wyrmrestarkordians

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If I were in the same time and place that t. rex lived, how would I not get eaten?

You might try evolving massive size and living in huge herds, or developing bony armour and a tail club, or even use large horns usually used in intraspecific interactions.

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It’s impossible to play Ark for half an hour you either play four hours straight or not at all

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This game is so pretty when you’re not being murdered by something

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Temporary Bronto Bus stop, built to carry all of my dinos out of the city and ready to be counted. The Bronto Bus is currently packed full of Ravagers.

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“Not much to say about the dodorex, except get on your knees and pray that you’ve made peace with your gods.”

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WIP! I started making the cloth armour from Ark: Survival Evolved after I found this beige fabric in my fabric pile 😃 Shirt base is done and stitching started, pants base is done. It looks funny now but will hopefully look super cool when finished!

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[wyrmrestarkordians]

Crocodylo-Month Bonus: “Megalania”

Earlier, I did mention that Quinkana was Pleistocene Australia’s “second-biggest land predator”.  While the biggest was not a crocodylomorph, it was a reptile, and it was impressive enough for me to include it here.  It was Megalania - the biggest lizard in history.*

(Image by Vlad Konstantinov.)

Unfortunately, “Megalania” might not actually be a valid name.  Based on its similarities to surviving varanid monitor lizards in every way but size, it’s been proposed that Megalania was actually just a very large species of Varanus.  However, “megalania” has been dubbed an acceptable vernacular name, and so I’m going to use it.

The megalania was somewhere around twenty-five feet long, making it the largest land predator of Pleistocene Australia.  However, “marsupial lions” and terrestrial crocodiles were likely occupying all available apex-predator niches, and their fossils are far more common than the megalania’s were.  This means that the megalania was likely never the dominant predator at any point.  It was probably a carrion-eater that occasionally took down live prey, like the modern-day Komodo dragon.

(Above: Komodo dragons eating a beached dolphin carcass.)

Based on the possible presence of venom in some monitor lizard species, it’s been suggested that the megalania might have been venomous as well.  If this were the case, it would make the megalania the largest known venomous animal.

The megalania went extinct approximately 40,000 years ago.  Although it’s sometimes believed to have been driven extinct by humans, climate change was probably a bigger factor.  A reptile of such massive size would likely have been unable to withstand environmental changes.

When scientific evidence is taken into account, the popular conception of human-megalania interactions is fairly sensationalized.  The megalania was probably not a cold, calculating eating machine that made a habit of tearing up early man, and man probably did not valiantly fight back against the reptile menace and drive the megalania back to Hell from whence it came.  The megalania was not a monstrous hell-beast.  It was just an animal - one that we unfortunately can no longer observe.

*If you don’t count mosasaurs.

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Titanoboa!

Although the dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago, Earth still had no shortage of reptilian predators.  One of these lived in Colombia in South America, from 60 to 58 million years ago, and was the largest snake in the history of the world*.

Titanoboa (image by Nobu Tamura) could grow up to 42 feet long, and may have been capable of getting even bigger.  As its name suggests, it was a boa - or, more scientifically, a boid, belonging to the same group of snakes as modern tree boas and anacondas.

(Image by Jason Bourque.)

When Titanoboa fossils were first discovered in 2009, it was believed to have been an apex predator.  Numerous sensationalist news articles were published, describing Titanoboa as the monster-king of the Colombian jungles who could totally have beaten up T. rex, except T. rex was so scared when he heard about Titanoboa that he went extinct just so he wouldn’t have to fight it!

However, later studies proved that this was not the case.   Although Titanoboa was quite massive, and definitely carnivorous, it was probably not a hunter of large land animals.  Instead, it was probably a fish-eater, and in that regard, it is unique among the boids.  However, the animal’s massive size would probably have allowed it to snack on the occasional crocodile, as pictured in the Smithsonian’s reconstruction.

In ARK: Survival Evolved, it has a frilled lizard’s neck frill, for some reason.

Prior to the discovery of Titanoboa, the largest known snake was Gigantophis, discovered in Egypt in 1901 - although at a maximum estimated size of 30 to 35 feet, it was only marginally larger than the biggest modern-day snakes.  Gigantophis lived about 20 million years later than Titanoboa, and was part of an entirely different family of snakes, the now-extinct Madtsoiidae.  Unlike Titanoboa, the madtsoiids preyed on land animals, killing them via constriction.

Image by lizardman22.

(Edit: The original image in this post was by James Gurney, but it was actually an image of Titanoboa, rather than Gigantophis.  

*If you don’t count mosasaurs, which some paleontologists do.  But that deserves a post of its own…

[wyrmrestarkordians]

You should talk about the Leopluraldon, a magical Leopluraldon!

(Image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Liopleurodon was a marine reptile that lived during the Middle Jurassic period, from about 160 to 105 million years ago.  It lived in western Europe, at a time when shallow seas covered the area, similar to the Western Interior Seaway that covered central North America during the Cretaceous period.

Liopleurodon was a fairly typical short-necked plesiosaur, with a bullet-shaped hydrodynamic body and long head, suited to the active pursuit of marine prey.  While not an exceptionally notable animal, it’s appeared more than once in popular culture, and may be the most well-known short-necked plesiosaur.

Its biggest claim to fame is its appearance in Walking With Dinosaurs (above), which depicts it as a whale-sized superpredator capable of snatching fully-grown theropod dinosaurs from the shore.  This estimated size was based on highly dubious and fragmentary fossil evidence, which has since been disproved; Liopleurodon could probably only grow to a length of about 20-25 feet.

Liopleurodon is also known, of course, from the 2008 YouTube sendation Charlie the Unicorn, in which it guides Charlie and his friends to Candy Mountain with its mysterious whale-like call.

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In Jurassic Park 3, what is the red and black dinosaur with the single horn?

It’s Ceratosaurus!

I’ve covered Ceratosaurus previously on this blog, but I’ve never seen Jurassic Park 3, so I can’t speak to the accuracy of its portrayal there.  Anyone else have any thoughts?

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Rare Sightings

Screenshot was taken by Imperian, one of our players and a member of The Clan Before Time

Do you want to more than just build and tame on a PvE server?  The mod Rare Sightings has just what you need!

Rare Sightings is an automated event system that we included in Wyrmrest Arkordians to encourage our players to venture out into the wilderness, not only to find these unique creatures, but to explore the wonderful map we are playing on  You can tame these creatures, or kill them for unique rewards and the 20 minute Slayer Buff which gives you 2x Experience boost and 20% bonus to your Melee damage and Stamina!

So how do you play?  It’s simple.  All you need is a radio hotbarred to slot 9 to give you updates on any rare sightings on the map.

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WrArk Aberration Cluster

“Bulby demands you come play with us.  You don’t want to hurt Bulby’s feelings, do you?”

Wyrmrest Arkordians and WrArk Aberration are connected to each other.  You can download your player profile and creatures back and forth between clusters.  Aberration creatures are now allowed on Wymrest Arkordians, so you will be able to keep whatever you bring over.  WrArk Aberration is a purely optional experience that will be around for a while.  We will still be offering Aberration creatures as event rewards on Wyrmrest Arkordians with funky color mutations.  You will still be able to use any Aberration tames you acquire via trade or through a tribe mate.

The admins can spawn Aberration creatures until our fingers are cramped from button mashing, but the pesky buggers will likely despawn or be eaten by the time anyone finds them.  By including the Aberration cluster, you can download your present character and go on a taming spree to bring your Bulbdogs and Shinehorns over to Ragnarok.  Aberration is also an optional PvE experience with a higher difficulty and only the essential mods.

You can view the full info here.

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Ark: Survival Evolved (2015)

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some of my bred dinos with cool mutations! and hats. they don’t just look good, these are all level 300+ hatches excluding the beavers which both were born at level 250 (they’re just for wood gathering so im not as picky)

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Archeopteryx in ARK makes me so mad. the model is so nice but its SO USELESS! Why cant it be a shouldermount?

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You know you want the dodo!

Some fanart for Ark survival evolved of something that really happened to me and my mates in game.