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Fish Dinosaurs; A world were fish have dinosaur body plans.
Topic Started: Oct 30 2010, 05:03 AM (3,096 Views)
ULTIMATE THEROPOD
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Ive got a new project were fish replace dinosaurs. Giant bipedal sharks with theropod body plans are the top predatores. Remoras have evolved into Pachycephalysaurus like creatures. What coud replace ceratopsians stegasaurs ankylosaurs and sauropods
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Ook
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I guess this could produce many interesting critters,but from evolutionary point it will be hard
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Scrublord
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I hate to be harsh, but the thing is, any great evolutionary leap (say, primitive diapsid to bird or in this case shark to dinosaur-analogue) requires such a great change and so much time that the creature involved is no longer considered to be what its ancestor was--that's the whole point of evolution! Sure, sharks could somehow get onto land and become T. rex-style apex predators, but to do this they would be modified so much that they will have become something we can no longer call sharks.
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T.Neo
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No, sharks can't evolve into dinosaurs (well, not as they are now- they're adapted nicely to an aquatic existence, but not life on land).

Also, I can see fish evolving land forms again long before arthropods or molluscs take over megafaunal niches. It's probably harder for them to do that, than it is for fish to evolve land-living forms again.
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Adman
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I guess that this could be underwater, but not on land
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Extended Pleistocene- An alternate future where man died out, and the megafauna would continue to thrive (may or may not include a bit about certain future sapients)
Inverted World- An alternate timeline where an asteroid hit during the Barremian, causing an extinction event before the Maastrichtian. Dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and notosuchians make it to the present, along with a host of other animals.
Badania- Alien planet that has life at a devonian stage of development, except it exists in the present day.
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World of Equal Opportunity- alternate history where denisovans come across Beringia and interact with native fauna. Much of the Pleistocene fauna survives, and the modern humans that end up crossing into North America do not overhunt the existing animals. 10,000 years later, civilizations exist that are on par with European and Asian societies.
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colddigger
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I'm still mighty curious as to what is being meant by fish replacing dinosaurs.

Again, if you were to kill of the dinosaurs you're going to end up with the age of mammals, so you're going to have to kill them off too, then you're going to end up with age of scaled beasts and so on until you end up with nothing but inverts left.

Once that's done there's likely only going to be a single ancestor to all your neodinos, unless you're dealing with major land masses already separated (so this depends on at what point in Earth's history you're killing off the dinos) in which case maybe two ancestors could appear, although they would eventually mingle as land masses clash and fliers/swimmers move between the continents.

With the lack of chordate competition inverts might get larger for a little while, but once your neodino ancestor steps up they're going back down.

Of course your neodino ancestor is probably not going to develop anything like dinosaurs though. It might develop naked serpentine animals with six filamentous pegs for crawling across the ground, eventually switching to upright creatures that swivel single jointed limbs in circular patterns to run.
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Spugpow
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Silver Slave, I love the scenario you just suggested!

Anyways, is there any method by which the land could be completely depleted of calcium? That would probably finish off the tetrapods.
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colddigger
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Joke's over! Love, Parasky
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I doubt it, I mean, calcium would be brought back on land from the ocean fairly quickly by animals, and it's used by plants too so there would be a major push to store it in them if it was being depleted...
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dialforthedevil
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Fakey you are being really nasty to him please don't there are very few of us in the world who are interested in this niche subject so don't put UT off.

Anyway maybe it should be a future evolution topic? Where life on land gets wiped out so fish take over, thus predatory land sharks maybe plausible. Bullsharks could be a likely candidate or lemon sharks since both species live in shallow water and fresh water. :)
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ULTIMATE THEROPOD
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What can replace Hadrosaurs? Please respond.
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Zorcuspine
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I think he's saying what if the tetrapods of today didn't evolve and land vertabrates decended from a different ancestor. And if so could any of them become like dinos
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Kamidio
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No, he meant sharks with legs and arms.
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ULTIMATE THEROPOD
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If its in water then its just normal fish.
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Flisch
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Theropod has a point, can't deny that.
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Rick Raptor
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If it´s on land that doesn´t automatically make it a dinosaur :P


As I already said, they would first have to go through some important stages Tetrapods had to go through, too, like evolving legs to support their weight on land (at first they would be sprawled). They wouldn´t jump out of the water onto land and then already have the erect stance and anatomy of a dinosaur.
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colddigger
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They wouldn´t jump out of the water onto land and then already have the erect stance and anatomy of a dinosaur.


Hell yeah they would.
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