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Cetacean like sirenians
Topic Started: Mar 17 2011, 10:12 AM (518 Views)
Carlos
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What if cetaceans never evolved and the other linage of aquatic, hindlimbless mammals took over their niches?

If sirenians evolved in fast marine predators, they'd do so in a way never seen before in marine tetrapods. For instance, like their elephant cousins, sirenians have well developed trunks; they may not be as long as elephant trunks, but they are much wider and in fact compose most of the animal's face. Much like our beaked whales and belugas, fish eating dugongs and manatees could make use of suction to hunt prey, perhaps giving them an advantage over other piscivorous tetrapods.

I suppose the only niche they couldn't fill would be filter feeders, but if they did they would be the most unusual mammalian filter feeders.
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lamna
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I don't know how useful a trunk would be for hunting actively on open water, it would probably be absent or greatly reduced in those species.
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Scrublord
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They'd probably start by rooting around for mollusks in the ocean floor.
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Adman
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Totally not lamna
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Yeah, sirenians could develop a sucking method for catching fish.
Edited by Adman, Mar 17 2011, 03:57 PM.
Projects and concepts that I have stewing around
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.
Ido- Alien world where hoppers (derived flightless ballonts) and mouthpart-legged beasts are prevalent.
Leto- Life on a moon orbiting a gas giant with an erratic orbit; experiences extremes of hot and cold.
The Park- ???
Deeper Impact- a world where the K-Pg extinction wipes out crocodilians, mammals, and birds; squamates, choristoderes, and turtles inherit the earth.
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.
The Ditch- Nothing is what if seems..
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