Question 1

How do you say Diplocaulus?

Accepted Answer

Diplocaulus is pronounced dip-loh-KAW-lus. Break it into four chunks: DIP, then loh, then KAW, then lus. The stress lands on that third chunk, KAW. A good memory trick is to say 'dip low, caw like a crow, lus' and you will have it every time.

Question 2

What does Diplocaulus mean?

Accepted Answer

The name comes from two Greek words. 'Diplo' means double or twin, and 'caulus' means stalk or stem. Put them together and you get something like 'double-stemmed,' which is a direct reference to the two long bony horns that stick out from either side of its skull. Edward Drinker Cope came up with the name in 1877 when he first described the fossil.

Question 3

What did Diplocaulus look like?

Accepted Answer

Diplocaulus looked like a flat salamander wearing a giant boomerang as a hat. Its body was low and wide, its limbs were tiny and stubby, and its head had two enormous bony horns sweeping out to the sides. In a fully grown adult, the skull could be nearly as wide as the body was long. It was one of the most bizarre-looking vertebrates that ever lived.

Question 4

Was Diplocaulus a dinosaur?

Accepted Answer

No, Diplocaulus was not a dinosaur at all. It was an ancient amphibian that lived during the Carboniferous and Permian periods, which ended about 252 million years ago, roughly 15 to 20 million years before the very first dinosaurs appeared. It belonged to an extinct group called lepospondyls that has no close living relatives today.

Question 5

Why did Diplocaulus have that weird boomerang head?

Accepted Answer

Scientists have two main ideas about this. The most popular hypothesis is that the wide flat skull worked like a hydrofoil, meaning flowing water over the curved top of the skull would push the animal upward, letting it launch off the riverbed to catch prey with almost no effort. A second idea is that the wide head made it almost impossible for predators to swallow Diplocaulus whole. The real answer might be both things at the same time.

Question 6

How big was Diplocaulus?

Accepted Answer

Diplocaulus grew to about 3.3 feet or 1 meter in length, roughly the size of a medium dog. But the head was so wide that it looked much bigger than it actually was. It was also very flat and probably weighed only a couple of pounds. Despite its modest size, it was by far the largest member of its entire group, the lepospondyls.

Question 7

Where did Diplocaulus live?

Accepted Answer

Most Diplocaulus fossils have been found in Texas in the United States, in what were once ancient swamps, floodplains, and shallow rivers during the Permian period. Remarkably, fossils that may belong to Diplocaulus have also been found in Morocco in Africa. These Moroccan fossils are the youngest lepospondyl fossils ever discovered anywhere on Earth, suggesting Diplocaulus spread across Pangaea before the group went extinct.

Question 8

When did Diplocaulus go extinct?

Accepted Answer

Diplocaulus appears to have gone extinct around 254 million years ago, just before the massive end-Permian extinction event that killed more than 90 percent of all species on Earth. The Moroccan fossils represent the last-known occurrence of any lepospondyl, making Diplocaulus the final survivor of its entire ancient group. The cause of its extinction is not fully known, but the dramatic environmental changes of the late Permian almost certainly played a role.

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