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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 (48,935 Views) | |
| Carlos | Jun 13 2017, 06:24 PM Post #421 |
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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The ranges of both not only overlap, but shrew-opossums are also speculated to prey on true shrews. Edited by Carlos, Jun 13 2017, 06:25 PM.
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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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| Tartarus | Jun 13 2017, 06:31 PM Post #422 |
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Prime Specimen
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Don't forget the solenodons. They're venomous as well. |
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| Carlos | Jun 13 2017, 08:21 PM Post #423 |
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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Again, mammals are ancestrally venomous. Spurs akin to those in platypi are found in several groups such as docodonts, eutriconodonts, multituberculates and symmetrodonts. |
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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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| Tartarus | Jun 14 2017, 01:27 AM Post #424 |
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Prime Specimen
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No one was implying otherwise. But Vorsa was just listing living, present day examples, so I pointed out a present day example he'd missed. If fossil examples were being included as well the list would of course be much, much longer. |
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| lamna | Jun 15 2017, 07:52 AM Post #425 |
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Onto more shrew-like mammals, but remaining within Eulipotyphla. Now along with shrews this group contains the families Erinaceidae and Talpidae, hedgehogs and moles respectively. These are animals that have taken the shew design and expanded and modified it. But there are still members of these families that retain a ancestral shrew-like body and lifestyle. Erinaceidae is divided into Erinaceinae, the familiar hedgehogs and Galericinae, Gymnures and Moonrats, today living mostly in South East Asia. Perhaps the most famous member of this group is actually extinct, Deinogalerix. It was quite large, for a hedgehog, similar in size to a badger or Tasmanian devil. It lived during the Miocene in Gargano, Italy. Back then the peninsula was an island, allowing this shrew-like animal to become a larger predator. I've not found anything about its actual diet, but looking at its skull I imagine it was doing similar things to badgers and foxes, mostly taking small prey, perhaps some fruit. Probably not the KILLER-DEATH-HOG you sometimes hear about. It did have a proportionally massive skull though, and a noticeable (but not huge) sagittal crest, so who knows what it was doing. ![]() Lovely image by alphynix, making it a animal and not a snarling murder beast. ![]() Note to self, I am going to have to revisit Gargano Island because that ecosystem sounds fascinating. Of the living Galericinae, probably the best known is the Moonrat, Echinosorex gymnura. That name is a misnomer as it is neither a rodent, nor a natural satellite. It's actually the longest member of the hedgehog family, though a little lighter than the European hedgehog. They live in Southern Thailand, Malaysia, Sumatra and Borneo. The Borneo subspecies is mostly white, while the Sumatran/mainland subspecies has black rear. The are omnivores feeding mainly on insects in the tropical rainforests they call home, and are remarkably similar in many ways to the American Opossum. ![]() ![]() The rest of the family are smaller and more shrew-like, and thus less well known, there are seven more species, across four genera. Long-eared gymnure, Hylomys megalotis ![]() Dwarf gymnure, Hylomys parvus ![]() Short-tailed gymnure, Hylomys suillus ![]() Hainan gymnure, Neohylomys hainanensis ![]() Shrew gymnure, Neotetracus sinensis ![]() No live photos of the two Philippine species, the Dinagat moonrat, Podogymnura aureospinula and the Mindanao gymnure, Podogymnura truei. |
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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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| Carlos | Jun 15 2017, 10:37 AM Post #426 |
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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Deinogalerix looks like a galericine's answer to a hyaenodont. I believe specialised carnivory was probably its deal, especially compared to its modern relatives. |
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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 | Jun 15 2017, 11:47 PM Post #427 |
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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Isn't the "basic rodent plan" just the "basic shrew plan" but with different teeth? |
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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 | Jun 16 2017, 08:08 AM Post #428 |
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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No, since the differing ecological niches tend to push rodent/glires like forms into different body shapes.
Edited by Carlos, Jun 16 2017, 08:08 AM.
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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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| lamna | Jun 16 2017, 10:53 AM Post #429 |
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Slight diversion from shrews now, but we will return with shrew moles soon! Anyone who's ever glanced at a project I've done will know I love islands. Isolation and limited resources make them the great engines of evolution. That was no different in the past than today. Once such place existed quite recently and was home to a whole host of obscure taxa. Take a look at the map of Italy and you'll see the spur of the the boot, Gargano. Today it is a area of coastal highland connected to Italy by low lying land. ![]() Back during the Miocene the sea levels were much higher, and Gargano was an island, similar in size to modern Rhodes. ![]() On the mainland, a huge variety of apes lived, including Pliopithecus and Oreopithecus. There were horses and rhinoceros, proboscideans and giraffes, bear-dogs and three lineages of sabre toothed cats, including the first machairodonts, the family that will one day include the famous Smilodon. But the island of Gargano was isolated and developed its own unique fauna. The island was home to a variety of large rodents and lagomorphs. Mikrotia was a genus of rats/mice, that evolved to be quite large on the island. They are extremely common in the fossil record and give their name to the fauna of the area, the Mikrotia fauna. One species, M. magna apparently had a skull the length of ten centimetres, which would mean that some of these rats were similar in size to the Gambian pouched rat. The island was also home to Stertomys, a genus of dormice and Hattomys, a genus of hamster, both having a giant species,S. laticrestatus and H. gargantua respectively. Not a lot of information on these guys, though it looks like the dormice were similar in size to the giant Maltese dormice, Leithia, so about 100g. Stertomys laticrestatus ![]() Hattomys gargantua The island was also home to Prolagus pika, a genus of pika that died out only recently, the last species living on Sardinia and Corsica, dying out sometime between the Roman colonisation and the 19th century. And while that Sardinian pika was pretty large, weighing about 500g, Prolagus imperialis, which I shall now call the Imperial Pika, weighed 5 kilos. It was as big as a cat, double the weight of the european rabbit. Prolagus would have probably looked somewhere between a pika and a rabbit, so this would have been one big bunny. Can't find a image of the Imperial Pika skeleton or reconstruction, so you'll have to make do with this smaller Sardinian species. ![]() But this island was not just home to big rodents and lagomorphs, it was also played hose to Hoplitomeryx a...we..it's....hmm. It's definitely a Artiodactyl. But where it fits in with the rest of them is not known. Some have suggested that they are related to Choeropotamidae, primitive ungulate related to pigs, known from Eocene France. Others have suggested them being related to pronghorns (and therefore giraffes) which seems likely to me. These animals were extremely well armed. They had five horns on their head, in addition to large canines, similar to muntjac deer. ![]() They were also very variable in size, coming in four morphs, tiny, small, medium and huge. The smallest were 5 kg, the size of a chevrotain, the largest the size of a pronghorn. It's hard to say if this represents a chronospecies, getting bigger or smaller, or different species or possibly even one very weird species with a range of differently sized morphs all living alongside one another. ![]() Another large herbivore living on the island was Garganornis, a giant goose. These were massive birds, weighing 15-22 kg, making them similar in size to rhea. Their great size, short, robust wings and long legs suggest that these were flightless, terrestrial birds. Given that their wings were still strong, they probably used them for fighting, and could break a mans arm! (Speculation) The island was also home to the first known member of a very familiar genus, Columba omnisanctorum, the first known pigeon. I imagine they flapped about like idiots. The island was also home to quiet the variety of predators. We've already covered the giant, carnivorous hedgehog. The only known carnivoran from the island was Paralutra garganensis, a species of otter. Its remains are pretty fragmentary, but it looks like it spent more time crushing shellfish than it did hunting down fish. Both those species though, would not have been top predators. Gargano was a island where archosaurs ruled. The island was home to several large raptors. Garganoaetus was a genus of hawks related to buzzards and harris hawks. G. freudenthali was the size of a golden eagle, while G. murivorus was smaller, about the size hawk-eagle. The island was also home to two species of large barn owl, though it is likely that this is an example of a chronospecies with Tyto robusta evolving into T. gigantea. And T. gigantea certainly earned this name, it was as large, if not larger than living Eurasian eagle owls, with T. robusta being the size of a snowy owl. Given their large size, G. freudenthali and T. gigantea could have eaten pretty much any other animal present on the island if they wanted to. ![]() Finally to round things out, the island was also home to a species of Crocodylus, the genus makes up the majority of living crocodiles. This may have been the last refuge of crocodiles in Europe. Edited by lamna, Jun 16 2017, 10:55 AM.
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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 | Jun 16 2017, 01:01 PM Post #430 |
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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 hate to be me, but did the island have any unique "invertebrate" fauna? |
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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 | Jun 16 2017, 04:44 PM Post #431 |
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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http://imgur.com/gallery/GLzpz I'm just gonna leave this here. |
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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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| Rodlox | Jun 16 2017, 11:02 PM Post #432 |
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Superhuman
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that we've found? not that I know of. at all? of course not - everyone knows insects can't evolve on islands. ![]() |
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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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| Dapper Man | Jun 19 2017, 01:24 AM Post #433 |
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* I am fed up with dis wuurld *
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Here's my contribution that you guys may/may not know of, a little known group of Cretaceous flightless birds known as the Patagopterygiformes: A skeleton of Patagopteryx, the type genus of Patagopterygiforme, from the Bajo de la Carpa Formation, Argentina, 85 million years ago. - These are small birds found within South America, lasting from 85-70 million years ago. These were large, ground dwelling birds, reaching around ~40-90 cm long, making them the same size as a Domestic Chicken. These birds provide the first definitive examples of secondary flightlessness in birds. The genera within this group are Patagopteryx, and Alamitornis (Although Gargantuavis may be a member of this group), and the two species are found from the Santonian-Maastrichtian epochs. They were omnivorous, and are believed to have been descended from flight-capable ancestors. An interesting feature in Patagopteryx itself is that it did not have a wishbone, meaning that it was incapable of flight. It also had a curved claw on the second toe that wasn't used as a weapon. EDIT: ![]() Here's a custom-made sketch of Patagopteryx, the type genus of the group. Made by yours truly ![]() --- I couldn't find much information on these birds, so if anyone has anymore information than I do, feel free to contribute. Edited by Dapper Man, Jun 19 2017, 04:10 AM.
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Speculative Evolution: Manitou; The Needle in the Haystack. | |
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| Chuditch | Jun 27 2017, 04:52 AM Post #434 |
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Dasyurid
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A ancestor of the caecilians has finally been revealed. Meet Chinlestegophis jenkinsi![]() Illustration by Jorge Gonzalez Living during the Triassic, this creature links the caecilians to the stereospondyls, the major group of amphibians at the time. Unlike the legless modern caecilians, it has four legs. It was found in central Colorado, and the finding was published earlier this month. To find out more, click here. Is it just me, or a caecilians fascinating? I'm going to do a terraformed world project with them sometime soon. |
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My wildlife YouTube channel Projects
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| Carlos | Jun 27 2017, 06:55 AM Post #435 |
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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Worked extensively on them in Lemuria |
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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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