This one is just for fun (I don't know anything about paleontology so keep expectations tempered) and mostly because of the name given to this creature! An article published in the journal PeerJ titled "An early geikiid dicynodont from the Tropidostoma Assemblage Zone (late Permian) of South Africa." Describes the unearthing of fossil remnants of an interestingly named creature, Bulbasaurus phylloxyron.

Here is the organism gently sleeping^[2]

Unfortunately despite a clickbait headline or two written by some desperate journalists trying to capitalize on people's love of pokemon... ^{[3] [4]}

Looks up at his own title

Shit. Despite the desperation of the journalists the scientists did not name this creature after Bulbasaur, much to the chagrin of us all! Rather the bulbasarus portion of its name was due to the bulbous nose that it had.^[5] while phylloxyron is in reference to it being a herbivore (it ate plants).

Look at how much it loved plants... wait... damn it, thats bulbasaur again

Bulbasaurus phylloxyron

Bulbasarus lived in the Triassic Period, which is the time period between 252 and 201 million years ago ^[6] it directly precedes the Jurassic period (which perhaps you are more familiar with as a term) and saw the beginning of the rise of dinosaurs. Bulbasarus however was a member of the order (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, ORDER, Family, Genus, Species) Therapsida,^[7] decedents from members of this order evolved into the mammals we know today. So Bulbasarus was related to mammals, and is a member of a group of animals known as dicynodonts.^[8] Dicynodont literally means two dog tooth and were plant eaters with tusks.

As a result Bulbasarus is described as being pig like, as it had large tusks (and a small skull):

Available under Creative Commons Attribution License ^[1]

In the image above we are looking at the maxilla bone, which is what makes up the snout of the animal. You can see in the diagram a section labeled tu, where the tusk would be. The reported size of the tusk was around 1.9 cm, on a skull that was about 14 cm.

In addition to being pig like it is also turtle like due to its possessing a beak like mouth, similar to a turtles beak:

Available under Creative Commons Attribution License ^[1]

So here what we are looking at a bone portion called the premaxilla, the beak is the curved/hooked end on the right hand side of the image.

So while we may not have a animal/plant hybrid that can whip vines at us like Bulbasaur:

Sorry buddy, not like you

It's got some sweet tusks, and a bad-ass beak for fighting its way through the dinosaurs of the time as it tries to mind its own business and eat some plants.

It is fun to watch as we learn more about the animals that thrived during these years in the earths history and slowly put together a better picture of the types of creatures that were thriving during the early days of the dinosaurs. Maybe Pokemon needs to re-imagine Bulbasaur and make it a badass pig-turtle like the fossils these scientists have discovered.

Sources

1. https://peerj.com/articles/2913/
2. Image 1
3. http://www.forbes.com/sites/shaenamontanari/2017/02/02/paleontologists-who-like-pokemon-name-newly-discovered-turtle-pig-fossil/
4. http://wwg.com/pokemon/2017/02/04/scientists-name-newly-discovered-prehistoric-creature-after-a-po/
5. https://www.inverse.com/article/27179-bulbasaurus-dicynodont-pokemon-dinosaur
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triassic
7. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Therapsid
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicynodont

All non Cited Images Are Available Under Creative Commons Licenses
Any Gifs Are From Giphy.com and Are Also Available for Use Under Creative Commons Licences

Articles Published in PeerJ and Images Contained Therein Are Also Available for Use Under Creative Commons Licence CC 4.0 As such I have cited the article for all text and images used.

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