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Obscure Taxa; For interesting or obscure organisms you'd like to share.
Topic Started: Dec 14 2016, 09:46 PM (48,906 Views)
IIGSY
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Chuditch
May 12 2018, 04:04 PM
IIGSY
May 12 2018, 10:50 AM
What an interesting marsupial. They way they reproduce is very reminiscent of insects, with the whole "dying after mating" thing.
Several other dasyurids, including antechinuses and the Northern Quoll, also have males that die after mating. It seems to be a popular choice for the smaller species.
Do any placentals show this kind of behavior?
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Chuditch
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IIGSY
May 12 2018, 04:17 PM
Do any placentals show this kind of behavior?
As far as I know, no.



A little-known but interesting member of polar Australia's dinosaur fauna is an unnamed spinosaur. This Australian spinosaurid is known from a single incomplete vertebra recovered from the Eumeralla Formation, the same formation as more famous dinosaurs like Leaellynasaura, Timimus and Atlascopcosaurus. The single known vertebra is that of a juvenile, and out of all other dinosaurs it most closely resembles Baryonyx.

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The vertebra on the bottom right is Baryonyx for comparison.

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Yiqi15
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While the western interior plains of Canada hold the country's most famous fossils, the Martimes hold their own assemblage of fossils. For instance, in Nova Soctia around the Bay of Fundy are fossils dating back to the Triassic period, with ichnofossils of saurischians being common,along the remains of other reptiled. One genus, recovered in 2003, is Teraterpeton hrynewichorum, a type of trilophosaur (originally thought to be its own family Teraterpetidae) around a meter long. Its closest relative is the more derived Trilophosaurus.
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The most notable trait of Teraterpeton is its elongated, ibis-like skull, with only the back half of it having teeth. While Teraterpeton's exact niche us unknown, it can be inferred that it filled a piscivorous niche, also suggested by having nostrils directly in front of the eyes a la spinosaurus. It also notably a euryapsid or having a single-holed skull even though the species came from diapsid reptiles

Two drawings of this animal
Edited by Yiqi15, May 30 2018, 08:09 AM.
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LittleLazyLass
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Maritime fossils, eh? I can work with that. Also, I was at the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History two days ago, so I'll be posting some pictures I got there in SWHTYT.

The first and more historically of Prince Edward Island's notable fossil discoveries was Bathygnathus, now known as Dimetrodon borealis. A partial maxilla discovered in shale at the bottom of a well, c. 1845, and was later described by Joseph Leidy himself. He thought it was a dinosaur, and so this makes it the first reported dinosaur from Canada, ever. Second one from all of North America, losing to something called Clepsysaurus, also not actually a dinosaur (seemingly a phytosaur, but looks like I'll have to do some digging on this one). Described in 1854, it's also the first sphenacodont ever discovered, and, as far as I can tell, the oldest pelycosaur. Dimetrodon, Sphenacodon, and Ophiacodon wouldn't be described until nearly twenty five years later.

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The holotype and only known specimen; D. grandis skull at top.
Nowadays we recognize it as just another species of Dimetrodon, which it's been petitioned to be sunk in favor of. Despite what you might expect for a species so far from Texas and Oklahoma, where most species are found, it was found in the 2015 paper that sunk it to be deeply nested within the genus, sister to the famous D. grandis. It's also bloody big; to my knowledge, it's supposed to rival the largest species in size, at about fifteen or sixteen feet long.

But, as 2015 took away our only distinct fossil genus, it gave us a new, far grander one. If Bathygnathus was of notable historic importance, Erpetonyx is of just as great evolutionary importance. Firstly, because it's not just a fragmentary maxilla, but a nearly complete specimen:

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The holotype and only known specimen. Look at that beauty!
Secondly, and more notably, due to its age. It's from the late Carboniferous, and more specifically to the early Gzhelian, the last age of the Carboniferous. The rainforest collapse had already happened, and the coal forests were largely gone, found only in isolated and increasingly rare pockets. Parareptiles were, before it, completely unknown from the period, and reptiles as a whole were very rare. It fills a roughly 4.8 million year gap in reptile species, fills in some of the parareptile ghost lineage, and, as a bolosaurian, yanks a few individual groups of reptile into the Carboniferous, indicating a high than previously expected diversity. This lack of reptile fossils is explained by their small size, making them harder to find and less obviously important out in the field. As small insectivores, they couldn't prey on the larger and more diverse synapsids of the time.

Wikipedia also indicates fossils of several common Carboniferous plant genera are found on the island. Lastly, there's some footprints of assorted early reptiles and/or diadectids from the early Permian/late Carboniferous.
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Chuditch
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Stick-nest rats (Leporillus) are a unique genus of rodents endemic to Australia, and there are, or were, two species, the Lesser Stick-nest Rat (L. apicalis) and the Greater Stick-nest Rat (L. conditor). Their names are pretty descriptive; these are rats that build giant communal nests of sticks.

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The nest of a Greater Stick-nest Rat in Arid Recovery Reserve.

Pretty neat right? Sadly, the rats haven't managed well in the modern world. Their food was decimated by introduced herbivores (they eat mostly plant matter), their nests were destroyed by thundering hooves, and they were eaten by foxes and cats. By the 1930s, stick-nest rats were extinct on mainland Australia, where they were once widespread. Even today you can still find their abandoned stick nests, a haunting reminder of the time when the rats roamed these lands. The Lesser Stick-nest Rat was gone forever. But the Greater Stick-nest Rat was more fortunate. It survived on the Franklin Islands in South Australia, where it still exists to this day.

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Greater Stick-nest Rat

Since then, Greater Stick-nest Rats, or stickies as they are sometimes called, have been at the centre of several conservation programs in order to secure the future of this unique rodent. They have been introduced to several other islands including Reevesby Island, St Peter’s Island and Salutation Island. They have also now been returned to mainland Australia, in Shark Bay Nature Reserve, Venus Bay Conservation Park, Arid Recovery Reserve, Heirisson Prong Conservation Area and AWC's Scotia and Mt Gibson sanctuaries (these are feral-exclusion areas. They can't survive where invasive species are present). There is also a large population in captivity, including a breeding population in the nocturnal house of my local zoo (Adelaide Zoo).

Although there are still only around 3000 left, the species is classed as Near Threatened as its future seems to now be secure, and numbers are gradually increasing. Most of this is due to private not-for-profit conservation companies that actually care about Australia and its unique wildlife, as the government does fuck all as usual.
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ZoologicalBotanist
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Wikipedia on the Belantsea genus
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Belantsea is a genus of fish from the Early Carboniferous period. Their short, muscular fins made them slow but maneuverable. Their diet is believed to have been bryozoans, sponges, crinoids, and other encrusting animals. They look kind of like frogfish don't they? Well, they are actually more closely related to sharks, as they are cartilaginous fish. Their general shape and appearance makes me wonder what would have happened if they hadn't gone extinct. Would they have eventually made it to land, using their muscular fins as primitive feet? We may never know.


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Tartarus
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ZoologicalBotanist
May 18 2018, 03:57 PM
Their general shape and appearance makes me wonder what would have happened if they hadn't gone extinct. Would they have eventually made it to land, using their muscular fins as primitive feet? We may never know.
An idea for an alternative evolution spec project perhaps?
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ZoologicalBotanist
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Okay, maybe I was hinting that something was in the works for this species. They did live in America during the Carboniferous, so perhaps a few snuck off on a certain island...


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HangingThief
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Here's a pretty obscure one: Telegeusidae is a family of elateroid beetles containing two genera and eight species, found in Central and North America (from Panama to the extreme southwest US). They are known only from the adult males, which are small, soft- bodied beetles with reduced elytra and exposed hindwings. The males are almost always collected at lights, and probably don't feed. No larvae or females have ever been discovered and their biology is totally unknown.

Due to their resemblance to species in related families which have flightless or larviform females (Lampyridae, Lycidae and especially Phengodidae) it is speculated that the females may be flightless or larviform. It's also quite likely that the larvae and/or females are specialist predators on some sort of invertebrate, judging by their relatives.

The most bizarre and distinctive feature of these beetles is their palps. In four of them, the final segment is elongated into a long, soft noodly appendage considerably larger than the beetles' antennae.

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Certainly a mystery waiting to be unraveled.
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beingsneaky
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the scientific name of these guys are Cthulhu macrofasciculumque and Cthylla microfasciculumque and they live in the guts of termites and help the termites digest wood

now i wish science would name more creatures after the cthulhu mythos

here is the article of where i found it https://phys.org/news/2013-04-tiny-octopus-like-microorganisms-science-fiction.html
Edited by beingsneaky, May 28 2018, 07:26 AM.
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DINOCARID
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Haven't made a post here in a while, but seeing whip-poor-wills for the first time last night inspired some nightjar-related reading that landed on this interesting bird.

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Photo by Diego Oscar.

This is a Nacunda Nighthawk (Chordeiles nacunda), a very large nighthawk from most of tropical South America east of the Andes. By very large, I mean a foot long, and that's not the only reason they're interesting. Though similar to other nighthawks in most respects, Nacunda Nighthawks are partially diurnal, foraging early in the evening and late into morning when the sun is shining. Furthermore, a significant amount of that foraging is done on the ground.

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Photo by Gustavo Casas.

They even have longer tarsi, an adaptation to walking around on the ground, instead of merely sleeping there, truly odd for the mostly aerial nightjars. Lastly, though social behavior is not entirely unknown in nighthawks, Nacunda Nighthawks have been reported to gather in flocks of several hundred individuals. Nighthawks, other nightjars, and strisores (the clade consisting of nightjars, swifts, potoos, hummingbirds, and a few others) in general, are sadly underrepresented in spec. There's a lot of potential here to be used.
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Archeoraptor
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ZoologicalBotanist
May 18 2018, 03:57 PM
We may never know.
but we can always speculate
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Fazaner
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I think I haven't posted here for some time, so I have an weird one.

I present to you a Garjainia a two species genus of Erythrosuchidae arhosaurs from Triassic. Two species known are G. prima (Russia), and G. madaiba (South Africa). The defining feature of this group if a weird proportions, especially at Garjainia.
I think that picture will show it far better than I can explain it.

In words of a picture creator(Mark Witton) ''They're the Mesozoic equivalent of mounting a howitzer on a golf cart and calling it a tank.''
For more detailed reeding visit this two blog posts from same guy above.
http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2016/09/
http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2014/11/of-tiny-tyrants-and-triassic-big-heads.html



On the topic of strange Triassic critters (Man, nature was so 'high' back then), I would like to present a interesting take on relatively well known reptile Sharovipteryx. For those who don't know it is basically a small lizard-like gliding archosauromorph that had wings on it legs.
Big image, you have been warned.


EDIT: Thanks to Tartarus for pointing out that they were actually archosauromorphs and not true archosaurs.
Edited by Fazaner, May 31 2018, 02:52 PM.
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Scrublord
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Isn't that the one David Peters think was the ancestor of pterosaurs?
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Fazaner
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Scrublord
May 30 2018, 09:18 AM
Isn't that the one David Peters think was the ancestor of pterosaurs?
Yup.

Although I still don't get how would that be possible.
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