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Obscure Taxa; For interesting or obscure organisms you'd like to share.
Topic Started: Dec 14 2016, 09:46 PM (48,941 Views)
IIGSY
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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I am at such a complete loss for words, I'll just put this here
http://www.deepseanews.com/2013/10/ill-see-your-horrifying-crab-barnacle-and-raise-you-a-heart-eel/
Yet another reason Ray finned fish are better than tetrapods
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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Inceptis
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There is enough nope in that article to deter quite a few people.

Almost everyone knows about sea stars and sea urchins, but not very many people know about their larvae. For starters, before metamorphosis, the larvae have bilateral symmetry. Here's the brachiolaria larva of a sea star:

Posted Image

And here's the late stage of a pluteus larva for sea urchins:

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As far as I know, all echinoderms start out as bilateral larvae, but once they're developed enough, cells that were set aside start growing into what's called the rudiment. The rudiment carries the typical pentaradial symmetry of echinoderms, and this develops into the actual adult. The larva is absorbed into the rudiment, it settles on the sea floor, and you now have a mature echinoderm. Here's what the brachiolaria looks like right before complete metamorphosis, with the rudiment at the front.

Posted Image

Star-fish, anyone?
Edited by Inceptis, Apr 28 2017, 05:06 PM.
This was getting fairly big.
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lamna
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The Galapagos are a pretty isolated place, almost a thousand kilometres from mainland South America.

The islands are famous for their diverse bird and reptilian fauna. Galapagos mammals receive less attention. Of course their are bats, bats live everywhere that's not polar. And there are sealions.

That's likely all you've heard of. Perhaps, like myself you would have assumed that the islands were just to far away for land mammals to reach. Not so, Galapagos actually does have one native land mammal, the Galapagos rice rat.

Unfortunately there isn't much information on these guys. These are the only free photographs I can find online.

Posted Image

Posted Image

I can't find much about them, they seem to be fairly typical rice rats. What's most interesting is that they live there at all. Rodents are supreme colonisers. The only significant land masses without them are Antarctica and New Zealand.

So, a point for spec projects, if a land mass is less than 1000 km from a continent with rodents, that landmass will likely soon have rodents.
Living Fossils

Fósseis Vibos: Reserva Natural


34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur.
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LittleLazyLass
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Proud quilt in a bag

I imagine it'd be highly dependent on ocean currents.
totally not British, b-baka!
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I don't even really like this song that much but the title is pretty relatable sometimes, I guess.
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What, you want me to tell you what these mean?
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trex841
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I thought I read that they were a product of human introduction. Or maybe that was conjectural.
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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peashyjah
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Inceptis
Apr 25 2017, 06:10 PM
Behold the glorious Asaphoidea!

Posted Image

These guys evolved in an inland sea in post-europe in the Ordovician. They gradually evolved longer and longer eyestalks, likely due to the changes in turbidity. It's thought that they lay in the sediment, waiting for prey to pass by. They dissapeared in the O-S mass extinction. Quite popular among fossil collectors.
You do know these trilobites first appeared in the Middle Cambrian...
Discontinued projects:
The New Ostracoderms (i might continue with this project again someday)
The Americas (where in 58 million years from now in the future North and South America has both become isolated island continents)



All Expansions (my attempt at expanding the universe of All Tomorrows by Nemo Ramjet aka C.M. Kosemen, started June 6, 2018)
Anthropozoic (my attempt at expanding the universe of Man After Man and also a re-imagining of it, coming 2019 or 2020)
New Cenozoica (my attempt at expanding the universe of The New Dinosaurs and also a re-imagining of it, also coming 2019 or 2020)
All Alternatives or All Changes (a re-telling of All Tomorrows but with some minor and major "changes", coming June 10, 2018)
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Carlos
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lamna
Apr 28 2017, 05:21 PM
The Galapagos are a pretty isolated place, almost a thousand kilometres from mainland South America.

The islands are famous for their diverse bird and reptilian fauna. Galapagos mammals receive less attention. Of course their are bats, bats live everywhere that's not polar. And there are sealions.

That's likely all you've heard of. Perhaps, like myself you would have assumed that the islands were just to far away for land mammals to reach. Not so, Galapagos actually does have one native land mammal, the Galapagos rice rat.

Unfortunately there isn't much information on these guys. These are the only free photographs I can find online.

Posted Image

Posted Image

I can't find much about them, they seem to be fairly typical rice rats. What's most interesting is that they live there at all. Rodents are supreme colonisers. The only significant land masses without them are Antarctica and New Zealand.

So, a point for spec projects, if a land mass is less than 1000 km from a continent with rodents, that landmass will likely soon have rodents.

Several species, actually.

Kind of surprising how little coverage they get. Almost like a deliberate attempt to orwellianly edit them out or something.
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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lamna
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No, these are related to South American rodents and are distinct enough to be separate species.

And yeah, just found out about the other species. Apprently there are four living species and three extincit ones.
https://www.quasarex.com/galapagos/animals/rodents-rats

I'll have to write something about the Polynesian rat. Despite being the third of the great rats that have adapted to live alongside humans, you don't hear as much about them as black or brown rats.
Living Fossils

Fósseis Vibos: Reserva Natural


34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur.
T.Neo
 
Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
[flash=500,450] Video Magic! [/flash]
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Lowry
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ARH-WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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Can we post organisms that people may know, but may not necessarily know the full weirdness of? Like people may have heard of a Chiton, but didn't know they had Magnetite teeth
Projects Currently Being Worked Upon:

Karkinos: Where faith meets myth on a world of the strangely familiar.
Under New Suns: The forums own colonisation race! Steep yourself in my lore....

Projects in suspension (for when inspiration hits):

- Galapagaia
- Rich Man's Ark (nice little bit of community spec :P)
- Ichor

Projects for a latter day:




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Beetleboy
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I would say that it's completely fine to do that, given what we've recently been saying about this thread (pointing out that we can use it also for obscure facts not just obscure taxa).
~ The Age of Forests ~
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Inceptis
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In-tro-vertebrate
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peashyjah
Apr 28 2017, 06:32 PM
Inceptis
Apr 25 2017, 06:10 PM
Behold the glorious Asaphoidea!

Posted Image

These guys evolved in an inland sea in post-europe in the Ordovician. They gradually evolved longer and longer eyestalks, likely due to the changes in turbidity. It's thought that they lay in the sediment, waiting for prey to pass by. They dissapeared in the O-S mass extinction. Quite popular among fossil collectors.
You do know these trilobites first appeared in the Middle Cambrian...

The higher group they're in did. The eye-stalked fossils are only found from that region and date to the Ordovician. Also, the majority of trilobite groups in general appeared in the Middle Cambrian.
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Inceptis
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I know I'm double posting, but, The Fijian Ground Frog.

Posted Image

One of two frogs that live on Fiji, it grows to about 11 cm in length and is likely an ambush predator, attacking nocturnal insects. But its claim to fame is its nesting habits.
They will lay their eggs in a secluded place, like in the fold of a leaf or at the base of a tree, and the eggs develop terrestrially, skipping the tadpole stage entirely. This is probably what allowed them to get to Fiji in the first place, with eggs hitching a ride on rafts of vegetation created by storms.

Posted Image
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IIGSY
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Posted Image

What is this? This, my friends, is Eokinorhynchus rarus, the first known fossil khinorhynch! It dates back to cambrian strata 535 million years ago. What's even better, is that this animal is actually noticeably different from it's modern relatives. Among these features are more segments and larger spines.

Congratulations khinorhyncha! You joined the "animal phyla with fossil records" club! Now I'm just waiting for fossil gastrotrichs.

http://english.nigpas.cas.cn/rh/rp/201511/t20151127_156577.html
Edited by IIGSY, May 1 2017, 04:39 PM.
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
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Inceptis
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In-tro-vertebrate
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Quote:
 
Now I'm just waiting for fossil gastrotrichs.

They might already exist, since there are rotifer fossils within some Dominican amber dating to the cretaceous.

Prototaxites was discovered in the first half of the twentieth century. Giant columns of organic matter dating to the Silurian, they confused many scientists, until it was proposed that they were giant lichens towering above the moss and liverworts. Some have now argued that they're in fact rolled up sheets of liverworts, but the growth pattern of the cells inside doesn't fit that hypothesis, and so they remain as some of the most successful fungi to ever live.

Posted Image
Edited by Inceptis, May 1 2017, 10:48 PM.
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Mr.Scruth
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Yep, I thought they'd fit well into my Nibiru. I just made them way, way bigger and even more plant-like.
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