A Prehistoric Picnic

A Prehistoric Picnic | procreate | 2026

A lovely beach picnic from the Pleistocene of California’s coast 17000 years ago. In 1960, the skull of hydrodamalis, the giant Steller’s sea cow, was caught in a trawl net somewhere in the Monterey Bay (written about briefly by Robert E. Jones in ‘67). Here, a young female has washed ashore, where it serves as a tough opportunity for scavengers. Gymnogyps amplus, a larger relative of the California condor, claims its authority. Two Pleistocene coyotes, more robust than their modern counterparts, gnaw at the tough hide. And no beach picnic can escape swarms of Western gulls.

A paper in 2021 (Sacks et al.) suggests the Pleistocene coyote may be a western population of red wolf. My reconstruction leans heavily on red wolves and the larger eastern coyote.

Descriptions of hydrodamalis recount the tough and nigh impenetrable qualities of the skin. These scavengers are focusing their energy on orifices that would be the most easily accessible as the carcass begins to decay, like the eyes, mouth, and milk ducts (behind the flippers on sirenians).