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Questions that don't need their own topics vol.2; New and fresh
Topic Started: Jan 4 2018, 11:18 AM (26,862 Views)
CaledonianWarrior96
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Hola La
May 9 2018, 02:55 AM
is that possible if bone or shell made from gold ?
IIRC I think we said it would be unlikely to happen due to how unreactive gold is and how it wouldn't be properly infused with organic compounds or something along those lines
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Flisch
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beingsneaky
May 8 2018, 07:10 PM
in what situation do you see an animal evolving 3 legs

Personally I think it could evolve in animals that use their tail as a frog-like leg when coming to land. This would mean that the unpaired leg would be in the rear. I don't really see an unpaired front leg evolving, because the first (semi-)terrestrialanimals would be dragging themselves on the ground.

Unless, you have the evolution of proper legs predate terrestriality, like in arthropods, but even then the first forms would likely not have the leg strength to support the body vertically.

Paradoxically I think it is easier for animals to evolve a "two or more unpaired legs in a row" arrangement than a single unpaired leg at the front and otherwise paired legs. This I could see "easily" arising, if the first terrestrial groups move about with a peristaltic motion like earthworms or that weird thing inchworms and leeches do. Then pads on the bottom of their bodies might evolve into legs in the long run.

Akurian452
May 8 2018, 08:48 PM
Could aquatic invertebrates be larger than vertebrates? Think a sea worm or a lancelet larger than a blue whale. I know lancelet aren't true invertebrates but they're not quite vertebrates either and I'm trying to determine if aquatic organisms with less rigid bodies and are not cell colonies could achieve equal or greater size than whales.

I can't really come up with any reason why they couldn't. If they keep their weight/density the same as the surrounding water, they're effectively weight-less, which would theoretically allow them to grow to any sizes.

However water has some tricky properties. For instance, density increases very quickly as you go down, so that could mess with a creature that inhabits multiple levels of depths at once. Then again we have animals that can move rapidly between crass density differences with apparent ease, so there's that.

Hola La
May 9 2018, 02:55 AM
is that possible if bone or shell made from gold ?

In addition to what Caledonian said, gold is also really heavy and not even all that common so using it to build shells seems counterproductive on multiple levels.
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ZoologicalBotanist
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I've used gold as an external covering, but it was on an aquatic, bottom-dwelling alien species. I do not believe it could happen on Earth.


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What are the advantages to life on a moon rather than a planet?
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I remember reading that Australia's climate used to be much more humid, thanks to two inland seas/lakes, but I can't find very much information on when the continent became the arid land that it is today. Does anybody know anything about this; or rather, when the climate was like this and when it dried out?
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Cool_Hippo43
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taking advantage of this story of legs ... what would be the possibility of an animal developing a system with 2 legs in front of the other (like that runner of darwin IV) ?? something like an animal that moves like a caterpillar develops 2 attachment points with suction cups that eventually evolve into legs?

and what are the limitations of the way of life of totally legless animals? (apods) could they evolve into large herbivores?
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Akurian452
May 8 2018, 08:48 PM
Could aquatic invertebrates be larger than vertebrates? Think a sea worm or a lancelet larger than a blue whale. I know lancelet aren't true invertebrates but they're not quite vertebrates either and I'm trying to determine if aquatic organisms with less rigid bodies and are not cell colonies could achieve equal or greater size than whales.
Actually lancelets do count as "true invertebrates". Keep in mind that the term "invertebrate" has nothing to do with classification but is just a blanket term for any animal that's not a vertebrate. So things like lancelets and starfish are counted as invertebrates despite being more closely related to us than to something like an insect or mollusc.
On your question, I think it should be quite possible for you to have an invertebrate larger than a blue whale provided you have some way of ensuring it is able to get enough food to sustain all that mass.

GlarnBoudin
 
I remember reading that Australia's climate used to be much more humid, thanks to two inland seas/lakes, but I can't find very much information on when the continent became the arid land that it is today. Does anybody know anything about this; or rather, when the climate was like this and when it dried out?
If I recall correctly Australia was already starting to dry out in the Miocene, though it was still pretty humid at that point. By the Pliocene it had become a pretty dry place, though wet rainforest regions still exist in some parts of the country even to this day.
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IIGSY
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Tartarus
May 9 2018, 07:28 PM
Actually lancelets do count as "true invertebrates"
No, they don't. While they are chordates, they lay just outside of true vertebrates.
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GlarnBoudin
May 9 2018, 10:34 AM
I remember reading that Australia's climate used to be much more humid, thanks to two inland seas/lakes, but I can't find very much information on when the continent became the arid land that it is today. Does anybody know anything about this; or rather, when the climate was like this and when it dried out?
As far as I know, desert only appeared in Australia around 5 million years ago, after the continent had been drying out for 10 million years or so. Aridlands only became widespread however during the late Pleistocene, replacing the fertile grasslands and woodlands on which the megafauna roamed. Humans are believed to have had some involvement in this desertification.
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GreatAuk
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Since some Lampreys filter-feed, could a species of Lamprey evolve to be a whale like animal?
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ÐK
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IIGSY
May 9 2018, 07:54 PM
No, they don't. While they are chordates, they lay just outside of true vertebrates.
Pretty sure "just outside of true vertebrates" makes something an invertebrate then.
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Tartarus
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IIGSY
May 9 2018, 07:54 PM
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May 9 2018, 07:28 PM
Actually lancelets do count as "true invertebrates"
No, they don't. While they are chordates, they lay just outside of true vertebrates.
You seem to have perhaps misread what I said. As can be seen I said "true invertebrates" not "true vertebrates". As they are not within the vertebrates that makes them invertebrates.
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Flisch
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AukTalk
May 9 2018, 09:57 AM
What are the advantages to life on a moon rather than a planet?

I don't think it makes sense to talk about "advantages" like that. Life largely evolves to fit whatever environment it finds itself in. Unless we go into biochemistry (where you could indeed say that certain biochemistries have optimal temeprature ranges etc) there's not much of an "ideal" environment.

This is made even worse due to the fact that there's no good objective metric to determine the success of life. Is it biodiversity? is it biomass? Is it stable populations? Whichever arbitrary metric you use, you get a different answer as to what would make for an ideal or "advantageous" environment.

GlarnBoudin
May 9 2018, 10:34 AM
I remember reading that Australia's climate used to be much more humid, thanks to two inland seas/lakes, but I can't find very much information on when the continent became the arid land that it is today. Does anybody know anything about this; or rather, when the climate was like this and when it dried out?

I could only find this article here: http://austhrutime.com/climate.htm

Specifically:
"Prior to the separation of South America and Australia from Antarctica, cold currents flowing along the Antarctic coast were diverted north to the tropics when they struck the west coasts of South America and Australia, returning south to Antarctica after they had been heated by their passage through the equatorial regions, taking that heat south to warm Antarctica. These warming currents were disrupted by the opening of the ocean between Antarctica and South America and Australia, allowing the Polar Regions to become a progressively colder closed climatic system. The southern parts of Australia became cooler, and the latitudinal temperature gradients steepened, and the climatic zones became more pronounced. The movement of Australia north gradually moved the central and northern parts of the continent away from the moist westerly winds, and into the region of the drier, warmer subtropical high pressure systems (Bowler, 1982; Bowman, 2000)."
Emphasis mine.

It's not much, but the site provides several sources, so maybe there's something useful for further reading.

Cool_Hippo43
May 9 2018, 07:25 PM
taking advantage of this story of legs ... what would be the possibility of an animal developing a system with 2 legs in front of the other (like that runner of darwin IV) ?? something like an animal that moves like a caterpillar develops 2 attachment points with suction cups that eventually evolve into legs?

I actually made a comment on that a bit earlier on this page. :P
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As for how likely it is? No idea.

Cool_Hippo43
May 9 2018, 07:25 PM
and what are the limitations of the way of life of totally legless animals? (apods) could they evolve into large herbivores?

I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. If the first pre-"tetrapods" would have been eel-like, terrestrial megafauna would likely be entirely serpentine or slug-like, except on a much larger scale.

As for limitations, I don't see any real limits there. We have swimming snakes, we have climbing snakes. We even have very fast speeding snakes, the sidewinders. So any niche from gigantic whale to speedy cheetah, you could have it even without legs.

Heck, if gliding snakes are any indication, we might even have flying "snakes". (Yes, I know, gliding is likely not a pre-adaption for flight, but you get the point.)

AukTalk
May 10 2018, 03:14 PM
Since some Lampreys filter-feed, could a species of Lamprey evolve to be a whale like animal?

Sure. There's actually some implicit evidence (aka precedence) that large aquatic filterfeeders tend to evolve from carnivores/piscivores.
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Cool_Hippo43
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this may seem a bit vague ... but I wanted to know about new forms of terrestrial vertebrates, just as diapsids evolved into several other groups (archosaurs, testudines ...) I think other groups could evolve this way as well as others saropsids or therapsids ... (but I think for that to happen they would need to develop some kind of internal heat)

I also think of non-amniots and how they could evolve into other groups ... but these animals would be like frogs and would have several limitations because of that, so how could they leave that amphibious way of life and become a really terrestrial animal (like the ancient non-amniots did this and if this could occur other times)


and lastly: all terrestrial tetrapods evolved from a single species of "fish" that came out of the oceans, so all tetrapods have a single common ancestor that was probably like a fat salamander ... (correct me if I'm wrong) . how would other "fish species" come out of the water as well and eventually evolve into totally different groups of tetrapods? by what I know, such behavior is seen in the arthropods, in which for several times the earth was colonized by different totally different groups (I do not know much about arthropods but I think that's it)
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IIGSY
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Tartarus
May 10 2018, 06:43 PM
IIGSY
May 9 2018, 07:54 PM
Tartarus
May 9 2018, 07:28 PM
Actually lancelets do count as "true invertebrates"
No, they don't. While they are chordates, they lay just outside of true vertebrates.
You seem to have perhaps misread what I said. As can be seen I said "true invertebrates" not "true vertebrates". As they are not within the vertebrates that makes them invertebrates.
Oh, sorry. I misread
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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)

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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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Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups


In honor of the greatest clade of all time


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