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Spectember 2024 Day 21: Parachiropterus ibis

Parachiropterus ibis, also known as the Ibis-Headed Parachiropteran, is the largest member of the Parachiropteridae, a family of strange, pterosaur-like mammals that are distantly related to camels, and with a wingspan of 13-14 meters and a standing height of 7-9 meters, it is also one of the largest flying vertebrates ever to inhabit Mars ll or Potworia. The species inhabits Jariloia’s sprawling oak-savannas and its surrounding desert lands, and it has a highly touch-sensitive, 3.5-meter-long rostrum that is used to probe around tall blades of grass or through the chunks of flesh of a carcass, very powerful olfactory lobes, and hollow air sac-filled bones to keep it lightweight like most other members of its family. The Ibis-Headed Parachiropteran usually stalks the open plains in search of cow or horse-sized prey hiding in the grass, much like a ground hornbill or stork feeding on insects, and it will also occasionally soar over vast patches of land to sniff out the scent of fresh carcasses to eat from hundreds of kilometers away and subsequently use its huge size to displace any smaller scavengers from its supper, or prey upon any small ungulates or other animals that try to escape the flames of the wildfires that ravage the grasslands at the peak of the dry season.

As with all other Parachiropteran species, the slightly-smaller females of the Ibis-Headed Parachiropteran produce only one or three fully-developed calves which are able to start hopping, running and flying soon after birth as a precaution against any potential predators. For the first four years of their lives they will initially feed upon their mother’s milk, which is produced from two pairs of small teats that have migrated up to the mother’s chest during the Parachiropterans’ evolutionary history. The calves will soon start consuming their first morsels of meat once they start moving on their own at the age of five, and it will take them another twelve to fifteen full years for them to reach adult size.

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Stick Insect (Agathemera luteola), family Agathemeridae, La Cumbre, Argentina

photograph by Béa Boul

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White-capped Tanager (Sericossypha albocristata), family Thraupidae, order Passeriformes, Ecuador

photograph by Christopher Forslund

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Valgavoth - sketchbook

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Sunbeam Snake (Xenopeltis unicolor), family Xenopeltidae, Thailand

photograph by Justin Coburn

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a little story about seeing the past through the present - featuring razorbill, who is the closest living relative of the great auk, a bird that became extinct not so long ago.

- Native to the Arctic and sub-Arctic region and once numbering millions of individuals, Great auks became extinct mid-19th century. The last breeding pair, found incubating an egg, was killed on 3 June 1844, on request from a merchant who wanted specimens, with Jón Brandsson and Sigurður Ísleifsson strangling the adults and Ketill Ketilsson smashing the egg with his boot. The last individual was seen in 1852, leaving no hope that the species might be extant.

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My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

For Fossil Friday, here is an enlarged model of Palaeocharinus, from the Devonian. This is one of many models I created for MUSE science museum (2015), in Trento, Italy.

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Italodraco giganteus

Most species of dragon are restricted to the forests of Afroeurasia. In most open habitats such as deserts and savannas, birds hold the competitive advantage when it comes to volant niches. Mountains are different, though. Like birds and pterosaurs, dragons have evolved a unidirectional breathing system and a series of postcranial air sacs that help them breathe in a relatively low-oxygen environment. The adhesive pads on their hands and feet helped dragons literally get a foothold, and their large wings proved useful in absorbing solar radiation to help fuel their mesothermic metabolisms.

The mountain dragon is the apex predator of the Mediterranean Mountains, with large individuals growing 7 meters in wingspan. Individual mountain dragons have large feeding ranges, often raising young higher in the mountains. Mountain dragons hunt on the wing and prey on pretty much any animal that they feel like eating. They bear semi-retractable foot talons which are often used to dispatch prey, but they seemingly prefer to startle prey into losing its footing and falling to its death.

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First week of Spectember is done! For this seventh day, a bit of fanart from one of Dougal Dixon's books, The New Dinosaurs.

Pictured here is the Crackbeak (Fortirostrum fructiphagum), an arboreal ornithopod that lives high in the canopy of the rainforests of Australia, Asia and Africa. It has very dextrous hands and feed to grab onto branches and onto food, and a large, muscular jaw with crushing teeth it uses to crack open nuts and other hard foods.

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Ilion dioramas, 2011-2015

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Spectember 2024 Day 19: Golden Crocodile-Fish

The Golden Crocodile-Fish is a somewhat aggressive, bizarre and very distant, salinity-tolerant relative of pikes that primarily inhabits the estuaries and freshwater lakes and rivers of Eastern Tataria and western Jariloia. The scientific name of the species means “long-snouted Gavial-Fish” in reference to its gavial-like jaws, which are dotted with electroreceptors that help the fish detect prey swimming around in the waters of its murky, muddy habitat. The Golden Crocodile Fish has also become quite similar to Earth’s stickleback fish as a result of convergent evolution, and the highly territorial, 3.3-meter-long males, which develop the golden-colored underside that gives the species its vernacular name during the breeding season, will help the females build a nest using the blades of nearby grass or other plants in which a clutch of eggs is laid, and it is they who will guard over the nest and the fry, which often huddle in the middle of the father’s long jaws or throat for safety from any potential predators.

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Another thing I pulled out of my ancient drafts, weird porpoises type critters

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My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

In 2015 I created a bunch more life-size and scale models for MUSE museum, in Trento, Italy. Here's a little Arthropleura (it grew as big as 2.6m long!), from the Carboniferous.