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| Out on a Branch; The radiations of clades after the Ages of Man and Jellyfish | |
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| Topic Started: Aug 11 2016, 12:53 AM (2,595 Views) | |
| Rodlox | Aug 11 2016, 12:53 AM Post #1 |
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Superhuman
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The extinction of humankind marked the end of an era which had wiped out many species and a number of genera. Some groups teetered and tottered after that Great Winnowing, and and it was easier for groups to perish if they had held only a handful of member species during the Age of Man - the Aardvark, for example, and the Monotremes. Other groups had been pushed to the edge by humans, and they simply did not survive the Cnidariacene. Some, such as the Ratites, went out flamboyantly; others, such as the Cetaceans, did not. Thus far, my goal is to focus on the second era following the Winnowing, with visits to the first era here and there. Contents by Era: The Winnowing -See Below Cnidariacene -The Last Whale - The Last Whale - The Last Lingering Penguin - The Last Lingering Penguin -Blind Sharks & their Tangles - Blind Sharks and their Tangles -The Last Ratite & The Three Major Cats - Ratite and cats -The Last Crocodilians - Last Crocodilians -The jellyfish of the land: arid beaches - arid beaches -Sharks & the ocean bottoms - Sharks and the Ocean bottoms - Mesoamerican Island Bees - Island Bees - Australia's Seawoods - Seawoods - Hawaii's Top Predator - the Vladpsychosis food chain - Australia's interior - Kangaroos, Oasis Mice, Cats, and Quolls - in the Arctic: Tunnel Bees and their foes - Tunnel Bees ?era - North American Riverlungers - Riverlungers The Littoriocene (yes, the Littorial Age} -Gigagnathid birds - Gigagnathids -Velvet Worms - Velvet Worms -Conquests of the Sea - Sea Cats - what the Turtles became: the Turtlefluke and Flapshells - Turtleflukes - Antelopes 2 - Sahara Giants Habitats: - South American Dryforest - Dryforest - Fynbos, part 1 - Part One Interactions - Grappler vs Bear (amazon dryforest) What do I imagine would happen within thirty million years of the end of the Littoriocene? -small-scale mass extinctions, wiping out many of the genera which had made themselves comfortable in the heat of these two after-human eras. -Like the Tethys before it, the Atlantic would begin to close. -The return of tropical rainforests. -The Horn of Africa breaks off. (I want to say it runs aground into Australia, and they form a new land with India - whether or not India is still part of Asia: Gondwana's Revenge!)  - Africa and Europe unite. The Extinct List: {those with a (?) are unsure at the present time, for one reason or another, but leaning towards total extinction} *of the Birds: -Ratites -Parrots -Penguins - *of the Reptiles: -Tuatara -Sea Turtles - *of the Mammals: -Monotrema -Marsupial Moles -Microbiotheriidae -Koalas -Atlantogenata: ---Xenarthra -Perisodactyla -Pholidota -Pinnapeds -Primates -Pigs Author's Note: I believe the phrase is "kill your darlings." Well, I've just wiped out almost all my favorite animals; time to evolve some new ones. Edited by Rodlox, Nov 27 2016, 03:21 AM.
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.---------------------------------------------. Parts of the Cluster Worlds: "Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP) | |
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| Rodlox | Aug 14 2016, 12:34 PM Post #16 |
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Superhuman
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(set myself a goal of how much to write each day...its helping) The Fynboses, part one. Not every Cnidaracene ecosystem is built on the ashes or ruins of ecosystems which worked during and before the Age of Man -- there are the various arid regions, certainly. And in the case of the South African Fynbos, which is neither of the above, there are some nondepauperate ecosystems left in the world post-humans. As the global temperatures soared and remained high throughout the Cnidaracene, the fynbos thrived in the new, warmer world it found itself in. Dangers like fire and infrequent rainfalls, were old hat for this flora and fauna, and they spread northwards, restricted only by the Namib. Fauna such as hopless frogs (they really can't hop or swim, nor could their human-era ancestors), segnis (elephant shrews), and hyraxes grew less and less uncommon and became the parents of new radiations, small at first, scattered throughout the Cnidaracene...but well-established even up to the edges of the Congo Fynbos by the Littoriocene. {while researchers can't be 100% certain, its looking like the hyrax radiations were not of the Rock Hyraxes originally native to the fynbos, but of the rock and bush hyraxes who took up residence as the fynbos spread northward} The Congo Fynbos is an...interesting place, what happens when the fynbos attempts to make a home in a tropical wetland, which retains some of the flora and fauna of the old rainforest, while giving rise to new species, such as the Atat Hyrax (which is fairly conservative for its arm of the hyrax family tree, differing mostly in having long limbs elevating it above its tree branches) |
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.---------------------------------------------. Parts of the Cluster Worlds: "Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP) | |
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| Rodlox | Aug 16 2016, 09:29 PM Post #17 |
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Superhuman
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(the contents of this post, may end up in that mentioned extinction; maybe) a small side-trip to the shorelines, if I may... There are few coasts more hostile to life than the shores of the Atacama and Namib (fur seals no longer nest along the latter)...so you would be forgiven for understandably thinking them not to be crucibles of new avenues of evolution. But right now, in the Cnidaracene, they are indeed. Both take similar initial conditions and structurally-similar organisms, but result with very different outcomes. Both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans have high tides and the occasional storm-driven waves that wash sea life higher than even high tides, and the aridity of the Atacama and Namib are no obstacle to storms. Tides of all sorts leave behind pools of water - tidepools, puddles, and other bodies of water. For now, these will be called tidepools and poolwaters (when not qualifying as a tidepool for one reason or another) Some creatures, such as the Namib Goby, live in these waters, hatching when there is an influx of tidal water, digging up to the water itself, living the few days of life it has, before reproducing and burying its eggs deeply enough that they aren't washed away. (egg-eating predators actually do them a favor here, as when the predators stick their snouts into the ground to lap up the eggs, some eggs stick to the snout, and get carried to the next nest or looks-like-theres-a-nest-here - thus establishing the Namib Goby both in unpopulated pools, as well as stirring the gene pool) The Namib Goby is a part of the diet of a poolwater jellyfish which has an interesting reaction to being caught out in the sun as the waters recede; it also feeds on any fish and sea critters that get washed up by the tides that replenish their pools. The Namib Jelly is opaque, not the translucence typical of its kin; this means that you can't see it from far off, only when you're about to trip over it - this is its camouflage; and that is not poetic tripping or figurative, but literal: for the Namib Jelly spends its dormant periods looking for all the world like a clot of sickly ice lying on the ground. When the camouflage fails, it has a second strategy, one which possibly predated the opaqueness: stark colors warn of its toxicity. Initial studies, done sans equipment, were unsure if the Namib Jelly had transferred most of its stinging cells to its bell, or if some stinging tentacles had evolved to grow on and above the bell. {more recent studies have been hampered by a lack of funding} The Atacama Jelly is a very different beast. When its poolwaters begin to evaporate, the Atacama Jellies do two things at once and with great speed: they breed en masse, but without dropping any eggs into the water - and they gorge themselves sufficient to focus a burst of new growth on the mid- and upper-levels of their bells. As the poolwaters continue to drop, the Atacama Jelly curls up, its eggs protected from dessication by the bell, which will break open when the new season of storms fill the pools once more. {note: these came to mind as I was watching Planet Earth: The Hunt, and Attenborough was narrating as an octopus crawled across land to ambush some crabs; I figured that, while an octopus is an armored amphibious tank compared with a jellyfish, who can't accomplish such a feat...I figured that jellyfish might have some interesting solutions to tidepool hunting...provided its pools that don't get interrupted much by other critters} Edited by Rodlox, Aug 16 2016, 09:37 PM.
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.---------------------------------------------. Parts of the Cluster Worlds: "Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP) | |
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| Rodlox | Aug 17 2016, 04:17 AM Post #18 |
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Superhuman
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Another brief aside, this time into the bottoms of the oceans... The Cnidaracene marked all but a trickle of the daily migrations from the ocean depths to the sea surface by plankton and the fishes and other organisms that feed on those fishes and plankton. That alone would have been a disaster for the Midnight Zone and its inhabitants. But, compounding that, were the corpses of jellyfish that drifted down, making up a large percentage of the marine snow that comes to settle on the ocean floors. One clade which came to produce specialized forms - both pelagic and silt-crawling - for feasting upon jellyfish, were the sea cucumbers. And while some starfish came to focus upon eating their cousins, even with a few open-water forms, it was the sharks that gave their all to the job of cucumber-eating. Both the survivors of the Wobbegong/Whale shark family and the Sleeper/Cookiecutter shark family, convergently broadened their front halves so as to take in as much and as many sea cucumbers as possible (they tended to multiply when they found a "whalefall" of a jellylfish or a lot of jellys), while keeping their tails as traditional and powerful as possible; this was, understandably, easier for the first family than the second. Further research is needed to fully understand these species. Among other projects, is the study of parthogenesis in the Jellycutter Sharks, as well as teething behavior in wobblewalker sharks. |
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.---------------------------------------------. Parts of the Cluster Worlds: "Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP) | |
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| Rodlox | Nov 11 2016, 12:29 AM Post #19 |
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Superhuman
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am going to give this another try; not a reboot...but trying to dip my toes back into the scalding and cooling waters of the relevant times. (for one, i've piqued my own interest about that last cetacean species) |
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.---------------------------------------------. Parts of the Cluster Worlds: "Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP) | |
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| Rodlox | Nov 11 2016, 02:16 AM Post #20 |
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Superhuman
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The Last Whale Observers believed the cetaceans had accompanied humans into extinction. That belief ended with the mid-Cnidariacene discovery of Adonta mysterious, a dingy-colored whale which possessed neither teeth nor baleen - nor the genes to produce either. Like sturgeon and walruses {both well extinct}, Adonta Whales use muscular lips and suction to bring clams and other buried gastropods into their mouths. The Adonta body is highly compact, with the tail taking up as much of the total length as was seen in Basiliosaurid Whales {but no, this is not a Lazarus line stretching back to them}. But Adonta are not powerful swimmers, using their tails to hold the body and head in place - this is also the function of the enormous flippers. The Adonta Whale is a ring species, found all along the American-Eurasian northern coastline (with the strongest population on the shores of Beringia), with individuals able to breed with any of their neighboring populations...but the Labrador-Hudson population (the easternmost group) cannot breed with the Ireland-Doggerland population, even when brought together in captivity. There is a population which somehow established itself on the coast of Greenland, and might qualify as a subspecies, but for the fact that they are infertile with both ends of the Adonta ring, thus making them Adonta insulus. |
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.---------------------------------------------. Parts of the Cluster Worlds: "Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP) | |
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| Rodlox | Nov 11 2016, 02:20 AM Post #21 |
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Superhuman
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still not sure if i want to wipe out all penguins, or just most of them. .-------------------. The Last Lingering Penguin The warming of Antarctica should be a joyous time, should it not, full of penguins and seals radiating into hundreds of new niches as the ice departs. The problem was, that as the ice melted for the last time, there was now fewer places to move around, but not anything more to eat. (if anything, it was now harder to access the ocean, even as the warming waters held fewer and fewer nutrients than they had, making the polar sea less species-rich than it had been) The only things to have a population boom, were Antarctica's insects. And some penguins, not hampered by energy needs of flight, tried their beaks at being bug-catchers before their Skua predators seized the role far better. The Spoonbill Penguin was the last member of that radiation and of the Antarctic Penguins as a whole. {the crabeater seals inherited their beach role} Edited by Rodlox, Nov 11 2016, 02:21 AM.
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.---------------------------------------------. Parts of the Cluster Worlds: "Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP) | |
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| Dapper Man | Nov 11 2016, 02:26 AM Post #22 |
* I am fed up with dis wuurld *
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Interesting stuff, and I love the idea of a Spoonbill esque penguin. Good job! |
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Speculative Evolution: Manitou; The Needle in the Haystack. | |
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| Rodlox | Nov 11 2016, 02:41 AM Post #23 |
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Superhuman
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thank you; much appreciated. i figured "okay, penguins can't fly after prey, can't hop very well...but they have long beaks..." and went from there. |
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.---------------------------------------------. Parts of the Cluster Worlds: "Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP) | |
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| Beetleboy | Nov 11 2016, 03:15 AM Post #24 |
neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Nice work! |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| Rodlox | Nov 11 2016, 03:55 AM Post #25 |
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Superhuman
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thank you. |
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.---------------------------------------------. Parts of the Cluster Worlds: "Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP) | |
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| Rodlox | Nov 11 2016, 11:48 PM Post #26 |
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Superhuman
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Wattllopes, the final flowering of antelopes: {no promises on the spelling} One of the few groups of True Antelopes to thrive, prosper, and radiate throughout the Littoriocene [Oryx failed to outlive humankind, though they'd have been well-suited to the post-humanity conditions], wattllopes are found throughout the drylands -- what used to be the savannas of central and eastern Africa {the southern savannas are part of the fynbos now} -- and by the mid to late Littoriocene, were entering the Congo Fymbos entering competition with the various hyraxes and segnis, armored and otherwise. Both sexes in all wattllope species have wattles down the sides of the neck, primarily for release of excess heat and part of species identifiers. In most species, the wattles are larger and more durable in males. Part of the reason becomes evident during the shoving matches at seasonal leks, at which time they behave more like a foam pillows than the balloons they resemble. All wattllopes are short-horned, often spiralling. A likely ancestor in the Holocene is the Dik-Dik or something of similar stature. Wattllopes may survive in the reborn Sahara in one or two remnant species once the Littoriocene ends and the planet more fully cools. For, for all they are the heirs of the successful antelope family, the wattllopes have hitched their wagon far too well to the heat and the dry. |
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| Rodlox | Nov 21 2016, 11:49 AM Post #27 |
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Superhuman
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Turtleflukes, a With the coming and ending of the Age of Man, the marine turtles perished. And with their passing, a huge niche was opened just in time for the sheer bounty of the Cnidnaracene: jellyfish-eating swimming animals. And some did adapt to feed on the tentacled beasts. But the turtle family would not be denied their right of return. It undoubtedly began on the coasts of some continent, though fossils have yet to be found, and presumably in the mid- or early-late Cnidnaracene; perhaps they existed on the shores of the equitorial Barrenlands[FN1]. Some species of turtles were wading into the ocean and feeding upon the jellyfish that were to be found there. The Flapwings are a vestige of the radiation that swept through the southern oceans as a result of that. Like the extinct sea turtles of the Age of Dinosaurs and Age of Man alike, their four limbs were each separate paddles, and some species used the front ones more than the back, while other species used the back ones more than the front. But nearly all of them ate jellyfish, though a few adapted their beaks to go after sea worms and flapkelp. The Turtleflukes are, as their name suggests, the most successful attempt by the ancient armored family that are the turtles, at producing inhabitants of the shark and whale ecomorph: fin-handed marine organisms with a tail capable of sculling or propulsive bursts. But how did they do it? How did they turn the tiny stub of a turtle's tail into a massive swimming structure? The short answer is: they didn't. Observers watching the golden age of turtleflukes in the late Littoriocene, watched the shell-bodied creatures breach the ocean surface and then dive back down, a huge fluked tail behind them; and they saw the exhalation like with the extinct whales, from the skull -- and they saw another exhalation or firing-off of pellets (depending on the genus), from the top side of what was believed to be the tail. When further glimpses and visual study revealed that the turtlefluke tail was in fact drawn from the rear feet of the turtle, it was proposed that the rear exhalation was the gastrointestinal system's way of exiting the body, now that the rear limbs had fused together - by some quirk, they offered, the turtle's rear end was now on top rather than on bottom like whales and sharks, because it wasn't a true tail (which would have the GI ending below the tail). Like the extinct marine iguanas, turtleflukes can and do secrete salts from glands and spaces on their faces. But the behavior known as "sneezing" turns out to have been more accurate than anyone thought: while at the time of the coining it was used as a euphemism for defecating, closer study reveals that the sneezes have nothing to do with the gastrointestinal system or with reproduction (though some suggest it is used for signaling or depositing chemical cues for others of their species)...the sneezes are a salt-extruding behavior from functionally similar glands located where the tail used to be in ancestral forms. With the end of the Littoriocene, jellyfish populations worldwide are dipping and may not rebound. At the same time, the global temperature has been cooling back to Pliocene or pre-Pliocene levels. It is unknown if the turtleflukes and flapwings can survive into the next epoch. {1} - like the Permian and Triassic, temperatures in the early and mid Cnidnaracene were high enough that, combined with the actions of humans now extinct, most areas in the equator were barren of medium or large metazoan lifeforms. It was easier for amphibians and reptiles to live in what had been the boreal forests, than what had been southern mesoameria. |
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.---------------------------------------------. Parts of the Cluster Worlds: "Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP) | |
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| Beetleboy | Nov 21 2016, 11:53 AM Post #28 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Awesome turtle spec, my friend! We need more strange testudines on the forum. |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| Rodlox | Nov 22 2016, 12:08 AM Post #29 |
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Superhuman
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much appreciated; more turtles may evolve in this project in the upcoming week. for now...bees. <hr> Mesoamerican Island Bees In the early Cnidaracene, temperatures soared (as they did in the final centuries of the Age of Man), and any hint of the ice caps went bye-bye. This meant that many islands worldwide shrank as the coastline rose, and many more islands were formed from continental land being flooded til only the hills remained in some parts - like a good deal of Central America. This habitat fragmentation redoubled the effects of deforestation during the Age of Man, as well as many tropical trees' not being able to handle the sudden terrible swift But one species - well, genus, more likely, maybe - of insect has survived and prospered like a textbook case of island radiation. Evolved from one of the handful of sweat bee species to have not gone extinct in the tropics (the other survivors found themselves adapting to either southern North America, or to the Dryforest and mountains of South America), they took up a burrowing life for want of any other options (there's a Pygmy Dwarf Bee that inhabits driftwood, granted, but they're the exception) Once, long ago, a group of wasps evolved into ants. Now, the Island Bees appear to be heading down the same developmental road. Their furry bodies are colored silver to reflect the sun, and they have picked up a trick once observed by humans among army ants and leafcutters: the forming of rafts to spread new royals to other islands (all the Island Bees are flightless, using their wings to cool their small colonies). Also, raft-like bridges to pluck planktonic fish and other itty bitty critters from the shallows around their island homes. If they happen across the carcass of a backboned animal, even half-submerged in the sea, they will chomp off as much of it as they can, and bring it back to their nest, where, in true sweat bee fashion, the oils of the vertebrate are used to produce aromatics -- though this doesn't seem to be used as much for attracting lady bees (though many species do do this, at least among the royals founding new colonies) as for coating the fur of the workers, increasing their resistance to overheating and burning in the sun. A few species of Island Flies, either in a demonstration of an intermediate form or showing the next stage of development, use the vertebrate oils coated on the workers, to attract flies - which then feed the colony's babies. |
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.---------------------------------------------. Parts of the Cluster Worlds: "Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP) | |
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| Rodlox | Nov 22 2016, 09:54 AM Post #30 |
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Superhuman
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No matter who wins the polls, I have at least one species entry ready for each one by now. And now, a preview of one of them: The Seawoods As Australia grew warmer in the sweltering Cnidaracene, its mangrove forests took the opportunity to spread south to cover all the coasts. But by the time they were in the south coast, they ran smack into another ecosystem that was similar to them: the Seawoods. The seawoods have their origin in a woody plant (which?), which entered into a coexistance in the early Cnidaracene, that grew into partnership and then symbiosis...symbiotic with a kelp and an algae, that permitted them to live in the spray zone outside of the tidal reach, and to just a bit deeper than lowest tides reached. Like the mangroves, seawoods became homes to a collection of oceanic and terrestrial organisms. Some, like the quoll, used seawoods and mangroves as a refugia against extinction in the open reaches of the rest of Australia. |
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.---------------------------------------------. Parts of the Cluster Worlds: "Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP) | |
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