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The Species Factory; Empty your mind
Topic Started: Nov 6 2014, 06:54 PM (33,403 Views)
HangingThief
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Oh, yeah. Rats and muskrats do wriggle their tails back and forth.

And then there's seals, of course.

Edited by HangingThief, Aug 24 2016, 03:46 PM.
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peashyjah
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HangingThief
Aug 24 2016, 01:45 PM
Why would marine rodents swim like fish? All other aquatic mammals (including beavers) bend their spines up and down.
That's how aquatic rodents might swim inside the water during the future.
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TerrificTyler
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I had the idea of anurans which evolved drier skin, and retained their eggs inside of a pouch on the tail, although I'm not entirely sure how that particular feature would evolve. They'd probably fit somewhere in the deserts of Pangaea, where there'd be significant pressures to become more terrestrial.

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HangingThief
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TerrificTyler20
Aug 24 2016, 06:31 PM
I had the idea of anurans which evolved drier skin, and retained their eggs inside of a pouch on the tail, although I'm not entirely sure how that particular feature would evolve. They'd probably fit somewhere in the deserts of Pangaea, where there'd be significant pressures to become more terrestrial.
Marsupial frogs have got the whole keeping eggs in a pouch thing all figured out. First, they look like this:
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Then, she does this:
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And taadaa! Fully formed and functional baby frogs!
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Edited by HangingThief, Aug 24 2016, 09:53 PM.
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Finncredibad
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A crab like creature that protects its eyes inside its large claws.
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flashman63
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re: Flowering antarctic plants;

One of the major problems pointed out, in addition to all the normal hardships of arctic living, is permafrost, which makes setting down roots very difficult. Way I see it, there are two potential solutions to this problem; One, they're extremely long-lived and slow growing with a lot of energy devoted to expanding the roots. Over time, they grind away at the ice. Another, more interesting one, would be if a plant could potentially utilize some kind of chemical heating to periodically defrost the ground adjacent to its roots. Maybe it could naturally produce some kind of acidic citrus-like chemical, though I imagine that would take a lot of energy. A more interesting idea I thought of was some kind of cold-resistant bombardier beetle type. In addition to using the chemical to warm itself, it'll "donate" some to the plant, allowing it to survive the winter, and grow fruits to be eaten by the *Bombardier Beetle,.
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Joschua Knüppe
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Quick idea I had just a minute ago after reading this article: http://bestiarium.kryptozoologie.net/artikel/the-shoulder-horn-of-duerers-marvelous-rhinocerus-revealing-a-501-year-old-mystery-beast/comment-page-1
The the structures which some rhinos show here are quite remarkable and I wonder if some future species could have even more of these.
I thought for example about a ridge to low, blunt spikes along the back, similar to some hadrosaurs.
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Carlos
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HangingThief
Aug 24 2016, 01:45 PM
Why would marine rodents swim like fish? Nearly all other aquatic mammals (including beavers) bend their spines up and down.

You clearly need better education on mammals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potamogalinae
Lemuria:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/

Terra Alternativa:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/

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https://www.patreon.com/Carliro

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Joschua Knüppe
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Ah, thanks JohnFaa, I missed that question.

Some semiaquatic mammals are indeed able to propel themselves in a fish like manner, for example the Russian Desman
the giant otter shrew or, more importantly in this case the muskrats.

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HangingThief
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JohnFaa
Aug 26 2016, 10:23 AM
HangingThief
Aug 24 2016, 01:45 PM
Why would marine rodents swim like fish? Nearly all other aquatic mammals (including beavers) bend their spines up and down.

You clearly need better education on mammals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potamogalinae
I wasn't saying I thought it was implausible, i was wondering what his specific reasoning was. Notice how I said "nearly all."

Also, i mentioned muskrats up there ^ which I assumed was his reasoning behind fish- rodents.
Edited by HangingThief, Aug 26 2016, 11:49 AM.
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Joschua Knüppe
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I did this because I had animals like muskrats in mind as their ancestors... and of course because it is more interesting than just using the design
of whales.

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Velociraptor
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I don't know if y'all remember my "wobbegong abelisaur" (you can read about it here) from a few months back, but I've kind of reworked the idea. Instead of a carnotaur descendant living in the Amazon it's now a majungasaur descendant that lives in the rainforests of India. Majungasaurus and its relatives were already adapted for being ambush predators with their short legs, so I figure it'd make more sense as a descendant of those.
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Dapper Man
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Looking at the similarities between rat skulls:
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And Borhyaena skulls:
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I noticed that they where mildly similar, so that, if such carnivorous rats were to evolve, maybe they could be like Sparassodonts?
Speculative Evolution:

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Carlos
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Uh, no, as far as mammal skulls go sparassodonts and rats don't particularly resemble each other. Rats have massive diastemas (the space between incisors and molars), rats don't have carnassials or canines or more than two incisors, rats have thin zygomatic arcs while sparassodonts have very thick ones, et cetera.

Sparassodonts do share one thing with rats, though: ever growing teeth. Specifically, the canines rather the the incisors, but still very odd.
Lemuria:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/

Terra Alternativa:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/

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GlarnBoudin
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A family of wild boar descendants that have gradually grown more timid and reclusive, tending more towards herbivory. For defense, the bristly hair on their backs has developed into a coat of razor-sharp porcupine-like quills; some species have even developed toxins in said quills, secreted from the plants they eat.
Relatives include small long-legged and long-snouted forms that feed on eggs.

Also:

-A gigantic woolly entelodont that lives in tundra and taiga environs, feeding on whatever it can get.
-A large, burly, hippo-like entelodont.
-Descendant of gorgonopsids with a crocodile or otter-like bodyplan.
-Oligokyphus descendants that look like otters, but live like muskrats.
-Giant-sized Placerias descendants covered in integument of some sort with large elephant-like tusks; roam the tundras of their world like synapsid mammoths.
-A highly successful family of animals descended from Effigia: includes cassowary, Deinocheirus, therizinosaur, ornithomimid, sereima, and terror bird mimics
-Ornithopod and ornithomimid-mimicking descendants of Elaphrosaurus and Chilesaurus.
-A descendant of Cotylorhynchus with a massive upper body and forelimbs that literally wrestles with and punches the shit out of predators.
-Enormous semi-aquatic Cotylorhynchus descendant with a long, thin neck, a big buoyant body, and powerful limbs to push through weed-choked waters.
-A giant chalicothere or ornithomimids that's colored like a Mexican wrestler and wrestles with its predators.
-Ankylosaur with an axe-shaped tail 'club'. Hey, if they could become semi-aquatic fish-eaters, they could cut instead of bash.
-A hadrosaur with dozens of retractable blade-like spikes on the sides of its tail like a giant surgeonfish.
-An iguanodontid with fused together fingers that just straight-up punches the shit out of predators instead of using its (now nonexistent) thumb spike.
-A theropod of some sort that took to the water. Its hind legs strengthened and grew webbing between the toes while the tail became more flexible, pushing the animal along while its limbs shrank, but didn't disappear: young still used them to cling to the backs of their mother as she cruised along the surface to allow her hatchlings to breathe, and adults used them to hold onto one another to mate. The jaws became bulky and tyrannosaur-like; all the better for the extra power needed to crack the shells and thick scales of the often-armored animals that they fed upon. Eventually, the swamps these theropods lived in dried up, giving way to jungles, and the dinosaurs adapted. No longer would they walk in the horizontal stance of their ancestors-they were too back-heavy for that. Instead, they walked at about a 45 degree angle to the ground, their powerful tail dragging behind as their strong hind legs supported the rest of the body and oh look I just made plausible tail-dragging theropods.
-A gargantuan sauropod-like descendant of Moschops.
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