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Obscure Taxa; For interesting or obscure organisms you'd like to share.
Topic Started: Dec 14 2016, 09:46 PM (48,944 Views)
DINOCARID
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Now I'm all jelly of your giant awesome post.
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LittleLazyLass
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Maybe he should be jealous about your giant awesome thread.
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HangingThief
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Here's a great clip from life in the undergrowth that shows webspinner's spinneret-arms in action.

Hey.


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trex841
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Ooo, didn't know about the webspinners. Or the specifics on pteropods.
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A comprehensive list of all organisms, artifacts, and alternative worlds encountered by the foundation team.

At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting.

(And this is just the spec related stuff)
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Sceynyos-yos
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Imagine eusocial webspinners. Silk castles!
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lamna
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Crustacean are really nasty guys. Don't let the woodlice and crabs fool you. There are many parasitic species with highly modified bodies, so much so you'd never guess they were an arthropod.

Take for example Lernaeocera branchialis, or the cod worm.

They spend their early life looking much like any other copepod. They hatch, live as free swimming larva until they are mature enough to parasitise slow moving fish like lumpfish or flatfish.

The swim into their gills, and drink their blood, still looking like a copepod. At this point they mate, and rather than just reproducing, the females go swimming off to find cod, haddock, etc.

They then swim inside the cod's gills and start drinking blood, but the time their body grows long and worm-like, becoming some of the largest copepods in the world (still only 5cm, but that's pretty big considering most are only millimetres in length). The penetrate deep into the cod's circulatory system until they penetrate the heart, from there the cod worms starts branching out.

It can then lay eggs and start the cycle over again.
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trex841
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Quote:
 

Now that we've seen all the weird shit fish do, think of this. Imagine if tetrapods did the same things. Mammals with eyestalks. Reptiles where the much smaller male melds into the female. I know I'v asked this before, but is this stuff even possible in tetrapods?


This thread has made me really interested in the truly bizarre features that fish have workout that tetrapods apparently haven't.
F.I.N.D.R Field Incident Logs
A comprehensive list of all organisms, artifacts, and alternative worlds encountered by the foundation team.

At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting.

(And this is just the spec related stuff)
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Carlos
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That's metabolic and physiological complexity fer ya
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IIGSY
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JohnFaa
Apr 19 2017, 02:32 PM
That's metabolic and physiological complexity fer ya
Would you care to eloborate? What about tetrapod physiology prevents this from happening? Why no eyestalked turtles or mammals that literally meld together?
Edited by IIGSY, Apr 19 2017, 09:14 PM.
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Punga: A terraformed world with no vertebrates
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Nematozoic: After a mass extinction of ultimate proportions, a single species of nematode is the only surviving animal.
Tri-devonian: A devonian like ecosystem with holocene species on three different continents.

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Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups


In honor of the greatest clade of all time


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Rodlox
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Insect Illuminati Get Shrekt
Apr 19 2017, 06:35 PM
JohnFaa
Apr 19 2017, 02:32 PM
That's metabolic and physiological complexity fer ya
Would you care to eloborate? What about tetrapod physiology prevents this from happening? Why no eyestalked turtles or mammals that literally meld together?
because there haven't been, at least not yet. maybe its because vert.s have no exoskeleton that can be inflated like stalk-eyed flies do, or maybe for some other reason. (mammals have fewer skull bones than viperfish do, don't they?)
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Nyarlathotep
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Hippopotamus gorgops basically had the start of eyestalks on it, so there is at least a small possibility of that.
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IIGSY
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Rodlox
Apr 19 2017, 11:31 PM
Insect Illuminati Get Shrekt
Apr 19 2017, 06:35 PM
JohnFaa
Apr 19 2017, 02:32 PM
That's metabolic and physiological complexity fer ya
Would you care to eloborate? What about tetrapod physiology prevents this from happening? Why no eyestalked turtles or mammals that literally meld together?
because there haven't been, at least not yet. maybe its because vert.s have no exoskeleton that can be inflated like stalk-eyed flies do, or maybe for some other reason. (mammals have fewer skull bones than viperfish do, don't they?)
How does that help with the development of eyestalks?
Projects
Punga: A terraformed world with no vertebrates
Last one crawling: The last arthropod

ARTH-6810: A world without vertebrates (It's ded, but you can still read I guess)

Potential ideas-
Swamp world: A world covered in lakes, with the largest being caspian sized.
Nematozoic: After a mass extinction of ultimate proportions, a single species of nematode is the only surviving animal.
Tri-devonian: A devonian like ecosystem with holocene species on three different continents.

Quotes


Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups


In honor of the greatest clade of all time


More pictures


Other cool things


All African countries can fit into Brazil
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WaterWitch
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Insect Illuminati Get Shrekt
Apr 20 2017, 05:33 AM
Rodlox
Apr 19 2017, 11:31 PM
Insect Illuminati Get Shrekt
Apr 19 2017, 06:35 PM
JohnFaa
Apr 19 2017, 02:32 PM
That's metabolic and physiological complexity fer ya
Would you care to eloborate? What about tetrapod physiology prevents this from happening? Why no eyestalked turtles or mammals that literally meld together?
because there haven't been, at least not yet. maybe its because vert.s have no exoskeleton that can be inflated like stalk-eyed flies do, or maybe for some other reason. (mammals have fewer skull bones than viperfish do, don't they?)
How does that help with the development of eyestalks?
probably the plasticity of their skulls compared to those with more calcified skulls.
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lamna
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Something more normal and less disgusting this time. I love rodents. Other mammals, Yeah I pretty much knew them all by the time I was 12. Rodents, still more to learn about.

Everyone here will know about naked mole rats, and many of you will know that their other, less derived mole-rats also known as blesmols (Bathyergidae).

Fewer of you will be familiar with the fact that this is a wildly successful body-plan that has evolved in rodents independently four times. Reasonably sized rodents that spend their entire lives underground eating roots and digging with large teeth that often protrude from the lips.

The American gophers are also fairly well known, especially in North America. But then their are also the Eurasia Spalacidae, and the Tuco-Tucos of South America.

While all rodents, they are about as distantly related as rodents can be. Blesmols are Phiomorpha, a group of ancient Africa rodents that today consist of blesmols, dassie rats, and cane rats.
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Gophers are part of Castorimorpha, and are related to kangaroo rats and beavers.
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Spalacidae are part of Muroidea, making them related to mice, rats voles and hamsters.
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Tuco-Tucos taxanomy is a bit messy, their clearly members of Caviomorpha, related to chinchillas, Capybara and new world porcupines.
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There are loads of these animals and they have a wide distribution. There are 65 Tuco-tucos, 37 Spalacids, 34 pocket gophers, and 25 blesmols, including the naked mole rat.

So what I'm saying is, if your project has rodents as abundant and diverse animals, you'd get something like these guys.

Three things I learned, the King African mole-rat scientific name can be correctly written as T. rex, people farm bamboo rats in China and their is an animal called a zokor, which is a Spalacid that has developed huge, mole-like claws to dig with rather than its teeth.
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Living Fossils

Fósseis Vibos: Reserva Natural


34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur.
T.Neo
 
Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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Rodlox
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lamna
Apr 20 2017, 07:50 AM
Three things I learned, the King African mole-rat scientific name can be correctly written as T. rex, people farm bamboo rats in China and their is an animal called a zokor, which is a Spalacid that has developed huge, mole-like claws to dig with rather than its teeth.
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:D

that is all massively cool. such layers and levels of parallel evolution. (my mind boggles at how much iterative evolution must have happened)


Quote:
 
Tuco-Tucos taxanomy is a bit messy, their clearly members of Caviomorpha, related to chinchillas, Capybara and new world porcupines.
Posted Image


wait, I thought chinchillas were part of the rabbit&cavy family (lagomorphs),,,did that change, or were they folded into Caviomorpha?
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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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