#ostracoderm

[impulseimpact]

these paleospream picks are from today lel, hope ya like em

[vickysaurus]

A display showing off armoured jawless fish.

[antiqueanimals]

Prehistoric Animals. The 1976 Childcraft Annual.

[pickles4nickles]

Oh to be an anatomically incorrect jawless prehistoric fish with not a braincell to be found

[the-aromancer]

What would be the first thing you do if you evolved back into a fish?

easy. eat other fish.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

glub glub

[minecraft-inspo]

Why are slimes placed as an early branch off of the kingdom Animalia? 

Slimes are enigmatic. Taken at face value, they could fit anywhere or nowhere in the tree. They tick all of the boxes required to be defined as an animal, but don’t closely resemble any real phylum, though they do bear some resemblance to certain basal animal groups such as ctenophores and cnidarians. 

Why is the elytra branching off from the insects?

The word elytra refers to the hard wings of beetles. This is where beetles would be placed on the tree.

Why is the shulker a mollusk?

It’s a shelled invertebrate - anything beyond this is unclear. It has a pair of shells like a bivalve, but could belong to any of a number of different related groups. 

Why is the sea pickle so close to vertebrates?

The sea pickle is either based on a real life sea cucumber (an echinoderm), or a sea pickle (a tunicate). Either way, both of these groups are deuterostomes, which means they, like us, develop their anus before their mouth. Yeah. 

Why are guardians labeled as manufactured?

It’s an idea I’m not totally sold on, but a theory nevertheless. It has been posited that guardians were created to guard underwater monuments and are not actually animals. I am of the opinion that if this is the case, they are still at least partially biological, as they do drop edible raw fish. In this case, they likely represent a lineage of jawless fish comparable to real life ostracoderms that was further modified for their role as temple guardians. 

Why are the dragon and sniffer related? Why do they branch off the tree so early?

Both are 6 limbed, meaning they are not tetrapods, the group which includes all real terrestrial vertebrates. Instead, they may represent a different lineage of fishes which separately developed a third limb girdle and then followed a line of parallel evolution with the tetrapods. This is comparable to the various invasions of land by arthropods, in which arachnids, myriapods and insects separately evolved mechanisms of terrestrialization while also convergently evolving many of the same structures as each other. 

Aren’t creepers described as “plant-like?” Why are they included with the vertebrates?

They have indeed often been described as plant-like by various developers. It is my belief that they are vertebrates with a symbiotic relationship with some form of plant, probably a moss. This is why they are also included in Bryophyta on the other side of the tree. All promotional merchandise that shows creeper internal anatomy shows the presence of bones and the general anatomy reflects a familiar yet distorted version of the common tetrapod body plan. They do not share much in common with either reptiles or mammals, and so I split them off early in the vertebrate portion of the tree. While creepers share a developmental history with pigs, they do not actually bear any synapomorphies to suggest this relationship is canon, and so I chose not to place them nearby. 

Why are phantoms reptiles?

I’m honestly not sure what else they could be. The underside of the texture reminds me of the plastron of a turtle, though the wings are arguably more bat-like than anything else. Phantoms are all undead and their living version is likely now extinct, so we can’t fully understand the anatomy they would have had. 

Why are striders synapsids? What is a synapsid?

Synapsids are mammals and their extinct, reptile-like ancestors. Striders have hair, like living mammals, but otherwise share very little with modern mammals, suggesting they split off early in synapsid evolution.

What is the warden/sculk?

I don’t know. It’s very purposefully the most alien life in Minecraft. Most realistically, I think it’s not from the overworld at all. However, that’s not really in the spirit of this project. Therefore, I hypothetically place it as a fungus, as fungi are capable of the sprawling growth in dark environments and possible parasitism in the case of the warden itself. 

Why are blazes labeled as “manufactured?”

I haven’t got a clue what blazes could be. Are they sentient fire? Are they living creatures that mimic fire? Who knows. I finally ended up considering them to be something akin to vexes or golems - summoned by someone or something to guard nether fortresses, rather than naturally evolved creatures. This is actually supported by a really old (and likely since retconned) article from the Minecraft website. https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/visit-nether- 

Why is glow lichen connected to two separate branches?

Because lichen is a symbiotic structure formed by both algae and fungi!

Why are chorus plants where they are?

They are angiosperms, meaning they bear flowers and fruit, but do not have the characteristics of either of the more derived major lineages of flowering plants.

Why are dripleaf plants alismatales?

To me, they bear a great resemblance to members of the arum family, such as elephant ear plants, arrowhead plants, and Monstera. 

Torchflower?

It bears greatest resemblance to bromeliads, a group of plants related to grasses.

Why is the spore blossom placed where it is?

The spore blossom is another anomalous species. If “spore” is taken seriously, it must be a fern. However, ferns don’t have flowers, so I assumed the spores are actually just pollen. I placed it as a dicot based on the fact that dicots typically have flowers with 4-5 petals, while monocots have flowers with petals in multiples of 3. 

Why aren’t vines and glow berry vines placed together?

The “vine” form has evolved dozens of times in separate lineages of plants, just like the “tree” form. It alone is not enough to indicate a close relationship. I tentatively placed vines where the grape family would go, and placed the glow berries where staff vines (Celastrus) should be. 

Why aren’t dead bushes grouped with sweet berry bushes and azaleas?

Like vines and trees, “bush” is a description of a body form and not an evolutionary group. I depicted the dead bush as a real form of desert bush, a tumbleweed, specifically the Russian thistle, a common tumbleweed in the order Caryophyllales.

Sweet berries, on the other hand, are most likely based on lingonberries, a commonly grown crop in Sweden, where Mojang is based. These belong to the order Ericales along with azaleas, as well as many other common plants not yet represented in the game such as blueberries and cranberries. 

Pitcher plants are real - why isn’t there a “confirmed” lineage on the tree?

Pitcher plants have evolved several times in different lineages, and there is no clear indication which ones the ones in Minecraft are. In fact, most likely, the Minecraft pitcher plants don’t belong to any real group of pitcher plants, as none of these produce “pods” nor do they have similar leaves. However, the most likely candidates are the family Nepenthaceae (order Caryophylalles) or the family Sarraceniaceae (order Ericales).

[andy-paleoart]

Biodiversity expands! | A biodiversidade se expande!

🇬🇧

The Ordovician Period is the second geological period of the Paleozoic Era, spanning from approximately 485.4 to 443.8 million years ago. It follows the Cambrian Period and precedes the Silurian Period.

During the Ordovician, Earth's landmasses were still clustered together in a supercontinent called Gondwana. The continents were located closer to the South Pole, and much of the Earth's surface was covered by a vast ocean known as the Iapetus Ocean. The climate during this period was relatively stable and warmer than the preceding Cambrian, with moderate temperatures and a generally shallow sea level.

It was a time of significant evolutionary diversification, marking the rise of various marine life forms. The seas were populated by a diverse array of invertebrates, including trilobites, brachiopods, mollusks, and echinoderms. Trilobites, in particular, were highly successful and abundant during this period. Early jawless fish, such as the ostracoderms, began to appear in the oceans, representing a crucial step in the evolution of vertebrates. However, these early fish were still quite primitive compared to later fish that would dominate the seas in subsequent periods.

The continents were gradually drifting, contributing to changes in oceanic circulation patterns and climate. By the end of the period, Gondwana began to experience fragmentation, marking the initial steps toward the eventual formation of different landmasses. These continental movements had profound implications for marine life and ecosystems.

The Ordovician-Silurian extinction event primarily affected marine life, and the impact on terrestrial environments and plants is not as well-documented as it is for marine organisms. During the Ordovician, land was sparsely populated by simple plants, and more complex terrestrial ecosystems would evolve in the subsequent periods.

🇧🇷

O Período Ordoviciano é o segundo período geológico da Era Paleozoica, abrangendo aproximadamente de 485,4 a 443,8 milhões de anos atrás. Ele sucede o Período Cambriano e antecede o Período Siluriano.

Durante o Ordoviciano, os continentes da Terra ainda estavam agrupados em um supercontinente chamado Gondwana. Os continentes estavam localizados mais próximos ao Polo Sul, e grande parte da superfície terrestre estava coberta por um vasto oceano conhecido como Oceano Iapetus. O clima durante esse período era relativamente estável e mais quente do que o Cambriano anterior, com temperaturas moderadas e um nível do mar geralmente raso.

Foi um período de significativa diversificação evolutiva, marcando o surgimento de várias formas de vida marinhas. Os mares eram habitados por uma variedade de invertebrados, incluindo trilobitas, braquiópodes, moluscos e equinodermos. Os trilobitas, em particular, foram altamente bem-sucedidos e abundantes durante esse período. Peixes primitivos sem mandíbula, como os ostracodermas, começaram a aparecer nos oceanos, representando um passo crucial na evolução dos vertebrados. No entanto, esses primeiros peixes ainda eram bastante primitivos em comparação com os peixes posteriores que dominariam os mares nos períodos subsequentes.

Os continentes estavam gradualmente se movendo, contribuindo para mudanças nos padrões de circulação oceânica e no clima. No final do período, Gondwana começou a se fragmentar, marcando os passos iniciais em direção à eventual formação de diferentes massas terrestres. Esses movimentos continentais tiveram profundas implicações para a vida marinha e os ecossistemas.

O evento de extinção Ordoviciano-Siluriano afetou principalmente a vida marinha, e o impacto em ambientes terrestres e plantas não está tão bem documentado quanto para os organismos marinhos. Durante o Ordoviciano, a terra era escassamente povoada por plantas simples, e ecossistemas terrestres mais complexos evoluiriam nos períodos subsequentes.

[the-real-list-of-ominous-threats]

I will ossify the rest of your skin

oh no i have become perhaps a dunkleosteus or an ostracoderm with a dermatocranium-like pseudo-exoskeleton armor

[jawless-lads]

People really see fish evolution as this linear thing when it absolutely wasn't

Case in point: we have this picture of jawless fish were replaced by placoderms, which were replaced by bony fish, with ray-finned fish became modern teleosts while lobed-finned fish got on land, "March of Progress" style.

Except that like. At the time fishapods came onto land (Middle Devonian), jawless fish like psammosteids were doing pretty well (some reaching up to 1.5 meters wide)! Meanwhile, placoderms and rhizodonts were dominating the "big predator" niches and sharing smaller ones with bony fish, cartilaginous fish and jawless fish. Devonian oceans had a lot of diversity, and there wasn't a trend towards one "superior" body plan - we only have this illusion because of the Late Devonian extinction removing most of the diversity, but, in the same way as both sharks and bony fish are doing pretty well today, so could have been placoderms and ostracoderms!

(Pretty accurate picture of what Devonian fauna was like, although Rhizodus itself didn't live during the Devonian, it was its cousin Sauripterus)

[nocountryforiguanodon]

Wet Woodward Wednesday Welcome one and all to Woodward Wednesdays, where we celebrate the works of Alice B. Woodward, possibly the earliest female paleoartist to restore a wide range taxa in works of undeniable artistic - not just scientific - merit. Today I'll walk you through Paleozoic underwater scenes she drew for Evolution in the Past (1912).

The first one depicts the Cambrian, and any modern lover of paleoart is probably going to ask what exactly is Cambrian about it? Where are the big stars of Burgess Shale from Anomalocaris to Hallucigenia to Pab the Snab a.k.a. Opabinia? They simply weren't known well enough: that big jelly may actually be the mouth of Peytoia, a radiodont related to Anomalocaris, which got misidentified as a jellyfish at one point:

It's unfortunate we didn't get to see any lobopods from Woodward. At least there are many other periods to cover like Ordovician:

It's hard to avoid wondering if people thought of Ordovician as the peaceful period of life, or even the boring one, with the most exciting things being graceful crinoids swaying in the waves and trilobites scittering on the sea floor. No terrifying sea scorpions or eldritch Orthoceras to haunt your nightmares.

I'm jumping right past Silurian and into Devonian, because that scene was already covered in an earlier Woodward Wednesday. Fish predictably make their first appearance (as earlier vertebrates had barely been discovered yet) in the form of placoderms and ostracoderms. There's even an ammonoid crawling on the sea floor next to Drepanaspis looking curiously like a Devonian roomba. Then again, that probably describes the feeding ecology of Drepanaspis pretty well.

The Permian marine life scene feels almost daring now, a century later. Just a bunch of regular fish and molluscs having a nice day in the sea, no rake toothed reptilians or rotary saw sharkoids or even the humble Hybodus to be seen. The temptation to make the illustrations more thrilling was surely a thing back then as much as it is now, but our standards have shifted. Aquariums were still a relatively new thing and hadn't quite made their big break into households, so these lifelike undersea scenes may have been far more exciting for an early 20th century reader. Curiously, Evolution in the Past does not include any Carboniferous scenes illustrated by Alice Woodward. Why this is, I cannot tell. If you know of other sources of Carboniferous life depicted by her in some sources, please let me know.

[impulseimpact]

#85 galeaspark: an incredibly heavy fish due to the armor around its head made both from bone and magnetic metal. The little hole between its eyes is actually a nostral, its real mouth is under its body as it feeds on different animals and metals hidden in the sea floor

[sinosauropteryx--prima]

Life in the Ordovician

(top left: Endoceras; top middle: Promissum; top right: Pentecopterus; middle left: Aegirocassis; middle right: Bumastus; bottom left: first land plants; bottom middle: Sacabambaspis; bottom right: Arandaspis)

Art by:

Bumastus - Obsidian Soul

Promissum, Aegirocassis, Sacabambaspis - Nobu Tamura

Endoceras - AStepIntoOblivion

Pentecopterus - Patrick J. Lynch

Arandaspis - Christian Darkin

First land plants - Tahoenathan

After the Cambrian Explosion we reach the “Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event“ or GOBE (which, admittedly, sounds a lot less catchy than Cambrian Explosion).

The Ordovician starts directly after the Cambrian about 485 million years ago. Life really started to diversify during this period and came up with a lot of new and more modern forms (as far as you can call something that‘s 485 million years old “modern“). Groups like gastropods (slugs and snails), bivalves (shelled marine invertebrate) and brachiopods (shelled molluscs like clams, oysters, etc.) started to gain prominence. It really is a shame that, as a vertebrate myself, I am biased to things that also have bones and therefore won‘t talk a lot about those critters (maybe at some point i have to dig deeper into them). I can however tell you that those groups became very important to marine ecosystems and that the brachiopods especially are characteristic for the “paleozoic fauna“ in contrast to the “cambrian fauna“. Also, the fact that paleontologist distinguish between those two should give you a hint as to how impactful the GOBE really was.

Trilobites like Bumastus, which first originated in the Cambrian, were doing very well and diversified further. Most of them were bottom dwelling and relatively small, but the biggest ones, which lived during the late Ordovician could reach up to 70 cm. Just like the gastropods, bivalves and brachiopods, they were mayor players of their time, and just like them, they get concerningly little attention in relation to how big of a group they were and how important they were to our Earth‘s history. Although, I suppose I am part of the problem here, because I could go into deep detail about them right now. I‘m just not going to. Maybe some day…

While the trilobites were running around on the ocean floors some of the earliest chordates slowly turned into fish. They were of course a very basic type of fish. We call this group Agnatha, which translates to “no-jaw“, because, well, they didn‘t have jaws yet (they did have teeth though). Some jawless fish are still alive today, the lampreys and hagfish. They are truely disgusting, slimy, blood-sucking, eel-like creatures. The extinct jawless fish include the conodonts like Promissum. For the longest time scientists had no idea what kind of animal conodonts were, because the only parts of them that fossilized were their cone-shaped teeth (that‘s also where they got their name). Those teeth however were found everywhere and they are very important fossils, because by looking at them geologist can determine from which geologic age a fossil site is. Relatively recently we then started to find better preserved fossils, that revealed that conodonts where also eel-shaped and had big eyes. The other type of extinct jawless fish were the Ostracoderms like Sacabambaspis or Arandaspis. They are usually better preserved because their heads were covered in boney armor which fossilizes much better than the wiggly soft bodies of the conodonts.

One of the biggest names of the Ordovician was Endoceras, a shelled cephalopod (related to squids and octopus). And by big I mean that this weird ice cream cone was more than 3 m long. Another famous group that got their start during this time are the eurypterids, the sea scorpions, like Pentecopterus. Neither were they real scorpions (they were arachnids though, so close enough), nor lived they exclusively in the sea as there were a lot of fresh water species. There are some suggestions that they might have been able to at least briefly walk on land and breath in the air. They were also some of the biggest arthropods that ever live. Pentecopterus for example was about 1.7 m long and it wasn‘t even the biggest eurypterid (we‘ll get to that one later). They weren‘t all massive, but sizes of 1 m and more were not rare and to be honest, that‘s already way to big for any bug of my liking.

While all those new linages arose they slowly outcompeted many of the Cambrian weirdos I talked about last week. Some held on longer than others though. The Radiodonts (Anomalocaris and friends) declined during the Ordovician, but it was also the time during which we see the biggest one of them: 2 m long Aegirocassis. It was a filter feeder, so basically a giant whale of its time.

As all of that was happening in the oceans, another revolution happened quietly on the shores of our early planet: We see the very first land plants. Those early plants would have been non-vascular plants (vascular tissue is basically the plant equivalent to blood vessels; and it had not developed yet). They would have looked similar to mosses.

Even though those early plants wouldn‘t have looked very exciting, they would have put a lot of work into terraforming the world. It is believed that their photosynthesis lowered carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and that this might have caused temperatures to drop, turning the late Ordovician into an ice age. We know for certain that this drop in CO2 levels and temperature happened. If it was actually caused by the photosynthesis is another questions, though. Another suggestion, that also makes plants the culprits, is that their roots increased the erosion of rocks and this erosion involved the reaction between the rocks and CO2 from the atmosphere. Another reason for increased erosion could have been vulcanism creating a lot more “new“ rocks to erode. An (to my ears) absolutely wild theory is that the earth actually didn‘t cool because of lower CO2, but instead got hit by a gamma-ray burst, which sounds like something out of a scifi-movie. Apparently a gamma-ray burst is an intense energy beam, that is caused by a supernova (I really know nothing about space…), and it could have stripped our planet very quickly of our ozone layer. As ozone is a greenhouse gas, just like CO2, that would have also caused a cool down.

Whatever it was, at the end of the Ordovician the earth froze over. Drastic changes in temperature usually lead to extinction and that was the case here as well. The Late Ordovician Mass Extinction killed around 85 % of marine species, which is a pretty big deal when you consider, that almost all species at the time were marine species. It is often seen as the second-worst of the mayor “big 5“ mass extinctions (we’ll get to all the other ones in the future, don‘t worry about it). But, unlike many other mass extinctions, it didn‘t have a mayor impact on the fauna and most groups of life recovered and re-diversified after the extinction. But that‘s a story for another time.

Again, all the info from wikipedia. I got some stuff about jawless fish here.

[antiqueanimals]

In Prehistoric Seas. Written by Carroll Lane Fenton and Mildred Adams Fenton. Illustrated by Carroll Lane Fenton. 1963.

[ouroblorbos]

anyways open unrelated question 4 u guys. what do u think dave’s favorite prehistoric animal would be. he doesnt really strike me as a dinosaur guy. like... idk if he explored the hobby more i could see him getting like really interested in the ordovician. like. for example: (on the wikipedia page for “ostracoderms”) “rose look at all these fucked up fish” (learning about aegirocassis) “rose holy shit the shrimps just get bigger” OR. if he was into dinosaurs it’d be like. paraves. or like post-kt extinction birds. hes a fish guy but also a bird guy. is this anything

[greedisland-devs]

How does Mystery Pond (008) determine what is and is not a fish? Cladistically, mammals (and, indeed, all tetrapods) emerged from fishes and so are fish as well. If I, hypothetically, pushed a fellow player into the pond would a another person appear the next day? Would it be another distinct human or a clone of the fellow player? Have you considered the ethical ramifications of cloning players without their explicit consent? Furthermore, would the same hold for NPCs? How are they classified by the game's internal logic? If 'fish' is limited to paraphyletic definition (cowards), which extant groups are considered? Do you account for extinct fish which through unnatural means may be manifested within the game? Are Galgaida (1217) and Chidon (7018) fish or, due to their nature as game constructs, classified differently. Have you considered that differentiating them from True fish might be discrimination?

How does Mystery Pond (008) determine what is and is not a fish?

The definition of fish that we are using goes as follows

The creature must be a vertebrate

They must be aquatic

They must be lacking terrestrial locomotive members

They must not be descended from any land tetrapods

Since tetrapods have terrestrial locomotive members, they are not considered under the taxonomy of what we designate a fish.

If 'fish' is limited to paraphyletic definition (cowards), which extant groups are considered?

There are six distinct modern lineages of fish which were considered when classifying which organisms can show up:

Mixini (hagfish)

Cephalaspidomorphi (lampreys)

Chondrichthyes (sharks & rays)

Coelacanthimorpha (coelacanth)

Dipnomorpha (lungfish)

Actinopterygi (bony fish)

Do you account for extinct fish which through unnatural means may be manifested within the game?

Here are the extinct lineages we took into account.

Ostracoderms (jawless fish)

Acanthodians (spiny sharks)

Placoderms (plate skinned bottom dwellers)

The only extinct fish which appear within Mystery Pond (008) are ones we have substantial records of in order to recreate.

Are Galgaida (1217) and Chidon (7018) fish or, due to their nature as game constructs, classified differently.

Galgadia (1217) and Chidon (7018) do count as fish that can be spawned within the Mystery Pond, however, the cards for these fish cannot be acquired by catching them through mystery pond. These fish can be interacted with but if they are spawned by the pond they are considered to be part of that card, not their own distinct cards.

And now for the more philosophical debate of comments made above.

If I, hypothetically, pushed a fellow player into the pond would a another person appear the next day? Would it be another distinct human or a clone of the fellow player? Have you considered the ethical ramifications of cloning players without their explicit consent?

While players cannot be cloned through the methods stated above, there was an interesting argument we had regarding the insertion of a cloning card. Through our beta testing, we came to realize a few things.

If the clone gained sentience, there was always a confusion of which was the original and which was the clone, as both people had the memory of using the card, and every memory prior to that. The extra confusion came from the fact that the clones were spawned holding a copy of the same card, which gave them resonable suspicion to believe they were the original. This caused a huge ethical issue for the beta tester, who at the time wanted to de-spawn his clone, who had run off and gained new experiences thus becoming a new person.

Is it ethical to be able to de-spawn a person? Would that not be the same as killing?

Therefore, we had to classify any new life as life and not an NPC

Shadow List is still running around Greed Island to this day, we cannot apprehend him.

Furthermore, would the same hold for NPCs? How are they classified by the game's internal logic?

NPCs are beings made of nen that we have full control over. They function as more of an autonomous nen beast until control is needed, in which they can be shut down, edited, or set back into free range motion. Some NPCs have the ability to achieve more structural autonomy in a long form of conjuration, which can happen if the player who wins the game suggests to take an NPC card out of the game. While the NPC will not technically be "alive" in the same way you or I will be alive, that will fullfill the nen condition that makes them fully autonomous from us. However, they must have a constant source of aura or therefore they will start to despawn, therefore they need to eat plant or animal matter from the real world. So long as your NPC will eat, they will live.

-Ging