carnivore since the dinosaurs, but this was with mesonychid proportions, and as we now know, Andrewsarchus was not a mesonychid. So how could the size be found? Well, me, , and decided to find out. We looked at several of Andrewsarchus' closest relatives. We used entelodonts, close cousins of that looked a lot like pigs despite not being pigs, and anthractotheres, hippo like relatives that were more terrestrial than hippos. The results based on these two groups gave length estimates between 3.1-3.3 meters and mass estimates between 980-1200 kg. I wouldn't take these estimates with complete certainty though, since all we have of Andrewsarchus is the skull, but it is clear that this was a pretty big animal. Because we used entelodont and anthracothere measurements, I decided to use entelodont and anthracothere proportions in my Andrewsarchus. The back half and front legs are from an anthracothere, while the body and neck are from an entelodont. The head's reference was the actual skull of Andrewsarchus.

Secondly: Diet. Despite what Walking With Beasts and all those 90's prehistory pop-culture wanted you think, Andrewsarchus wasn't a bone crusher.

From Darren Naish
"While it may well be that Andrewsarchus was an entelodont-like predator and/or omnivore (for more on entelodonts see Tet Zoo picture of the day # 23 and Giant killer pigs from hell), there are, however, indications that Andrewsarchus was freakishly weird, and doing something very special. In fact, the weirdness of its skull is routinely not depicted correctly in life restorations. Its snout is strikingly long and narrow, and ‘pinched in’ about half-way along its length. The result is that the distal end of the rostrum forms a sub-circular rosette that almost resembles that of a spinosaurid theropod. Its orbits are located way down on the sides of its skull and were widely separated by the broad base of the snout, and its entire occipital region looks narrower, and smaller, than expected in an animal of this size. The glenoid fossa is flattened compared to that of ‘proper’ mesonychians, and the associated pre- and post-glenoid structures on the zygomatic arch are small. The sagittal crest is small as well. These features all suggest that the jaws were relatively weak. And while the upper canines were said by Osborn (1924) to be enormous, they aren’t: ‘The canines are very reduced in size and in proportion to the whole dentition and to the whole skull’ (Szalay & Gould 1966, p. 154). Clearly, Andrewsarchus is just crying out for some neat functional study on cranial kinematics and function. Come on: surely someone, by now, must have thought of doing FEA or something on its skull?"

What does this suggest? Well, a lot actually. It may suggest Andrewsarchus was a fish eater, or maybe a scavenger that ate small prey, or even just a generalist. We can't be sure. We can be sure though, that Andrewsarchus was living in a environment with lots of large prey and lots of other predators. It could be possible that it was using its jaws completely differently than any other carnivore/omnivore.

So there you have it. Andrewsarchus, the hippo-whale-thing with a giant head and a body possibly bigger than any other cenozoic carnivorous synapsid. I hope you like my interpretation of this beast. Andrewsarchus will be featured in the second episode of my Walking With Beasts remake, where it will be portrayed next to giant mesonychids, brontotheres, indricotheres, and more.

NOTE: I do not own the references I use to make these drawings. The entelodont part of my Andrewsarchus is possible by the Daeodon skeletal by , while the anthracothere part is by designeranimals designeranimals.wikispaces.com…
and this
savepic.ru/9014094.htm
(I cannot find who made this, so please inform me who made this)

EDIT: Removed human. It was messing with the size.

Description
WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE SO FRAGMENTARY!!!!!

Also, Hippooink

Andrewsarchus was described by Henry Fairfield Osborn. Only the skull was found, but it was HUGE. 83.4 cm in length to be exact. Osborn decided to scale the creature to find out its size. He thought that the skull belonged to an mesonychid, a family of carnivorous mammals that were ungulates, or hoofed animals. Osborn's calculations put Andrewsarchus as the largest carnivore to walk the Earth since the dinosaurs. This idea has been accepted for many years, and made its way in public endorsement and TV shows like Walking With Beasts. Then in late 2000's, Andrewsarchus was found to show very little affinities with mesonychids, and were instead placed in the family Cetancodontamorpha, a family that also inlcudes entelodonts, anthracotheres, hippos, and ,yes, whales.

And since then this is what we have learned about Andrewsarchus
-It's big
-It's a cetancodontamorph
......
Yeah, that's about it......
Since all we have is a SINGLE skull from a SINGLE individual, the appearance of Andrewsarchus remains almost a complete mystery. Heck, we don't even know what it ate. The only skull doesn't preserve the canines, and there are other factors as well (more on that later). The fact we only have a single skull just ticks me off since this is such a cool animal. (I bet that someone is gonna find post-cranial of Andrewsarchus just like they did with Spinosaurus and Deinocheirus) We can however guess with some certainty as to what this creature may have looked like.

First off: Size. Osborn said that Andrewsarchus was the largest land carnivore since the dinosaurs, but this was with mesonychid proportions, and as we now know, Andrewsarchus was not a mesonychid. So how could the size be found? Well, me, , and decided to find out. We looked at several of Andrewsarchus' closest relatives. We used entelodonts, close cousins of that looked a lot like pigs despite not being pigs, and anthractotheres, hippo like relatives that were more terrestrial than hippos. The results based on these two groups gave length estimates between 3.1-3.3 meters and mass estimates between 980-1200 kg. I wouldn't take these estimates with complete certainty though, since all we have of Andrewsarchus is the skull, but it is clear that this was a pretty big animal. Because we used entelodont and anthracothere measurements, I decided to use entelodont and anthracothere proportions in my Andrewsarchus. The back half and front legs are from an anthracothere, while the body and neck are from an entelodont. The head's reference was the actual skull of Andrewsarchus.

Secondly: Diet. Despite what Walking With Beasts and all those 90's prehistory pop-culture wanted you think, Andrewsarchus wasn't a bone crusher.

From Darren Naish
"While it may well be that Andrewsarchus was an entelodont-like predator and/or omnivore (for more on entelodonts see Tet Zoo picture of the day # 23 and Giant killer pigs from hell), there are, however, indications that Andrewsarchus was freakishly weird, and doing something very special. In fact, the weirdness of its skull is routinely not depicted correctly in life restorations. Its snout is strikingly long and narrow, and ‘pinched in’ about half-way along its length. The result is that the distal end of the rostrum forms a sub-circular rosette that almost resembles that of a spinosaurid theropod. Its orbits are located way down on the sides of its skull and were widely separated by the broad base of the snout, and its entire occipital region looks narrower, and smaller, than expected in an animal of this size. The glenoid fossa is flattened compared to that of ‘proper’ mesonychians, and the associated pre- and post-glenoid structures on the zygomatic arch are small. The sagittal crest is small as well. These features all suggest that the jaws were relatively weak. And while the upper canines were said by Osborn (1924) to be enormous, they aren’t: ‘The canines are very reduced in size and in proportion to the whole dentition and to the whole skull’ (Szalay & Gould 1966, p. 154). Clearly, Andrewsarchus is just crying out for some neat functional study on cranial kinematics and function. Come on: surely someone, by now, must have thought of doing FEA or something on its skull?"

What does this suggest? Well, a lot actually. It may suggest Andrewsarchus was a fish eater, or maybe a scavenger that ate small prey, or even just a generalist. We can't be sure. We can be sure though, that Andrewsarchus was living in a environment with lots of large prey and lots of other predators. It could be possible that it was using its jaws completely differently than any other carnivore/omnivore.

So there you have it. Andrewsarchus, the hippo-whale-thing with a giant head and a body possibly bigger than any other cenozoic carnivorous synapsid. I hope you like my interpretation of this beast. Andrewsarchus will be featured in the second episode of my Walking With Beasts remake, where it will be portrayed next to giant mesonychids, brontotheres, indricotheres, and more.

NOTE: I do not own the references I use to make these drawings. The entelodont part of my Andrewsarchus is possible by the Daeodon skeletal by , while the anthracothere part is by designeranimals designeranimals.wikispaces.com…
and this
savepic.ru/9014094.htm
(I cannot find who made this, so please inform me who made this)

EDIT: Removed human. It was messing with the size.