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Alterniverse; A world where dinosaurs, mammals, notosuchids, pterosaurs are dominant
Topic Started: Aug 5 2010, 05:55 AM (4,699 Views)
Cephylus
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Okay here is a project I've been working on for some time. It has a very common theme, what if the asteroid never crashed at the end of Cretaceous and if dinosaurs had survived as the dominant clade on Earth. I already have a website on wikidot but I haven't yet discussed it much on this forum. I've been working on it alone except for some help from by paleontology crazed friends but now I'm posting it here for some suggestions and corrections since I want to make this project as plausible as possible and my ideas are limited.

So here are the general settings for this project:
- First, most importantly, the asteroid missed and so dinosaurs went on as the dominant clade. Although many dinosaurs were killed off during many extinction events in the Cenezoic, they still are the dominant land vertebrates in the present.
- As you can guess, mammals don't fare well as they do in HE but they are still one of the secondary major clades and a successful group. They fare far better than their Mesozoic ancestors with dinosaurs. However, mammals are still the prey and dinosaurs are still the predators..... with some exceptions
- Pterosaurs are one of the other successful clades. They fill various flyer niches occupied by birds in HE. There are some flightless animals that fill large omnivore/carnivore niches.
- Mosasaurs aren't so lucky in this New World. They survive and thrive in some places, but they are not the dominant sea vertebrates and their diversity reduced as they are more and more pushed off the stage by marine mammals and penguin-like sea dinos.
- Champsosaurs are still around and some managed to quite successfuly establish themselves in semi aquatic/ marine niches.
- Notosuchids are another successful clade and they range from small insectivores to gigantic dinosaur guzzling sabre toothed apex predators. All of them are heterodont and they distinctly resemble mammals.

So what do you think of this world? I'll be posting more specific stuff when this draws some attention..... Also I need help with those Latin names for classfication..... ;)
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Cephylus
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Yay I'm getting some attention!! :D :D
answer to the questions:

1. Notosuchians are a very successful clade and after many dinosaurs perished in the Eocene cooloff small notosuchians evolved to fill many empty niches. Notosuchians are on almost all continents except Australia and the poles.
2. Yeah, penguin like ocean dinosaurs do evolve, mostly neornithes. these penguins eventually fill many marine niches in the southern seas and reach huge sizes and are much more diverse than our own world penguins since they weren't affected by the K-T.
3. Yup. Abelisaurs and Noasaurs are still alive and well in the southern hemisphere. Tyrannosaurs are located in the Northern Hemisphere, Abelisaurs in the Southern Hemisphere, and carnivorous maniraptorans everywhere.
4. Carnivorous ceratopsians mostly have the traditonal shape, big quadrupeds with beaks. THe only different things are that they have smaller frills and bigger beaks better at ripping flesh. They obviously aren't very good predators so they mostly rely on scavenging. However, smaller descendent of psittacosaurs exist that are biped and much better at being a predator than the clumsy quadrupeds...
5. Australia has a relic population of Ankylosaurs otherwise extinct on other places except a small area in South America and australia is home to a group of unique large herbivorous ornithischians found nowhere in other continents. Australia also is home to carnivorous ornithischians and held the last population of now completely extinct old-world tyrannosaurs. '
6. And yeah pandorasaurus I'm going to make all sea mosasaurs extinct 'cause they'll have such a slim chance of survival like you said. But I'll keep a few surviving mosasaurs in some freshwater habitats.

Next up is something on maniraptorans....
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Pando
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I'm waiting for the Notosuchians. How diverse exactly are they, compared to mammals or dinosaurs?
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Cephylus
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Oh notosuchids are important in my project. They aren't as diverse as dinosaurs naturally as dinosaurs are the dominant cosmopolitan group but they are far more diverse than mammals and are more common and noticeable.
Those small, relatively quick and adaptable notosuchids from Cretaceous survived the extinctions that wiped out many of the bigger dinosaurs and they came to fill many niches that dinosaurs left empty.
I'm making small to large sized herbivores and carnivorous notosuchians. Large predatorial or scavenging baurusuchids that prey on large dinosaurs, some smaller pack-hunting carnivores, some hyena analogue crocs, hippo-like semi aquatic herbivores, some weird omnivores and small herbivores, large armored and quilled herbivores.
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Cephylus
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I also have an idea for a fairly large hyena-like and lynx-like mammalian carnivore of middle sized game.....
and also a large flightless browsing pterosaur. are those plausible?

Also I'm also having problems on marine mammals. I really want to have marine mammals in this but I can't figure out what mammal should be their common ancestor and what should they be like...pinniped like or cetacean like?
suggestions for this project are welcome :lol:

I also have a lot of drawings for this project and I don't think I'm such a bad artist...so I'll be uploading some art soon and some individual species...
Edited by Cephylus, Aug 6 2010, 08:54 AM.
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Holben
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The browsing pterosaur... the gut, limbs and teeth are going to have be majorly reworked... reversed 50 million years then sent forward another 40.
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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Cephylus
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I know :;S: That's the problem with browsing pterosaurs. I dumped the idea originally but decided to resurrect the idea after seeing the Qilin made by Darren Naish in Tet Zoo.
He didn't really have pterosaurs evolve real teeth, just a beak with serrated edges for cropping up plant matter. So I figured that it may just be possible.... but the guts still have to be majorly reworked like you said for pterosaurs to be herbivores. But it's still a nice idea, but only an idea...
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Rick Raptor
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Wow, I really like where this project is going.

It becomes harder and harder for me to come up with an own Alternate Evolution project because I can´t think of any other ideas than such ingenious ones as your diverse notosuchians, sea-going avians, predatory ceratopsians, relict Ankylosaurs in Australia, large and diverse maniraptorans, Abelisaurs and Noasaurs continueing to thrive in the Southern Hemisphere and flightless pterosaurs. :D


There are just some groups you haven´t mentioned (yet) whose fate I would like to hear:
Enantiornithes - would they survive or be completely outcompeted by true avians? If the latter, then there couldn´t even be relict populations on remote islands, as flying avians would manage to get there, too.
And what about Unenlagiines? I think JohnFaa once had an idea for sapient Unenlagiines evolving in Africa.
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dialforthedevil
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cephlaken
Aug 6 2010, 08:52 AM
I also have a lot of drawings for this project and I don't think I'm such a bad artist...so I'll be uploading some art soon and some individual species...
Your a great artist ^_^
I know your busy right now but if you could just show me the lungs i would be happy :lol:
And would you like any help i speak latin :D
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Kamidio
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Will the dilophosaurs survive? I think they have potential in this world of yours.
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Holben
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The dilophosaurs were only really around in the Early Jurassic. This starts at the Late Cretaceous.
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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Rick Raptor
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Well, maybe they could survive as a ghost lineage, just like Heterodontosaurs in this project seem to do?
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Kamidio
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Poison spitting animals will always be awesome.
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Cephylus
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Rick Raptor
Aug 6 2010, 07:15 PM
Well, maybe they could survive as a ghost lineage, just like Heterodontosaurs in this project seem to do?
No, heterodontosaurs aren't actually a ghost lineage in this project but just convergent evolution of small ornithischians evolving to fill a simialr niche at the start of Oligocene.
But I guess I could make a convergent Dilophosaur group. That'd be interesting. I could try out some really weird ones. I'm already trying out some very weirdly frilled, finned, crested and spined species for a new marginocephalian group, pachycephalosaur-like dinos that evolved from small basal relatives of ceratopsians
And thanks Rick for the compliments :D I like your Alternate Earth project especially that tyrannosaur-like oviraptorosaur concept I thought of the same thing once And Dial I drew the Lungs but my scanner isn't working well again so it seems I have to replace it... and I could use some help with Latin I suck at Latin :D

And it's interesting that you should ask about Unenlagiines. THey are a successful group in my project and the ones like Austroraptor gave spawn to a group of pseudo-tyrannosaurid dromaeosaurs that fill the niches of deep-jawed scavengers, fish eaters and large predators. They are largely outcompeting the tyrannosaurs in NA. Also smaller and a very ingelligent group of Unenlagiines are found in the Southern Hemisphere...
And Enantiornithes, I figured that some would survive, but mostly a different niche from the ones from flying avians. I have the idea of a terror bird Enantiornithe inhabiting New Zealand... and small nocturnal flying carnivores and insectivores similar to small owls.
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Cephylus
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Ononokusu
Aug 6 2010, 10:11 PM
Poison spitting animals will always be awesome.
Oh poison spitting dinos would be awesome!!! I'll be making some poisonous small coelurosaurs... I think they are the group most likely to get poison.
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Kamidio
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Well the Dilos could grow smaller.
Edited by Kamidio, Aug 6 2010, 11:24 PM.
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