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Obscure Taxa; For interesting or obscure organisms you'd like to share.
Topic Started: Dec 14 2016, 09:46 PM (48,958 Views)
DINOCARID
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Adolescent
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I'm sorry pandoravirus, you've been edged out as spoopiest microorganism.
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The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms
The Tetrarch (coming soon)


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peashyjah
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Bydo
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W.C.K.D
Dec 15 2016, 07:55 AM
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Remember an ancient show called Prehistoric Park guys? Good times, watched it when I was 7. Really nice show except for the completely impossible time travel. Loved how they portrayed the terror birds and they introduced me to the Toxodon. I don't really know much about them though, just that their lifestyles were probably similar to hippos.
I used to watch Prehistoric Park on Animal Planet before a long time ago.
Discontinued projects:
The New Ostracoderms (i might continue with this project again someday)
The Americas (where in 58 million years from now in the future North and South America has both become isolated island continents)



All Expansions (my attempt at expanding the universe of All Tomorrows by Nemo Ramjet aka C.M. Kosemen, started June 6, 2018)
Anthropozoic (my attempt at expanding the universe of Man After Man and also a re-imagining of it, coming 2019 or 2020)
New Cenozoica (my attempt at expanding the universe of The New Dinosaurs and also a re-imagining of it, also coming 2019 or 2020)
All Alternatives or All Changes (a re-telling of All Tomorrows but with some minor and major "changes", coming June 10, 2018)
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HangingThief
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ghoulish
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Talenkauen Spec
Dec 25 2016, 12:26 AM
Polypodium hydriforme is the only species in it's genus, family, and class. It's a freshwater parasite, that attacks the oocytes (immature egg cells) of acipenseriform fishes (Sturgeon and Paddlefish). This makes it one of the few known metazoan species that live inside the cells of other animals. P.hydriforme is traditionally classified as a primitive cnidarian. However, genetic analysis suggests it actually has closer ties to bilaterians.


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I wonder if they make pests of themselves at caviar farms.
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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Dromaeosaurus
Dec 25 2016, 07:07 AM
Stretching the boundaries of what counts as a "taxon"...

The 8th February 1951, the hospital of Baltimore took cervical cancer cells from Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman who would die because of that cancer in October. Despite the death of their original host, the cancer cells survived well enough in the lab, because of a genetical mutation that allowed them to replicate indefinitely. They're hypertriploid, reaching 76-80 chromosomes per cells, and they have absorbed viral genes from the papillomavirus. They were successfully cloned in 1955. Six decades later, those cells are still growing and reproducing. Known as HeLa cells, they're shipped around the world to be used in all kinds of experiments - cancer research, resistence to toxins and viruses, sensitivity to drugs or cosmetics, and so on. If you still count them as parts of Henrietta Lack's body, Mrs. Lacks weighs around 20 tons at 96 years.
Because of their inhuman genome, Leigh Van Valen, whom you might remember for the Red Queen Hypothesis, proposed to classify HeLa cells in the new species Helacyton gartleri, named after Stanley Gartler, who had worked on their clonation and issues with contamination of other cultures. An alternative proposal would classify them as Homo sapiens gartleri. So here you have it - the first (kinda) official posthuman!

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I am left absolutely dumbfounded. Someone should make a spec project about this.
Edited by IIGSY, Dec 25 2016, 02:54 PM.
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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Dromaeosaurus
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Haemothermic orthostatic matrotrophic lexiphanic deuterostome
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The sea pig (Scotoplanes globosa) is an abyssal sea cucumber that has turned a few of his tube feet into hydraulic legs to walk around the seafloor, 3-5 km deep. They have five pairs of legs (not many compared to the hundreds of tube feet of most echinoderms) are inflated and deflated with water by cavities in the main body; other tube feet have formed two pairs of dorsal tentacles, while curiusly hand-like anterior appendages explore the mud in search of food. Despite being the ultimate bottom-feeders, they only eat the freshest food - which in the deep sea means detritus that has reached the bottom less than three months before.

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Bonus pictures
My deviantART page - My other extra-project work - Natural History of Horus and its flora and fauna - A graphic history of life (also here) - AuxLang Project: a worldwide language - Behold THE MEGACLADOGRAM - World Without West: an alternate history

SpecEvo Tutorials: Habitable Solar Systems (galaxies, stars and moons); Planets (geology, oceans and atmosphere); Ecology (energy, biomes and relationships); Alternative Biochemistry (basic elements, solvents, pigments); Biomechanics (body structure, skeletons, locomotion); Bioenergetics (photosynthesis, digestion, respiration); Perception (sense organs and nervous system); Reproduction (from genetics to childbirth); Offense and Defense (camouflage, poisons and weapons); Intelligence (EQ, consciousness and smartest animals); Civilizations (technology, domestication and culture); Exotic Life (living crystals, nuclear life, 2D biology); Evolution (genetics, selection and speed); Phylogeny (trees of life); Guide to Naming (how to name your creations) (and more!)

My projects here:

Natural History of Horus (19th century naturalists... in space)
Galactic Anthropology (intelligence takes many forms around the Milky Way)
Settlers from the Deep (a tour in a blind and slimy future)
Coming soon: A Matter of Time (a history of the future... all of it)
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TAXESbutNano
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I'm going back to basics.
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Dromaeosaurus
Dec 27 2016, 06:03 PM
The sea pig (Scotoplanes globosa) is an abyssal sea cucumber that has turned a few of his tube feet into hydraulic legs to walk around the seafloor, 3-5 km deep.
As a bonus, ophiocistoids might have effectively been sea urchins with sea pig feet coming out of their corners.
Edited by TAXESbutNano, Dec 27 2016, 06:11 PM.
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LittleLazyLass
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Proud quilt in a bag

Relevant:
totally not British, b-baka!
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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?
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Words Maybe
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Tartarus
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Prime Specimen
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Dendrogramma enigmatica is a small mushroom-like sea creature discovered off the south-east coast of Australia in 1986, though not named until 2014. It had such unusual anatomy that it was suspected that it could have been a newly discovered phylum or maybe not even an animal at all. It was noted that it bore some similarities to some of the strange life forms of the Ediacaran period (635-542 million years ago). However, genetic studies in 2016 revealed that D. enigmatica was actually a very unusual type of siphonophore. It is also now thought that the specimens so far discovered may actually not be full creatures but rather parts of a larger organism whose exact anatomy and physiology remains unknown.

Dendrogramma enigmatica


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LittleLazyLass
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Proud quilt in a bag

Was thinking about posting that one eventually. I hadn't actually heard about the genetics study though, that's interesting. On the topic of it though, I heard that specimen was in pretty bad condition, and even if it's not just one body part, it might not have looked quite like that.
totally not British, b-baka!
Posted Image 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?
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Words Maybe
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HangingThief
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Here's something that's a little weird- tetrapods with blood that ain't red.

Skinks in the genus Prasinohaema have green blood and tissues. This isn't because their blood doesn't contain hemoglobin or anything like that, but because of enormously excessive amounts of the pigment that gives liver bile its green color. This might make the skinks toxic or foul tasting, or it might be a defense against malaria parasites.

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Even stranger, and apparently unexplained, Amazon Milk Frogs (Trachycephalus) seem to have blue blood. I'm basing this on the color of their mouth lining, the tint of their skin in places (especially on thin- skinned juveniles) and especially on this image of an individual suffering from a cloacal prolapse. The green blooded skinks also have blue in their mouth lining, and one might take that as evidence that the milk frog's tissue is actually green, (it might be, but I think the prolapse is fairly compelling evidence that it's blue) but we can see from numerous examples that the color of a reptile's mouth has little to do with the color of its innards.

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Slightly graphic, but spoilered for size, not your petty sensibilities


So what do you guys think the deal is with Trachycephalus?
Hey.


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Sayornis
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LittleYukidaruma
Dec 27 2016, 08:21 PM
Was thinking about posting that one eventually. I hadn't actually heard about the genetics study though, that's interesting. On the topic of it though, I heard that specimen was in pretty bad condition, and even if it's not just one body part, it might not have looked quite like that.
So what we may have here is an Anomalocaris-appendage situation, but with a currently living animal.

Desmids (family Desmidiaceae) are unicellular green algae found in acidic fresh water. They have a variety of ornate, usually bilaterally-symmetrical shapes.

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Desmid illustrations by Ernst Haeckel

Video of the desmid Micrasterias dividing

More photos and info here.
Edited by Sayornis, Dec 27 2016, 10:09 PM.
The Library is open. (Now under new management!)
Dr Nitwhite
Aug 19 2016, 07:42 PM
As I said before, the Library is like spec crack.
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Vorsa
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Mysterious tundra-dwelling humanoid
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HangingThief
Dec 27 2016, 09:43 PM
Even stranger, and apparently unexplained, Amazon Milk Frogs (Trachycephalus) seem to have blue blood. I'm basing this on the color of their mouth lining, the tint of their skin in places (especially on thin- skinned juveniles) and especially on this image of an individual suffering from a cloacal prolapse. The green blooded skinks also have blue in their mouth lining, and one might take that as evidence that the milk frog's tissue is actually green, (it might be, but I think the prolapse is fairly compelling evidence that it's blue) but we can see from numerous examples that the color of a reptile's mouth has little to do with the color of its innards.

Posted Image

Slightly graphic, but spoilered for size, not your petty sensibilities


So what do you guys think the deal is with Trachycephalus?
That's fascinating! Could it be that copper-based blood is more useful in the environment that they live? Or perhaps their ancestors evolved a different blood composition because they lived in harsher conditions and the modern milk frogs have only recently moved into the Amazon.

EDIT: I've had a look online and whilst some sites mention the blue insides, none seem to confirm the idea of blue blood. Perhaps this is just a defensive adaptation. The bright blue would suggest toxicity, even if the species isn't dangerous.
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Birbs

"you are about to try that on a species that clawed its way to the top of a 4 billion year deep corpse pile of evolution. one that has committed the genocide you are contemplating several times already. they are the pinnacle of intelligence-based survival techniques and outnumber you 7 billion to 1" - humans vs machine
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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

HangingThief
Dec 27 2016, 09:43 PM
Even stranger, and apparently unexplained, Amazon Milk Frogs (Trachycephalus) seem to have blue blood. I'm basing this on the color of their mouth lining, the tint of their skin in places (especially on thin- skinned juveniles) and especially on this image of an individual suffering from a cloacal prolapse. The green blooded skinks also have blue in their mouth lining, and one might take that as evidence that the milk frog's tissue is actually green, (it might be, but I think the prolapse is fairly compelling evidence that it's blue) but we can see from numerous examples that the color of a reptile's mouth has little to do with the color of its innards.

So what do you guys think the deal is with Trachycephalus?
Huh, I've seen this species before but I never knew there was blue inside them as well- I thought it was just skin iridophores. But that's really interesting, and my digging isn't finding much in the way of an explanation.

However, it does seem to be something that happens about a year into development, so it could be something that's happening along with toxin production;

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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Monster
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Space Oddity

The green blooded lizards don't havr copper based blood, the colour is from biliverdin.
Flashlights, nightmares, sudden explosions.

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Carlos
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Just in case you forgot I love pterosaurs, there's Prejanopterus:

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Basically imagine Lonchodectes with a downturned beak:

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Edited by Carlos, Dec 28 2016, 12:16 PM.
Lemuria:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/

Terra Alternativa:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/

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