#Chicxulub... TWO!

[akiragatr]

DISCLAIMER IF ANY OF THESE BANDS EXIST: In my defense, your honor, I did a Google search first.

(I actually did come up with several that were already taken, FYI. Among them was "Feral Housecats" and "The Gregs")

[bobnichollsart]

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

This is where a career in palaeo-reconstruction began. This acrylic painting is the first artwork I was ever paid for, a private commission by Paul Anker, in 1999. Named "Impending Doom," it depicts two T. rex approaching a "Super rex," an informal name given to some large remains (now considered T. rex, I believe). Behind them is the Chicxulub asteroid.

As you can see, I needed to teach myself how to paint and I had a long way to go – ya gotta start somewhere!

[dragonshoardofworks]

Chapters: 17/19 Fandom: Danny Phantom Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Danny Fenton & Dinosaurs Characters: Danny Fenton, Dinosaurs - Character, Jazz Fenton Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Not Phantom Planet Compliant (Danny Phantom), College Student Danny Fenton, Stranded In The Past, Chicxulub Asteroid, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the wilderness, Wraith, Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, So much angst, Extinction, but there will be - Freeform, Fluff and Humor, Surprise Adoption, Eggs, Minor Character Death, No Beta we die like the dinosaurs, Mentioned Clockwork (Danny Phantom), Trigger Warning in the Start Notes of Each Chapter, Sick Character, Drown Scare, Acid Rain - Freeform, Earthquakes, Anxiety, Ectoberhaunt Order (Danny Phantom), Ectoberhaunt Chaos (Danny Phantom), Ectoberhaunt 2024 Past (Danny Phantom), Ectoberhaunt 2024 Future (Danny Phantom) Summary:

Alt. Titles: "Stranded Before Time" (thanks @redfoxtail26!) & "Danny's guide: How to escape from an Asteroid (not PP)" (thanks @mymadmedleyw) 🦕🦖/ᐠ｡ꞈ｡ᐟ\☄️☄️ College was meant to be his respite from the craziness of Amity Park, now that he had formed a stable truce with his Rogue Gallery. And it had been! (The first year.) It's the start of the second year that left him stranded in the past of 66 MYA with an... interesting unknown light approaching in the sky...

At long last! The 🦖Dinosaur Phic🦕 is complete! ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ

@ashoutinthedarkness @ectoberhaunt this is for you. Thank you for giving me the strength and the excuse to overcome the Writing Block and complete EH22 with EH24's prompt "Dinosaur". The unintentional peer pressure did wonders (and maybe that was the point...)! (^～^;)ゞ

Anyway! New tags have popped up, chapters have been rearranged in order to go in chronological order instead of following the Prompt List... And the chapter count WENT UP?? THAT IS NOT ALLOWED, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME, BRAIN OF MINE!

*hem* Welp, hopefully there won't be another hiatus two-years long for the Extra Stories, but in the meanwhile, I hope y'all enjoy the technical end of Danny's Journey to the Past!

(๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

[hoodie-prince-kid-archived]

"Average stone kills two birds a year" factoid actually just statistical error. Average stone kills zero birds a year. Asteroid Chicxulub, which crashed & killed approximately 20,000,000,000,000,000,000 dinosaurs at once, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.

[pokemoncenter]

On Pokemon genetics

If I am being honest, I do not want to post this. The truth contained in this post is something I despise. Not due to any moral judgment, nor is it unbelievable. It is simply... deeply unsatisfying, to have chased this truth, and come to such a ridiculous answer.

Ditto is a very unique Pokemon. Through its signature ability, Transform, it can transform into anything, capable of rearranging its entire cellular structure to perfectly mimic anything it sees. Somehow, its visual scan is even able to identify the DNA of the other Pokemon, making it able to become a viable- that is, fertile- member of that species.

Mew is believed to have been the first Pokemon, three hundred million years ago. It was believed to have the same transformative properties as Ditto. Thus, it can be assumed Mew had the same properties. Mew was able to transform into anything, and thus, could breed with other beings. It was believed it became extinct in this way- By breeding by transforming into other beings, the resulting babies were not Mews, and thus, the species could not maintain its own population.

Even if it can rearrange its own cellular structure, its own DNA, its own natural structure must remain recorded, so it can change back.

In other words, when Mew bred with other beings... and passed on its own genetics to the children. This may be the origin of Pokemon as we know it. This is the meaning of the fact that all Pokemon are descended from Mew. All Pokemon share the genetics of Mew.

... I digress.

Through our studies here, we have determined that Pokemon have a far, far greater quantity of 'junk DNA' than any other creature. However, though it is non-coding, it appears to not be junk. It seems that ncDNA is... remnants of not only Mew, but every other Pokemon in that Pokemon's ancestry.

(This also seems to explain why Pokemon are able to interbreed among each other, despite not being the same species.)

I have mentioned before, the Great Mysteries of Pokemon. One of them is the extreme mutatability, the extreme changes that occur in Pokemon, but only when they need to for environmental factors, that then stabilize so quickly.

The ncDNA has so much information. While all the Pokemon have so much interbreeding between species, this means that generally, each Pokemon will have quite a variety of ancestry in them, with an endless variety of traits.

It is our current belief that when faced with environmental pressures, a mother Pokemon will be able to use... something of a degraded form of Transform. Not for itself, but for what genes it will pass down. It will make it easier to adapt its children to different environments, by bringing forward atavistic traits.

Atavism, for the record, is when recessive or seemingly-lost genetic traits are suddenly expressed again, many generations later.

For example, if there was a prehistoric mammalian Pokemon adapted to the cold- likely, one that would have existed during the Ice Age after the Chicxulub Impact- that was within this Vulpix's distant, distant ancestry, Team Winter's sudden freeze would have caused this Ninetales to attempt to adapt its children. Two of them were already too developed to receive the adaptation, but one of them was able to properly receive the atavistic transformation.

The idea of genetic code lasting that long is ridiculous. Everything about this is ridiculous. Ascribing this all to Mew genetics feels like we may as well be ascribing it to magic.

And yet, it is, as far as we are able to tell, the truth.

Regional formes, extreme mutations, inexplicable mysteries of Pokemon... So much of it is nothing more than ncDNA being called upon to create atavistic regressions to more suitable forms.

As a side note, the mother Ninetales was not released to our care, so we were unable to find the genetic mechanism by which the mother can trigger this effect, which is causing no end of frustration, yet we know it must be there.

[thienvaldram]

Silurian Speculative Ancestry

Edit: Major overhaul to accurately reflect story details of the Adolescence of Time as well as The War Between the Land and Sea and Rose Coloured Crosshairs

Prelude – Meta-Origins of Silurians

It is of note that the Silurians, upon original development, were very much intended to effectively be ‘dinosaur people’. With their reptilian appearance being indicative of the pre-Avian, pre-Jurassic Park reptilian dinosaur conception. Though with JP-style avian dinosaurs being depicted in both Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and Deep Breath among others, as well as the newer designs of the Silurians themselves, make such an origin retroactively very tenuous in Universe.

Their two names from their first couple of stories, ‘Silurians’ and ‘Eocenes’, reflect two eras of history in which they are implied to originate, though both raise massive chronological problems with regards to how their depicted, especially in later works but even in their early ones. The Silurian era (444-415 million years ago) predates the emergence of reptiles entirely (310-320 million years ago) whereas the Eocene (56-34 million years ago) postdates the Dinosaurs but also still predates humanity (300,000 years ago), the homo genus (2.8 million years ago) and Hominids (22 million years ago).

And the ‘Silurian dating controversy’ only gets worse the more Silurian stories got written over time, as various pieces of media date them anywhere between less than 1 million years ago to 65 million years ago to 1 billion years ago (Which is pre Multicellular life). This exacerbated by the idea that the Moon’s capture was the reason for the Silurian hibernation, a theory that was since superseded by the Theia impact theory in modern scientific consensus and either way would have been dated to the early Solar System.

Thus for the interest of Speculative Biology I have thrown out all specific absolute dates and specific geological events associated with the Silurians in favour of hashing together an origin that makes conceptual sense for the Silurians as a prehistoric sentient Earthbound species based on what knowledge of modern biology I happen to have, as well as what jives with the overall ideas of the DWU.

Speculative Evolution

Speciation

Template

Scientific Name – Colloquial Identifier for this writeup (DWU Name/Origin Story)

Genus

Bipeslacertia – Reptilian Kindred, Suminisans (Credit Tara) (Earth Reptiles)

Species

Bipeslacertia vehemenus – Primitive Ancestor (Primitive Ancestor)

Bipeslacertia volans – “Winged Kindred”, Pterosaurians (Winged Earth Reptiles)

Bipeslacertia diabolus – Sea Devils, Mesosaurians (Sea Devils)

Bipeslacertia homines – Silurians, Saurians, Eocenes (Silurians)

Mondasian Parallel Evolution

Bipeslacertia diabolus abastrius – Sea Kings (Mondasian Sea Devils)

Bipeslacertia homines abastrius – Lizard Kings (Mondasian Silurians)

Subspecies (Winged Kindred)

Bipeslacertia volans mortuus – “Paleocenes”, Chicxulub (Winged Species – Adolescence of Time)

Bipeslacertia volans malakhi – Wyrm Callers (Wyrm infected Paleocenes)

Bipeslacertia volans vivus – Luadans (Reign of the Reptiles)

Bipeslacertia volans longiceps – “Pterosaur Men” (TM: A Morphology/Rose Coloured Crosshairs)

Bipeslacertia volans aurori – Zori (Reign of the Reptiles/Revelry of the Redacted)

Subspecies (Sea Devil)

Bipeslacertia diabolus sapiens – “Junior” Sea Devils (The War Between Sea Devils)

Bipeslacertia diabolus sicutsimiae – “Warrior” Sea Devils (Comic Sea Devils)

Bipeslacertia diabolus sicuturtus – Early Sea Devils (Normal Sea Devils)

Bipeslacertia diabolus reditius – “Devolved Ones” (Inhabitants of the Nameless City – HP Lovecraft/Faction Paradox)

Subspecies (Silurian)

Bipeslacertia homines malus – Serad-dur (Serad-dur)

Bipeslacertia homines calyptratus – “Chameleonic Branch” (Rose Coloured Crosshairs)

“Scholar” Caste

Bipeslacertia homines augurius – Fair Folk (Fair Folk- The Shadows of Avalon)

Bipeslacertia homines sapentia – “Senior” Silurians (Chibnall’s original classic style redesign – Cold Blood, The Lost Dimension)

Bipeslacertia homines rostrata – “Middle” Silurians (Warriors of the Deep Silurians)

Bipeslacertia homines gravius – “Horned Kindred” (Bulky Horned Herbivorous Silurians – TM A Morphology)

Bipeslacertia homines labia – “Early” Silurians (Original Classic Who Silurians)

Bipeslacertia homines venefica – The Silurians from the 30th Anniversary Calendar

“Warrior” Caste (Alternatively “Hunter” Caste)

Bipeslacertia homines anguis – “Junior” Silurians (Silurian Hunters – Supremacy of the Cybermen)

Bipeslacertia homines sapiens – “Late” Silurians (New Who Silurians)

Bipeslacertia homines facultatem – “Alternative Future” Silurians (Rubathon Blue)

Notes

Bipeslacertia vehemenus is considered by the Reptilian Kindred to be an ancestor species and not part of the ‘Reptilian Kindred’ themselves, it is however considered to be in the same genus biologically.

Bipeslacertia volans mortuus was the earliest sapient subspecies to diverge from the Reptilian Kindred and the first to develop a civilisation, but was however rendered extinct by the Wyrm (Alongside the Wyrm mutated Bipeslacertia volans malakhi)

The Reptilian Kindred consider themselves to have five extant ‘Classes/Castes’

Sea Devil

Scholar

Warrior

Winged Kindred

Serad-Dur

And do not consider any greater subgroupings such as the ‘Silurian/Sea Devil two species grouping’ or the ‘Scholar/Warrior single species hypothesis’ as valid, from their perspective, the five main classes are considered the maximal groupings of Reptilian Kindred outside of the sole group that includes all of them, with the term ‘Silurian’ (Alternatively Earth Reptile, Suminisan or ‘Eocene’) being used to refer to all five rather than just the Scholar and Warrior castes.

The original Reptilian Kindred diverged from the ancestor of the Helodermatidae family of venomous lizards in the late Cretaceous, with the Bipeslacertia genus itself diverging from the rest of the family with the origin of its bipedal stance in the late Cretaceous, just prior to the KT Extinction Event.

Most accounts of Reptilian Kindred-Dinosaur cohabitation are either later palimpsests (The Reptilian Kindred were a time active power during the Time Wars era, with an individual of Bipeslacertia homines sapiens appearing in the Alliance of Races alongside Rassilon and were seen as a technological civilisation natively inhabiting the timezone during one of the anomalous histories created by the detonation of a Time Anchor in the late Cretaceous) or instances of Reptilian Kindred bioengineering in the Eocene and Oligocene rather than true Jurassic-Cretaceous era native Reptilian Kindred species.

Their technological civilisation emerged in the Eocene, after the divergence between the “Scholar” and “Warrior” castes of Silurians but before full speciation. Hence the more formally accurate species name of ‘Eocenes’.

Their full classification is

Domain: Eukaryota

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Reptilia

Order: Squamata

(Potential Clade: Toxicofera)

Suborder: Anguimorpha

Infraorder: Neoanguimorpha

Clade: Monstersauria

Family: Bipeslacertidae

Genus: Bipeslacertia

The emergence order of distinct subspecies was as follows

Cretaceous (145-65 mya)

Split of Bipeslacertidae from Helodermatidae

Bipeslacertia splits from the rest of the (extinct) Bipeslacertiadae genera, they are separately characterised by their bipedal stance as opposed to other lizard species. First signs of complex intelligence akin to that of Australopithecus afarensis or Velociraptor priorii

Paleocene (65-56 mya)

Spilt of ancestor species from the rest of Bipeslacertia

Reptilian Kindred reach the tribal level of early Homo sapiens or Velociraptor antirrhopus

Bipeslacertia volans splits from the rest of Bipeslacertia

The Zori split from Bipeslacertia volans before the full development of wings

Silurian-Sea Devil Split

“Paleocenes” split from Bipeslacertia volans, “Paleocene” civilisation forms (mostly) above the clouds.

“Paleocene” extinction at the hands of the Wyrm

Technological Reptilian Kindred Civilisations first form.

Extinction of ancestor species

Eocene (56-34 mya)

Serad-Dur split from Silurians

“Early” and “Warrior” Sea Devils Split

Scholar-Warrior Split, emergence of Scholar Third Eye

“Junior” Sea Devils split from Warrior

“Pterosaur Men” split from Luadans, develop beaks

Events of Reign of the Reptiles

Fair Folk Split after Silurians are transported to Avalon

Oligocene (34-23 mya)

“Senior Silurians” split from Scholar caste

 Scholar Caste splits into “Early” and “Middle” Silurians

The Inhabitants of the Nameless City split from the “Early” Sea Devils and devolve, eventually disappearing entirely under the shallow seas of north Africa.

 “Junior” and “Late” Silurians split

Miocene (23-5.3 mya)

Speciation begins to slow down due to civilisation technological advancement

Reptilian Kindred civilisation enters hibernation due to disaster (Either the newest Moon or a planetoid close passage unrelated to the Moon)

Pliocene (5.3-2.6 mya)

Various apes modified and bred by the Reptilian Kindred begin to develop to fill the ecological niche left by the Reptilian Kindred’s hibernation.

Pleistocene (2.6 mya – 11,700 ya)

Evolution of Homo Sapien Sapiens (humans).

Holocene (11,700 ya – 1712)

Various sporadic reawakenings that are almost always killed off by the newly developed humans.

1500 BCE – Atlantis is destroyed, the Nameless City is forced above the ocean in Africa and the inhabitants are rendered (mostly) extinct

Anthropocene (1712 – 500,000 yf)

2023 AD – The origin era of Rubathon Blue of the Fifty Second Hemisphere Hatchlings in an alternative future

(22nd Century) Reptilian Kindred civilisation reawakens and is forced to cohabitate the planet with the human civilisation.

Relinquecene (500,000 yf – 2 myf)

Reptilian Kindred and humanity mostly abandon Earth for the first significant geological time (Previous abandonments had happened temporarily for much shorter timespans), whilst they would make sporadic returns, from this point onwards the Earth was allowed to evolutionarily develop without its previous intelligent species. (This is when the Haemovores evolve)

Perdicene (2 myf – 10 myf)

Earth was lost, and began being known by different names including Ravalox, Orphan 55 and Tellus. This is the point in which the Reptilian Kindred became no longer tied to Earth as a homeworld beyond as a cultural factoid (Unlike humanity who consistently returned and remained conceptually tied to it until its destruction in 10 myf and the start of the Posthuman era).

This document for the most part, only covers the Extant subspecies of Reptilian Kindred and does not account for the unknown species and subspecies that went extinct prior to the Anthropocene (nor the other extinct Bipeslacertiadae genera) with the exception of Bipeslacertia vehemenus, identified only due to Vastra’s devolution into one during ‘The Evolution Episode’ due to exposure to temporal radiation, Bipeslacertia volans mortuus, an early intelligent extinct species documented by Bernice Summerfield and Peter Summerfield and Bipeslacertia homines facultatem caused by the Fifteenth Doctor’s alterations to the evolutionary history of the Earth.

The Mondasian Parallel Evolution species (The Lizard Kings or Bipeslacertia homines abastrius and Sea Kings or Bipeslacertia diabolus abastrius) which were documented by both the Homo sapiens contra (Mondasians) and the Mondasian Cybermen are considered to be parallel evolutionary counterparts of their Earth twins and aren’t included, it is speculated their evolutionary tree is identical to that of Earth’s.

Despite being considered distinct castes by the Reptilian Kindred, the ‘Early’ Sea Devils (The Sea Devils), the ‘Middle’ Sea Devils (Warriors of the Deep) and the ‘Late’ Sea Devils (Legend of the Sea Devils) are considered to all be local or climate variations of the same subspecies of Sea Devil, Bipeslacertia diabolus sicuturtus. And are distinct from the academically designated “Warrior” Sea Devils (Bipeslacertia diabolus sicutsimiae) and “Junior”Sea Devils (Bipeslacertia diabolus sapiens – The War Between) subgroups which are often referred to as ‘Middle’ and ‘Late’.

I basically ignored most direct years given in DWU sources when doing this in favour of trying to work out something that conceptually made the most sense (IMO). Since DWU sources give Silurian origin or even civilisation years as far back as 450 mya, in the Ordovician, Pre-Reptiles, which is not conducive to trying to actually do speculative biology with, and the less said about 'They predate complex life entirely' the better.

I went with Eocene - Miocene because references to the Dinosaurs can always have been post-Cretaceous genetic engineering stuff (They have the tech) but references to "apes" should be theoretically constrained to early human evolution in the Miocene and Pliocene, and the idea that the Silurians existed for the entirety of the Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene and Miocene was... kinda ridiculous IMO for this exercise.

Subspecies Visualisation

Bipeslacertia vehemenus – Primitive Ancestor (Primitive Ancestor)

Subspecies (Winged Kindred)

Bipeslacertia volans mortuus – “Paleocenes”, Chicxulub (Winged Species – Adolescence of Time)

Bipeslacertia volans malakhi – Wyrm Callers (Wyrm infected Paleocenes)

Bipeslacertia volans longiceps – “Pterosaur Men” (TM: A Morphology/Rose Coloured Crosshairs)

But the wreck, first seen from the air by a migratory tribe of the flying kindred en route from the tropical swelter of the Oriental Archipelago to the temperate climes of the Austral Spur, had confirmed to the profile of no known vessel from any of the saurian kindred, and Morrahaurm had been the only specialist available. And so, with many misgivings, she had embarked.

(Winged Kindred - The Book of the Enemy)

Only one customer was sat outside the shack at this time. She was a diminutive Pterosaurian with amber-coloured scales. Short-beaked and crestless, her crown was brushed with stubbly pink feathers and her forehead lined with concern.

(Pterosaurian - Rose Coloured Crosshairs)

Bipeslacertia volans vivus – Luadans (Reign of the Reptiles)

The globe was held by a creature like a mythical devil incarnate! Its oily green, needle-fanged head hovered just above the luminous sphere, the hellish red eyes darting from side to side in search of the intruder; and where the shoulders should have been were hunched lumps that made the man think of folded wings. The body and shuffling feet were invisible; the claws appeared in silhouette on the surface of the globe that the monstrosity held before it. A little it resembled a gigantic lizard, and the fanged snout, if not the same one, was at least practically identical with the one Sanders had seen in the room of horror. Only now it had lost its super- natural and diabolical aspect, appearing still hideous but only in a reptilian, scaled way. It propelled itself on hissing, leathery wings, and its sinuous body was clad in a blue, silken robe. About its ugly brow was a jewelled diadem; its claws were alight with jewels.

(Luadans - Reign of the Reptiles)

Bipeslacertia volans aurori – Zori (Reign of the Reptiles/Revelry of the Redacted)

He was a Zori, a subspecies of the Reptilian Kindred with vestigial wings on their backs that were useless on Earth, but perfectly adapted to low- gravity environments.

Revelry of the Redacted (The Book of the Snowstorm)

Subspecies (Sea Devil)

Bipeslacertia diabolus sapiens – “Junior” Sea Devils (The War Between Sea Devils)

Bipeslacertia diabolus sicutsimiae – "Warrior" Sea Devils (Comic Sea Devils)

Bipeslacertia diabolus sicuturtus – Early Sea Devils (Normal Sea Devils)

Bipeslacertia diabolus reditius – “Devolved Ones” (Inhabitants of the Nameless City – HP Lovecraft/Faction Paradox)

They were of the reptile kind, with body lines suggesting sometimes the crocodile, sometimes the seal, but more often nothing of which either the naturalist or the palaeontologist ever heard. In size they approximated a small man, and their fore-legs bore delicate and evident feet curiously like human hands and fingers. But strangest of all were their heads, which presented a contour violating all know biological principles. To nothing can such things be well compared - in one flash I thought of comparisons as varied as the cat, the bullfrog, the mythic Satyr, and the human being. Not Jove himself had had so colossal and protuberant a forehead, yet the horns and the noselessness and the alligator-like jaw placed things outside all established categories.

Subspecies (Silurian)

Bipeslacertia homines malus – Serad-dur (Serad-dur)

Bipeslacertia homines calyptratus – “Chameleonic Branch” (Rose Coloured Crosshairs)

“Scholar” Caste

Bipeslacertia homines augurius – Fair Folk (Fair Folk- The Shadows of Avalon)

[No Specific Description]

Bipeslacertia homines sapentia – “Senior” Silurians (Chibnall’s original classic style redesign – Cold Blood, The Lost Dimension)

Bipeslacertia homines rostrata – “Middle” Silurians (Warriors of the Deep Silurians)

Bipeslacertia homines gravius – “Horned Kindred” (Bulky Horned Herbivorous Silurians – A Morphology)

Her mass alone would have made Morrahaurm the most conspicuous individual on board, even without the horns and crest majestically adorning her high forehead. Among her own she was known as a beauty, a graceful dancer and no mean athlete: here she was simply a bulky, lumbering target.

(The Book of the Enemy)

Bipeslacertia homines labia – “Early” Silurians (Original Classic Who Silurians)

Bipeslacertia homines venefica – The Silurians from the 30th Anniversary Calendar

“Warrior” Caste (Alternatively “Hunter” Caste)

Bipeslacertia homines anguis – “Junior” Silurians (Silurian Hunters – Supremacy of the Cybermen)

Bipeslacertia homines sapiens – “Late” Silurians (New Who Silurians)

Bipeslacertia homines facultatem – “Alternative Future” Silurians (Rubathon Blue)

Notes on the Meta-history of Earth Reptiles

The natural evolution of most species on Earth was a by-product of the anchoring of the thread, when the Time Lords locked down the rational Universe and rewrote all of history to suit their new rules. In the pre anchoring Universe, humanity was created using Time Lord Looms by the Original Mammoths, a powerful, psychic and magical sapient species that rivalled the Time Lords in the pre-Universe.

Whilst we have pretty much no knowledge of the Silurians from that era, we do know that they were a Time Active power in the Alliance of Races during the Time Wars era, shortly after the anchoring. Implying some kind of time active power, which would explain their appearances in eras of Earth history predating the one in which they originally developed in the Time Lord dominated rational Universe. It is, however, also of note that the vast majority of other more recent (in Universe) accounts depict the Silurians as a mildly advanced mostly stagnant species with very little space travel capabilities most likely indicating at some point between Gallifrey’s ancient past and relative present that the Silurians time active civilisation was erased from history. It is possible they experienced some equivalent of the Ghost Point (The point in which humanity became culturally sterile and stopped meaningfully advancing as a civilisation) though more extreme as humanity was still able to traditionally, if not conceptually, advance whereas the Silurians grew complacent and stagnant for presumably millions of years.

It is of note that New Who consistently depicts the Silurians as both coexisting natively with Dinosaurs and knowing humanities Ape ancestors despite an ~60 million year gap between the two eras. There are numerous potential explanations for this including human evolution occurring over a much longer period in the DWU relative to real life, the effects of the Last Great Time War on the history of Earth, genetic engineering resurrection of Dinosaurs in the Eocene-Miocene, the multiple paradoxical timelines created by the explosion of a Time Anchor in the later Cretaceous as part of the Great Cosmic War and potentially Silurian related dates being actually in months rather than years.

Further Note, Rose Coloured Crosshairs is set on Dolos, a planet that is a temporal echo of Earth hidden within its causal shadow, rather than the Earth itself. It is assumed here that a majority of RCC’s worldbuilding applies to Earth’s civilisation too in the same way Mondas’s Sea Kings and Lizard Kings are one to one reflections of the Sea Devils and Silurians.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Asteroid impact sulfur release less lethal in dinosaur extinction

Approximately 66 million years ago, the Chicxulub asteroid, estimated to be 10-15 kilometer in diameter, struck the Yucatán Peninsula (in current-day Mexico), creating a 200-kilometer-wide impact crater. This impact triggered a chain reaction of destructive events including a rapid climate change that eventually led to the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs and in total about 75% of species on Earth. The main culprit is most likely the “impact winter”, which was caused by massive release of dust, soot, and sulfur into the atmosphere, leading to extreme cold, darkness, and a collapse in global photosynthesis, with lasting effects on ecosystems for years to decades after impact.

Most previous studies considered sulfur as the most crucial factor in driving the cooling and extinction after the impact event. However, estimates of the volume of sulfate aerosols released from the vaporization of the impacted rocks in Mexico have varied widely over two orders of magnitude from one study to another. This is because such estimates are largely based on uncertain parameters, such as the proportion of sulfur-bearing rocks at the impact location, the size, velocity, and impact angle of the asteroid, and the resulting shock pressures of sulfur-bearing minerals.

In the new study, Katarina Rodiouchkina and colleagues used sulfur concentrations and isotopic compositions from new drill cores of impact rocks within the crater region, combined with detailed chemical profiles across K-Pg boundary sediments around the world. This way, the authors were able to empirically estimate, for the first time, the total amount of sulfur released into the atmosphere due to the Chicxulub asteroid impact event.

“Instead of focusing on the impact event itself, we focused on the aftermath of the impact “, explains chemist Katerina Rodiouchkina. “We first analyzed the sulfur fingerprint of the rocks within the crater region that were the source of sulfate aerosols released into the atmosphere. These sulfate aerosols distributed globally and were eventually deposited from the atmosphere back onto the Earth’s surface in the months to years after impact. The sulfur was deposited around the K-Pg boundary layer in sedimentary profiles all over the world. We used the corresponding change in the isotopic composition of sulfur to distinguish impact-related sulfur from natural sources and the total amount of sulfur released was calculated through mass balance.“

The scientists revealed that a total of 67 ± 39 billion tons of sulfur were released, approximately five times less than previously estimated in numerical models. This suggests a milder "impact winter" than previously believed, leading to a less severe temperature decline and faster climate recovery, which could have contributed to the survival of at least 25% of species on Earth following the event. While sulfur remains the primary driver of global cooling, it is important to note that a recent study by the Royal Observatory of Belgium and VUB suggests a massive plume of micrometer-sized fine dust may have played a crucial role in creating a two-year-long dark period, blocking photosynthesis and further compounding the environmental impacts.

[hologramblue]

something i really really like in ffxiv, which obviously is drawn from FF in general -> ff7 but which to my limited understanding? is exponentially More in ffxiv, with how many times it's been iterated on in the scope of the game itself and within the lore of its universe,

is the Meteor motif. Meteor being the ultimate and definitive symbol of destruction and apocalyptic ends, over and over across xpac and in-universe epoch. i don't need to list all the examples, you know them. what i like about it so much is two things; one is the chill i get from the implication of primal fears echoing across time, the degree of repetition in the lore, that shit always makes me shiver. the other is how it's very grandiose and fantastical but also very modern, marrying a nice classic "skies raining fire" apocalypse concept (which is really volcanic, right?) to, like, a present-day awareness of The Impact Event as a very real thing that can happen, the Chicxulub asteroid as a thing that did happen, a sci-fi edge that embodied final fantasy's genre-blending shenanigans and embodied ff7's whole Vibe and is now woven into ffxiv's whole cosmogony. it's very spooky.

[arctic-hands]

I know logically I should pass off the last of my alcohol to friends who can still safely drink so as to avoid temptation and save my liver, but also my plan for if nuclear war breaks out or Chicxulub TWO is heading towards us is to get blasted on booze and the few drugs I have access to and just let it happen

[weirdcreaturefeed]

Weird Creature of the Day: Welwitschia

Presenting a truly underrated ancient wonder! Welwitschia mirabilis!

It's a thousand years old and looks like an eldritch horror's favorite houseplant. I'm so in love.

Its many sprawling arms are actually simply split extensions of the same two leaves (!!!) it's been growing since it was first germinated.

The plant is commonly known simply as welwitschia in English, but the name tree tumbo is also used. It is called kharos or khurub in Nama, tweeblaarkanniedood ('two leaves; can't die') in Afrikaans, and onyanga in Herero.

This plant is featured in the official coat of arms of Namibia!

Because the plant can't produce rings, its age is measured through radiocarbon dating. Many specimens are several hundred years old, but it's believed that a significant number are between 1000 to 2000 years old.

Welwitschia is not currently considered officially endangered by the wider international community, but folks involved in conservation efforts in the region report it to fit within the IUCN's criteria for endangered status. This is primarily a result of climate change, habitat loss, and increased vulnerability to fungal infection.

The largest specimen recorded currently living is located in the Messum Mountains (off the coast of Namibia) and is roughly 1.8 meters tall. That's taller than the average human.

Welwitschia plants were around when the Chicxulub impactor asteroid hit our planet 65 million years ago. Think about that. It's wild!

Photo credit: Hans Hillewaert via Wikimedia Commons

[skullshoal]

Ive decided to combine two worlds and have all the modern nanosaurus drawings I've done be a part of my story about aliens, replacing humans with dinosaurs.

Basically a world without the Chicxulub impact means dinosaurs evolved intelligence akin to modern day humans, but became a colony for a much larger alien civilization launched them into the space age.

this is an old line up so the designs are outdated and there is a human there but these are other alien designs and they run a cargo ship

[spacenutspod]

The massive South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin is one of the Moon’s dominant features, though it’s not visible from Earth. It’s on the lunar far side, and only visible to spacecraft. It’s one of the largest impact features in the Solar System, and there are many outstanding questions about it. What type of impactor created it? Where did the ejected material end up? Is it feasible or worthwhile to explore it? But the biggest question could be: how old is it? The SPA basin is about 2500 km (1600 mi) in diameter and between 6.2 and 8.2 km (3.9–5.1 mi) deep. Research shows that it’s the Moon’s oldest impact basin and likely formed between 4.2 and 4.3 billion years ago. That places it in the most intense period of bombardment in the inner Solar System. But there’s debate about the accuracy of that date. A more precise measurement would help scientists understand the history of the Solar System and the periods of bombardment that helped shape it. Researchers at the University of Manchester and other institutions tackled the problem of the SPA’s age. Their results are in a paper in Nature Astronomy titled “Evidence of a 4.33 billion year age for the Moon’s South Pole–Aitken basin.” The lead author is Professor Katherine Joy from The University of Manchester. “The implications of our findings reach far beyond the Moon. We know that the Earth and the Moon likely experienced similar impacts during their early history, but rock records from the Earth have been lost.”Co-author Dr. Romain Tartese, University of Manchester Whatever struck the Moon, the impact was catastrophic. Some estimates suggest the impactor was 200 km in diameter, far more massive than the 10 km Chicxulub impactor that ended the dinosaurs. This massive, energetic impact represents a key event in the inner Solar System’s history. “Determining the timing of this catastrophic event is key to understanding the onset of the lunar basin-forming epoch, with implications for understanding the impact bombardment history of the inner Solar System,” the researchers write. “Despite this, the formation age of the SPA basin remains poorly constrained.” The inner Solar System bodies have been pummelled by comets and asteroids. On Earth, the evidence of these impacts is mostly wiped away by billions of years of plate tectonics and weathering. There’s only faint evidence of most impacts. The Vredevort impact crater in South Africa was created by a massive impactor about two billion years ago. It’s so eroded that scientists aren’t certain how large the original impact structure was. Since Earth’s impact features are incomplete, scientists study the lunar surface to understand both the Earth and the Moon’s bombardment history. Fortunately, some evidence from the lunar surface has made it to Earth in the form of samples collected by landers. Some serendipitous evidence also comes in the form of meteorites. Study co-author Dr. Romain Tartese, Senior Lecturer at The University of Manchester, said, “The implications of our findings reach far beyond the Moon. We know that the Earth and the Moon likely experienced similar impacts during their early history, but rock records from the Earth have been lost. We can use what we have learnt about the Moon to provide us with clues about the conditions on Earth during the same period of time.” When a large impactor travelling quickly strikes a rocky planet or moon, it releases a lot of energy. The impact can spread debris around the surface and even launch some into space. Scientists have studied multiple meteorites that came from lunar and Mars impacts, and they’ve learned a lot by studying them. In fact, there are so many of them that they’ve been able to categorize many meteorites according to their asteroidal parent bodies. At least one piece of debris from the impact reached Earth: a lunar meteorite named Northwest Africa 2995. Over the years, different researchers have examined NWA 2995. By comparing it to Apollo samples, they’ve found that it has the same oxygen isotope ratios, which points to a shared lunar origin. The meteorite’s minerals and texture are also very similar to crustal rocks from the lunar highlands. The researchers write that the meteorite is in “good agreement with lithologies exposed within the southern region of the SPA basin.” NWA 2995 was found in Algeria in 2005 and it hasn’t been on Earth for long. It’s only been here for a few thousand years, and by analyzing the concentration of certain cosmogenic nuclides, which are atoms produced by exposure to cosmic rays, scientists have determined that the rock has only been travelling in space for about 22 million years. So, though it was initially created in an ancient impact, it was only launched into space much later by a subsequent impact. MWA 2995 is relatively unchanged and can provide insights into the early Solar System. NWA 2995 is what scientists call regolith breccia. Regolith is the layer of unconsolidated rocky material that covers bedrock. Breccia is a rock formed from angular fragments of rocks and minerals that are cemented together by fine-grained material. According to the authors, NWA 2995 represents an “ancient fused lunar soil, made up of many different rock and mineral components. ” The researchers examined NWA 2995 to constrain the age of the SPA basin. They used radiometric dating on a range of mineral and rock components of the meteorite to find NWA 2995’s age. This image from the research shows a section of NWA 2995 in four different views. a is an optical scan, b is a back-scattered electron image from an electron microscope, c is a cathodoluminescence image that highlights certain minerals, and d is a composite false colour element map. The colours represent silica (blue), aluminum (white), magnesium (green), iron (red), titanium (pink), potassium (cyan) and calcium (yellow). Image Credit: Joy et al. 2024. The researchers also compared NWA 2995 with orbital data from NASA’s Lunar Prospector, which used a low polar orbit to map the Moon’s surface composition. They created a map showing the probabilities that the meteorite originated in different regions on the Moon. This figure from the research shows the probability that NWA 2995 came from different locations on the lunar surface. Image Credit: Joy et al. 2024. They found that the meteorite most likely came from one of two locations, both inside the SPA. The nearby Cabannes craters are all the right size to eject a rock like NWA 2995. c is from a unified geological map of the Moon, and d shows stratigraphic units by age. Image Credit: Joy et al. 2024. The researchers analyzed the ages of uranium and lead in NWA 2995. Overall, the results indicate that the SPA basin formed about 4.32–4.33 billion years ago. That means that it formed about 120 million years before the main cluster of other lunar basins like the Serenitatis, Nectaris, and Crisium basins. This image shows thorium concentrations on the Moon. Thorium is used in conjunction with uranium in radiometric dating to help determine the Moon’s chronology. Radiometric data suggests that NWA 2995 came from the South Pole-Aitken Basin. Image Credit: Joy et al. 2024. Dr Joshua Snape, Royal Society University Research Fellow at The University of Manchester, is one of the co-authors of the new research. “Over many years, scientists across the globe have been studying rocks collected during the Apollo, Luna, and Chang’e 5 missions, as well as lunar meteorites, and have built up a picture of when these impact events occurred,” Snape said. “For several decades there has been general agreement that the most intense period of impact bombardment was concentrated between 4.2-3.8 billion years ago – in the first half a billion years of the Moon’s history,” said Snape. “But now, constraining the age of the South-Pole Aitken basin to 120 million years earlier weakens the argument for this narrow period of impact bombardment on the Moon and instead indicates there was a more gradual process of impacts over a longer period.” These results will only grow stronger when future missions collect more samples from the area. “The proposed ancient 4.32 billion year old age of the South Pole-Aiken basin now needs to be tested by sample return missions collecting rocks from known localities within the crater itself,” said lead author Joy. “Our proposed formation age for SPA will require confirmation from future radiometric dating of samples collected from the south of the Apollo basin area by the Chang’e–6 mission or from future proposed missions such as the Endurance-A rover concept that aims to collect 100?kg of samples from across the SPA basin floor,” the authors write in their conclusion. The post Scientists Determine the Age of the Moon’s Oldest and Largest Impact Basin appeared first on Universe Today.

[hasellia]

Heya I'm bored so like, what's yoir current favorite animal? Mines the olm

Ahhhh I love them all it's hard to choose... Sooo I'll say my top 2

The spotted tiger Quoll

(Pictured: A spotted tiger quoll, Dasyurus maculatus, curled up sleeping in a glass exhibit.)

Bunjeen is the original Indigenous name (from the Bandjalung language group) for them in my area. Was called the marsupial cat by colonizers until naturalist told folk or was missleading. "Quoll" comes from anglicisation of "dhigul" (Note: Aboriginal spelling is different from English spelling) from the Guugu Yimithirr mob who contacted Captain Cook (our Christopher Columbus booooo).

Since it occupies the same ecological niche as them. A good native defence against feral rabbits, but is vulnrable due to competition with feral cats and poisoning from cane toads. These Polka dotted murder balls are the second largest extant carnivorus marsupial. Live only for 2-4 years. The size of a grain of rice when born. Live solitarily, but will use a communal latrine to see who's in the area. Reaches it's teens in year one, stops growing year two, doesn't live very long past year 3 (；ＴДＴ). I don't like exotics, and the reality is definetly different to my fantasy, but I kinda want one as a pet. Maybe I can volunteer at a sanctuary or something.

(Pictured; A Spotted-tailed Tiger Quoll on a mossy log at night, by JJ Henson.

Below that picture is an Eastern Quoll, Dasyurus viverrinus. Eating a very bloody piece of meat with their hands full. I had to include it for the absolute gremlin energy).

Hoatzin

Stem-bird/Dinosaur vibes. Babies have claws on their wings to climb trees if they fall out of the nest. It is also the only bird to be a folivore; a dedicated leaf eater (foli, like foliage, and vore, which I encourage everyone to look up themselves). It's very rotund for digestion and stinky, like a cow! A dinosaur cow bird is also apt, because we no idea what kind of bird it is! Is it a pheasant? Ratite? Songbird? To my understanding, the current idea is that it's a survivor of a unique lineage of birds that survived the Chicxulub mass extinction. Our oldest fossils of potential relatives only go to about 30 MYA. Not even genetics have gotten us too far, but give it time. Was my profile picture for a time on an obscure internet forum when I was a teen. It is also the same colours as my favourite and oldest Velociraptor plush toy. (Razor the wild republic UK Velociraptor plush)

(Pictured; Top Picture of a Hoatzin chick with visable wing claws. Below it Razor, my Willd Republic UK Velocirptor)

[realswolestrider]

Long expositional tirade.

Please.

[Text is bright orange and bolded, but has been Edited for accessibility.]

Sorry about that. Funny slash fucked up part of having progeny in any form - they take after you. Every day I think, surely at this point, Rose's gotta be outta ways to stealthily forcefeed me my own patented brand of nuclear orange medicine, and every day I am simultaneously pleasantly surprised and mildly horrified to be proven wrong.

Anyway. I got my fuckin' pantaloons back and we're done with the thinly veiled psychological warfare for the time being. So I got a couple minutes to give the people what they want.

Normally I'd have concerns about giving away all my plans, let alone in such dramatic detail. Oh, you're a mastermind supervillain and you're just gonna give the hero all the information in a neatly packaged two minute monologue? You're makin' some big brain moves the rest of us couldn't even hope to understand.

I'm sure you're thinking the same thing. "Yes, Dirk." You hiss through your teeth while jacking it furiously to your own literary competence. "Fall prey to your own ego for the umpteenth time this week and hand me the key to your downfall on a silver platter." And I'm like. Okay. With an enigmatic level of placidity.

I'm doing stuff. Things. Anticipating your dissatisfaction with such a memey non-answer, I continue on. To be blunt, as of recently I've been doing jack shit of fuck all, except waiting around. I am an irrelevant number of Earth C's revolutions along its axis into this trip across the Virgo Supercluster to find a needle in a haystack - the perfect planet for my plans.

It's a lot like picking one particular grain of sand outta the Sahara, but with way more grains, and billions of miles between each one. So as you can imagine, it ain't exactly a mentally stimulating process.

You see, on the relevant scales of spacetime, life is a fluke. An anomaly. Calling it a rare occurrence is being generous. It's not just the size of the planet, or the presence of water. The incubation period for successful generations of the most widely accepted philosophical definition of life is longer than my dick, and twice as dangerous. For a species to develop a level of cognitive awareness enough to question its place in the universe, a lot of shit has to happen. A Rube Goldberg Fractal of an infinite amount of Rube Goldberg Machines.

Sometimes, life gets pretty damn far. Take a trip to Chicxulub in the Yucatán. Find a gift shop there, and buy a velociraptor plushie to the impact crater of the K-pg extinction.

You'll look like a fucking moron, because velociraptors went extinct long before then.

If the variants of life on Earth C are crabs in a bucket, humans and trolls just happened to be the crabs at the very top who got their claws around the rim and got the fuck outta Crab Dodge before everything went pear-shaped.

The mere fact any amount of us survived the Sburb extinction event boggles the mind. Natural generation is clumsy and random. Many times human and troll alike were held back due to biological or sociological flaws.

Intelligent design ain't fuckin' real.

But what if it was?

[halidaia]

How did people who died before 1991 think the dinosaurs went extinct?

The first dinosaur fossils were discovered in 1824, but it wasn’t until 1991 that the Chicxulub impact site was finally linked to their extinction. So 167 years passed in which we knew dinosaurs existed, but had no clue how they went extinct. As you can imagine, people had all kinds of guesses and ideas

My mother found a book of stories and nursery rhymes for children that she had growing up, and one of the stories was about the dinosaurs. At the end, it says we don’t know about what happened to the dinosaurs. One of the theories it proposes is that the dinosaurs may have starved from overconsumption of resources, because they’re so big that they must take a lot of food to sustain. My grandmother and another old person I asked both said that they learned a little bit about dinosaurs in school, but the subject of how they went extinct was conveniently left out

I have a book from 1901, entitled “The World’s Book Of Knowledge And Universal Educator”. This book is actually how I came up with this subject, because it has a very, very interesting theory for how dinosaurs went extinct. And honestly, for the time period, this theory makes quite a lot of sense. I love how creative it is. They did what they could with the knowledge they had

On page 593, the book says “In the days before the flood, the ikhthyosaurius existed with eyes measuring one foot in diameter”

You likely noticed something about that

First, I seem to have misspelled “ichthyosaurus”. Actually, I didn’t, for two reasons: first, “ichthyosaurus” comes from Ancient Greek, and the Ancient Greek alphabet had a letter K, but no letter C. it’s better to spell the Greek word with the Greek spelling. So we replaced the CH with the more accurate KH. Second way I misspelled it is —saurius and not —saurus. I was surprised by this too, but the book actually spells it “—saurius”. Strange

Now, finally, what you were probably waiting for me to address: the sentence starts with “In the days before the flood”. This was my main point in all this. Here is what some people thought happened to the dinosaurs before we discovered the crater in Mexico. Notice anything? “In the days before the FLOOD, the IKHTHYOSAURIUS existED…”. Some people thought the dinosaurs died out in the Noah’s Ark flood!

Does this seem like jumping to conclusions? Well, it is. But, I mean, what other ancient flood that killed 99% of the life on earth could they possibly be referring to? Especially when the ikhthyosaurus was literally a fish dinosaur. Back in 1901, they had no working theories on floods killing dinosaurs, except for the Noah’s Ark flood. Back then, people were far more religious, and people turned to religion and god for help with stuff and answers to questions

Although it has been disproven, I really like this theory because of how resourceful it was. People noticed large skeletons underground, and couldn’t figure out how the animals died, so they created a working theory with the facts that were accessible at the time. I myself would’ve never made the Noah’s Ark flood connection. Whoever put two and two together like that was an absolute genius, even if they were wrong

[sp1resong]

[id: two discord messages from 'cir transed my gender [spire]'. The first reads, "i think we need more prehistoric xenofiction. not even like, educational necessarily i just want fuckin. warrior cats but with troodon. guardians of gahoole but with a pterosaur of your choice. watership down but set in the pleistocene. do you see my vision". The message has been edited. The second reads, "a post-apocalyptic type story set in the aftermath of the chicxulub meteor, told from the pov of a small surviving dinosaur (bird)" /end id]

guess who's starting another project :3 !!!!! someone help me