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As you all may be aware, this is not my first attempt at artistically interpreting this dinosaur. I last left this creature off in 2015 with my "Vulcan's Forge" series (starting here). While I can say that I tried my best to make that representation accurate to the fossil evidence, there were many facts that I managed to get very wrong. The two most important of which were that a) we managed to find every part of the creature besides what I assumed to be a large, boxy skull, and b) I depicted it as a generic diplodocid when it was an extremely basal sauropod, even inciting debate at its discovery that it was a prosauropod (or, more accurately, a plateosaurid).
Even so, V. karibaensis still manages to be one of the most well-recorded animals known from a partial skeleton. Its home - Zimbabwe circa 180 million years ago - is a patchwork of various lava flows and sandy deserts. This phenomenon was the result of the same tectonic action that broke Pangea and caused the end-Triassic extinction event- one of the most severe in geologic history. It was a tough time and place, and the animals that lived there had to be tougher. Because they were, animals like Vulcanodon were able to spearhead the family of the sauropods: the largest and most spectacular land animals to roam the planet.
Source: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/349/1330/365
