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Mesosaur domination.; What if they dominated instead?
Topic Started: Dec 1 2010, 04:23 PM (678 Views)
Forbiddenparadise64
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The mesosaurs were an early group of marine anapsid reptiles appearing 280 million years ago, and were like sea otters in lifestyle, feeding on fish, and were only a metre long. Unfortunately they were not very successful and there fore perished under the pressure of more efficient fish and sharks. However, what if they had managed to survive and adapt? What if they had managed to diversify into a greater variety of forms, including sea snake like (in niche at least), turtle like, crocodile like, seal like or even dolphin like animals over the next 30 million years, and what if they survived the Permian mass extinction too, having already established their niches long before the ancestors of icthyosaurs and sauropterigens even got to dip their toes in the water? They would be the supreme rulers of the ocean for the next 185 million years afterwards, although most or all will probably die out in the K-T. How would the rest of life be different to R-L? You decide.
Prepare for the Future Walking with the future: Allozoic (pts 4-6)http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/3252142/14/#new

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The Dodo
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I could see them becoming fully aquatic after moving into marine habitats, they were already very close to being fully aquatic. Maybe evolving into some snake like or Icthyosaur like forms.
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Cephylus
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Aaaa... in Korea we learn over and over about mesosaurs because of their fossils being the clue that South America and Africa was in a single continent..... why aren't they doing other examples?
Anyway, I still like mesosaurs. Since they used their teeth as a kind of sieve, I'd imagine that over some millions of years, they'd become larger, evolve baleen and occupy large filter feeder niches. Or evolve into something like Metriorhynchus.
Edited by Cephylus, Dec 2 2010, 03:00 AM.
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Forbiddenparadise64
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At the divergence point, about 280 million years ago, instead of dying out the mesosaurs start to diversify into various new niches and competing with fish and sharks. They evolve into various new species over the next 30 million years. Many remain the same size or become even smaller and live in the reefs, feeding on fish, crustaceans or molluscs, with many being either agile, otter like species or bottom feeders, like henodus. Some even start to filter out plankton. In the rivers, larger species up to 3m long evolve into ambush predators. And further out to sea, some develop into aquatic creatures, resembling a cross between a crocodile and a seal, often 4-5 metres long, and compete with sharks. One medium sized species, around 1.5-2m long, even manages to develop ovovivapory just before the Permian extinction. Of course, they are hit hard by the Permian like everyone else, but a substantial number also survive, mostly the smaller species of 1m or less, although the vivaporous species also survives. This means that the mesosaurs have already got well established aquatic niches long before the ancestors of icthyosaurs, sauropterygens or crocodilians are even able to enter the water, and therefore these groups never evolve, along with mososaurs later. With the Permian extinction bringing a lot of the competition from sharks, molluscs and eurypterids out of the way, they straight away explode into various niches of all sorts. Most species before the Permian extinction resemble small crocodiles with flippers loosely, although the vivaporous species already has the beginning of a tail fluke forming. Due to additional competition prior to the extinction, the surviving sharks are somewhat less diverse than in R-L and remain so all the way up until after the Eocene extinction. With so little competition, the reptiles explode into various different niches over the mesozoic. Turtles are a lot more diverse in this world, and even evolve into plesiosaur like forms as well. These two groups rule the whole of the mesozoic unchallenged for 185 million years before the K-T occurs. Apart from the Pseudosuchid forms (which continue as freshwater predators up to the present), the last of the mesosaurs die out at the beginning of the miocene, having enjoyed more than 200 million years of domination of the seas. Over this course, they evolve into much more fish like creatures, as well as flippered creatures, and prove adaptable and able to cope with everything else nature threw at them, including the triassic mass extinction, the Jurassic, the evolution of teleost fish (which icthyosaurs never did) and other minor extinction events. Several whole orders appear and disappear from this group. On land, there are few differences. With no crocodilians, there are also no terrestrial crocs, meaning that dinosaurs, and possibly mammals take more niches, although this has little effect post K-T, so our evolutionary route stays the same.
Prepare for the Future Walking with the future: Allozoic (pts 4-6)http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/3252142/14/#new

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The Dodo
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Good predictions, although semi-aquatic Crocodylomorphs don't evolve dinosaurs and mammals would still have competition from the earlier, terrestrial Crocodylomorphs.
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Scrublord
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Can we start covering the species now?
My Projects:
The Neozoic Redux
Valhalla--Take Three!
The Big One



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