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Obscure Taxa; For interesting or obscure organisms you'd like to share.
Topic Started: Dec 14 2016, 09:46 PM (48,938 Views)
trex841
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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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Yiqi15
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trex841
May 27 2017, 02:39 PM
I don't understand. Something about sand cats?
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trex841
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This thread got absolutely derailed with arguments about whose heard of what before. General consensus was that everyone knows different things, so it's not worth debating what counts as obscure.
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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Yiqi15
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trex841
May 27 2017, 04:22 PM
This thread got absolutely derailed with arguments about whose heard of what before. General consensus was that everyone knows different things, so it's not worth debating what counts as obscure.
Sorry about that.
Current/Completed Projects
- After the Holocene: Your run-of-the-mill future evolution project.
- A History of the Odessa Rhinoceros: What happens when you ship 28 southern white rhinoceri to Texas and try and farm them? Quite a lot, actually.

Future Projects
- XenoSphere: The greatest zoo in the galaxy.
- The Curious Case of the Woolly Giraffe: A case study of an eocene relic.
- Untittled Asylum Studios-Based Project: The truth behind all the CGI schlock
- Riggslandia V.II: A World 150 million years in the making

Potential Projects
- Klowns: The biology and culture of a creepy-yet-fascinating being

My Zoochat and Fadom Accounts
- Zoochat
- Fandom
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IIGSY
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Chresmoda is a large, enigmatic insect of the jurassic. It's within the extinct order archaeorthoptera, which is likely a paraphyletic assemblage of various basal polyneopteran insects. It's exact position is uncertain, as is it's lifestyle. It much resembles a water strider, so it was likely aquatic.
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Aquatic flies, butterfly looking lacewings, stem-earwigs, and orthopteroid water striders. Jurassic insects are pretty cool if you look closely. Too bad information on post-paleozoic arthropods is pretty sparse.
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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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Calcancora is an extinct genus of sea cucumber. There isn't much to say about it, other than that is lasted from the middle triassic to the late miocene.
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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That's impressive.
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LittleLazyLass
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On the topic of sand cats, the babies are adorable:
Posted Image

I might look into extinct hominids and make a post; everyone knows there's a ton but people don't really look into specific species which aren't austrolopiths.
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Now that is friggin adorable! I want 10 of them.
Journey to the Makrinocene, a world in the twilight hours of the Cenozoic! (Slightly Inactive, will eventually pick up)
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lamna
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Break news, there are other animals aside from rodents! But I'm still sticking with mammals of course.

Today we're heading to Australia to look at a superorder of Marsupials, Dasyuromorphia. Now this group has a lot of famous members, you have the termite eating Numbat, and large predators such as the Tiger Quoll, Tasmanian Devil and the recently extinct Thylacine.

But it's a hugely diverse group of animals, with 73 living members. What I find most interesting about them, is their size. When you look at dominant carnivorous placental mammals, Carnivora, they are for the most part, larger mammals. Sure there are some miniaturised ones like the weasel, but most are 100 grams or more.

Dasyuromorphs are the opposite, most of its members are small, with a few that are larger predators.

Being Australian animals, they also have great names, a mix of aboriginal names, bastardised scientific names and good old fashioned Australian jibberish.

We'll start with Quolls. The Tiger Quoll most of you will be familiar with, it's a big powerful, cat like predator that usually weighs between 2 to 3 and a half kilos, it lives across eastern Australia and in Tasmania and in many ways is comparable to a Marten or Tayra in its size and lifestyle.
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Three other species of quoll are found in Australia and they are much smaller and slighter, the Western, Eastern and Northern quolls all of which usually weigh between just over a kilogram to less than half a kilo.

Northern Quoll
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Eastern Quoll
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Western Quoll, also known as the Chuditch.
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Two species, the Bronze Quoll and the New Guinean Quoll live in New Guinea. The Bronze Quoll I can't find a picture of online that I'm sure is them, but they are both also smaller Quolls.

New Guinean Quoll
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Which the larger predators out the way, you now are left with a dazzling variety of small, shrew like animals. Far too many to go through now, so here are some highlights.

The Kowari is a small hunter that preys on invertebrates, lizards and small mammals in the area around Lake Eyre. It's got a bushy, black tipped tail and is apparently pretty feisty. Weighs about 100 grams, so a little smaller than a hamster.
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The Fat-tailed dunnart is absolutely minute, weighing about 10-20 grams. As their name suggests, they have a thick tail that they use to store fat.
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Even smaller is the Long-tailed planigale. It weighs just over 4 grams, making it one of the smallest mammals. Its tiny size and flattened head help it squeeze intro crevices to hunt invertebrates and hide from predators.
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Finally, the Dibbler, which bring up not just because it has a silly name, but because in addition to insects and small mammals (it weights between 40-100 g) it also enjoys nectar.Posted Image
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Why did I think these animals were particularly interesting? I think it's fascinating that Australia's large carnivores are essentially super sized shrews. It also reminds us that, all the big carnivorous mammals, the Carnivores and the Hyenadonts, Oxyaenids, Mesonychids and Sparassodonts, they all started out as small shrew-like insectivores.

It's also pretty useful for this sight in particular. If you're considering future evolution, shrew-like animals can very easily become large predators. It's also important that, while I'm glad more people are getting interested in Mesozoic mammals, that's often accompanied by the qualifying statement "they were not all boring shrews". Shrew-y animals can be incredibly ecologically diverse.

Hmm, might have to talk more about "shrews". It's the oldest mammal bauplan, and phenomenally successful.
Edited by lamna, Jun 6 2017, 08:04 AM.
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Carlos
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Actually, Dasyuromorpha is unique in that insectivore/carnivore mammalian guilds are continuous, other carnivorous mammal groups evolved from non-shrew-like ancestors.

The only exception are of course eutriconodonts.
Lemuria:
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lamna
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What do you mean? Surely they came from shrew-like animals at some point?
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- Basal sparassodonts are omnivores, some quite large

- Basal carnivorans are weasel-to-cat sized omnivores

- Basal oxyaenids are clam-crushers

- Mesonychids evolved from already fairly large omnivores

- Hyaenodonts are all specialised carnivores, so the possibility of a direct descendency from shrew-like animals is substantially larger. But still, already fairly large

Therefore, most of these evolved from animals already distinctively not shrew-like. Of course their deeper mammalian ancestors were probably shrew-like, but they clearly did not develop carnivory as an extension of insectivory.

In all cases they are ecologically separated from contemporary shrew analogues.
Edited by Carlos, Jun 6 2017, 08:37 AM.
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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lamna
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Oh ok, so they developed into larger, generalised forms (badgerl/raccoon type things) before becoming carnivores.

Interesting, undercuts one point, but adds to another, and makes Australia even weirder.

Australia's living and recently extinct native carnivores are giant shrews and lizards, with older predators including wombats trying to be cats and land crocs.

Really says something where Quinkana is your continent's "normal" carnivore.

Anyway, Dibblers picking out mealworms from pinecones.
Edited by lamna, Jun 6 2017, 09:13 AM.
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I love sharing the many great, exoskeletal beasts that crawl the crevices of this planet, but today, I want to share something more convential like a sauropsid.
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Stomatosuchus is a large crocodylamorph from the late cretaceous period. It's feeding habits are not fully understood, but a popular and probable theory is that it was a filter feeder eating plankton and small fish. It's upper jaw has small conical teeth, and it's lower jaws are presumed toothless with a pelican-like throat pouch similar to a pelican. Too bad the only specimens where destroyed in the same allied bombing raid that destroyed the spinosaurus fossils. I wished that never happened.
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
 
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