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| Strange dinosaur adaptations; Who thinks these are plausible? | |
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| Topic Started: Feb 12 2010, 08:59 AM (8,953 Views) | |
| Margaret Pye | Feb 12 2010, 08:59 AM Post #1 |
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So, as I said on the introduction thread, I haz a maniraptoran sophont. I've been fleshing out a world for them to live in. And I've been violating the phylogenetic bracket appallingly - in ways that strike me as plausible, but I've been doing it a lot and I wanted some second opinions on the plausibility of some of my critters. I've put fur on a lot of ornithopods, but that doesn't violate the phylogenetic bracket since Tianyulong. (I was writing furry ornithopods before Tianyulong, mind you - how else would Leaellynasaura have avoided freezing into a little hypsilophodont icypole? Especially since it didn't have growth rings in its bones, and therefore probably didn't hibernate.) Things I want criticism and suggestions on, mostly dinosaur-related: Opposable digits. I've been handing out opposable digits like candy, and with blithe disregard for phylogeny (I figured they could evolve repeatedly and independently.) Bipedal browsers get opposable digits with which to hold browse. Most of my small-game hunting coelurosaurs have hands like three-fingered hawk claws. Most of my grazers evolved from browsers, and most of my big-game hunters evolved from small-game hunters. Direct brooding by a lot of ornithopods (I don't know what the ceratopsians and ankylosaurs do, I'll have to figure that out: I think sauropods are extinct, perhaps very recently as a result of sophont activity, and coelurosaurs are the only surviving theropods). No, there's no fossil evidence for it. But it seems enough of an improvement on the megapode model that I'd assume, given enough time, it could evolve. Is this stupid? (The obvious way to get round "It's too heavy to sit on eggs!" is to have them lie next to the eggs rather than on top.) Pouches. I've given a lot of random dinosaurs (again, it seemed a simple enough and useful enough adaptation to evolve repeatedly and independently) some kind of skin pouch in which to incubate their eggs. A lot of the bipeds, including the sophonts, have "saddlebags" either side of the ribcage. Venom. I have a clade of venomous coelurosaurs. In most of them, the venom is quite weak: it's the slashing sharklike teeth that do the real damage, and the vasodilator, anticoagulant venom just makes the wound bleed more so that the prey collapses faster. (Yep, idea stolen direct from Komodo dragon.) I'm thinking about creating some with more powerful venom, and possibly with a fancier venom delivery system than "it's in the spit so it gets all over the teeth." In particular, I was thinking about cheetahs, and I came up with a concept for a Coelophysis-shaped creature adapted for camouflage, stalking and incredible sprinting abilities. Except when it caught up with its prey, instead of wrestling it, it'd bite it once and let go - and the prey would run for another minute or so, then drop dead. External ears. Yes, on dinosaurs. Specifically, on troodonts. Troodonts seem to have had very sensitive hearing, and asymmetrical ears like owls, so it seems reasonable to give them an external sound-focussing device. And yes, I could just give them an owly facial disc of vaned feathers, but external ears didn't seem that improbable. They aren't complex. They're strategically placed flaps of skin, plus a bit of cartilage stiffening and, if you're feeling fancy, some muscle. Asymmetrical external ears, obviously. One pointing up, one sideways. And a non-dinosaurian issue: I want to replace rabbits and hares with bipedal saltorial versions. Do you think I'm better off with wallabies, or with very large jerboas? (I also want some saltorial-biped mammalian predators and omnivores, most of them under 5 kg: they don't have to be related to the kangabunnies, and I don't know whether they're marsupials or rodents either.) |
| My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont. | |
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| Holben | Feb 12 2010, 11:02 AM Post #2 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Why pouches when they can carry eggs? Safer and removable. So you want the 3D hearing of an owl with the ears and the hoo-ha. How many fingers? And how are you going to circumvent the wrist problems? |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| Carlos | Feb 12 2010, 01:17 PM Post #3 |
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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It is not. For the external ear issue, well, I feel that owl style "ears" (as in, tufts of feathers/quills/whatever sorrounding the ear) would be more easy, and perhaps more usefull (keratin can recover from damage, while cartiladge doesn't do so very well). Saltatorial mammals could be the examples you provided, but I would produce an original group. As for predatory versions, well, kangaroos did have carnivorous forms right? |
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Lemuria: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/ Terra Alternativa: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/ My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Carliro ![]() | |
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| Venatosaurus | Feb 12 2010, 01:37 PM Post #4 |
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HAUS OF SPEC
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I think this is great, especially since,I too, love to come up with ridiculous ideas that can actually work ! I have to agree with Faa when addressing the ears, especially when feather tufts can appear so much more easily ! I also like the pouch idea, though, I think a more appropriate placement would be near the cloaca/tail, that way they eggs could be directly deposited into the pouch (and then closed shut) , and they would be kept out of dangers way...the fact that they can open and close the pouch would protect against egg-thieves, and the placement would be much better than on the sides, as they could easily fall on their sides and break the eggs
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| Holben | Feb 12 2010, 03:06 PM Post #5 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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And if they lack the resources to look after an egg, they leave it.
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| Margaret Pye | Feb 12 2010, 09:04 PM Post #6 |
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Hey, thanks everyone! Glad you like my ideas! On pouches: Maybe I phrased that badly. The eggs don't attach to the pouch - they're normal dinosaur eggs and can be removed at any time, and handed over to the other parent for incubation. The young don't attach to the pouch either. They're often precocial enough to jump out and run along after the parent when they hatch, like emus. And why I put them on the sides: I was planning to use them as a logical extension of direct brooding. First you have the dinosaur that puts its eggs in two rows, lies down between them and tucks them under its fluffy arms. Then you have the dinosaur that grows skin folds along its sides, so it can tuck the eggs a bit closer. Then you have the dinosaur with skin folds large and strong enough that it can stand up and run around without danger to the eggs (unless, of course, it falls on its side.) So this only works for bipeds. If the eggs are incubated inside the cloaca, that's practically ovoviviparity. I've been contemplating introducing ovoviviparity, or viviparity evolved from ovoviviparity, but it feels a bit mammal-chauvinist. Yes, that's true: it would make more sense to build a mammal-shaped ear out of keratin. Except keratin, being dead, has to be replaced, and we can't have ears falling off a creature that's dependent on them. Can't we? Maybe they replace one at a time and use the other... nah, that'd still wreck their triangulation. Maybe they switch to a different, more vision-based lifestyle while they're replacing their ears? Maybe the new ear grows in front of or behind the old one before the old one moults? Maybe the ears grow constantly and wear down constantly... maybe not that one, I'm not sure how an ear wears down. About the kangabunnies, I'm assuming rodents would still be a huge success in a KTless world. Macropods... maybe not, but marsupials do seem prone to saltoriality, so it doesn't seem too farfetched to evolve a very similar-looking analogue. And yes, the carnivorous one are a result of me hearing about carnivorous wallabies, then much later hearing that they probably weren't macropod-shaped and being bitterly disappointed. For no particular reason, I think I'll make the specialised herbivores rodents or lagomorphs, and the ones with more nutritious diets can be some kind of marsupial. A kind with no canine teeth, so that they'll still wind up killing things with their incisors. Dinosaur hands: The opposable-thumbed ones have the normal number of fingers for their taxon: five on most ornithopods, three on coelurosaurs... And most of them don't have anything like human manual dexterity. I've only "solved the wrist problems" for the sophonts and their relatives. Like this: Dinosaur evolves flight, and develops hyperextensible shoulders without losing hand claws, teeth or long tail. Dinosaur loses flight. Still has hyperextensible shoulders. Dinosaur develops lifestyle based on catching rats with hands. Develops opposable third finger. Develops increased wrist flexibility for improved grabbing. They don't pronate and supinate: instead, the semilunate bone becomes dome-shaped and eventually winds up as a ball-and-socket (harder to dislocate) so that the wrist can swivel and bend in any direction. That basic design should be dextrous enough for simple tool use. Introduce selection for better tool use, as detailed in the sentients post. |
| My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont. | |
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| Venatosaurus | Feb 12 2010, 09:22 PM Post #7 |
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HAUS OF SPEC
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I still think those pouches are weird, especially where they are placed...another option could be mouth, or throat brooding, storing the eggs in a pouch, similar to a pelicans pouch. I also don't see why these dinosaur need external ears, they seem really unlikely, and your best bet would be 'ears' composed of feathers. As for rodent analogues, remember, Multituberculates were around, and if left undisturbed would have remained around even till today (well they did go extinct in the Cenozoic, due to the global drying, but...), and could evolve into very interesting creatures, hell maybe even cow-sized, hippo analogues, that look a bit like ground sloths ! These bipeds, could instead, take to omnivorous, carnivorous, and even insectivorous lifestyles, with some low browsers here and there...and instead be Leptictids, which were already bipedal mammals, that walked like theropods ! |
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| Carlos | Feb 13 2010, 04:13 AM Post #8 |
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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Ence why I suggested them to be feather tufts, so that only one feather at the time falls, keeping the enhanced hearing still relatively efficient |
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Lemuria: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/ Terra Alternativa: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/ My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Carliro ![]() | |
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| Margaret Pye | Feb 13 2010, 08:21 AM Post #9 |
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OK, that makes sense, I'll use that. Venatosaurus, what faults do you see in the pouches? Yep, mouth-brooding would also work, but what I've come up with seems like the easiest extension from direct brooding behaviour. There's actually a modern bird with similar adaptations - some kind of gruiform, I can't remember which one, but it definitely exists. And I thought multituberculates died out because of rodent competition. The leptictids are a good idea, I'll research them. Edited by Margaret Pye, Feb 13 2010, 08:22 AM.
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| My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont. | |
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| Holben | Feb 13 2010, 09:32 AM Post #10 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Lepticitidium and pals were a very successful group in the cretacous and Eocene (Including the palaeocene) but then went into a decline. They were small, probably hopping mammals which ate small reptiles and invertebrates. They may have had long, twitching noses which could function a little like trunks. |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| Margaret Pye | Feb 13 2010, 09:54 AM Post #11 |
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Well, whether or not they went extinct in my world, it'd be very easy to evolve an analogue from elephant shrews. I'll think about that idea. Nah, I like the wallabies. I'll just put normal elephant shrews all over the place - use them instead of regular shrews. |
| My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont. | |
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| Holben | Feb 13 2010, 10:01 AM Post #12 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Elephant shrew blitzkrieg? What evolutionary niche do they take? |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| Margaret Pye | Feb 13 2010, 10:23 AM Post #13 |
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They take the niche of teeny frenetic insectivore, mostly. And maybe a few slightly bigger ones, or more omnivorous. |
| My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont. | |
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| Holben | Feb 13 2010, 10:30 AM Post #14 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Frenetic niches? Interesting. What eats them? |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| Margaret Pye | Feb 13 2010, 10:33 AM Post #15 |
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Hmmm... very small coelurosaurs, the carnivorous wallabies if they wind up on the same continent, weasel-shaped monotremes, hawks, owls, snakes... |
| My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont. | |
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