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| Obscure Taxa; For interesting or obscure organisms you'd like to share. | |
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| Topic Started: Dec 14 2016, 09:46 PM (48,940 Views) | |
| IIGSY | May 7 2017, 06:57 PM Post #346 |
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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For a second I thought you meant the khinorhynchs and got really hyped up. But then I realized you meant protoaxtites. |
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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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| IIGSY | May 7 2017, 07:03 PM Post #347 |
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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Websteroprion armstrongi is a species of eunicoid polychaete that lived during the devonain. Like most fossil polychaetes, it's only known from jaw fragments. Though the fossils where only a few millimeters, if the scaling is correct, the worm may have been a meter in length. Spoiler: click to toggle
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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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| Beetleboy | May 8 2017, 07:45 AM Post #348 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Wow that is so cool! |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| Rodlox | May 8 2017, 01:25 PM Post #349 |
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Superhuman
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up til that last image, my thought was "ahh, Graboids! yes!" |
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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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| Scrublord | May 9 2017, 09:38 PM Post #350 |
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Father Pellegrini
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I can think of one thing tetrapods do better: blogging. |
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My Projects: The Neozoic Redux Valhalla--Take Three! The Big One Deviantart Account: http://elsqiubbonator.deviantart.com In the end, the best advice I could give you would be to do your project in a way that feels natural to you, rather than trying to imitate some geek with a laptop in Colorado. --Heteromorph | |
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| HangingThief | May 10 2017, 06:27 AM Post #351 |
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ghoulish
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Bear in mind that that image is based on modern bobbit worms, which are much longer than 1 meter. |
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Hey. | |
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| IIGSY | May 14 2017, 01:09 PM Post #352 |
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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Shipworms are a strange group of marine bivalve mollusks with worm-like bodies. As their name suggests, they bore into submerged wood such as driftwood and ships. They do this via a pair of small shells at the end. They use a symbiotic bacteria is break down the cellulose in wood. Their burrow is lined with a calcareous tube.![]()
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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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| Carlos | May 14 2017, 01:33 PM Post #353 |
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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Also, they caused the extinction of the giant crinoids. |
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Lemuria: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/ Terra Alternativa: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/ My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Carliro ![]() | |
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| IIGSY | May 14 2017, 01:35 PM Post #354 |
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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WHAT?! |
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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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| Sphenodon | May 15 2017, 12:14 AM Post #355 |
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Calcareous
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Prior to the development of marine wood-borers, driftwood (whether simple sticks or entire trees) was broken down only very slowly as it drifted through the sea. This allowed driftwood to act as a floating anchor for various types of sessile biota, including stalked crinoids; growing downwards from the driftwood's lower surface and sieving water as the wood drifted, several taxa developed extreme proportions and became the largest-known of all echinoderms, with some specimens of the genus Seirocrinus growing to calx lengths of up to 15 meters (not counting the arms). With the appearance of wood-boring organisms, such driftwood communities were no longer possible, as large pieces were broken down too quickly to allow reliant organisms to colonize and develop on them. This led to the extinction of the large, pelagic driftwood crinoids. Reconstruction of the early Carnian (~233 MYA) Guanling Biota, which hosted large populations of the pelagic crinoid Traumatocrinus
Edited by Sphenodon, May 15 2017, 12:23 AM.
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We have a Discord server! If you would like to join, simply message myself, Flisch, or Icthyander. Some of my ideas (nothing real yet, but soon): Refugium: A last chance for collapsing ecosystems and their inhabitants. Pansauria: A terraforming project featuring the evolution of exactly one animal - the marine iguana. Mars Renewed: An insight into the life of Mars thirty million years after its terraforming by humankind. Microcosm: An exceedingly small environment. Alcyon: A planet colonized by species remodeled into new niches by genetic engineering. Oddballs: Aberrant representatives of various biological groups compete and coexist. ..and probably some other stuff at some point (perhaps a no K-T project). Stay tuned! | |
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| YixianBirdBeast | May 15 2017, 12:27 AM Post #356 |
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Adolescent
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What about Gypsonictops? I heard that it is a Leptictid and thus a close relative of Leptictidium But it does not have a Wikipedia article |
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| IIGSY | May 15 2017, 03:00 PM Post #357 |
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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 never thought I would say this, but I kinda hate shipworms now. |
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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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| lamna | May 24 2017, 06:14 PM Post #358 |
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Take a look at this cutie, at first glance you might mistake it for a paca.![]() But this is a Pacarana. They live in much the same way, large sulking rodents in the forests of South America. However, they are only distantly related to the paca and today they are the last remaining representative of their group, Dinomyidae. In the past this group was much more diverse, and included some of the largest rodents ever to live. And when I say large rodents, you shouldn't be thinking of these as being large for being rodents, these were genuinely big animals. ![]() Telicomys was comparable in size to a large wild boar, Phoberomys was the size of a Sumatran rhinoceros and Josephoartigasia was the size of a bison or black rhinoceros. Think about that for a moment, were these animals around today, one of the top ten largest land animals would be a rodent. ![]() I particularly like this illustration, not only because it's by James Gurney, but ti gives you a sense of these being megafauna. Josephoartigasia, being a superlative animal, you may have heard of, but I still wanted to put it into context. It wasn't some isolated freak, rodents were part of the megafauna of South America, alongside Xenartha and Notoungulata, Litopterna, Pyrotheria, Astrapotheria. The group seemed to decline during Great American Interchange, perhaps from competition from true ungulates and Gomphotheres, and today we're left with one, shy forest dweller. But their still neat! |
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Living Fossils Fósseis Vibos: Reserva Natural 34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur. [flash=500,450] Video Magic! [/flash] | |
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| lamna | May 25 2017, 09:12 AM Post #359 |
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Not had enough of interesting relicts? Well, rodents are diverse and numerous to provide several examples.![]() The is the mountain beaver, Aplodontia rufa. They are quite a large rodent, comparable to a guinea pig. They live on the West Coast of North America, in moist forests from the Cascade Mountains in British Colombia down to the Sierra Nevada mountains in California and Nevada. As an American animal, there is plenty of easily accessible information on them online. They have 46 chromosomes, a 4.5 cm penis, a forked baculum and while they lack a true scrotum, they can apparently move their testes into a semiscrotal position during the breeding season. ![]() They are herbivores, living in forests (coniferous forests being preferred) where they feed mainly on ferns, practising coprophagy to get the most out of their food. They live in burrows, do not hibernate and are quite long lived for a rodent, living between 5-10 years. ![]() They are part of Sciuromorpha, related to squirrels/marmot and dormice, but belong to an separate family, Aplodontiidae. This was a group that was widespread in Laurasia during the Oligocene, however it died out in Europe and Asia, and became rarer in North America leaving the mountain beaver the sole surviving member alive today. For a time, they were to be thought to be even more primitive as they have skulls similar to lots of early rodents. Many modern rodents have done very complex things with their jaw muscles, threading them through holes that ought to be nerves to give them more powerful bites. Mountain beavers have not done that, so it was long though they are related to the early rodents like Ischyromyids. However molecular evidence puts them closer to squirrels, suggesting that grouping rodents this way may be paraphyletic. Helpful lecture on rodent skulls. The mountain beaver is unable to produce concentrated urine (hence why they live in wetter areas), perhaps if this was common among Aplodontiidae it lead to them being out-competed by other rodents during the increasingly cooler and drier late Cenozoic. Or perhaps their comparatively weaker jaws and preference for soft vegetation stopped them being as competitive. Bonus obscure taxa, they are host to Hystrichopsylla schefferi, the largests flea in the world. They can reach over a centimetre in length and they seem to only live on mountain beavers. Here is one with a cat flea to give you an idea of scale. ![]() This post was brought to you by the word; Semiscrotal. |
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Living Fossils Fósseis Vibos: Reserva Natural 34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur. [flash=500,450] Video Magic! [/flash] | |
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| IIGSY | May 25 2017, 06:02 PM Post #360 |
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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Ah, I love fleas. Zhangsolvidae are a group of Stratiomyomorph flies that lived during the cretaceous period, and where probably wiped out during the K-Pg extinction. They where major pollinators of gymnosperms, and had a long butterfly like proboscises. But what made me really happy, there was reconstructions! Here is a reconstruction and a picture of the actual fossil of Buccinatormyia magnifica Oh, and here's a wonderful paper discussing them. http://www.academia.edu/16822690/Long-proboscid_brachyceran_flies_in_Cretaceous_amber_Diptera_Stratiomyomorpha_Zhangsolvidae_ Habrosaurus was a 1.6 meter long salamander from the late Cretaceous and early Paleocene. It is the oldest known siren, and was one of the largest ever lissamphibians. It's dentation suggested a diet consisting of hard shelled aquatic creatures such as crayfish, snails, and clams. Hymenolepis nana, or the dwarft tapeworm, a 40mm long tapeworm common in humans. It spreads through feces, where eggs may picked up. But what makes this animal very interesting is that it was involved in the only known cross species cancer transmission to humans. Edited by IIGSY, May 25 2017, 06:05 PM.
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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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