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Yesterday I told myself "mmm yes I should start making the Cyprus size chart", so here's Rusingoryx atopocranion, an extinct alcephaline from Middle Pleistocene of Kenya. I love procrastination.

So you see, Rusingoryx is most often depicted as a blue wildebeest with a dome, however, taxonomic studies indicate it was more closely related to the extinct genus Megalotragus, often depicted as a giant hartebeest, weird huh? This would mean that our boy Rusy rather represents a ghost lineage since the Late Pliocene, and this basically means it's less likely to have similar features to modern wildebeest. Besides, the manes of wildebeest are meant for display, and who needs display when you have an epic hadrosaur-like skull to make noisy calls, SO LOUD (so loud humans hunted them to extinction haha > [joke]). Either way, I think this breaks a bit the monotony of Rusingoryx reconstructions, also I decided to give it the vernacular name of Luidebeest (loud in dutch + beast in dutch) or Trumpeter gnu. Enjoy!

Description
Yesterday I told myself "mmm yes I should start making the Cyprus size chart", so here's Rusingoryx atopocranion, an extinct alcephaline from Middle Pleistocene of Kenya. I love procrastination.

So you see, Rusingoryx is most often depicted as a blue wildebeest with a dome, however, taxonomic studies indicate it was more closely related to the extinct genus Megalotragus, often depicted as a giant hartebeest, weird huh? This would mean that our boy Rusy rather represents a ghost lineage since the Late Pliocene, and this basically means it's less likely to have similar features to modern wildebeest. Besides, the manes of wildebeest are meant for display, and who needs display when you have an epic hadrosaur-like skull to make noisy calls, SO LOUD (so loud humans hunted them to extinction haha > [joke]). Either way, I think this breaks a bit the monotony of Rusingoryx reconstructions, also I decided to give it the vernacular name of Luidebeest (loud in dutch + beast in dutch) or Trumpeter gnu. Enjoy!