This is an intricately designed new seed jar by Jennifer Tafoya.  She is known for her clay vessels and also her amazing animal figures and for this show, they are animals from the “Ice Age”!  This piece is fully polished and fully designed.  It has a round shape and an elongated neck.  The top has a Uintatherium a Brontotherium Megacerops.  They are highly detailed and check out the horns on their heads!  They are spectacular!  There are lightning bolts separating them, as they are also referred to as “Thunder Beasts”.  There are additional Santa Clara designs. Jennifer continues to not just be creative in design, but in technique.  All the various colors are derived from natural clay slips.  The piece is signed on the bottom in the clay, “Jennifer Tafoya”.

“Uintatherium was a large browsing animal.  It was similar to today’s rhinoceros, both in size and in shape.  Its legs were robust to sustain the weight of the animal and were equipped with hooves.  Moreover, a Uintathere’s sternum was made up of horizontal segments, unlike today’s rhinos, which have compressed vertical segments.  Its most unusual feature was the skull, which is both large and strongly built, but simultaneously flat and concave: this feature is rare and, apart from some brontotheres, not regularly characteristic of any other known mammal. Its cranial cavity was exceptionally small due to the walls of the cranium being exceedingly thick.  The large upper canine teeth might have served as formidable defensive weapons, and superficially resembled those of saber-toothed cats.   They also might have used them to pluck the aquatic plants from marshes that seem to have comprised their diet.”

“Brontotherium is one of those prehistoric megafauna mammals that has been “discovered” over and over again by generations of paleontologists, as a result of which it has been known by no less than four different names (the others are the equally impressive Megacerops, Brontops and Titanops). Lately, paleontologists have largely settled on Megacerops (“giant horned face”), but Brontotherium (“thunder beast”) has proven more enduring with the general public — perhaps because it evokes a creature that has experienced its own share of naming issues, Brontosaurus.”