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| Strange dinosaur adaptations; Who thinks these are plausible? | |
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| Topic Started: Feb 12 2010, 08:59 AM (8,965 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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| The Dodo | Feb 13 2010, 06:18 PM Post #31 |
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Prime Specimen
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What about Titanosaurs, they survived to the end of the Cretaceous and were one of the dominant herbivores of the Late Cretaceous. |
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| Carlos | Feb 13 2010, 06:32 PM Post #32 |
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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Indeed, titanosaurs had a dominant position |
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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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| Kamidio | Feb 13 2010, 07:25 PM Post #33 |
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The Game Master of the SSU:NC
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They're an exception. They could live on forever in one form or another as long as competition is low. |
SSU:NC - Finding a new home. Quotes WAA
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| Margaret Pye | Feb 13 2010, 11:47 PM Post #34 |
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I thought I'd have the sophonts exterminate the titanosaurs. It seems realistic, and it gives the resident hippie something to complain about. About the cat thing: I was thinking of the more ground-dwelling types of cat. Tigers, lynxes, wildcats. Not margays. The sort of thing that, on HE, only climb a tree when something's chasing them. And I was planning to have the troodonts mostly impersonate small canines - the dromaeosaurs get the ground-cat niches. Except maybe the tiny little mouse-eating ones, because better hearing and better night vision are a big advantage to a rodent-hunter. I'm using a classic troodont design, apart from the feather ears. Perhaps I should introduce some tree-dwelling deinonychosaurs. I've always liked Microraptor, I should base a few creatures on a similar bauplan. I do want monkeys and opossums though... ah well, they can live on different continents and/or take slightly different niches. I was meaning to have most of the arboreal predators be mammals, lemurs maybe, but there's room for a dinosaur or two. And it seems perfectly reasonable to have a stealthy, camouflaged hypercarnivore with very big weapons, great reflexes, great leaping and sprinting skills, and pathetic marathon skills, without giving it much climbing ability. I plan on filling most of those niches with dromaeosaurs. Edited by Margaret Pye, Feb 13 2010, 11:48 PM.
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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 14 2010, 04:38 AM Post #35 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Hypercarnviores, eh? The Species will sort 'em out. But you need to stop them from eliminating all wildlife in the region. |
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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 14 2010, 06:01 AM Post #36 |
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What? That's not what "hypercarnivore" means. "Hypercarnivore" means a creature that can't digest anything except meat. |
| My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont. | |
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| Holben | Feb 14 2010, 12:02 PM Post #37 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Exactly, so they'll eat the other animals in the region if they're big and strong. |
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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 15 2010, 05:01 AM Post #38 |
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I figure that if a tiger doesn't exterminate all the game in its habitat, a shara won't either. |
| My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont. | |
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| The Dodo | Feb 15 2010, 06:21 AM Post #39 |
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Prime Specimen
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Do you have any ideas for what takes the dromeosaurs and troodonts place in Australia and South America before it joined with North America? |
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| Carlos | Feb 15 2010, 06:30 AM Post #40 |
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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More of them; dromeosaurs were already common in Gondwanna as unenlagiines, and in the late Cretaceous the North and South Americas briefly collided |
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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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| Holben | Feb 15 2010, 10:52 AM Post #41 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Whenever those two collided, there were mass floods of wildlife across. |
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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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| Toad of Spades | Feb 18 2010, 03:21 AM Post #42 |
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Clorothod
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I have some ideas. A descendant of a miniature therizinosaur that lives a lifestyle similar to a sloth. A very primitive holdover descended from the earliest of saurischians living on an isolated island. A semi-aquatic theropod that uses webbed feet and a paddle-like tail to swim through the water. Its hands would remain relatively unchanged. A abelisaurid descendant that uses its thickened ridged skull to kill prey. A manatee analogue sauropod descendant. A psuedo-pterosaur descended from small gliding arboreal ceratosaurs. A small burrowing ceratopsid. A carnivorous ceratopsid that uses its sharp beak and shearing teeth to kill and eat large prey items. Its frilll is much shorter and serves as an anchor to huge jaw muscles. |
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Sorry Link, I don't give credit. Come back when you're a little...MMMMMM...Richer. Bread is an animal and humans are %90 aluminum. | |
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| Holben | Feb 18 2010, 05:51 AM Post #43 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Wouldn't the theropod be outcompeted by crocodilians and marine reptiles? The abelisaurid sounds like its reach is low, just neck length. Unless it jumps from above onto the creature. Manatee analogue- the bones of sauropods are quite well suited for marine life, however i doubt they would evolve flippers with those titanic femurs and humeri. The ceratopsian- there were diictodonts around in the triassic, would this be like 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 18 2010, 06:45 AM Post #44 |
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What kind of basal saurischian were you thinking of? Ceratopsia: Gougers and Tigs Gougers are a widespread and successful group. Most of them are 50-150 kg in weight, although a few aberrant forms are smaller and the appalling tarracks can reach over 500 kg. Gougers have a fairly conservative body plan: squat-bodied, with short stout flexed legs and a short stiff tail. The head is enormous, with a narrow powerful beak. Almost all gougers have long, vicious horns, most commonly one above each eye. Some (particularly the longer-legged plains species) have extravagant bony frills. Others, particularly those adapted for thick forests or cold, are frillless or have only a horizontal crest of elongated scales. Tropical gougers are naked and scaly, apart from patches of display pelage: gougers from cooler climates are covered in fur. Their most innovative feature is the large digging claws on the front feet. Gougers eat anything. Roots, dug up with the front feet, are a favourite with most species. Forest species eat fallen fruit or nuts. Most of them aren't much use as hunters, but they love to eat carrion and will often intimidate predators off their kills. In a pinch, they can derive a fair amount of nutrition from grass. Tarracks have a similar digestive system and general bauplan to smaller gougers, but they kill their own meat (sometimes - they're not the most skilled of predators.) They're sedately coloured - dark reds and blues rather than the sparkly rainbows the rest of the clade go in for - and better at stalking than you'd expect from their size and shape. Whereas most gougers will gore you to death if you threaten their young, and then eat you because, well, why waste good meat? tarracks will charge out of the undergrowth and gore you to death when you're being perfectly inoffensive, for the express purpose of eating you. Some gougers (tarracks, for example) live in monogamous pairs, but most live in small, closely-knit herds. Males and females are hard to tell apart, and both incubate and care for the young (they're quite precocial, but they do often need to be fed.) Gougers are aggressive towards other species, and will often kill (and, to add insult to injury, eat) foolhardy predators. Most gougers are very brightly coloured, particularly around the face and crest. Gouger species found in the Caenhar Islands are the florent, the vesp, and (in forested nature reserves) the tarrack. Vesps, the emblem of semi-legendary ancient queen Rystan Maresskye, are a largish (over 100 kg) forest species with a particular fondness for fruit and nuts. They have minimal frills - just enough to anchor the jaw and neck muscles. They have glossy, polished-looking scales: a black background with wide yellow stripes. The eyes, beak and horns are bright red. Florents are a smaller, long-legged grassland species, more prone to run away and less to charge than most gougers. They eat mainly roots and mushrooms. Florents are mostly iridescent pale green, apart from the large, round, scalloped-edged frill, which is rose pink at the edges fading to crimson in the middle: the horns are also pink, the beak is emerald green and the eyes are bright yellow. Edited by Margaret Pye, Feb 23 2010, 05:05 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 18 2010, 06:54 AM Post #45 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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The terrifying Gorefangs, perhaps? Gorebeaks, bloodbeaks, fleshrenders? |
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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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