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| Pladcoderm evolution; Remember the armored fish? | |
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| Topic Started: Sep 11 2008, 08:37 AM (3,173 Views) | |
| Spartan Delta | Sep 11 2008, 08:37 AM Post #1 |
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I had a thought. Does anybody remember the pladcoderm fish from the Devonian, like Dunkleosteus? Well, what if they were able to get on land first? I imagined a T-Rex like biped with fins for this... What do you think? |
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| Jurassic-Gothic | Oct 3 2009, 04:05 PM Post #61 |
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That would be likely at all. Several Placoderms lived in freshwater environments, so water-land transition could even occur as for Crossopterygians. |
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| Spartan Delta | Feb 10 2010, 07:22 AM Post #62 |
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First off, thank you for enjoying my work. ^^ Second, I just have one question for that idea - how could they change their diet? Dunkleosteids, anyway. As far as I know, the dunkleosteids and other large, carnivorous placoderms were....well, carnivorous. And their jaw structure had sharpened bony scissors, essentially, instead of teeth. It seems quite a transition from a bony-jawed carnivor to a filter-feeding giant. I'm not saying it's a bad idea - in fact, that idea actually sounds cool - ,but I don't quite see how Dunkleosteids in particular could chnge to fit that. To be honest, I actually thought that sharks could've well kept that slot filled in, keeping those armored fish to either smaller filter-feders or carnivores. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yeah. See, my thoughts went basically like this: -"Dunkleosteus is huge, bloodthirsty, and reeally mean-lookin'! Totally awesome, dood!" --"That jaw design is really unique; it looks like an armored T-Rex!" ---"Hey, what if there was a land predator with a similar type of jaw? That'd be sweet!" ----"OMG, what if it was Dunkleosteus?! He could've possibly gotten on land, and since he only had two well-defined flippers, he could evolve into a predator alot like T-Rex!" -----"Hey, whay if not just Dunkleosteus, but all the placoderms made it on land? What would they change into?" |
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