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Obscure Taxa; For interesting or obscure organisms you'd like to share.
Topic Started: Dec 14 2016, 09:46 PM (48,916 Views)
Archeoraptor
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"A living paradox"
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long live diatoms
Astarte an alt eocene world,now on long hiatus but you never know
Fanauraa; The rebirth of Aotearoa future evo set in new zealand after a mass extinction
coming soon......a world that was seeded with earth´s weridest
and who knows what is coming next...........

" I have to know what the world will be looking throw a future beyond us
I have to know what could have been if fate acted in another way
I have to know what lies on the unknown universe
I have to know that the laws of thee universe can be broken
throw The Spec I gain strength to the inner peace
the is not good of evil only nature and change,the evolution of all livings beings"
"
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Dragonthunders
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The ethereal archosaur in blue

Sayornis
Jan 6 2018, 09:59 PM
Thanks for keeping the list updated! However, you omitted this post of mine on Caduceia/"Rubberneckia".
Heh, sorry for that. :lol: I fixed it
Projects

"Active" projects

The Future is Far
Welcome to the next chapters of the evolution of life on earth, travel the across the earth on a journey that goes beyond the limits, a billion years of future history in the making.

The SE giants project
Wonder what is the big of the big on speculative evolution? no problem, here is the answer

Coming one day
Age of Mankind
Humanity fate and its possible finals.

The Long Cosmic Journey
The history outside our world.

The alternative paths
The multiverse, the final frontier...

Holocene park: Welcome to the biggest adventure of the last 215 million years, where the age of mammals comes to life again!
Cambrian mars: An interesting experiment on an unprecedented scale, the life of a particular and important period in the history of our planet, the cambric life, has been transported to a terraformed and habitable mars in an alternative past.
Two different paths, two different worlds, but same life and same weirdness.




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CeratosaurusKing
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Residential ceratosaurus fanboy
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Sayornis
Jan 6 2018, 09:59 PM
Thanks for keeping the list updated! However, you omitted this post of mine on Caduceia/"Rubberneckia".

I'm not sure if these qualify as a distinct taxon, but they're certainly odd: the cottonwood trees of Anton Valley, Panama grow with square trunks. Even their growth rings are quadrilateral:
Posted Image
The Atlas Obscura article mentions a study from the University of Florida on how local conditions shape the trees' odd growth, but I can't track it down.

While I'm on the subject of square life-forms, the archaean Haloquadratum, found in brine pools, has square cells:
Posted Image

Radiolaria, a clade of marine protozoa, are also known for their geometric forms of their silica skeletons:
Posted Image
Polyhedron-shaped radiolaria illustrated by Ernst Haeckel
IT'S MINECRAFT TIME!
Projects in work
Raparia

Future project ideas:
Tale of the horned beasts - A alternate evolution project where ceratosaurus never went extinct and instead evovled to better fit the new challenges they shall face ahead of them.

Umber - A alternate universe project where portals have been opening up to a moon named "umber" other then a few species of freshwater and saltwater fish, as well as invertebrates. Pangolins,Iguanas,Noasauriade, and Cuttlefish are the most prominet group of animals.
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Rebirth
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Adolescent
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Of all the geckos in New Zealand, the South Island members of the genus Naultinus are widely held to be among the, if not the, most beautiful species of them all, though the Stewart Island harlequin gecko might give them a run for their money. I will present three species which may particularly catch the eye.
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Naultinus stellatus, or the Nelson green gecko, is found throughout the Nelson province in the northern South Island of New Zealand, as well as northern Westland, typically in forests and shrublands, often in subalpine regions. They range anywhere from 4.5 to over 8 centimeters in snout-to-vent length, and are threatened by both habitat loss and introduced predators, which includes not only introduced mammals but also introduced wasps. Another problem is poaching for the international pet trade, of which there have been several highly publicized incidents.
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Naultinus gemmeus, the jewelled gecko, is an endangered gecko species found in several locations of the southern South Island, including Banks Peninsula, inland Canterbury and Otago Peninsula, as well as an isolated, unmarked population on Codfish Island near Stewart Island. They reach up to 17 centimeters long, and are vulnerable to habitat loss, introduced predators and are especially poached for the pet trade in Europe. The Otago Museum has one individual alive on display that was repatriated from Germany after being illegally smuggled out of the country, and sadly cannot ever return to the wild due to possible disease risk.
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Naultinus rudis, the rough gecko, is endemic to the Kaikoura Ranges and reaches lengths of up to 17 centimeters long. The usual threats of habitat loss, introduced predators and poaching threaten this species as well.

All species of South Island Naultinus (as well as Naultinus in general) are found in captivity both in zoos and private collections. With NZ lizards, captive populations tend to be separated not only by species but by wild populations. For example, jewelled geckos from Banks and Otago Peninsula are not interbred as this causes them to lose all conservation value. This is sometimes as extreme (but justified nonetheless) as not breeding species individuals from different offshore islands, even if they are mostly identical.
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Troll Man
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pretend this says something funny

South American opossums


hoppers of the grass


vegetarian louses


marine leeches


prehistoric millipedes


deep sea sharks (and one non-deep sea shark)


L O N G G scale bois


flab fish


animal
Isla del Mundo Perdido! Diyu! R'lyeh!

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Also can into [天].

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lamna
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Very nice post. The Permian Extinction was just colossal. It's a real line in the sand between the familiar and the bizarre world of deep time.
Living Fossils

Fósseis Vibos: Reserva Natural


34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur.
T.Neo
 
Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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HangingThief
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Wow you stole so many of mine... that i was definitely, for sure going to get around to posting.


Anyway, for anyone who's interested here's a recording of the extremely loud sound produced by male Bullacris: https://sixlegsphoto.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/bullacris_r.mp3

Possibly my favorite sound produced by any animal, it's just so eerie.
Hey.


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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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Wow. An incertae sedis animal as late as the Permian. This just begs the question, is it possible to have ncertae sedis animals in the Mesozoic? Or even Cenozoic?
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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Chuditch
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Dasyurid
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Posted Image

A reconstruction of an Emuary (Emuarius sp.), a ratite from the late Oligocene and early Miocene of Australia. Like its name suggests (which is a mix of emu and cassowary if you didn't notice), they have both emu- and cassowary-like features. There are two known species
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Fazaner
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Шашава птичурина
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Ocepechelon is an extinct genus of giant dermochelyoid sea turtle known from Late Cretaceous (late Maastrichtian stage, 67 Myr) phosphatic deposits of the Oulad Abdoun Basin, Khouribga Province of Morocco. It is known from the holotype OCP DEK/GE 516, a complete but isolated 70-cm-long skull, making it one of the largest marine turtles ever described. It was first named by Nathalie Bardet, Nour-Eddine Jalil, France de Lapparent de Broin, Damien Germain, Olivier Lambert and Mbarek Amaghzaz in 2013 and the type species is Ocepechelon bouyai. The feeding apparatus of Ocepechelon, a bony pipette-like snout, is unique among tetrapods and shares unique convergences with both syngnathid fishes (unique long tubular bony snout ending in a rounded and forward directed mouth) and beaked whales (large size and elongated edentulous jaws).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocepechelon more on the wiki page for vacuum-turtle.
Draving by hodarinundy from DA.
Projects (they are not dead, just updated realy slowly, feel free to comment):
-World after plague After a horrible plague unleashed by man nature slowly recovers. Now 36 million years later we take a look at this weird and wonderful world.
-Galaxy on fire. They have left their home to get out of war. They had no idea what awaits them.

My Deviant art profile, if you're curious.
Before you get offended or butthurt read this

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lamna
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Monitor lizards are pretty neat, but they are mostly just different sizes and colours right?
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Well, not this guy the Earless monitor lizard, Lanthanotus borneensis. Technically speaking it's not a true monitor lizard, but it is a close relative of Varanidae.
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The Earless monitor lizard is in fact they only member of the family Lanthanotidae. Quite where Lanthanotidae fits within the lizards has been debated for quite some time, originally they were thought to be close to the gila monster and beaded lizard.
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But it now seems likely they are close to Varanids. Interesting thing is that while I might refer to them as close relatives, these groups emerged during the cretaceous, they have been evolving along separate lines for tens of millions of years.
Spoiler: click to toggle

They are quiet little inhabitants of Boreno, preferring to live in wet environments with their ideal habitat being rocky jungle streams. They can even swallow food while underwater, not something many other lizards can do.
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Naturally such a pretty animal is popular in captivity, however, breeding success is limited and very recent. Most animals on the market are wild-caught. Given their secretive lifestyle it's hard to know how well they are doing, but it looks concerning.
Living Fossils

Fósseis Vibos: Reserva Natural


34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur.
T.Neo
 
Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
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HangingThief
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ghoulish
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When you're a dragon, but you're also trying to be a salamander
Hey.


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Archeoraptor
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"A living paradox"
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that smol chinese dragon
Astarte an alt eocene world,now on long hiatus but you never know
Fanauraa; The rebirth of Aotearoa future evo set in new zealand after a mass extinction
coming soon......a world that was seeded with earth´s weridest
and who knows what is coming next...........

" I have to know what the world will be looking throw a future beyond us
I have to know what could have been if fate acted in another way
I have to know what lies on the unknown universe
I have to know that the laws of thee universe can be broken
throw The Spec I gain strength to the inner peace
the is not good of evil only nature and change,the evolution of all livings beings"
"
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Scrublord
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Father Pellegrini
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The Hawaiian islands used to be home to a bewildering variety of ground-dwelling birds, ranging from the turkey-sized moa-nalos to bizarre land-dwelling ibises and kiwi-like ducks. But today, only one of those landlubbers survives, and the fact that it still exists at all is a miracle.
The Laysan duck is a smaller relative of the mallard, found exclusively on the northwestern Hawaiian island of Laysan. It displays a number of adaptations one would expect from a bird living on a tiny island--it is smaller than its relatives, its wings are relatively short and its flight muscles are reduced. Unusually for a duck, it feeds almost exclusively on flying insects, which it catches by running after them on the ground. It rarely flies, and never for long distances.
The Laysan duck was once reduced to a population of no more than seven individuals when introduced rats and rabbits turned the island into a barren dust bowl. Three other birds from the same place--the Laysan rail, the Laysan honeycreeper, and the Laysan millerbird-- were killed off, but the duck managed to survive and has become the subject of a successful breeding program.
Today there are more than 500 of the ducks, although the population was dealt a severe setback after a tsunami in 2011. Nevertheless they are recovering nicely and the species may even be down listed from Endangered to Threatened by next year. Populations have also been established on Midway Island and Kure, as "insurance" against any future threats to the main population on Laysan.
It would be remiss of me to end this without noting that the Laysan duck is an animal with some interesting spec potential. As a land-dwelling duck seemingly in the process of evolving away from flight and towards running, it could open up an entire new niche for ducks. . . if only there weren't so many pesky humans in the way.

Predatory flightless ducks. You heard it here first.
Edited by Scrublord, Mar 10 2018, 12:10 PM.
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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Rebirth
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Adolescent
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lamna
Jan 13 2018, 12:20 PM
Monitor lizards are pretty neat, but they are mostly just different sizes and colours right?
Spoiler: click to toggle

Well, not this guy the Earless monitor lizard, Lanthanotus borneensis. Technically speaking it's not a true monitor lizard, but it is a close relative of Varanidae.
Spoiler: click to toggle

The Earless monitor lizard is in fact they only member of the family Lanthanotidae. Quite where Lanthanotidae fits within the lizards has been debated for quite some time, originally they were thought to be close to the gila monster and beaded lizard.
Spoiler: click to toggle

But it now seems likely they are close to Varanids. Interesting thing is that while I might refer to them as close relatives, these groups emerged during the cretaceous, they have been evolving along separate lines for tens of millions of years.
Spoiler: click to toggle

They are quiet little inhabitants of Boreno, preferring to live in wet environments with their ideal habitat being rocky jungle streams. They can even swallow food while underwater, not something many other lizards can do.
Spoiler: click to toggle

Naturally such a pretty animal is popular in captivity, however, breeding success is limited and very recent. Most animals on the market are wild-caught. Given their secretive lifestyle it's hard to know how well they are doing, but it looks concerning.
Also, they have been protected in all of their native range for a long time, so all animals on the market are either smuggled animals or recently descended from smuggled animals (though bearded dragons in the pet trade today are also the descendants of smuggled animals).
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