mcpieandhaggis

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Chema Mendez aka Mendez Mendez (Dominican, b. Dominican Republic, based Bavaro, Punta Cana, Dominican Republic) - Growing, Digital Art

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Part of an educational project I collaborated on with Tyler Rhodes; children used evolutionary principles to design their own life-forms, and I then painted a selection of them :)

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great blue heron , Ardea herodias

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https://www.instagram.com/wildoatt?igsh=bTN4enMwZ2V3a2Mz

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Sketch linework for the jaw types present within anthropods. These sketches serve to showcase the jaws and general skull shapes seen for each group of anthropods and does not include such things as antennae types present within each group as it can be highly varied. The red lines denote possible esophagus path.

Anthropods are believed to have split off from arthropods during Atterra's early Carboniferous period around 356 million years ago, developing internal skeletons and a closed circulatory system to help them compete against early the early tetrapod's of their time. As the Carboniferous period drew to a close and their athropod cousins began to shrink due to the lower oxygen levels, anthropods moved into the young hollows of Atterra to avoid competition with Atterra's rapidly diversifying tetrapods during its Devonian period and the rainforest collapse caused by climate change at the end of the world's Carboniferous period.

Anthropods can be divided into two groups based on the number of holes present within it's skull, similar to tetrapods. The first group of anthropods are defined by a singular hole in their skill, a fused upper labrum. Many species also have hinged mandibles held in front of the face which are used to secure and process food. The second group of anthropods are generally closer in shape and structure to anthropods while possessing two holes in their skull. Many species in both groups have a mobile bottom labrum which is used to help bring food further into the mouth with the help of two tongues derived from two palps on either side of the mouths of their ancestors.

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The ancient mollusk punk ferox feeding on the detritus littering the seafloor.

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I was inspired by Turnip28 for this drawing I did

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Hay tumbly

I have a new adopt available if any of y'all like doggy bears

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Ritual

2023

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New (kinda!) print in the InPRNT store today. The Magpie is an older piece that still pops up once in a while as a tattoo on random folks.

Now available to own as a snazzy print. www.inprnt.com/gallery/asmeesh

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war and the eye of knowledge

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#LemuriaChallenge - Submission 10: Central Lake part 2

good mix of stuff this time around imo

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I’ll have some more of the ever popular little goat familiar sculptures available in this shop update! They will be available on Friday, January 17th!

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as we welcome october, i sit my ass down with browser full of bug and a head full of empty. welcome to no spine city baby 👏

day 1, peanut-headed lantern fly. hey big head

(as always, invertober is organized by the lovely @/fossilforager)

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Ashy Woodpecker (Mulleripicus fulvus), family Picidae, order Piciformes, North Sulawesi, Indonesia

photograph by Henrick Tan

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Amphibian Perucetus and giant scissor sharks

In previous posts, we considered Moropiton and Poseideongenia, two groups of animals that migrated to Siberia through the Ural Sea in the Late Carboniferous. Before moving on to the actual descendants of these Seymouries - the Angarians themselves - we can distract ourselves with the creatures that the Moscow settlers could encounter on a vegetable raft.

The Dynasty of marine amphibians

Let's start with a strange speculative kind that shouldn't exist. Ichthyocetus, the "whale fish", is a large animal reaching a size of up to 2.5 meters and is a direct descendant of tetrapods of the Moscow Sea, primarily tulerpeton. The latter is known primarily for its six-toed limbs developed relative to other modern tetropods, as well as for its location. The fact is that the remains of the tulerpiton were located 200 kilometers from the supposed shore: this and the very structure of the body of the tetrapod under discussion suggest that the animal lived in shallow water, breathing atmospheric air (no bones corresponding to the gills were found, and the head was separated from the body - i.e. the tulerpeton could lift its head) and moving forward using the legs, pushing them off the bottom (their strength would not be enough to allow the toolerpeton to move on land). It is possible that some tetrapods could have stayed in this habitat, becoming the main predators of shallow waters, where larger predators like eugeneodonts or placoderms could not move normally.

Tulerpeton, 360 m.y.a. Art by Dmitry Bogdanov

Tulerpeton found fossils

Ichthyocetus is the last representative of this hypothetical clade, whose population was almost completely destroyed by the decline in sea level due to the new peak of the Karoo ice Age. His basic diet is benthos, which he can find in the buried ground: echinoderms, starfish and lilies, as well as, if luck smiles, the corpses of marine animals that the surf brings. He could also purposefully hunt for moropitons if they swam too deep. The bones of ichthyocetus are incredibly dense; this allows it to stay in the water during strong waves. This animal is able to sense the approach of a storm - then it tries to find the shore and crawl out onto it, burrowing into the sand; then they are most vulnerable. If it is impossible to find the shore, then the ichthyocetuses go to depth, swallowing air, where they can stay for 3-4 hours. Sometimes this tetropods go deep in search of new food sources, where they can catch young eugeneodonts or small fish. Surprisingly, ichthyocetuses are not the largest representatives of their clade (let's call it Ichthyocetusae): some species could grow up to 3 meters and lead a more pelagic lifestyle.

They usually appeared during periods of intense glaciation with a reduction in their original habitat. Unfortunately, this time climate change has become insurmountable.

Something about scissor sharks

If the meeting of protoseimurians with their "cousin" was unreliable, then the same cannot be said about eugeneodonts. The largest animals of the sea were the edestus, or protopirates. Although the largest protopirate species, E. vorax, could reach 6 meters (making it the largest predator of its time), the Moscow species were somewhat smaller and reached a maximum of 4 meters. These sizes correspond to the modern white shark and mako shark.

Edestus, 313—307  m.y.a. Art by Dmitry Bogdanov

Comparison of the four species of Edestus. Authors of this illustration is Leif Tapanila and Jesse Pruitt

Both poseideonogenes and moropitons encountered these cartilaginous fish - most likely, they were four-meter E. heinrichi and E. triserratus commensurate with ichthyocetus. Most likely, the edestus hunted numerous nautiloids and other soft-bodied prey and could well attack rafts, mistaking them for a dead cephalopod with a spiral shell. The protoseimuria themselves would not be of interest to the edestus - they are too small. That's what saved them.