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Obscure Taxa; For interesting or obscure organisms you'd like to share.
Topic Started: Dec 14 2016, 09:46 PM (48,931 Views)
IIGSY
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Puts a new meaning to the phrase "bat shit insane"
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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.

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kusanagi
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Geckolepis maculata

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21564574.2017.1281172
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HangingThief
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kusanagi
Aug 6 2017, 06:13 PM
You should put some pictures and general information in the post, not just the animal's name and a link. (I believe that fishscale geckos have already been covered, but that's excusable since this is a very long thread.)
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LittleLazyLass
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This is a water opposum, or yapok:

Posted Image

It's an elusive nocturnal semi-aquatic marsupial from the Americas (from Mexico to Argentina) - the only truly semi-aquatic marsupial, in fact. The species of the genus Lutreolina, also didelphines, also display some aquatic tendencies, but they're far less pronounced. They apparently avoid competition with contemporary water rats by having different habitat preferences. Despite a mainly piscivorous species, they've apparently occasionally reported to climb up trees and predate on bats.

Posted Image

It has a variety of aquatic adaptations, including fully webbed hindfeet (but it lacks webbed forefeet) and - if you look closely - a sixth digit on their forelimb derived from a wrist bone. It's apparently fully opposable - speccers take note. Anyway, it's other cool adaptations is a pouch which can be fully sealed. The females can go underwater with their young safely inside the pouch, and the males - they're the only living marsupials where the males have pouches (although apparently thylacines also had this trait) - can seal them to protect their genitals from cold water and from getting tangled in underwater plants. These male pouches are apparently, however, less watertight than those of the females - perhaps it has not had time to sufficiently evolve? They go back to at least the Pliocene, so this might not hold up.
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IIGSY
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Hmm....
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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.

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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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All African countries can fit into Brazil
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kusanagi
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Stagodonts were as aquatic as Enhydra and had ear bones consistent with an aquatic lifestyle, as well as a durophagous habit more probably satiated by shelly invertebrates than baby ankylosaurs as stupid sources insist. Yes fully aquatic marsupials exist and have existed and can be done, although some sources insist marsupials are impaired at transitioning to aquatic life compared to placentals.
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Rodlox
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Inceptis
Aug 6 2017, 03:45 PM
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It says it's a young group, but I can't help but notice the similarities they have to Stromatoveris.
Posted Image Posted Image
it looks like a new phylum found last year...fully marine, found at the bottom of an ocean, looks like a cross between a mushroom and a whale shark/early jawless fish.
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Carlos
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kusanagi
Aug 6 2017, 07:28 PM
Stagodonts were as aquatic as Enhydra and had ear bones consistent with an aquatic lifestyle, as well as a durophagous habit more probably satiated by shelly invertebrates than baby ankylosaurs as stupid sources insist. Yes fully aquatic marsupials exist and have existed and can be done, although some sources insist marsupials are impaired at transitioning to aquatic life compared to placentals.

By technicality stagodonts aren't marsupials, but yes.

Non-placental mammals as a whole have/had the supposed reproductive limitations as marsupials, yet as the platypus, Castorocauda, Liaoconodon and several others show...
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IIGSY
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JohnFaa
Aug 7 2017, 06:40 PM
kusanagi
Aug 6 2017, 07:28 PM
Stagodonts were as aquatic as Enhydra and had ear bones consistent with an aquatic lifestyle, as well as a durophagous habit more probably satiated by shelly invertebrates than baby ankylosaurs as stupid sources insist. Yes fully aquatic marsupials exist and have existed and can be done, although some sources insist marsupials are impaired at transitioning to aquatic life compared to placentals.

By technicality stagodonts aren't marsupials, but yes.

Non-placental mammals as a whole have/had the supposed reproductive limitations as marsupials, yet as the platypus, Castorocauda, Liaoconodon and several others show...
But those weren't fully aquatic, they where only semi aquatic.
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
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belonochasma


Meet Belonochasma. It's a gnathostome vertebrate from the mesozoic. Yeah, that's it.
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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kusanagi
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Insect Illuminati Get Shrekt
Aug 7 2017, 06:42 PM
JohnFaa
Aug 7 2017, 06:40 PM
kusanagi
Aug 6 2017, 07:28 PM
Stagodonts were as aquatic as Enhydra and had ear bones consistent with an aquatic lifestyle, as well as a durophagous habit more probably satiated by shelly invertebrates than baby ankylosaurs as stupid sources insist. Yes fully aquatic marsupials exist and have existed and can be done, although some sources insist marsupials are impaired at transitioning to aquatic life compared to placentals.

By technicality stagodonts aren't marsupials, but yes.

Non-placental mammals as a whole have/had the supposed reproductive limitations as marsupials, yet as the platypus, Castorocauda, Liaoconodon and several others show...
But those weren't fully aquatic, they where only semi aquatic.
Nor is the yapok nor the stagodontidae, but the yapok was supposedly unique and platypuses are supposed to only exist because marsupials were impaired in Australia at entering monoteme niches, as the yapok was somehow improbable. The former presence of platypuses in the Neotropics refutes this almost as well as the yapok and all those other aquatic mammals with larval offspring.

Similarly marsupial-type mammals can be sand swimmers: it matters not should Notoryctes be an odd bandicoot or a surviving meridiolestidan because - again - the total group of therians was marsupial-like. In either phylogeny Notoryctes is a sand swimmer with a pouch, a larval state and a habitus causing similar problems to those faced by aquatic marsupials
Edited by kusanagi, Aug 8 2017, 04:07 PM.
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kusanagi
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Inceptis
Aug 6 2017, 03:45 PM
Stromatoveris psygmoglena is an enigmatic organism from the Chengjiang deposits-big surprise there, huh? It is enigmatic, though in the fact that it resembles some Ediacaran fossils, even though all known Vendians died at the start of the Cambrian or immediately after.

Posted Image

However, one hypothesis exists that it is a sessile, basal ctenophore, or closely related to ctenophores. Now, at first, this seems a little out of place-true, the tightly packed segments could resemble comb rows, but all ctenophores we know of are active, swimming predators, right? Not so. Enter Coeloplana sp. and friends. These guys live on the sea bottom, attached to various different objects and filter out plankton with their long tentacles. These guys are uncommon, but so far they constitute a third of ctenophore species, and we're likely to find more.

Quote:
 
Platyctenida is the only benthic group of organism in the phylum Ctenophora. Ranging in size 15 cm and below, they have dorsalventrally flattened, oval bodies and secondarily bilaterally symmetrical, platyctenids look very much like nudibranchs or flatworms and are often confused for them. All but 1 species of platyctenids do not possess the iconic ctene rows (the ciliated comb-rows) that distinguishes the Ctenophores but they still possess the pair of tentilla-bearing tentacles and adhesive collocytes that also characterize the phylum in pores along the dorsal surface.[1] They cling to and creep on surfaces by everting the pharynx and using it as a muscular "foot".

They are usually cryptically-colored, live on rocks, algae, soft coral, or the body surfaces of other invertebrates; primarily certain species of Cnidarians and Echinoderms (primarily the genus Coeloplana sp.). They are often revealed by their long tentacles with many sidebranches, seen streaming off the back of the animal into the current. They tend to be ectosymbiotic with the organisms they live on.[2]

Where as most Ctenophores are hermaphroditic, certain platyctenids have been found to be asexual, and furthermore, where other Ctenophores have been found to reproduce using external fertilization, certain species of platyctenids have been found to use brood pouches.[3]

Platyctenida are considered to be a phylogenetically young group along with the orders Lobata and Beroida and are believed to have stemmed from an ancestral version of the order Cydippida, after some kind of bottleneck effect in the phylum. This has been supported by strong morphological and developmental data, specifically the sharing of what has been termed a "Cydippida-like" larva form in all 4 orders. Platyctenida is thought to be a polyphyletic group.[4]


It says it's a young group, but I can't help but notice the similarities they have to Stromatoveris.

Posted Image Posted Image
Bear in mind that Vendian fronds which were actually hexaradial did have homologues of comb rows, as did scleroctenophores from the Cambrian which also took up sediment though Wikipedia chooses an image of free swimming. The correct comparison for the fronds is Cambrian scleroctenophorans not modern sessile ctenophores.

The interesting thing about ctenophores living today is they possess a double anus which might mean a convergently evolved through gut. Or maybe not but one wonders when the trait evolved, and which fossil eumetazoans shared it.
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Inceptis
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kusanagi
Aug 8 2017, 04:15 PM
Bear in mind that Vendian fronds which were actually hexaradial did have homologues of comb rows, as did scleroctenophores from the Cambrian which also took up sediment though Wikipedia chooses an image of free swimming. The correct comparison for the fronds is Cambrian scleroctenophorans not modern sessile ctenophores.

The interesting thing about ctenophores living today is they possess a double anus which might mean a convergently evolved through gut. Or maybe not but one wonders when the trait evolved, and which fossil eumetazoans shared it.

Okay, what source did you get that from in link form, please?

Also, the phylogenetic history of ctenophoers is a weird one. They evolved neurons independently from all other animals that have them, and were likely the first to split off the evolutionary tree from sponges, even before cnidarians. For all we know, the Cambrian Explosion made another branch off of ctenophora that resembles the platyctenida but went extinct shortly after.

And, in my very unscientific opinion, scleroctenophore fossils look nothing like Stromatoveris.
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IIGSY
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Inceptis
Aug 9 2017, 06:20 PM
They evolved neurons independently from all other animals
That's not confirmed
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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Rebirth
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Here are five of New Zealand's true lizard species. The true lizard herpetofauna is only 7-26 million years old and consists only of geckos and skinks, but there are dozens of species in various niches.

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This is the Otago skink (Oligosoma otagense), one of the largest New Zealand lizard species. It is a skink of around 30 centimeters long, and basks mainly on schist outcrops, feeding on insects (especially moths), spiders and berries. The region they live in, Central Otago, is known for hot, dry summers up to 30 degrees C (temperatures above this are general fatal for all New Zealand reptiles) and freezing cold winters. Nonetheless, the Otago skink does not hibernate or brumate and can even bask in the snow. They are sadly endangered due to introduced cats, mustelids, possums and rats, and so a combination of predator control, habitat protection and captive breeding (both zoos and experienced private keepers) is being done to prevent their extinction.

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This is the diving skink or egg-laying skink (Oligosoma suteri). It is notable for not only being the only New Zealand lizard to lay eggs (all others give live birth), but it is also a beach-dweller, foraging in tide pools, hunting marine invertebrates in washed-up kelp and even diving for up to 20 minutes. It is not thought to be endangered, and is in fact quite common in the North Island's north-western coast where it lives, but is not found in captivity.

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This beautiful lizard is the Northland green gecko (Naultinus grayii). A diurnal green gecko of up to 20 centimeters, this is one of the most common NZ lizards held privately in captivity (a license is required for this, and easy to get, however they cannot be captured from the wild, exported, sold or bought, only given or traded from other licensed keepers, the geckos in captivity are descended from those captured before protection started in the 1980s). It is an omnivore, feeding on berries and insects, and most keepers feed them on flies, moths and organic fruit puree, and also keep them in outdoor cages as opposed to in terrariums. Sadly, introduced predators and poaching for the pet trade (especially to Europe and Japan), along with habitat loss, have threatened this species with extinction, though the state of South Island Naultinus species is generally worse.

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This harlequin gecko (Tukutuku raikurae) is one of the most mysterious and stunning New Zealand lizards, a small species found in Stewart Island. Only discovered in 1966, it is capable of being active at temperatures as low as 4 degrees Celsius. In fact, this cold preference is why they are not found in captivity, and never will be. It has been attempted, but all individuals died or were released, as not even an aquarium chiller could keep them cold enough.

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The final one I will show is the Duvaucel's gecko (Hoplodactylus duvaucelii), another giant of the NZ lizard fauna at up to 32 centimeters long, one of the largest geckos in the world. While found today only on offshore islands off the coast of the North Island and the Cook Strait (similar to tuatara), it once had a range as far north as Northland and as far south as Otago in the South Island, suggesting a wide range of climatic tolerances. Despite being rare in the wild, it is one of the more common captive lizards, though a mid-level permit is needed to own them they are apparently rather easy to keep though they need a lot of sunlight to prevent metabolic bone disease. Like most or all NZ geckos, it is an omnivore with a preference for large insects such as weta and moths.
Edited by Rebirth, Aug 10 2017, 02:22 AM.
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