Dylanus

A **Dylanus** is an extinct bipedal mammal closely related to the "**Hunchback**", the "**Phantom**", the "**Human**", and/or the "**Vampire**", probably either carnivorous, omnivorous, or herbivorous, that lived in every single continent during the Holocene. They came in many different shapes and sizes, living in almost every kind of climates and habitats where they thrived in. We don't know what dylanuses really looked like exactly, but scientists believed that they had large gecko-like eyes, wide mouths that could have opened very wide like a **"Thylacine"** (another extinct Holocene animal), noses that could have been flat, sharp claws (with few species like the Dylanus Robumy especially very large and sickle-like to hunt and kill larger animals), sharp teeth for slicing flesh, few flat teeth for grinding some plant matter, and probably had scaly skin in some species (like the Dylanus Dylanus) and/or fur in some species (like the Dylanus Edwienus). There are also some evidence that some species had ears, with some having probably either short ears or even points at the end, possibly for acute sense of hearing. Their tailbones are likely incomplete, some paleontologists suggested that they had either short or long tails, if long, could have been used for balancing when walking/running, if short, probably lost their use or had developed plumage on their tails for display like birds had. The largest of the dylanuses were the Dylanus Indicus Megadontus, which were most likely quadrupedal due to their gigantic sizes and heavy weight, so they probably had very elephant-like feet and hands. We do not know much about their behavior, but some species like the dylanus robumy probably hunted in packs to hunt larger extinct Holocene animals like **"Rhinoceros"**, buffaloes, and some other big prey items and used their claws to rip flesh off of their helpless victims (in a similar fashion to dromaeosaurs [raptor dinosaurs of the mesozoic]). Dylanus dylanus was probably semi-aquatic, using their webbed feet and hands with sharp claws to paddle through water and hunt fish and crustaceans in lakes and rivers across what is now North America, but could have also fed on fruits and leaves, as their molars suggests, but is suggested that they didn't have webbed feet/hands, so they probably didn't spend a lot of time in water and instead had only sharp claws and used them mainly for hunting much bigger prey such as rhinoceroses. Some larger fossils suggested that Dylanus Dylanus could have grown to about the size of Dylanus Gigantecus, making them powerful predators, but some scientists suggested that these so-called giant Dylanus Dylanus fossils are more likely a completely different species and not from Dylanus Dylanus. Since the closest relatives of dylanusids and other mammals were birds and crocodilians, the sounds of many dylanusids were recreated in recent times using the sounds of various reptile species, which survived Holocene extinct and still live today, based on recent studies, so the Dylanus Dylanus may have had sounded like the Mesozoic raptors and Troodont dinosaurs. Dylanus Gigantecus could have been herbivorous, so it may have browsed on treetops to feed on leaves and fruit using their alien-looking hands ending with large scythe-like claws to pull down branches (much like the mesozoic therizinosaurs) and licked the fruits and leaves off the branches with their long sticky tongues. The mating of all dylanus species is probably like that of birds, with males fighting other males to win a right to mate, and the pair would have mated in a similar fashion to other large megafauna like cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, tapirs, antelopes, deer, and other Holocene megafauna. Like birds, dylanuses probably built nest for the females, but unlike birds, they probably gave birth to live young, instead of eggs, in nests, but they could have laid hard shelled eggs like birds, no one knows for sure currently. They were most likely very social, however, they sometimes could have live alone in solitary lives as not all animals alive today could have been social. It is possible that dylanuses could have been cold-blooded, so they could have grown slowly like most reptiles, amphibians, and fish species, and they could have also aged very slowly, possibly living for about 200-300 years.

## Gallery

A reconstruction of a dylanus' head without fur.A dylanus reconstruction with fur.An outdated head reconstruction of a dylanus, with overly thin lips, shark-like teeth, highly exaggerated eye size, and lacking any nostrils or ear holes. This likely stems from a few fragmentary remains that were once thought to be part of the animal, and its nasal holes were once thought to be injuries. Modern studies already refuted this trope, but this depiction is still used in many pop culture such as Holocene World: Dominion.