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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 (48,911 Views) | |
| Archeoraptor | Feb 22 2018, 03:37 AM Post #781 |
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"A living paradox"
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also to note europe had metatheria until the miocene as shown in like a page before |
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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" " Spoiler: click to toggle | |
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| Chuditch | Feb 22 2018, 04:03 AM Post #782 |
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Dasyurid
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![]() So we all know about the famous Laughing Kookaburra (Dacelo novaeguineae), one of Australia's most popular birds and common in many areas of bushland and even city suburbs. However, did you know about some of its lesser known relatives? Here are the other three kookaburra species. ![]() Australia's second kookaburra, the Blue-winged Kookaburra (Dacelo leachii) replaces its famous relative across northern Australia in the Top End and Kimberly regions. Its range however extends deep into that of the Laughing Kookaburra on the Queensland coast, where the two species compete directly (rare among close relatives). It also lives in southern New Guinea. While the Laughing Kookaburra is known as the 'laughing jackass', the Blue-winged is named the 'howling jackass', after its maniac-like laughing call. I have seen both species in the wild. ![]() The stunning Spangled Kookaburra (Dacelo tyro) is found in the Trans-Fly savannas of New Guinea as well as Aru Island. Despite its attractive appearence, practically nothing is known of its family life or breeding biology. For some reason Wikipedia states it lives in Australia, just another example of how the website can be untrustworthy. ![]() Another beautiful New Guinean species, the Rufuous-bellied Kookaburra (Dacelo gaudichaud) is widespread across the island's lowlands. This species is unusual among kookaburras as it inhabits tropical rainforests instead of open areas and breeds in pairs rather than cooperatively. It is the smallest kookaburra species (Laughing is the largest). Strange how the least colourful is the most popular, huh? Well, they're all wonderful birds, and an interesting genera of land-dwelling kingfishers. Us Aussies are truly privileged to hear their calls, even though they can be a little annoying at 3 in the morning. |
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My wildlife YouTube channel Projects
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| Tartarus | Feb 22 2018, 06:34 PM Post #783 |
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Prime Specimen
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Incidentally, I get laughing kookaburras in my neighbourhood from time to time but I've never been woken by them at the extremely early time you apparently have been on at least some occasions. I quite like the kookaburra calls. If there's a local bird call that can get annoying I'd say that would go to the shrieks of the sulphur-crested cockatoos. |
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| Chuditch | Feb 22 2018, 07:22 PM Post #784 |
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Dasyurid
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I love kookaburra calls (including the maniac laugh of the Blue-winged). The earliest I've been woken up by them is around 5, but I wasn't annoyed at all (I get up at 5 regularly while camping). I was going off what I have heard of other's experiences with kookaburras. I wouldn't mind being woken up at 3 if it was a one-off thing, but I guess being repeatedly woken up so early multiple times would get pretty annoying. Sadly, the nearest kookaburra colony is several kilometers away from my home. Definitely agree that parrots can be annoying though. For me it's lorikeets right outside my window. |
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My wildlife YouTube channel Projects
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| HangingThief | Feb 22 2018, 10:48 PM Post #785 |
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ghoulish
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I've found pellets from belted kingfishers. They're translucent, brittle pellets of tiny scales and bones. Today we're gonna talk about the realest isopod, Hemilepistus reaumuri. ![]() H. reaumuri is a fairly large (2 cm+) terrestrial woodlouse found in xeric regions of the Middle East and northern Africa, which is a very dry habitat for a terrestrial crustacean. Most woodlice die from insufficient humidity very easily, and this one is no exception, but it is much more tolerant of dryness than most species and has behavioral adaptations to survive in desert regions. In proper habitat they occur abundantly in huge population densities, making up a large chunk of animal biomass, around half that of all mammals in their habitat. (Yes, normally arthropod biomass greatly outweighs mammal biomass, but this is a single species.) They avoid desiccation by digging a vertical burrow a foot or more deep, where the humidity is high enough for them to survive. Presumably the raised ridges on their upper surface are used for digging. Their feces is dry and like other woodlice they excrete urine through their exoskeleton as ammonia gas rather than liquid urea, but they require air humidity to breathe with their gills and lack the waterproof exoskeleton that allows insects to survive low- humidity conditions. (On the plus side, woodlice are able to absorb water vapor through their exoskeleton, which probably helps Hemilepistus survive where liquid water is rare.) ![]() They spend most of their time at the bottom of their burrow, which has a very neat, perfectly circular shape which reminds me of that of a tiger beetle larva. They mostly emerge during Real Isopod Hours to collect plant matter. Rather than waste time outside the burrow, they grab large chunks and drag it home to feed at leisure, much like a human raiding a refrigerator at midnight and dragging food back into bed. If one gets lost while foraging, it walks in a spiral until it finds its burrow. H. reaumuri is unusual among woodlice in being territorial and exhibiting parental care. Individuals defend their burrow entrances and recognize their kin. They mate monogamously, with a male performing an elaborate and prolonged mating ritual with a female before taking up residence in her burrow and helping to raise her young. In spring the female gives birth to up to a hundred babies, and the parents take turns guarding the burrow and collecting food for them. Once the babies leave a few weeks later, they run the risk of being killed by unrelated H. reaumuri and fed to their babies. Presumably without the burrow- guarding system enlisted by parents such cannibals would directly raid burrows containing vulnerable young. The monogamous mating probably stems from their unusually short lifespan, around 1 year. They only breed once in their life, while other woodlice live several years and females may give birth several times per year. I have no idea why this is. Desert arthropods are often long- lived, the scarcity of resources and favorable conditions driving a slow metabolism and long life cycle, but not this species. I assume the reasons are related to why they're so abundant in their habitat. There are other members of this genus, but H. reaumuri (the only species found west of Asia) is, according to wikipedia, the only species that exhibits parental care. But they might just not be as well studied. Anyway, I think this is a fascinating species. Woodlice are creatures that usually have an exceedingly simple lifestyle, but harsh conditions has endowed this species with complex behaviors that are unseen in its relatives and relatively rare in arthropods overall. That's pretty neat. Think about that when you spec.
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| IIGSY | Feb 23 2018, 01:27 AM Post #786 |
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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Those are some pretty nice isopods. Fun fact: Unlike other crustaceans, Isopods have no naupilus stage |
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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 | Feb 23 2018, 01:30 AM Post #787 |
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Superhuman
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this is only the beginning...in time, they shall rule. (seriously, that's massively cool isopods) .----------------------------. question - didn't there used to be (Miocene?) a species of antelope with two asymmetrical horns? not one of the three-horned ones, or five- or seven-horned...just two horns, but of different lengths. |
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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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| Archeoraptor | Feb 23 2018, 09:00 AM Post #788 |
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"A living paradox"
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I knew of that isopod but was unaware of the burrow being so perfectly roudn or the bakc pointy things |
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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" " Spoiler: click to toggle | |
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| lamna | Feb 23 2018, 04:04 PM Post #789 |
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I want to talk about feral animals today, or rather, a different sort of animal that probably needs a new category. You see when most people here "feral" they think of a domestic animal that has escaped or been released, and has now become a wild animal. Generally, this is not the case. Feral animals neither wild, nor wholly domestic. Very often they hold on to useful traits gained from a life in captivity. Being able to breed more rapidly is very useful, however it has a cost. Most feral animals still rely on humans, directly or indirectly for food. Feral cats, for example, rely on human-handouts, scavenging for discarded food, and hunting the vast numbers of rodents that exist around humans. But there are some animals that have gone beyond this, and truly returned to the wild, with no aid from humans required. Perhaps these animals could be termed post-feral, or rewilded. These animals all share something in common, antiquity. All of them escaped into the wild a very, very long time ago. A long period of time to evolve into forms more suited to live in the wild, plus more limited domestication probably allowed these animals to develop into wild forms. The first is very famous, the Dingo, Australia's wild dog. The Dingo has been in Australia for a very, very long time. At least five thousand years of evolution have produced a more jackal-like animal, ideally suited to life in Australia's harsh climates. The second many of you may not have heard of is the Kri-kri. The Kri-kri was often called the Cretan ibex in the past, and with good reason. At a glance, this animal seems very similar to the bezoar ibex, Capra aegagrus. They live totally wild lives in in the mountains of Crete, but have no fossil record on the island. As mentioned before, until recently, dwarf relatives of the famous Irish Elk once filled that niche on Crete. Molecular studies have confirmed, these are descended from domestic goats. Kri-kri were originally domestic goats, brought to the island by the Minoans, the Europe's first civilisation around nine thousand years ago, only a few thousand years after the goat was first domesticated. Incidentally, goats were the second animal humans domesticated. Perhaps they should be considered the first, as it looks ever more likely dogs co-evolved with humans, rather and humans deliberately seeking them out for domestication. Pressures from human settlement caused these animals to become quite rare in the 20th century. Then WW2 happened, and if you don't know what happened in Crete, well, it wasn't good for the Kri-kri. After Italy attempted an invasion of Greece in 1940, Germany was forced to step in and help out their ally, and occupied Crete in early 1941. As an isolated island Crete would have been an excelent staging post for the Allies to try and retake the mainland, so the Germans invaded by air rapidly took over the island. However, the course of the war soon changed, with the entry of the USSR and USA into the war in 1941, soon Crete was isolated, Allied navies making food shipments nearly impossible. The situation for the occupation forces and Cretan civilians soon grew dire, and Kri-kri were an obvious source of food, and easily hunted on a island awash with guns. The Germans maintained control of part of Crete until May 12th 1945, by that time their were very few Kri-kri alive, by 1960 only 200 were left alive. Thankefully, they did manage to hang on, and though still rare today, their are believed to be two thousand living mainly in the Samariá Gorge. Third, a animal I'm sure you've heard of but probably didn't know was feral, the Przewalski's horse. Until recently it was assumed that they represented the last undomesticated examples of Equus ferus, however very recent evidence has shown this not to be the case. The very first known domesticated horses were those of the Botai culture, in modern Kazakhstan between 3700 and 3100 BC. However, DNA testing has shown that these Botai horse are not the ancestors of modern horses, but rather the ancestors of the Przewalski's horses. This means two things, first, that horses have been domesticated multiple times, and second, that Przewalski's horses are actually feral. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/ancient-dna-upends-horse-family-tree Edited by lamna, Feb 23 2018, 04:04 PM.
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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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| Yiqi15 | Feb 23 2018, 06:07 PM Post #790 |
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Prime Specimen
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![]() Sable Island is a small (barely over 302 kilometers) island located 300 kilometers southeast of Nova Scotia, Canada. It was formed at the end of the Pleistocene's Wisconsinian around 16,000 years ago from a terminal moraine over a bank which lends its name after the island. Perhaps the island's best known inhabitants are the Sable Island Horses, a feral population of wild horses. While anecdotes state they were shipwrecked, records state they arrived thanks to Thomas Hancock in the mid-1700's after the British seized Acadia in order to start a farming settlement. The horses themselves are rather small at 13 and 14 hands (52 and 56 inches, 132 and 142 cm) and about 360 kilograms (790 lb). Its currently estimated that there are only 500 individual horses at anytime. ![]() While horses are Sable Island's claim to fame, it has its own variety of endemic fauna, mostly arthropods. Two species of them are the Sable Island Sweat Bee (Lasioglossum sablense), a type of halictid bee native to the island's dunes and heathlands and Trichlochmaea sablensis, a genus of leaf beetle. These insects either were blown to Sable Island or arrived duruing the pleistocene, when the Coastal Plain of the US was much larger and thus closer to the island. ![]() ![]() Occasionally, the island holds a special visitor: the Ipswich sparrow (P. s. princeps), a subspecies of savannah sparrow native to much of New England which nests exclusively on the island. It also hosts the world's largest rookery of grey seals. ![]() Sable Island is a hidden gem in Canada's biosohere, but unfortunately, offshore drilling, climate change, and the horses which are an invasive species all pose threats to it. |
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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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| LittleLazyLass | Feb 23 2018, 09:49 PM Post #791 |
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Proud quilt in a bag
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I did actually know about Przewalski's horses being post-ferals, but reading about that and the kri-kri makes me wonder how much of it comes down to them reverting a more wild state, as opposed to their ancestral domestic stock merely not having yet diverged that much form the Wild state; that they weren't ever that different in the first place. Do we know how quickly the change happened in domestic species back then, and just "how" domesticated the goats and horses these descended from would've been? |
totally not British, b-baka! You like me (Unlike)I don't even really like this song that much but the title is pretty relatable sometimes, I guess. Me What, you want me to tell you what these mean? Read First Words Maybe | |
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| lamna | Feb 27 2018, 09:01 AM Post #792 |
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I imagine it would have been a combination of both, that those early escapees were very similar to their wild cousins, with the thousand of years in the wild rounding out any obvious traces of being feral. But that's something you'd need to ask a zooarchaeologist about for a answer better than my personal hunches. --- Now on to a animal that I'm sure many of you have heard of, and may even have seen, but probably never thought much about. Ungulates were originally small, shy animals living in forests. As the world cooled and dried, and grasslands started to spread across the earth, several groups spread out onto the plains and became the large forms familiar to us today, giraffes, deer, camels cattle, goats, sheep, horses and rhinoceros. But far from all ungulates made this transition. Forests may have shrunk, but they are still there. Many ungulates remain shy skulkers, and hopefully I'll cover a few of those. But today I want to talk about one in particular, the dik-dik. Right from the outset, dik-dik are unusual. With many animals where the sexes differ, the species gets named after the male (for example, the blackbird). Dik-dik get their name from the alarm cries of the female. The males make a much shriller, nasal whistle. Dik-dik are a group of small African antelope found in eastern and southern Africa. Indeed they are the smallest antelope in the world, with most weighing between 3-5 kilograms (7 to 11 pounds). They live in grasslands, but need good cover and scrub to hide in. Males have small, ribbed horns which they use for sparing. These horns can sometimes be hard to see in living animals, as bother sexes have tuft of hair on their forehead which can conceal these horns. Dik-dik live in mated pairs in a small territory. Fights are rare, and mostly display and bluster, rarely coming to physical blows. ![]() ![]() But they are not similarly smaller version of other antelope, they have their own unique adaptations. They have a head that comes to a narrow point to help them browse between the shark thorns of acacia, and they have a long, mobile snout, almost a short trunk. It's not very obvious in still photos but very clear when watching footage of them. Information on the populations of these animals is scarce, but what we do know, combined with the fact that they are hard to catch with little meat on them, suggests that they are doing well and that none of the species are currently endangered. If you are doing a future evolution project on Africa or the island that will form when east Africa tears itself away from the mainland, keep these guys in mind. Finally, the species. As you might imagine, with a small shy animal spread across such a huge area, their is a lot of debate about species and subspecies. All dik-dik belong to the genus Madoqua and can be divided into two sub-genera. The silver dik-dik (Madoqua piacentinii) and Salt's dik-dik (Madoqua saltiana) are considered to be within the sub-genus Madoqua, while Kirk's dik-dik (Madoqua kirkii) and Günther's dik-dik (Madoqua guentheri) are within the sub-senus Rhynchotragus. Silver dik-dik Salt's dik-dik ![]() Kirk's dik-dik Günther's dik-dik
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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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| Sphenodon | Mar 8 2018, 07:41 PM Post #793 |
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Calcareous
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Gonorhynchiformes is an order of ray-finned fish distributed throughout the world's oceans and in freshwater environments within continental Africa. Formerly significantly more diverse than they are today, the group is presently represented by four fairly disparate families. First among these is the milkfish (Chanos chanos), the single extant representative of the family Chanidae. Chanidae was quite diverse during the Early Cretaceous, but the group has declined noticeably since then. In spite of this, the modern milkfish is arguably the most successful of the extant gonorhynchiformes, being distributed throughout the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The species is also the largest extant gonorhynchiform; typical specimens measure approximately one meter long, though individuals have been recorded to reach up to nearly six feet in length. ![]() Adult milkfish photographed in Hawaiian waters. Milkfish most often frequent coastal environments near islands and shores, in particular coastal bays and shallow reefs. They are also found sporadically in estuarine or entirely freshwater environments, with the milkfish being tolerant of a wide range of salinities. This is a reflection of the species' breeding habits; spawning occurs in pelagic environments, with the larvae maturing there for two to three weeks before moving inland to mangroves and estuaries, then eventually returning to sea (if possible - juveniles on occasion move into lakes and remain there permanently) and reaching maturity there. Larvae eat zooplankton, while adults consume primarily algae, cyanobacteria, and small invertebrates and eggs. The milkfish is also by far the most commercially and culturally relevant gonorhynchiform, being the national fish of the Philippines and a popular food fish throughout its range. In addition to standard fishery, milkfish are also present in aquaculture; most modern methods rely on the raising of commercially-bred fry in sea cages and concrete tanks, but certain operations still employ the traditional method of rearing larvae captured from freshwater rivers in enclosed pools. ![]() Milkfish for sale in a Philippine market. Next on the list is the other marine group of gonorhynchids, the beaked salmon (Gonorhynchus). Comprising a single genus in the family Gonorhynchidae, these fish are also found throughout the Pacific and Indian Oceans. They differ from the milkfish in being demersal, being on occasion referred to as sandfish due to their habits of burrowing into substrate. Typically found near shorelines, beaked salmon are nocturnal fish. When active, they emerge from the sediment to feed on benthic and burrowing invertebrates. Most species are fairly small, growing to lengths somewhere on the order of two feet (0.6 m.) in length. ![]() Specimen of Gonorhynchus greyi. Native to waters surrounding Australia and New Zealand, this species is commercially fished on a small scale. Somewhat like the milkfish, the extant beaked salmon comprise the last genus of a once far more diverse assemblage of fishes. Gonorhynchidae once included freshwater members and a far broader distribution. The best-known example of this lost diversity is Notogoneous osculus, the terminal member of its genus (and of the North American gonorhynchiformes) and a member of the Eocene-age Green River Formation fossil assemblage in Wyoming. The species was a bottom-feeding detritivore, with trace fossils of feeding and swimming motions associated to the species. N. osculus seems to have been able to grow up to three feet in length, though most adult specimens known are significantly smaller. N. osculus is also interesting in that certain quirks of its presence in the Green River Formation assemblage give some rather interesting potential insights into the species' taphonomy. An example of this would be its presence almost exclusively within the "18-inch layer" region of the Fossil Butte member of Fossil Lake (the smallest and most productive of the three Green River Formation lakes). The 18-inch layer is distinct in preserving strata elements from the center of Fossil Lake, and due to certain trends in preserved biota and stratigraphy indicates the presence of a stratified water column within that region of the lake. Therefore, the presence of N. osculus exclusively in an area otherwise unconducive to demersal fauna (barring occasional instances of water circulation) remains an enigma. Some hypothesize this as evidence that the species was a potamodromous resident of the rivers feeding into Fossil Lake, entering it to spawn and residing within it as larvae, with preserved specimens representing individuals that died during spawning. Further research is needed to determine whether or not this is the case, but given similar reproductive trends in extant gonorhynchiformes the possibility is not out of the question. ![]() A specimen of Notogoneus osculus from the Green River Formation, preserving scalation. The next family, Kneriidae (known informally as the shellears), is the most speciose extant clade within the Gonorhynchiformes, containing thirty recognized species in four genera. All are fairly small, slender-bodied fish found in freshwater systems throughout sub-Saharan Africa; most occupy fairly unassuming roles in the lower water column, feeding on small invertebrates and algae. This is not the case for all kneriids, however - for instance, the airbreathing shellear (Kneria auriculata) inhabits montane streams and is capable of breathing atmospheric air while climbing damp rocks and small waterfalls during its breeding season migrations. An airbreathing shellear (K. auriculata). The fourth and final extant group of the Gonorhynchiformes is the family Phractolaemidae, represented today solely by the hingemouth (Phractolaemus ansorgii). A small brown fish not dissimilar in form to a bichir, it is distributed widely throughout western and central Africa, generally occupying the lower water column and consuming small bits of plant material and detritus. While similar in that regard to the kneriids, the hingemouth has a variety of physical features signifying its status as a member of its own group. For one is its namesake mouth; its jaws are extensible, and are said to be capable of being "projected as a small trunk." Another would be the species' two-chambered swim bladder, which is extensively alevolar and is capable of functioning effectively as a lung. Combined with the species' small size and undemanding diet, this allows it to thrive in anoxic environments where little else can. Aside from this, information on the species is quite sparse - most records seem to be old French papers from the colonial era. ![]() A captive hingemouth (P. ansorgii) specimen. Edited by Sphenodon, Mar 8 2018, 11:02 PM.
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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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| HangingThief | Mar 8 2018, 10:23 PM Post #794 |
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ghoulish
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Oh wow I really love the beaked salmon and the hingemouth. Those are beautiful fish. I knew the milkfish was one of the last members of a formerly diverse order, but I didn't realize that its living relatives are so interesting. ![]()
Edited by HangingThief, Mar 8 2018, 10:28 PM.
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| Scrublord | Mar 8 2018, 11:06 PM Post #795 |
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Father Pellegrini
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What if I told you that North America was once home to a large bird of prey that has gone almost completely unrecorded by science? You'd probably accuse me of dabbling in cryptozoology or something of the sort. I suppose, in the strictest sense, the Painted Vulture (Sarcoramphus sacra) doesn't really qualify as a taxon, since all we have as proof of its existence is a painting by one William Bartram. However, many scientists are now reasonably sure that it was a real animal, though whether it was a species in its own right or merely a far-flung subspecies of the still-living King Vulture is a matter of dispute. For a long time it was thought that Bartram's "Painted Vulture" was merely a confused description of a caracara, but the fact that another naturalist by the name of Eleazer Albin reported a very similar bird over 50 years earlier suggests that it was real. If so, it must have become extinct by the end of the 18th century, because it has not been seen since then. According to Bartram's observations, the "Painted Vulture" would frequently scavenge on animals killed by brushfires, much as caracaras do. It looked more or less identical to a King Vulture, aside from its black and white tail. It is not unheard of for otherwise South American birds to establish themselves in Florida (the Limpkin, the Snail Kite, and the Bananaquit, to name only three), so it is not impossible that the King Vulture once lived there as well. The Painted Vulture was most likely a subspecies of the King Vulture that became isolated in Florida, but died out due to unknown causes (it was seemingly not hunted by humans) before it could be properly studied. Since there are no existing specimens of the Painted Vulture, we have no way of knowing what it actually looked like and whether it was a subspecies or a full species. We probably never will. |
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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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