More of my paleontology illustration appears in this gallery:I was in graduate school in 1980 when I attended a guest lecture given by Walter Alvarez on the subject of the Iridium anomaly at the K-T boundary. When he put forth his asteroid extinction hypothesis, the light went on in my head. He was only addressing the Cretaceous mass extinction, but the obvious (to me) implication was that ALL of the disjunctions between epochal and period boundaries might ultimately be attributed to asteroid or comet impacts.I was ON the PERMIAN mass extinction right away in the form of this illustration.Now a quarter of a century later I am being vindicated by the evidence that the Siberian flood basalts of the end Permian represent the antipod of an asteroid crater of the right age that has been recently found in Antarctica.This picture depicts a world in which the Permian mass extinction event never occured. As a result the dinosaurs never evolved and the mammal-like reptiles ruled throughout the Mesozoic! These are intelligent cynodonts having it out with derived synapsids. Note the weird juxtaposition of mammaries and egg-laying. These creatures have LESS in common with us than does the platypus.To date I am not aware of another artist who has speculated on this particular juncture in evolutionary history.The composition of this picture was insprired by a Jay Matternes painting that appeared in the Time-Life book "Fossil Man". That one showed a confrontation between Homo habilis and Australopithecus boisei at Oldavai Gorge.art (c) John P. Alexander