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| Strange dinosaur adaptations; Who thinks these are plausible? | |
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| Topic Started: Feb 12 2010, 08:59 AM (8,962 Views) | |
| Margaret Pye | Feb 12 2010, 08:59 AM Post #1 |
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Adult
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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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| Carlos | Mar 1 2010, 08:03 AM Post #76 |
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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Its just more pratical to have fingers that oppose each other but still are most of the time in a normal position for a maniraptor. |
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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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| The Dodo | Mar 2 2010, 09:08 PM Post #77 |
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Prime Specimen
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The Jackybird looked like an Alvarezsaur to me, to you have any in this world by chance? |
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| Margaret Pye | Mar 7 2010, 06:43 AM Post #78 |
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I haven't designed any alvarezsaurs - do you have any suggestions? |
| My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont. | |
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| Rick Raptor | Mar 7 2010, 09:46 AM Post #79 |
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Ho about an ostrich-like animal with an anteater-like muzzle and long tongue? |
| [My DeviantArt account] | |
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| Holben | Mar 7 2010, 10:14 AM Post #80 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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How did those fingers go around the maniraptoran wrist bones? |
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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 | Mar 8 2010, 04:30 AM Post #81 |
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I haven't designed the anatomy in detail, but I'd assume radical reshaping of the wrist bones. Does it look implausible? It just struck me as easier to make the fingers permanently opposed than to make them more mobile. |
| My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont. | |
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| colddigger | Mar 9 2010, 08:57 PM Post #82 |
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Joke's over! Love, Parasky
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why not give it a spur or something that acts kind of like a thumb, when the fingers fold they press whatever they are holding against the spur and the critter can pick the object up? |
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Oh Fine. Oh hi you! Why don't you go check out the finery that is SGP?? v Don't click v Spoiler: click to toggle | |
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| Margaret Pye | Mar 9 2010, 09:59 PM Post #83 |
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Seems easier to just evolve opposability... |
| My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont. | |
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| Margaret Pye | Mar 13 2010, 02:43 AM Post #84 |
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If you go back to page 5, I've finally finished the cryptosmilid and miniherbivore entries. Nyctosaurs The surviving nyctosaurs are all creatures of the open sea, and being viviparous (complete with placentas!) they never need to come to land at all. In fact, they’ve lost the ability to walk. Gleds Gleds spend most of their time in flight, even sleeping on the wing: they’re good swimmers and will often rest on the water, but they’re too buoyant to dive. They’re all pretty much the same shape, with long narrow wings, long, often serrated beaks with a strong hook at the end, shortish flexible necks and large webbed feet used as rudders. They eat various combinations of plankton, fish, squid or floating carrion. Adults are large, often enormous. Males are much larger than the females, and often have spectacular display structures. In the breeding season, adult males congregate into leks where they fly around while displaying: females visit these leks and mate with the largest, prettiest males. Gleds are hyper-precocial – at birth, they immediately fly off and start their own independent existence, passing through several different ecological niches as they grow. Obviously this requires extreme R-selection. Newborns are minuscule compared to their mothers, and born in litters of 50-100. Very few gleds survive to puberty, but those that do may live more than a century. The great gled is found in the southern tropical and warm-temperate latitudes of the Sunset Ocean (aka Sunrise Ocean if you’re Keshiyan.) It’s one of the largest members of the clade: adult males have an average wingspan of 10 m and weight around 50 kg. Females are rather undistinguished, with pale grey backs and white undersides, but the males are spectacular: completely pure white, with a many-branched antler-like crest as long as the body. Adult great gleds eat mainly squid, whereas the swallow-sized young mostly eat larval fish and large plankton. The pirate gled has a similar distribution. It’s medium-sized, 10-20 kg, with particularly large wings and feet for its body size.Both sexes have a black back and white underside, and males have a tall, rounded red crest extending onto the base of the beak. Pirate gleds are unfussy feeders – fish, squid, carrion, the young of other gled species, other small fliers (bumbles, seabirds if they’re near the shore)… In particular, they like to steal food from other gleds. They’re unusually agile and aerobatic fliers, and they’ll harrass other gleds into dropping or regurgitating their catches. The babies attack equally young individuals of other species, or stay near the shore and chase gannets and icthyornids. Edited by Margaret Pye, Mar 13 2010, 05:41 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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| The Dodo | Mar 13 2010, 03:04 AM Post #85 |
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Prime Specimen
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Since they don't come to land do they give birth on the wing or on the water? |
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| Margaret Pye | Mar 13 2010, 03:35 AM Post #86 |
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In flight, I'd imagine. That way the babies come out into air, not water, and they're less vulnerable to sharks that smell blood/amniotic fluid. |
| My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont. | |
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| Carlos | Mar 13 2010, 04:15 AM Post #87 |
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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Magnificient work, though I'm kind of bothered by how heavy they seeem to be, since nyctosaurs, like all ornithocheiroids, had proportionally quite small bodies and thus weren't very heavy. Pteranodon, the closest relative to the nyctosaurs, had an expected body weight of 20 kg despiste its wingspan |
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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 | Mar 13 2010, 05:11 AM Post #88 |
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20 kg? I'm a bit startled. Um, can you link me to some appropriate references, or recommend books or articles? What'd be a more appropriate maximum size? |
| My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont. | |
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| Carlos | Mar 13 2010, 05:35 AM Post #89 |
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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Well, there's Mark Witton's place: http://www.flickr.com/photos/markwitton Here he has answered some comments stating how much some pterosaurs weight; at least two images have his comment text stating about pterosaur mass. Based on nyctosaurid anatomy, I'd say a maxiumum weight of 40-50 kg for the greater gled |
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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 | Mar 13 2010, 05:36 AM Post #90 |
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Nyctosaurs: Bumbles and teeras Bumbles prefer swimming to flying, and teeras (a polyphyletic grade) can’t fly at all. Bumbles are all under one kilogram, and the smallest are the size of sparrows. They have fat streamlined bodies, short necks and an odd wing design: the patagium attaches to the hip instead of the ankle, and is particularly heavily reinforced, with a strong tendon along the trailing edge. Bumbles are fast and enduring fliers, but not great at taking off (since their wings and legs are separate, they can do the running-across-the-water swan takeoff thing) and with limited agility. They fly better underwater, using the large webbed feet to steer. They eat, depending on the species, small fish or large plankton. Bumbles have extremely thick waterproof fur, particularly the polar varieties, and they spend a couple of hours preening every day. The smaller ones accumulate thick layers of blubber, but the larger ones have to rely on their fur because blubber would be too heavy. Most bumbles are monogamous, often pairing long-term or for life. Pairs stay close together, and keep in contact by calling to each other underwater. Unlike gleds, they give birth to one large young at a time and have several months of biparental care. Sparrow bumbles are found in great swarms around both poles (not the same species, but similar.) As the name suggests, they look rather like sparrows: same size, mottled brown fur, nondescript roundish shape, short thick triangular beak. They hunt krill, and are often eaten along with the krill by (insert huge filter-feeder here – leedsichthyid? Shark? Mammal that isn’t technically a whale but you’d have to dissect it to tell the difference? Endothermic mosasaur? I probably like the pseudowhales best.) I’m not quite sure what to do with the flightless pelagic nyctosaurs. I know there are a lot of them, the bauplan’s pretty obvious, I know some of them are quite big. I’m pretty sure none of them are over 200 kg. I just have to work out what else lives in the sea. Probably mosasaurs, possibly endothermic ones. Definitely the odd surviving elasmosaur, or something else the same shape – I really like the shape. Probably the odd hesperornithid and penguin, but of course they have their oviparity problem, and they’d probably all wind up staying close to the shore due to teera competition. Probably pseudowhales. Hmm. |
| My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont. | |
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