#kpg extinction event

[saint-nevermore]

a visitor

[catgirl-kaiju]

Just heard about the KPg mass extinction. SAD. Oh well, there's other animals.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Hypothetical scenario: you’ve been granted the budget of your average big summer blockbuster movie, but you can only use it to fund a movie / TV series on dinosaurs or prehistoric animals. What would that ideal piece of paleo-programming look like?

o-o

I'd tell the entire story of dinosaurs, from beginning to today. Start with the end-Permian extinction and how that lead to the empty niches that allowed sauropsids to diversify. Discuss the evolution of Archosaurs and what made early Dinosaurs unique from other animals (and highlight that those things were usually things that make birds unique from other animals today). I'd then go into their diversification in each period, showcasing how different environmental events affected their evolution. I wouldn't stop at the KPg, of course; I would talk about why the dinosaurs that survived (birds) did, while others didn't. I then would dig into the Cenozoic and how dinosaurs have diversified through that, discussing notable major groups and their responses to environmental change. I would finish with the modern day, the sheer diversity of living dinosaur species, and how these dinosaurs are affected by anthropogenic climate change.

can you tell I think about this a lot and wish some magical rich person would descend from the clouds to give the money I need to make my projects happen?

[fancysaurus]

If you are into paleo and have not heard of this yet:

There is some controversy surrounding a paper published by Robert DePalma (also known as the person who described dakotaraptor).

He worked on a project with PhD student Melanie During, excavating fish fossils from Tanis (a site which he apparently has control over as a PhD student). She used spherules in the gills of these fish to conclude that they would have died during the kpg extinction event. Looking at the bones of these fish, she concluded these died during spring, thus linking the kpg extinction to spring season.

However, when her paper was still in review, DePalma published his own paper with the same conclusions, without any acknowledgement to her. She had offered him to be second author before this, which he alledgedly did not respond to.

Turns out: his paper is suspicious to say the least.

His graphs have incorrect error bars, graphs of different specimens which match when enlarged or shrinked and a dubious amount of specimens tested (he originally claimed 19, but later 4)

No original data was published along with the paper and it cannot be retraced. (Due to the death of a researcher, according to DePalma).

His supervisor nor co-authors have said anything about these allegations.

This is not only the story of a man who likely committed scientific fraud, but also the story of a man who tried to benefit unethically of the research of a fellow female colleague.

Science, while awesome, has some huge issues regarding power dynamics, integrity and sexism.

(Ps. His paper is currently under review. However, the validity of Durings paper is NOT under question, go check it out! )

[dragonthunders01]

Spectember D14: The Future

Has been 200 million years since life on earth changed, a destructive astronomical event wiped out most of the surface life, leaving only the deep-water fauna almost untouched, and they have tried to recolonize the surface little by little, many squids, arthropods, bony fishes and also a very ancient group of vertebrates that passed this cataclysm, sharks.

Sharks have had a constant story of survival over the last 200 million years since they evolved, passing the KPg with ease, and counting back their oldest relatives that had similar body forms, that gives another 200 million years. Although people often want to remark they are sort of “living fossils” that’s just relative superficial as many groups that came before always had peculiar and unique anatomies for being of different groups, and now with the extinction of the surface-dwelling species like lamniform, there would be another wave of new differently forms, preserving some features of their predecessors but changed for the anatomical differences of other groups.

These are the Damselsharks, descendant of lantern sharks (Squaliformes, Etmopteridae) that took over the surface and diversified, sort of adopted a shape similar to the extinct  Lamniformes and so had to adjust some of their anatomy to make it fit to the pelagic predatory role in the ocean, with a drop shaped body and a tall head, very big eyes result of their still prevailing deep water behavior, as well prominent pectoral fins that resemble the ones of a mako shark, short dorsal, pelvic and anal fins and a well developed C shaped heterocercal tail. Their jaws remain similar to their ancestors in articulation and position, but adjusted to tear and cut meat with new types of dentitions depending of their prey.

Many species have lost their bioluminescence but others preserved it, even further developing certain communication behavior that can help them to coordinate whole groups while hunting, which one of the most impressive examples as well the largest species of this family, the Shakopath, a 4 meter long species with characteristic bioluminescent arrangement around the belly and different sized long spots around the pelvic region, they swim in large groups of 20 individuals, patrolling the surface for any potential prey, either large squids that camouflage with their environment and often compete for food or can hunt one of these sharks in an ambush; although also they can preffer fishes that swim or fly over the water, many of the pelagic species crustaceans and even other species of sharks which are also long distant relatives of the Damnselsharks.

[herebecritters]

Origins of a Curse pt 2

Sorry! It was such a long post I had to split it up into two! Here is the Lore Part Two!

Click here to read Part One if you haven’t yet

One fateful night, Geshtu heard a warning from Theia. An event was coming that would bring great devastation to them all. The three realized they would need to do something drastic to save their people. Geshtu sought out ancient forces deep within the earth and they began experimenting with this newfound dark magic. They discovered that sacrifice and blood could be used to extend life if done right.

They carved stone idols in their respective images and tied their souls to them. When placed in the middle of them, a corpse could be revived after blood was spilt and prepared by Geshtu. They had the oppurtunity to test this further when Demuzi found parts of her brothers mangled body in the aftermath of a tragic mishap he'd had while wandering the badlands- the ritual was a success, and it saved his life. Unfortunately, one sacrifice was only good for one life. To save them all from the great calamity to come, they would need a bigger sacrifice and much, much more blood.

Nergal suggested they summon something to destroy all of their enemies and give them all of the blood that they could ever need. Enough blood to last for centuries, ages even. They reached out deeper into the ether and the three were granted more power through their stone idols. The more suffering they caused, the more blood was spilt to feed the insatiable hunger of their idols. However, there was another price to pay that they did not realize. As they grew closer and closer to godhood, the more of their humanity they lost. Even so, the three had developed a system that worked, and their power only grew stronger. Eventually, Nergal found himself able to summon one of the greatest misfortunes to ever hit the earth- the Chicxulub impactor. They put their plan into action.

The three took their respective idols and hid them in burrows surrounding the area. They spread them out as far as they could to give them a large zone for regenerating their fellow mammals after the devastation. Within the burrows were chambers with a series of channels connecting the three to one another. The night before the impact, the three demigods abandoned their original cavern of operations and settled alongside their respective idols, readying themselves for the ritual to come.

As Chicxilub careened closer to earth, some of the mammalian villagers may have noticed a new star appearing in the night sky, growing ever larger, before one night when it disappeared into the Earth's shadow.

The next morning, there were two suns in the sky. All the mammals were asleep in their burrows...except for one. Unbeknownst to Dumuzi, her brother would be face-to-face with the doom they brought.

The impact did exactly what it was meant to do. Devastation swept over the planet, killing 75% of all life. You are probably familiar with the infamous kpg mass extinction, in which a Mr. Everest sized bolide hit the planet and wiped out the Non-avian Dinosaurs, as well as the pterosaurs and the giant marine reptiles. For the sake of time, here is a little summary of what Cro and his friends got to experience:

The irony is, the devastation that they were warned about initially ended up being the very devastation that they brought. A paradox of sorts.

Regardless, this plan worked. Blood flowed deep into the earth and filled the chambers, forming an underground lake. The land violently broke away and the Isles were formed. From the lake of blood, the three were able to bring back any of the mammals that perished during the impact. There was one they could not find though- Cro had gone missing during the mayhem. Had he perished within the circle Dumuzi would have been able to see him…but he was nowhere to be found. He either died outside of the circle or he was somewhere, still alive. He was lost to them, much to Dumuzis despair.

Little did they know he was frozen within the circle, in glaciers north of the Isles. The tsunamis had swept him up and as the sun was covered by soot and the temperatures dropped, he was frozen in place.

He’d be there for the next 66 million years until the ice around him thawed enough for his ice cube to break away and float onto the shore of Happy Tree Town.

Dumuzi searched everywhere for him, but could not find her brother- the one that she had wanted to protect the most. However, the three demigods had known the risks. It was all for the greater good; the ultimate sacrifice was needed in order to to reach godhood.

The surviving mammals of the impact gathered around their saviors. These were their gods now, and they would all spend the next million years living as immortals thanks to this gift they'd been given. As it would eventually prove, however, even the blood from a mass extinction does not last forever. As the years progressed, the lake of blood grew smaller. They could not sustain it without more sacrifice, and there were no more dinosaurs to kill.

It was decided that they would have to use their own peoples' blood to keep them alive. Now, they'd pay for their immortality with their own suffering. Unfortunately, people become less gracious when they are the sheep for their own sacrifices. This inevitably would not last.

~ To be continued ~

Shout out to my pal @teddy-terrible for listening to my insane rambles and cheering me on! Also for looking over and editing my writing on this. They are one hell of a wordsmith!

[pleistocene-pride]

The Tuatara is a species of reptile endemic to New Zealand and its surrounding islands, belonging to the genus Sphenodon. Their name derives from the Māori language, and means "peaks on the back" referencing their unique spiny vertebral crests. Although resembling most lizards, they are part of a unique lineage of reptiles, the order Rhynchocephalia, which originated in the Triassic period around 250 million years ago and flourished throughout the Mesozoic until being near completely wiped out by the KPG mass extinction event some 66 million years ago. Tuatara are typically a mix of green, brown, and gray in color, measure upwards 31 inches in length and upwards of 3lbs in weight. They sport a spiny white crest along the back, two rows of teeth in the upper jaw overlapping one row on the lower jaw, and are able to hear remarkably well despite lacking an external ear. They are also unusual in having a pronounced photoreceptive third eye, which is thought to be involved in sensing circadian and seasonal cycles. Tuataras thrive in temperatures much lower than those tolerated by most reptiles, and hibernate during winter. Their diet consists of insects, arachnids, crustaceans, other arthropods, frogs, lizards, and bird eggs. While juveniles are diurnal, adults are typically nocturnal or crepuscular depending on the season, spending the day inside of shallow burrows which they may share with seabirds such as petrels, prions, and shearwaters. Tuatara probably have the slowest growth rates of any reptile taking 10 to 20 years to reach sexual maturity, and up to 35 years to reach full size. Mating occurs in midsummer typically once every four years. Mothers lay 2 to 19 white, soft-shelled eggs in nesting burrows, which are covered and incubated for 12 to 15 months before hatching. Barring tortoises, tuataras have the longest lifespan of any reptile with individuals regularly living well past 100 years.

[albino-parakeet]

Listen, I don’t know much about Death Stranding. I haven’t finished it, even though I’ve had the game for 2 years now, and am still (not counting the gold mask lion BT) blind for basically all of it. (I love the game, just don’t have time) So I could be wrong and this is in the story or something.

I just think it’s interesting that Kojima didn’t some how involve the several extinction events in Earth’s history in his game about the dead interacting with the living. Like I know the whole “once there was an explosion” intro, but other than that, maybe a document, and some like flavor text from one(?) delivery, they’re not mentioned.

Like Kojima, The Great Dying is sitting right there, you can still use the whole ocean/beach concept since ~90% of the marine species at the time died. The Kpg extinction also (the most famous one). I don’t know if the “a bang which gave rise to life as we know it” part of the intro is referring to the ending of the Cretaceous or is about the beginning of life from single cell to multicellular.

Can you imagine the beach littered with the corpses of present and ancient marine species. All equal in Death, despite the millions of years gaps, they all lived on the same Earth as you and I. Flesh and bone. Mortal.

What if those BTs that chase you down if you get caught were like a Shonisaurus, maybe one of the smaller species of Mosasaur there were, or hell a carnivorous theropod from the Cretaceous or something instead. It just seems fitting in my head and a missed opportunity tbh. But I’m not Kojima so who knows if it actually fits to what he’s going for.

[wanderingnork]

So, tldr for the folks who don’t know: what edda is asking about here is the issue of the Tanis site in North Dakota. The geology of the site may record the actual minutes to hours of events that occurred right after the asteroid impact that ended the Cretaceous Period (the KPg or KT extinction). In the last few days, accusations of falsified data related to the Tanis site have been leveled at a major figure involved with its description and excavation. That’s the Drama and it is…not good. We’ll hit that at the end.

Since I started yelling about it to edda and everyone else who’d sit still long enough to hear me thank you all for your patience I love you all, I’ve been reading as many papers as I can get my hands on related to the Tanis site and the extinction event in general. I’ve cited the most accessible-to-average-readers and key papers under the cut below. The story is...incredible.

The asteroid that caused the KPg extinction struck the earth off the Yucatán Peninsula, at the Chicxulub impact crater. Ten kilometers in diameter, leaving behind a crater a hundred and eighty kilometers across which is still intact today, the asteroid set off an instant apocalypse. Megatsunamis, firestorms, and earthquakes, and debris falling from the sky were followed by clouds of dust that dropped temperatures around the world. Oceans acidified and plants couldn’t photosynthesize. Evidence of this impact is found all over the world, from seafloors that fossilized with the ripples of tsunamis still intact to layers of charcoal and soot left behind by wildfires. (For a comprehensive review of all this, including a response to counterevidence, see the Kring 2007 paper specifically, that citation links directly to a PDF with no paywall.)

Most importantly, though, the impact left behind a clear, visible boundary line: a layer of iridium-rich clay found worldwide. That’s an element rare on earth, but not nearly as rare in extraterrestrial bodies. Above that layer, there are no non-avian dinosaurs. It marks the KPg extinction boundary. Wherever you find it, you know exactly what you’re dealing with.

At the Tanis site, this iridium layer is directly above a dramatic bone bed and a cluster of geological features that also align with other signs of the Chicxulub impact. The site is described in “A seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota” by DePalma et al. 2019; the citation I’ve included takes you directly to the article, open access. If you don’t feel like reading the entire article, here’s the most relevant piece from the abstract:

“Associated ejecta and a cap of iridium-rich impactite reveal that its emplacement coincided with the Chicxulub event. Acipenseriform fish, densely packed in the deposit, contain ejecta spherules in their gills and were buried by an inland-directed surge that inundated a deeply incised river channel before accretion of the fine-grained impactite. Although this deposit displays all of the physical characteristics of a tsunami runup, the timing (<1 hour postimpact) is instead consistent with the arrival of strong seismic waves from the magnitude Mw ∼10 to 11 earthquake generated by the Chicxulub impact, identifying a seismically coupled seiche inundation as the likely cause.” (DePalma et al., 2019)

In simpler terms: the site is located directly under the iridium layer and full of debris thrown up from an impact. Sturgeons and other fish, which are packed in a deep river channel, have tiny spheres of ejected glass in their gills and were buried by a surge of mud and water coming upstream in the river. The timing of it (determined by methods that are beyond my limited understanding as a highly enthusiastic amateur) indicates that the surge was triggered by massive earthquakes caused by the Chicxulub impact.

So we are almost completely certain at this point that this site is a record of the hours and minutes immediately following the asteroid impact. The current mess surrounds two papers released last year and this year, both of which have claimed to determine the exact season in which the asteroid hit. Please note that, although I’ve cited both papers for the sake of comprehensiveness, I would at this moment believe Melissa During’s claim that the discovery is hers and her paper from 2022 should be considered valid, not the DePalma paper from last year (which has been accused of falsified data to “scoop” the story before During could publish). The DOI links for both papers will take you to open access versions of the papers where you can read them in their entirety.

It was spring in the northern hemisphere on the day of the impact.

The bones of the sturgeons and other fish, when closely studied, reveal growth patterns consistent in all other relatives with seasonal dietary fluctuations. The growth records in the fossilized bones indicate that they were still in the middle of the springtime feeding season. The speed of their death froze the growth of their bones in time, preserving that moment to be seen millions of years later. No matter how this conflict surrounding the papers shakes out...it was spring.

Did you know that flowering plants evolved during the Cretaceous period? In North America, there were flowers of the same order that includes heather, phlox, and primroses. There were magnolias and buttercups. Even the ancestors of roses.

There were flowers blooming in the moment that the asteroid struck.

Alvarez, Luis W., Walter Alvarez, Frank Asaro, and Helen V. Michel. "Extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction." Science 208, no. 4448 (1980): 1095-1108. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1683699

DePalma, Robert A., Anton A. Oleinik, Loren P. Gurche, David A. Burnham, Jeremy J. Klingler, Curtis J. McKinney, Frederick P. Cichocki et al. "Seasonal calibration of the end-cretaceous Chicxulub impact event." Scientific reports 11, no. 1 (2021): 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-03232-9

DePalma, Robert A., Jan Smit, David A. Burnham, Klaudia Kuiper, Phillip L. Manning, Anton Oleinik, Peter Larson et al. "A seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 17 (2019): 8190-8199. https://doi.org/10.1073%2Fpnas.1817407116

During, Melanie AD, Jan Smit, Dennis FAE Voeten, Camille Berruyer, Paul Tafforeau, Sophie Sanchez, Koen HW Stein, Suzan JA Verdegaal-Warmerdam, and Jeroen HJL van der Lubbe. "The Mesozoic terminated in boreal spring." Nature 603, no. 7899 (2022): 91-94. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04446-1

Friis, Else Marie, K. Raunsgaard Pedersen, and Peter R. Crane. "Cretaceous angiosperm flowers: innovation and evolution in plant reproduction." Palaeogeography, palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology 232, no. 2-4 (2006): 251-293. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2005.07.006

Henehan, Michael J., Andy Ridgwell, Ellen Thomas, Shuang Zhang, Laia Alegret, Daniela N. Schmidt, James WB Rae et al. "Rapid ocean acidification and protracted Earth system recovery followed the end-Cretaceous Chicxulub impact." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 45 (2019): 22500-22504. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1905989116

Hildebrand, Alan R., Glen T. Penfield, David A. Kring, Mark Pilkington, Antonio Camargo Z, Stein B. Jacobsen, and William V. Boynton. "Chicxulub crater: a possible Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary impact crater on the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico." Geology 19, no. 9 (1991): 867-871. https://doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(1991)019%3C0867:CCAPCT%3E2.3.CO;2

Kring, David A. “The Chicxulub impact event and its environmental consequences at the Cretaceous–Tertiary boundary.” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 255, no. 1-2 (2007): 4-21. http://www.ela-iet.com/EMD/Kring2007ChicxulubK-TReview.pdf

Nixon, Kevin C., and William L. Crepet. "Late Cretaceous fossil flowers of ericalean affinity." American Journal of Botany 80, no. 6 (1993): 616-623. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1537-2197.1993.tb15230.x

Pope, Kevin O., Kevin H. Baines, Adriana C. Ocampo, and Boris A. Ivanov. "Energy, volatile production, and climatic effects of the Chicxulub Cretaceous/Tertiary impact." Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets 102, no. E9 (1997): 21645-21664. https://doi.org/10.1029/97JE01743

Schulte, Peter, J. A. N. Smit, Alexander Deutsch, Tobias Salge, Andrea Friese, and Kilian Beichel. "Tsunami backwash deposits with Chicxulub impact ejecta and dinosaur remains from the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary in the La Popa Basin, Mexico." Sedimentology 59, no. 3 (2012): 737-765. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-3091.2011.01274.x

Schulte, Peter, Laia Alegret, Ignacio Arenillas, José A. Arz, Penny J. Barton, Paul R. Bown, Timothy J. Bralower et al. "The Chicxulub asteroid impact and mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary." Science 327, no. 5970 (2010): 1214-1218. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1177265

Vajda, Vivi, J. Ian Raine, Christopher J. Hollis, and C. Percy Strong. "Global effects of the Chicxulub impact on terrestrial vegetation—review of the palynological record from New Zealand Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary." Cratering in marine environments and on ice (2004): 57-74. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-662-06423-8_4

[vees-strangeworld-omniverse]

ARGONUS FAUNA: beast of sonias

(NOTE: descriptions copy-pasted from DA where i normally/originally post my works. any context that is missing here on tumblr can be found on my DA [linked here and on pinned post] )

[additional note: much of the first several post on argous's fauna use a human to scale instead of an E-class aircraft like i would end up doing later on. thus, animal's actual size relative to their world will be smaller. a bonus note to make is that this human perspective also includes names of the animals, so i'll be giving out alternate names and/or some explanation....]

so now we head over to the asia of argonus, aka sonias.

not unlike our asia, and also like other parts of the world, sonias has some interesting and unique fauna. not surprisingly (especially with these guys i drew), most of these weird wonders come from the jungles where diversity is at it's fullest. actually, alongside arid biomes, tropical climates are a hotspot for some of the "living fossils" of argonus...for some reason...

pantheronager -5ft at hips -dichobunoid ungulate -rainforest of KO laos (kingdom of laos)

    looking like the hybrid between a deer, horse and cat, pantheronagers are neither those three and are instead a "cat-sized" dichobunoid, an ancient group of ungulates more closer to whales and hippos. the surviving dichobunoids that exist in the sonian tropics aren't too different from their ancient relatives in terms of looks and behaviors, and the panteronager is no exception     typical of it's relatives, they're fleet-footed browsers that feed mostly on the foliage and fallen fruit within the forest floor. males are solitary most of the time (excluding mating season), while the females live in small groups of 2-4 with one of them being the alpha. however, unlike other species of surviving dichobunoid, they (alongside the other members of it's genus) have horns and tusks, two pairs each in true argonian fashion. both males and female have them; males use them to fight other males over territory and mates, females use them similarly to establish the pecking order, and both also use them a protection if cornered. every season, males will find a harem and mate with all the females, then leave once the fawns are born.     the panthonagars have been kept in captivity for quite a while. they're rather infamous in the pet trade, due to their high reproductive rates (females can have 2-3 fawns every 3 months) and rather surprising adaptability. this has lead them to become introduced into other tropical climates in cities and towns, though their saving grace from becoming completely destructive are the equally abundant introduced/adaptive predators , especially the stunnits and avibels aeronoids.

olmraptor -8ft tall -dromaeosaurid -forests of center kingdom.

    there are lots of "living fossils" with dinosaurs being no exception. this is probably because the kpg extinction event wasn't exactly like our own. instead of one big asteroid killing off the dinosaurs, a mixture of volcanic activity and a tiny dash of climate change had the Mesozoic reptiles start to fizzle out in the beginning of the Paleocene, leaving behind only the lucky ones that were adaptable enough to survive the changes. one of these lucky archosaurs to make it to the modern Holocene were the dromaeosaurids, more specifically the "Asiatic" members of velociraptorinae. such is the case with the olmraptor, a forest-dwelling descendant of those velociraptors.     the olmraptor, like all other non-avian/pterosaur archosaurs, have a line of spikes going down their backs. they're solitary hunters, preferring to catch small prey like rodents, invertebrates, lizards and birds. although diurnal, they're most active during the brighter hours of dusk and dawn. the male and female mate for life and, despite their solitary lifestyle, have their territories overlapping each other. every year, the male's coat becomes brightly colored, and they begin to start their collection of flowers and bones. when the male first starts this display, the collection starts in a small, shallow pile of grass and twigs. if he's lucky and manages to successfully gain the love of a female, they'll make that display pile into a nest and he'll use it every year to renew their love. both parent incubate the eggs, with the female doing most of the incubating as the male either gathers food or defends the female. when the babies hatch, they're almost fully developed and are able to start walking within their first hour of their life. once able to walk, both parents and offspring leave the nest where the babies are taught how to survive on their own. next season, they'll come back to that nest to start the process all over again.     like the pantheronager, they're kept as pets and are infamous for their high reproduction and adaptability. however, they are at least a little helpful in hunting and eating unwanted pest. olmraptors in the western hemisphere (especially amerigia) are popular in places like parks, country clubs and gated communities for their colors and pest control.

onisuchus -49ft long -crocodilian, converging onto kaprosuchus -tropical wetlands of indus     sometimes what seems to be a living fossil is actually just an animal converging onto a similar build to prehistoric animal. modern crocodilians are sometimes considered living fossils, given how alot of them haven't changed in the 100 millions of years being here. in some funny twist, most of the seemingly "mesozoic survivors" crocodilians aren't really that and are instead just a case of convergent evolution, such as the case with the onisuchus.     the onisuchus is a massive carnivore who's claim to fame is it's kaprosuchus-like looks and it's voracious appetite. they'll eat practically any animal they see fit for a meal, dead or alive. they're just as good swimmers as they are runner, and can run in short burst of speed to catch prey. they even have a body count; about 150 people per year, mostly humans and smaller elkinets, have their lives taken by this gluttonous archosaur. however, not everything is doom and gloom for the onisuchus; like all other surviving crocodilians they're great mothers that protect their young and move them away from danger (mostly other onisuchus). at least 2/3rds of all onisuchus-related deaths are due to people being unaware of a mother onisuchus's presence, or even the babies since they hang around dense foliage to further be protected. when the mother spots the threat, she'll not only kill the animal (or person), but also will ensure that the carcass wont attract other predators by eating their dead body. still, even with all these protective measures, lost of predator's still manage to steal her babies, and only 3 out of 10 of her babies will make it to adulthood.

striped tapir -13ft tall -tapiridae -tropics of southern sonias

    one of the very rare instances of an argonian species replacing an earth's species entirely, the striped tapir (aka baku to many humans) was though to be some kind of extreme argonian variation of the Malayan tapir, when in fact they're a completely different species that replaces the Malayan tapir entirely. like alot of perissodactyls, they have a semi-long tail, with the long hair making up a third of it's length. and, like most other tapir species on argonus, they also have tiny, little tusks on their mouths.     the behavior is not too different from other tapir species. they're mostly solitary, eats leaves and shoots, most active at night, and can be considerably dangerous when cornered (though the prefer to run first). 

if the tapir's ears look a bit weird, that's because i accidentally gave it two ears instead of four and didn't notice until i was typing this. so, i used mspaint as a makeshift photoshop and it surprisingly worked.

also, fun fact, the male olmraptor's colors are based off of the mononykus reconstruction from the weird & wild creature cards.

[ben-shapiro-onlyfans]

she call me kpg the way i mass extinction event

[dinobotisland]

I won't become a discourse blog i am not a cyberbully i am not a cyberbully. I hate white people i hate people who defend ao3 i hope we get hit with another kpg extinction event

[artificial-ascension]

I'm trying to come up with silly names for mass extinction events because it's not fair that the end permian gets to be called The Great Dying and the theoretical idea of a mass extinction event 2.4bya (theoretical because we know something happened but fossil evidence is so scarce we can't say for certain the full gravity of the situation) gets to be called the Great Oxidation Catastrophe so I think they should all have names.

I'm not changing the end Cretaceous because KT mass extinction (better than KPG) sounds cool and I joke about it enough to be iconic. I also already came up with the Ordovician Ice Bath (I am aware of the heating part but the ice bath just sounds better) Not sure if the Holocene counts, but, Holocene Hot Box Crisis (global warming)

Now I'm struggling for the end Devonian and Triassic seeing as their cause isn't exactly known (technically the Devonian was a two part act) so it's harder to pin something down. Ideas??

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

You get to pick one lineage (consisting of no more than a handful of closely related species) of non-avian dinosaurs from any point in time to survive up to and past the kpg extinction event and undergo an adaptive radiation alongside mammals and birds. Who are you picking, and why?

Hadrosaurs, because they’re my favorite group of dinosaurs (penguins are second)

[weirdponytail]

My actual typed notes from my Evolution of Earth and Life lecture yesterday. 

Them sexy, sexy LIPs.

[dragonthunders01]

Spectember D19: Commensalism

In an alternative earth where the late cretaceous went very smooth on its transitional event (multiple minor extinctions and a non-KPg) caused pterosaurs on marine environment to experiment in new behaviors and so lose flight, and in dozen million years those derived pterosaurs started to become specialized swimmers that expanded into new forms, many penguin and cormorant like forms, long manta shaped wanderers of different feeding behaviors and a strange long necked like form, but nothing could compare to the strange and large boatbills, they sort of converged with azhdarchids with their body:head ration being around ¼ of the body size, but unlike those lack long necks or large limbs for their aquatic lifestyle, with their large head and beaks adapted to remain afloat near the surface, being limited to swim in the surface, which many animals take advantage of their length and live alongside these, including an unique squamate that adapted to live on these big marine flightless pterosaurs.

The Bowstick Icthoherpetes is part of a minor radiation of the cretaceous saltwater mosasaurs, although many diverged into thunniform body types few average forms similarly to their cretaceous relatives remained, the Bowsticks is one of few last descendant of the lineage of these, this small reptile over time adopted the behavior of stick alongside large animals to eat what they leave behind, though being air breathing limit the options of host and the Boatbill became the most compatible to live with, as their anatomy restricted them to be surface dwellers with a limited range of diving.  

The way it attaches to their host is simple as with animals like geckoes, their fore fins have evolved rows of comb structured scales that extend in the 4-digit pads that physically attach firmly on the beak of the boatbill, often near the upper part for the access to air. They can regulate their air intake and keep it relatively slow oxygen consuming so they can last underwater for an hour, only if they need to breath, they can detach from their host boatbill and reach the surface only to swim fast before the big pterosaur drift away.