#either an archaeopteryx

[ghost-bxrd]

Prompt:

The Bat Family as shifters.

But they’re all some extinct animal.

[outragedslime]

When the first Archaeopteryx fossils were found, some people thought they were angels. They were right

[acorviart]

archaeopteryx 🪶

[smile-files]

i'm trying to do some speculative biology stuff on how dragons could exist: provided i'm thinking of the typical hexapod/six-limbed dragon (four legs and two wings), however, i have to contrive reasons for how the extra set of limbs would arise on a quadruped, and how they'd function (wyvern dragons are much easier to envision, as they're just scarier pterodactyls); i'm also curious as to how dragons would behave given their anatomy. assorted thoughts below...

for one thing, i instantly imagined dragons evolving from dinosairs. i was thinking of some sort of conjoined/parasitic twin mutation common to the dragon species which would add the extra wings, but that idea rested on one twin having the wing-limbs to contribute to the wingless dominant twin, which apparently would be impossible as all conjoined twins are identical (which is pretty obvious now that i think about it). i should still keep the conjoined twins idea in my back pocket, though, so there could be hydras!

maybe the extra limbs would just be a product of polymelia, specifically notomelia... as it is, though, i'm wondering how the mutant extra limbs would evolve into wings fast enough that the mutation could even persist in the population: the presence of the extra limbs would likely be a hinderance for as long as they aren't actively beneficial, after all. maybe i can look into how pterodactyl and archaeopteryx wings evolved to get a sense of how that occurred: for them, too, any evolutionary stage at the midpoint between leg and wing would likely have not been specialized enough in either direction to be helpful, so the transition must've been quick/direct and therefore a product of a single large mutation with subsequent refinements. for dragons, i could imagine two stages, with a simpler, smaller wing evolving in a quick first pass -- giving the animal more air time when leaping -- and a second stage of the wings enlarging to provide the capacity for real flight. (either way i'd imagine that dragons, like birds and mammals, would initially be very small and only evolve to their maximum size after the extinction of the dinosaurs.) i'd have to look more into the occurrence of notomelia and what causes it (does it even occur in reptiles/dinosaurs?), to see how realistic it would be for it to occur commonly within a species and produce fully-functioning limbs.

i'm picturing dragons as carnivorous, meaning they'd likely evolve from theropods: this would make sense, given theropods' hollow bones, as well as their evolutionary proximity to birds. with that in mind, having the wings as an extra set of limbs would be especially beneficial, as all four of the animal's legs could be maintained: the hindlegs for running, and the forelegs for grasping (these would necessarily not be tiny like a t-rex's). also, the idea of feathered dragons is a very fun one: imagine the vivid colors and patterns they could have!

in terms of size, we tend to picture dragons as very large -- however, i'd have to keep in mind that the larger the animal, the harder it will be to maintain lift and fly efficiently, especially if the animal in question has more than four limbs to carry in addition to its body. there have been some genuinely huge flying reptiles and birds in existence, such as quetzalcoatlus northropi (~35 ft wingspan, 440-550 lbs weight) and pelagornis sandersi (~20 ft wingspan, 48-44 lbs weight) -- and these awesome animals were able to fly, despite being so massive! there are several factors that would contribute to this, including the giant wingspan and hollow bones. because of the weight of the extra limbs, i doubt a hexapod dragon could grow quite as massive as quetzalcoatlus and still be able to fly well, though i still think it would be possible for them to be very large; it's worth mentioning, too, that having four legs to power liftoff would make it more viable for a dragon to take to the skies at all.

in myth, dragons often breathe fire; i don't think i could manage to find a reasonable biological means of that evolving, though perhaps dragons could evolve to spit venom, which would be a more realistic means of delivering a ranged, burning attack. in flight, the dragon could take down its prey by targeting it with venom, then quickly snatch it up with its forelegs to eat without ever alighting. sounds evolutionarily beneficial to me: very efficient, and very awesome.

tying into the trope of a greedy dragon's hoard, perhaps dragons are especially keen to shiny objects, which they can see from afar: with this mid-flight grasping maneuver, they'd snatch them up to add to a bowerbird-like nest decorated with "treasure". to connect more with myth, dragons are often associated with weather, storms in particular; perhaps dragons migrate at high altitudes during rainy seasons, creating that correlation.

it should be noted, too, that the reality in which i'm picturing these dragons is one in which humans also exist. these humans, witnessing the behaviors of these awe-inspiring creatures, would tell stories about them: they breathe fire (they spit venom), and they abduct children (they snatch up their prey in their claws), and they steal treasure from kings (they take shiny things for their nests), and they control the weather (they migrate during the rainy season). perhaps humans aren't their main prey source, causing dragons to be a fear but not a genuine threat to humans (like how we view sharks); or perhaps dragons indeed regularly eat humans, meaning humans have to live out of sight of them. in the latter case, considering how dragons are highly effective predators, they might drive humans towards extinction!

i hope you enjoyed my spec-bio ramble on the evolution, physiology, and behavior of dragons! it's very fun to think about :)

[i-draws-dinosaurs]

i was rewatching the rite of spring segment from fantasia and i've got to wonder. Why Did We Draw Archaeopteryx Like That. i remember toys having that same, boomerang arm shaped pose too. it's like a monkey lizard more than a bird.

Ooh okay this is a fun one cause while it technically is an Archaeopteryx and is listed as such in the production draft, I don't think the design is based on Archaeopteryx at all!

To me, this "Archaeopteryx" almost exactly resembles something else, the fascinating historical phenomenon called Proavis.

Proavis, or Tetrapteryx as some four-winged interpretations were called, was a hypothetical prehistoric creature that was proposed in the early 20th century as a best guess at what the unknown ancestor of birds could have looked like. The illustration above was drawn in 1926 by Gerhard Heilmann, a Danish artist and amateur scientist who argued that birds evolved from non-dinosaurian archosaurs like Euparkeria. In his 1916 book Vor Nuvaerende Viden om Fuglenes Afstamning and the 1926 English translation The Origin of Birds, he presented Proavis as the imagined midpoint between a scaly ground-running archosaur and Archaeopteryx, which at the time held the title of The First Bird.

Other versions of the same hypothesis, like William Beebe's Tetrapteryx above, were published and discussed around the same time, but it was Heilmann's Proavis that gained immense popularity to the point that bird evolution was considered essentially "solved" for decades. It was also painted by Zdeněk Burian, one of the Old Greats of palaeoart, which kept the concept alive in dinosaur books for decades as well.

Of course further study has shown this hypothesis to be incorrect and that birds are instead members of Dinosauria (and honestly Heilmann either missed or ignored a lot of evidence for a dinosaurian origin of birds even in the 1910s), but the Proavis to me remains a beautiful and fascinating concept that represents scientists and artists striving to understand the prehistoric world and the passage of evolution, much like we still do today!

And of course, its popularity in the early 20th century put it at the perfect time for Fantasia's artists to take... let's say heavy inspiration from Heilmann's imaginary Proavis when depicting a creature that was intended to be Archaeopteryx the whole time! The pattern of feathers matches up almost exactly, although the larger leg wings might have been inspired by Beebe's Tetrapteryx as well:

So to get back to your original question that led to this whole deep dive, artists didn't actually Draw Archaeopteryx Like That except when they were mistakenly drawing something that wasn't Archaeopteryx at all! If you want to read more about the Proavis and Tetrapteryx I recommend this Tetrapod Zoology blog post by Darren Naish, he does into more depth about the history of the concept and some of the unusual evolutionary ideas that Heilmann used to arrive at this weird and cool imaginary creature!

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

All the "birds are dinosaurs" deniers got me thinking:

Is there a specific word to refer to dinosaurs as common non scientific perception defines them??? Like, everything I can think of is either too specific (ie 'jurassic period dinosaurs') or just. "Extinct/prehistorical dinosaurs" or something like that, and that's just... eh. "Extinct" is at least kinda funny because it includes ivory billed woodpeckers but not pileated woodpeckers lol

Sometimes when I speak about dinosaurs to friends and stuff (and what that one person who was like "I want to see a dinosaur and it makes me sad that I can't!" person was probably getting at) I want to specifically refer to the sorts of species that are old enough to be fossils, you know? Including the old avian dinosaurs! :)

Apologies if you've answered this sort of ask before! But since I don't know the word I cannot search your blog for it lol. Thank you in advance, I love seeing you on my dash and learning things!

so there's a few different things you could mean depending on the situation.

here's the thing:

what's a bird, to you?

if you want the smallest group you can pick, ie the clade that consists of all the birds of today and nothing else, then you mean

"non-neornithine dinosaur"

aka

dinosaurs that aren't in Neornithes, which is that smallest possible group

so if you want to say "nonavian dinosaur" (aka, a dinosaur that isn't a "bird") you have to know what you're saying

bc there is also "nonavialan dinosaur", that is often just "nonavian dinosaur", aka the group of dinosaurs that have traditionally been considered as such exclusive of things that sometimes got put with birds instead

aka it includes Velociraptor but not Archaeopteryx

but the difference between the two is honestly miniscule at this point and things jump around a lot. many scientists do not think that's how we should define bird versus "classical dinosaur"

hence non-neornithine, aka neornithes being just the dinosaurs that survived the end-cretaceous extinction (most likely don't worry about it) and into the cenozoic, and non-neornithine dinosaurs being all that went extinct

being the most exact term for what you're looking for

you also could just go simple and do "classical dinosaurs"

but most often you'll see "nonavian dinosaur" which usually means, in practical parlance, non-neornithine dinosaur, or maybe non-avialan. sometimes non-pygostylian if they want to be contrarian, even non-maniraptor(iform?) if they want to be hipster

it's a fun time

what is a bird, indeed

[modrntravlr]

A Love Letter to Avians

Pairing: The Doctor/Rose Tyler

Rated: General

Summary: When Rose decides she wants the Doctor to take her to see the dinosaurs, she discovers that they're a bit more complicated than she originally thought. The Doctor takes her through time as he teaches her the history of avians and how 21st-century birds are directly descended from the dinosaurs of the Mesozoic era.

WC: 3.3k

A/N:

hi everyone,

just a bit of doctor who tenrose/timepetals (could be read as either) fluff inspired by some readings done in my biological evolution class. most of the dating and geography is scientifically accurate, but of course the actual physical descriptions of the dinosaurs and flora of the Mesozoic era is all inspired by artist interpretations. hope you all enjoy!

-c

p.s. the two main sources i used when writing this have been uploaded to my internet archive and are linked at the end for anyone who wants to read up on it for themselves.

“Right then, Rose, where’re we off to next? Your choice.”

“Well, you still haven’t taken me to see any dinosaurs, how about we go there? Plus, no people there to cause any trouble.”

“‘Yet to see dinosaurs’, Rose, we see dinosaurs every day,” he half-chuckled, scrunching his face in a slight mocking disapproval.

“We do not! How could we possibly see dinosaurs every day if we’ve never even gone further back than the 18th century on Earth?” Rose cheekily retorted.

“We just saw that pigeon eating outside the TARDIS before we came back in!” he exclaimed, dramatically pointing to the door as though the bird in question were still outside the box and not at least a few light years away by now. 

“Pigeon? I said dinosaurs, not pigeons, Doctor. Have you gone mad?”

“No, I have not gone mad! Pigeons are dinosaurs. Crows, penguins, turkeys, ducks, that whole lot. All birds are dinosaurs. Every last one of them. You can’t possibly tell me you’ve never seen a bird before.”

“How can birds be dinosaurs? I’m talking about actual proper dinosaurs, like T. Rexes and Velociraptors and Pterodactyls, and that Loch Ness Monster-looking one.”

“Well see, those last two aren’t actually dinosaurs. Jurassic Park did irreparable damage to the dinosaur image,” he frowned to himself. “Right, but who am I to deny the brilliant Rose Tyler of Mesozoic dinosaurs, about 67 million years back should do it. Just about a million years before the big meteorite wipes ‘em all out,” he said, beginning to type the coordinates into the TARDIS console.

“Wait, but now I’m all curious about the birds and stuff. Are they really dinosaurs, or are you just taking the mickey? I mean they’re not really that old, right?” Rose asked, self-consciously biting her lip. 

“Well your modern birds haven’t been around that long, but they’re direct descendants of mesozoic dinosaurs, and still just as dinosaur-y as their ancestors were. Some of them looked and sounded similar to the modern ones though,” he absentmindedly replied, still focused on the console screen. 

“Wait, Doctor! I want to see them,” she spoke up. “The bird relatives or whatever they are, I mean.”

He cheekily smiled looking up from the screen and at Rose. Rose, who was fearless as ever. 

“Quite right,” he gave her that signature crooked smile of his that made her melt. “Even further back then, 150 million years ago. Late Jurassic period, Rose, further back than we’ve ever gone before!”

He was right. It was the furthest back they had ever gone. Further back in time than any human, apart from Rose herself now had ever been. The trees were absolutely massive, and all had what Rose could only describe as fern-like qualities. The sky was bluer than she had ever seen it during their travels across various times in Britain, and she had never breathed cleaner air. 

“That, Rose, is the earliest ancestor of your modern birds. It’s called an Archaeopteryx.”

Rose had met a lot of unfamiliar and uncanny creatures during her time with the Doctor, but this one by far had to be the most interesting. She watched attentively as the bird elegantly soared above their heads, gliding from tree to tree, hand clasped to the Doctor’s slightly nervous of any unknown dangers that may be lurking in the foliage surrounding them. It was a fairly small bird, not much larger than the average bird she’d see flying around London in the 21st century, but it was undeniably beautiful. Its short legs ended in clawed feet made for perching on the tall trees of its time, and its tail was decorated in the most brightly beautiful blues Rose had ever seen that matched its wings, which had the most noticeable difference from 21st-century birds. Unlike the birds Rose was familiar with, this one ended with long, spindly claws, making the bird appear as though its feathered wings were merely decorative sleeves it had attached to its arms. Its head though was long, with a relatively large and pronounced beak, forming a nearly perfect triangular shape with its vertices slightly rounded, that housed sharp teeth she had never seen on a bird before. The Doctor had been right though, it was undeniably a bird. 

“So where exactly are we right now? I mean what country would this be in the 21st century?” Rose asked, still staring at the bird, seemingly unphased by their presence.

“150 million years from now, this is Central Europe. We’re more or less standing in Germany right now,” he answered, eyes solely on Rose as she awed at the creature. 

“And where are the T. Rexes I was asking about earlier?”

“Not around yet. Archaeopteryx predates T. Rexes by about 80 million years, give or take a couple million.”

“So what came next then, if not the T. Rex? How did this become a pigeon?” she asked, finally meeting his eyes.

“Well why don’t we have a look?” he said smiling, cocking his head towards the parked TARDIS.

They walked hand in hand back to the TARDIS where the Doctor swiftly made work of the console and sent them a few million years closer to Rose’s time. In hardly any time at all, the TARDIS landed. 

“Welcome, Rose, to the Early Cretaceous Period. Congratulations, you’re the only human to have seen the Jurassic Period and lived to tell the tale,” he announced, ceremoniously opening the TARDIS doors.

Rose stepped out to see what looked quite similar to the Jurrasic period they had just seen. There were more fern-like plants, and the trees differed slightly, trunks and leaves slightly thicker than their predecessors. 

“This is now 129 million years before your time. And that,” he said pointing to a new creature “is Confuciusornis, in the flesh. Or rather, feathers. As you probably could’ve guessed by its name, we’ve now landed in what would be modern-day China,”

Once again, Rose thought, it was undeniably a bird. It was slightly smaller than the previous one and bore quite a few differences. Unlike the Archaeopteryx, this new creature had two thin tails, each bald except for a few short feathers at the ends. Its head and clawed wings were relatively similar to both the Archaeopteryx of the Jurassic period and the birds of her own time. This bird, however, had beautifully white feathers dusted with shades of pale yellows, oranges, and blues. 

Not far off in the distance, a twig snapped, sending the poor bird flying away in fear. It was then that movement caught Rose’s eye as another creature moved into view, out from behind a tree. Now this creature was truly and utterly unlike anything Rose had ever seen. It was small, no bigger than a house cat or smaller dog, but it looked much more like the kinds of dinosaurs Rose had seen in films and television shows. It walked on two muscular, but short hind legs and had two even shorter arms, resembling a sort of mini T. Rex, with a tail that was about its own length and a half. What Rose found the most shocking though, was the feathers that coated its body head to toe, nose to tail. They looked nearly identical to those of the bird that it had scared off just moments before but with a distinct deep orange color mixed with patches of white. 

“Doctor, what on earth is that?” Rose whispered nervously. 

“Oh, that’s a Sinosauropteryx, how brilliant! It’s not a bird, but it does have feathers like one, and it is in fact a dinosaur. A few non-avian species, like this one, had feathers but none of them survived beyond the Mesozoic era. Right then, best be off so we don’t disturb it. Besides, we haven’t even gotten to the exciting stuff yet.”

It was a much smaller jump this time, only 5 million years into the future, and still in what would eventually become China. The Doctor explained to Rose the late great species of the Caudipteryx as they walked out of the TARDIS. 

“It’s a bit larger than the ones we’ve seen so far, at least a meter tall. Quite funny looking to be completely honest with you, but brilliant nonetheless, Rose.”

He was right, it was taller, and it walked on two long and sturdy hind legs. It reminded Rose of something like a turkey, except with the head and neck of what she thought a proper dinosaur ought to look like. It had a long tapered tail decorated with an elaborate fan of feathers at the end of it. The feathers that covered its body were dull shades of browns, but Rose thought they complimented the odd bird nonetheless. 

“You know, I’ll never get tired of this. Seeing all these things, with you,” Rose smiled at the Doctor standing by her side. He returned the smile, about to speak when something caught Rose’s eye.

“Oh my god! Doctor, it’s a bird. An actual proper bird and it’s chirping,” she said, wide-eyed and staring just beyond his head. 

“Oh, that’s a Sinornis,” he announced, upon directing his attention to the small bird perched on a nearby branch. “Almost a Cenozoic bird but still not quite yet. Sort of a transitional species.”

Rose watched attentively as the Doctor stuck his arm out and whistled to the bird. The bird, for the first time, seemed to notice their presence before curiously flying over to him and perching on his hand. It was the smallest bird they had come across so far and was about the size of a pigeon standing at only a few inches. Rose however, thought it looked a bit more like a sparrow, only with a much thicker beak.

“It’s a close relative of the Archaeopteryx that we saw earlier, and if you look closely, it has those same claws on its wings, just a bit smaller. Look there,” he said, holding it closer to Rose and carefully exposing the underside of its wings tucked into its side. He was right, the three claws at the end of its wings were there just as they had been on all the others they had seen. Rose reached out and gently petted the small animal. It leaned into the touch briefly before it finally flew away and back into the trees. 

“Come on now, back to the TARDIS. How do you feel about digging out your winter coat for a short trip?”

“Why? Where are we going?”

“Antarctica.”

The Doctor allowed the TARDIS to linger for a bit on the way to Antarctica, 6 million years into the future from where they’d previously been. He and Rose took to the various wardrobe rooms aboard the TARDIS as they fished out their warmest winter gear. According to the Doctor, Antarctica wasn’t anywhere near as cold as it is in the 21st century, in fact it wouldn’t even be frozen, but it was still the south pole nonetheless, and would certainly be chillier than Rose’s London. 

To Rose’s surprise, not only was Antarctica not frozen, but it was thriving with life. There were actual plants and animals as far as the eye could see, and quite a diverse group of them too. Her and the Doctor had only made it a few steps out of the TARDIS when something suddenly landed a few feet in front of them. Rose had hardly even had the time to register the odd animal before it did the most unexpected thing. 

“Doctor,” she whispered under her breath in an attempt to not startle the creature. “Did that thing just quack at us?”

“It did!” he whisper-shouted. “That Rose, is a Vegavis. Isn’t it brilliant?” He was carefully approaching it now. Attempting to get a better look. 

“Doctor, that’s a duck.”

“Not a duck exactly, just looks like one. And quacks like one. But not a duck. Look, it has bigger wings than a Cenozoic duck.” He carefully reached out and gently lifted the bird's wings, extending them out for Rose to see as well. They were long, and its feathers were neither as colorful nor as slick as a ducks, but apart from that it had a similar shape and sound. 

“Does it swim like a duck?”

“Oh yes! That’s why their wings are so long, good for diving and gliding through the water to catch food. Right now, back in your time, 2006, there’s a group of archaeologists that just discovered a Vegavis fossil for the very first time in human history a few months ago. They haven’t told the public yet, haven’t even thought to call it a Vegavis yet. They won’t know much about it for a while, but by the time you're about 30, they’ll have figured out just how similar to a duck it really is,” he said, looking at her with that smug smile of his.

“So you mean, I’m sort of like the first human to know what a Vagavis is?” she smiled back at him.

“Something like that.”

They’d spent a few more moments watching the Vegavis from a distance before finally deciding to head back to the TARDIS, this time with the Doctor’s promise that a T. Rex would be at their next stop. As the TARDIS drifted off into the future, she and the Doctor made their way back into the wardrobe room to shed their thick, warm layers and put on something a bit more suited for relatively temperate weather. 

“America, Rose, in the summertime. Plenty of sun to soak up while we’re there, no need for coats and what not.”

The Doctor had set the TARDIS’s coordinates to roughly 68 million years prior to Rose’s time, somewhere in the North West United States, up near the Canadian border. The more-or-less modern Wyoming-Montana area he had told her. 

In just a few short moments, the TARDIS had gently touched ground, and finishing up their final touches on their respective outfits, they made their way out of the TARDIS and entered the world of the Late Cretaceous period. In all of Rose’s time spent with the Doctor, she had seen an immeasurable number of absolutely magnificent things, although she could definitely count quite a few of them that she had seen in just that singular day alone, but this was like nothing she had ever seen in her 20 years. 

The sun was beating down on wide, long grassy fields that stretched out in every direction as far as her eyes could see, and although there were a bit fewer trees in this part of the world compared to some of the other places the Doctor had taken her to see that day, there were more animals leisurely grazing the fields than she could’ve ever imagined possible. Some of them were absolutely massive, their heads, reaching the treetops as they lazily munched on leaves pulled straight from the highest branches. Others, much smaller, zooming past her legs in the tall, swaying grass, hardly reaching the height of her knees. 

Almost immediately, she realized the Doctor had kept his word, and there were a few of the strange looking animals that she could vaguely recognize and name herself without the help of the Doctor’s vast bank of knowledge. She could see T. rexes, running through the fields, some of them play-fighting with one another like they were a couple of stray dogs she'd see running through the streets of London, forget the fact that each one looked to be about the size of the Powell estate. A bit closer to where her and the Doctor stood, and only slightly smaller than the T. rex, she could see quite a few Triceratopses, each distantly spaced away and seemingly ignoring one another, their majestic crowns and massive horns looking even more colorful and spectacular than any picture she’d ever seen them depicted as in books and films. 

Aside from those two, there were definitely a few that she couldn’t necessarily name off the top of her head, but they were certainly the type of dinosaurs she’d had in mind when the day had begun. Each longer than they were taller, with their bulging muscles and hunched backs. However, now that her eyes had been trained for it, she noted that there were in fact birds. More birds than she had seen in all the times and places she had been previously that day and they were everywhere, far outnumbering the T. rexes, and the Triceratopses, and what the Doctor had helpfully reminded her was a Brontosaurus. They came in every size, and every shape, and every color she could’ve possibly thought to imagine, and they were so undeniably bird-like, now looking like an odd mixture between the birds she knew from home, and the archaic ones the Doctor had introduced her to throughout the day.  They had their wings, and their tails, and their feathers, and beaks. She was in absolute awe.

“There’s just so many of them,” she said, staring out at all the animals in front of her and around her, shock on her face.

“Well of course there are, Rose. Why’d you think they’re the only lineage of the dinosaurs to have survived. Each and every animal serves an individual purpose, a niche. Look at those T. rexes, and the Gryposaurus. Sure, they’re big and scary, but that’s limiting. It’s like the sharks and whales, and tigers in the Cenozoic era. They’re already at the top of their ecological pyramids, so confined by their environment’s expectations of them, although you humans definitely don’t help much either, but I digress. My point is, Rose, they have nowhere to go from the top but down.

“But these birds, Rose, these brilliant, beautiful, magnificent birds, they are putty in the hands of the world. Look at how diverse they are, each and every one of them unique in their own right. Not just these here in front of us, but each and every single one we’ve seen today. For a brief period of time, after the asteroid hits, the Earth becomes a sort of biological wasteland, but those that survived did so because they adapted. They had purpose, niches to fill, an entire world to repopulate. You humans go on and on and on bickering and arguing and going to war over diversity and differences, but this Rose, this is nature. This is life. ”

They had spent more time there in Montana than they had in any other place they had visited that day. The Doctor introduced to Rose and taught her about the Pectinodon and the Anzu and Archeroraptor as they freely wandered through the fields alongside the dinosaurs, occasionally stopping to look at a rather interesting tree or foliage that wasn’t being occupied by an animal at the time. By the time they’d made it back to the TARDIS, although still light out, the sun had already disappeared beyond the horizon, and Rose was right and proper knackered after all the travel. 

“Thank you,” she sighed into the Doctor’s shoulder as she tightly clung to him as he sent the TARDIS into the time vortex to drift while they rested. 

“What for, Rose?” he dryly laughed as he returned the hug once his hands had finished with the console. 

“For today, for everything. For just being you.”

They stood there for a moment, just enjoying one another's touch and their oh so rare moments of peace with one another.

“Right, off to bed, before you fall asleep standing here in the console room like a horse,” he said, both of them laughing as they finally let go of each other, Rose off to her bedroom, and the Doctor left to pass the time until his most beloved companion was rested and ready to set off on their next adventure together. 

Sources for Further Reading if you're interested: https://archive.org/details/dinosaurs-that-didnt-die

[quark-nova]

Why defining "birds" precisely is hard

(A reply to @lyxthen-reblogs that got too long and is now its own post)

A long time ago (in the 1700s), we didn't really have any idea of how birds came about - evolutionary theory itself would have to wait another century! And, we didn't have knowledge of extinct species either, or even of the fact extinction was a thing. Carl Linnaeus, when setting up the first taxonomical classification of life, grouped modern birds in the class Aves. Mammals were grouped in Mammalia, reptiles, amphibians and cartilaginous fish in Amphibia, bony fish in Pisces, arthropods in Insecta and all other animals in Vermes.

This first classification was pretty crude, and, around 1820, scientists like de Blainville and Latreille began distinguishing reptiles from "batrachians" as separate classes. De Blainville, pointing out similarities between reptiles and birds, labelled the former as "ornithoid" (bird-like) while amphibians were "ichthyoid" (fish-like). In 1825, Latreille fully separated amphibians (Batrachia, later Amphibia) from reptiles (Reptilia).

The first major turning point for taxonomy came in the next decades, as many fossils of now-extinct creatures were unearthed. In 1842, Richard Owen coined the term Dinosauria, then uniting the recently discovered Megalosaurus, Hylaeosaurus and Iguanodon.

But it wouldn't be until the 1860s that Darwinian evolution would highlight the flaws in the earlier understanding of separate classes. In 1863, Thomas Henry Huxley would suggest uniting birds and reptiles, creating the class Sauropsida the next year. Huxley was the first to suggest birds evolved from dinosaurs, comparing the recently-discovered Archaeopteryx (1861) with Compsognathus. As cladistics didn't exist back then, no attempt at precisely extending the definition of "bird" to extinct forms was made, even though Archaeopteryx was usually called "the first bird" (Urvogel).

Unfortunately, this hypothesis would be shelved for a whole century, leading to little progress happening in terms of understanding bird evolution. It wouldn't be until the 1960s and the Dinosaur Renaissance that the links between birds and dinosaurs would be rediscovered, with birdlike theropods like Deinonychus being unearthed. This would really accelerate with the discovery of extremely well-preserved feathered dinosaurs, starting with Sinosauropteryx in 1996.

With numerous fossils showing steps of a gradual dinosaur-to-bird transition, the question of defining the "first bird" came to be asked again. To try to answer this, Jacques Gauthier coined the clade Avialae in 1986 as all dinosaurs more closely related to modern birds than to deinonychosaurs. This included Archaeopteryx, which other authors used for an alternate definition of Avialae: "the smallest clade containing Archaeopteryx and modern birds".

Still, the conflict didn't end there. Fundamentally, there were many ways to extend Aves (as defined from modern birds) to past ancestors, and, in 2001, Gauthier and de Quieroz identified four. Avemetatarsalia, defined as any archosaur closer to birds than to crocodilians (including all dinosaurs and pterosaurs!). Avifilopluma, defined as any archosaur possessing feathers homologous to bird ones. Avialae, redefined as any dinosaur able to fly (and their flightless descendants). And finally, Aves or Neornithes, the crown-group (the last common ancestor of modern birds, and its descendants).

The issues were many. Avifilopluma became mostly useless as a definition as ornithischians, then pterosaurs, were found to possess filaments homologous with bird feathers. Virtually every bird-line archosaur (with the possible exception of the little-known aphanosaurs) could likely fit in this clade, and its content was too uncertain to be reliably used.

Meanwhile, Avialae had (and continues to have) three distinct definitions. Notably, the ability for flight itself proved to be a poor definition, as bird relatives (Maniraptora, including Deinonychus, Velociraptor, Oviraptor, and many other bird-like theropods) likely evolved flight several times, from the four-winged Microraptor to the bat-winged Yi qi. Truly, most maniraptorans were extremely bird-like: wings had evolved much earlier than flight itself, with even dinosaurs like Velociraptor sporting fully feathered wings despite being unable to fly.

So, what was left? The crown group Neornithes, a vaguely defined Avialae, a more extensive Maniraptora, the stem group Avemetatarsalia, and lots of confusion. Usually, Aves is taken today as referring to either Neornithes or Avialae, although Avifilopluma/Avimetatarsalia are also in use (for instance, the Sinosauropteryx discoverers used Avifilopluma, and considered it a bird).

But none of these definitions are inherently better or worse. They are all different ways of extending a definition made for modern creatures to have it apply to past ones.

[verflares]

also gamers would any of you mind weighing in... 👉 👈

[leopardsealz]

a secondary mlpsona <3 gay ass draconequus. notes under the cut

please reblog my art!

head is a deer, wings are fork-tailed storm petrel, front paws are sea otter, hind legs are osprey, tail is vaguely archaeopteryx, teeth are leopard seal

height wise it is around the same height as luna / cadence? so tall but not Super tall

it is a weather / water draconequus & powers include: some weather / water manipulation & underwater breathing. also it can talk to birds. it often disguises itself as either a reindeer or a peryton in some situations

last but not least heres a silly doodle of it in the mlp style with simplified markings :3

[smorpher]

I love Yuki, but I hate that she said this

She may be right. Birds may have evolved flight, at least in part, because it helped them escape predators.

We honestly don't know.

Evolution doesn't care why. It only cares about if a species lives long enough to make more of itself. This is usually through finding food and finding a mate.

Some birds look so extravagant to find a mate

And some fly because it helps them hunt and reach food that other animals usually wouldn't be able to

What we do know is that birds came from the same line that gave us the therapods.

These guys

Then there's the oldest known bird

Archaeopteryx

These bad boys had sharp teeth and talons indicating they were carnivorous.

To me, this lends some weight to the theory that maybe birds evolved flight to chase after food that other animals couldn't. Flying bugs too high up unless you joined them and skittering lizards only caught through bursts of speed from descending on them from somewhere up high.

Current theories indicate that birds likely either evolved from arboreal species that hopped from tree to tree until that turned to gliding and then flying. Or, they came from species that started by running and hopping and, once again, eventually took to gliding and then flying.

We don't know the exact reason other than to live long enough to reproduce.

Maybe they were fleeing predators, but I don't think that was the only reason if so. I think they were looking for food, and their best bet was to take to the skies.

And that's why Yuki saying they evolved out of fear and danger is so frustrating to me. Fear is not the only reason a species evolves, and often is not the main one either.

I understand that, as sorcerers, they often see the worst of people and the world around them. And, as such, it is very easy to see those negative things as the reason the world turns.

But it's not.

There's so much more

And the world is so much more complicated and beautiful than that

[ghost-bxrd]

HAHHAA

You’ve come to a person with enough knowledge about paleobiology to possibly get a phd, I happen to have had a special interest in prehistoric animals since I was 3

So I present to you, my favorite thing ever created ever….

MICRORAPTOR!!

This is a non avian dinosaur (yes, birds are dinosaurs, however not all dinosaurs are birds. They’re all reptiles. Either a sparrow is a reptile or a nile crocodile is a bird, pick your poison.) that inhabited early Cretaceous China roughly 125mya! The iridescent black coloration was found in the pigmentation cells preserved in the feather impressions of multiple specimens (yes! We can tell a feathered dinosaurs colors if we have enough feather impressions! Archaeopteryx is a light beige with black tips on the edge, pictures further below)

This is the Microraptor Gui holotype specimen, or the specimen that is currently most representative of the species. You see all of those dark lines along the body and limbs? THOSE ARE FEATHER IMPRESSIONS!!!!! How cool is that?

Microraptor is currently in taxonomic limbo, however it’s known to be at least somewhat related to the dromaeosaurs, or “raptors” (YES, they were also covered in feathers and even had arm wings!). It and Velociraptor are sorta very distant cousins

Also, microraptor is 2’6” long including the tail, and 4” thick at its thickest point (YES, I MEASURED IT). Teeny tiny, I love this guy so muchhh

As for some others, here’s a few cool little guys!

This is Yi-Qi, an absolute weirdo of a little guy who is just wonderful to me. They’re a dinosaur that lived in the Jurassic, roughly 159mya. They’re perfect, no notes

This is archaeopteryx! A sort of transitional form for early birds, this guy lived in the Jurassic, a whole 160 million years ago. The feather impressions shown on Microraptor are less prominent here, but are still noticeable if you know what to look for! This guy is not a true bird, but was a big first step in the evolution of flight feathers and the bird body plan :D

Yes, I will infodump about prehistoric animals at any given opportunity, if you want anything else just ask I reached the image limit :(

I’ll just… leave this here I guess?

[squish36-writes-and-draws]

17 November: Unraveling

Word count: 1385

TW: Swearing

General Taglist (lmk if you want to be added/removed!): @stellar-lune @faggot-friday @kamikothe1and0nly @nyxpixels @florida-preposterously

@poppinspop @uni-seahorse-572 @solreefs @corruption-exe @rusted-phone-calls

@when-wax-wings-melt @good-old-fashioned-lover-boy7 @dexter-dizzknees @abubble125 @hi-imgrapes

@callum-hunt-is-bisexual @callas-pancake-tree @hi-my-name-is-awesome @katniss-elizabeth-chase @sillyguy-supreme

@void-kill @thefoxysnake @the-pre-quiz

Unraveling Project Specific Taglist (lmk if you want to be added/removed/upgraded): @cutebisexualmess @crippling-pages @daizythegreat @sophiefostersno1stan @iggydancebreak

@theleopardstalker @you-will-meet-your-downfall @multi-fandom-lunatic

On Ao3 or below the cut!

First (3 November) / Previous / Next

A Script of a Video from Florent's YouTube Channel

    Alrighty, everybody. Being that I am chronically on the internet and I expect that you are as well, I take it we’re all familiar with the concept of flower shop AUs. If you aren’t, well, maybe you should preserve your sanity because one second you’re reading a cute little story about these deeply traumatized characters opening up a flower shop together and the next you know way too much about the Omegaverse. Don’t look that up.  I don’t need you to be scarred for life too. 

    Today’s topic isn’t really going to be connected to fanfic, but I needed a way to hook you into the video because let’s be fucking honest, approximately none of you are going to willingly click on a video about the history of plants. You can make your self-inserts have a crisis over the fact that Stegosaurus never saw a flower. It’s very sad. I’m sad. 

    Where I’d like to start today is with the Great Oxidation Event. It actually killed, like, everything, so it’s kind of significant in the course of Earth’s history. This was over two billion years ago—I better not see Young Earth Creationists in my comment section. Go away. Humans and dinosaurs did not coexist unless you count birds as dinosaurs but then again birds are just government spies so they aren’t real either—but essentially the whole thing with the Great Oxidation Event is that some microbes figured out how to do photosynthesis, realised it was good for making food, and then they pumped so much oxygen into the atmosphere that everything fucking died. 

    So, uh, that’s why we have oxygen in the atmosphere now, which is kind of a nice thing to have in general, I’d say. The really cool thing is that we have fossils, called stromatolites, of these microbes from that long ago. Like, we have a spotty record of multicellular life, but these biofilms of cyanobacteria managed to survive two billion years. So much has to be missing from the fossil record. 

    The next stop on our journey is a lot nearer to us. In the Devonian period, which ranged from about 420 million years ago to 360 million years ago, instead of having forests of plants like we’re used to, there were giant fungi, like Prototaxites. I know what you’re thinking and I refuse to comment. The Devonian is also home to what is currently the oldest known tree, Wattesia. Before that, it was Archaeopteris, which definitely isn’t confusing when put next to Archaeopteryx, a genus midway through the transition from dinosaurs to birds that lived during the Jurassic. 

    The Devonian ended in a mass extinction before giving way to the Carboniferous. Most of the coal that we’re using to cause next mass extinction is from the Carboniferous, mostly because there were a lot of fucking trees. Like, so many trees that by the end of the period the oxygen levels were around 35%, which is quite a lot compared to today’s 21%. Trees were having a good time. 

    Insects were also having a good time. The increased oxygen levels means that they could get a whole lot bigger and at the same time figured out how to do flight, which is good for them and bad for my mental health. Just to take a couple of examples we have the genus Meganeura, a dragonfly with a wingspan of a meter and the genus Arthropleura, which was a myriapod taller than me. 

    I am aware that I am short. However, that is still heinous bullshit and I shall not stand for it. 

    On the arthropod front, there’s a clade of spiders known as the Mesothelae featured in Walking with Monsters and it was the size of a cat. I don’t want to be here anymore. Let us move on to the Permian for about thirty seconds. 

    In the Permian, everything died. A lot. More than the dinosaur asteroid that I’m sure all of you know about. Plants died a little bit less than most things, but it was still generally not a good time. While we’re here though, I want to talk about Glossopteris. Now, all of you are looking at this and going, “that just looks like a leaf,” and, yeah, it is. But its fossils were used as evidence towards proving tectonic plates, which I think is pretty cool. I’d also like to mention Lepidodendron, which lived during both the Carboniferous and Permian and has been mistaken as being an imprint fossil of a large reptile’s skin. No. It’s just a tree with some funny-looking bark to our modern eyeballs. And, to round off this trifecta, we had conifers first appear during the Permian. 

    And now let’s jump forward to the Cretaceous. This is the one with most of the dinosaurs you know. As an audience retention strategy, I want you to come up with a list of your ten favourite dinosaurs. Unless you’re a dinosaur aficionado purposely trying to be difficult to invalidate the accuracy of my point, you’re probably going to name at least a couple that are from the Cretaceous.

    The Cretaceous is also where angiosperms, flowering plants, went absolutely buck fucking wild. Like, today angiosperms make up 90% of the living plant species on Earth. And you know what else first appeared? Well, technically it’s a flowering plant, so I’ve already covered it but, like, the concept of Earth without grass is completely absurd to my little brain. I’m sure the ecological niche was covered by other things, but the fact that most of human society exists because we domesticated grasses in the form of wheat, corn, and rice and that only appeared during the Cretaceous is not something I want to comprehend.

    And that brings us mostly to today. I mean, there was probably an asteroid in there, but I also don’t care very much about the Paleogene. It’s close enough to modern day to not be as interesting as the older periods. It’s just slightly weird. I mean, there was the family Chalicotheriidae, which looks kind of funny, I guess. 

    What does all of this mean though? Why did I bother doing all of this? Was it so that you could copy and paste what I said into your Flower Shop AU I definitely didn’t cause to start existing at the beginning of this video so you spent the last ten minutes writing instead of watching my shit editing skills? No. It’s because I know too much shit about plants and I need to tell other people about them or I’m going to be even more of a menace to society than I already am. 

    I also think that it’s important to think about plants in the context of geologic history because so much of the space is taken up by dinosaurs, and that’s kind of a shame. I’m not advocating for less dinosaurs; I just want to highlight that there are other things in the fossil record. There are people who stare at fossilized pollen all day. I’m not going to lie to you—I would sell my soul to do that. That sounds fun. I’d be so good at it, I promise. Let me see the pollen. You can trust me to not eat the rocks. 

    I definitely haven’t ever tried to eat a rock before. 

    Anyway—I’d like to thank all the people on Patreon who, for some reason, fund this mess, and if you’d like to join them for whatever reason, link in the description. I don’t know why I bother saying that. You know how YouTube works. You also know that YouTube likes it when you like, subscribe, and leave comments telling me about how I’m obviously wrong about everything ever. Genuinely though, I do appreciate the corrections you guys give me. I’m one guy here and sometimes I say stupid or stupidly worded shit. I can’t wait for the Latin scholars to tell me that I absolutely fucking butchered the scientific names. You all know who you are. In my defence, taxonomy is a dumpster fire and it’s not my fault that I’m treating it like it is. And, finally, I’d like to thank Keefe, who took the time out of his day to stare at me ominously while I was writing this script. I’m not concerned at all.

[vvalllerie]

TRICK OR TREAT!!! >:]]]]

okay for you my darling i have compiled a list of things i’ve been incubating about my jurassic park au that i thought you might enjoy!

it’s based off of the events of the book way more than the movie, and will have way more dinosaurs than either of them did- stuff they didn’t even make in the most recent jurassic world movies

i had to create a daichi & atsumu tag! they’re childhood friends who got separated after elementary school in this au

i have a list of character/dinosaur interactions- i’ll give you a few: oikawa and giganotosaurus (it’s from argentina), bokuto and dilophosaurus, and of course sakusa with an archaeopteryx

there’s going to be a part two, something i’m creating myself (but including dinosaurs from the later jurassic park/world movies) after they think everything’s over and they’re safe

in this second part, i’ll be introducing some new characters too! matsukawa, hanamaki, tsukishima, yamaguchi, and kita to name a few 

one thing i’m keen to avoid from the canon jurassic park universe is major character death.. but don’t worry, they’ll get traumatic injuries instead! someone loses a leg :3

i’m considering switching some ships around (daisuga and iwaoi becoming iwasuga and oidai) and creating some real tension between oikawa and suga

this might change, but as of now the only ship pairing i have that isn’t romantic is kuroken- they’re in a QPR (i’m unable to see them as romantic no matter how hard i try)

just like in the book, there’s going to be two tyrannosaurs! one adult and one juvenile- they’re not mother and baby, though, in fact they conflict with each other throughout

another thing with the tyrannosaurs- i plan to have a scene where our characters think they’re safe in the water, but not only are there dinos in the water already, the juvenile tyrannosaur can swim.. and he has his eyes set on his prize. 

i’m including the jurassic world raptor squad (blue, charlie, delta, echo) as the raptors in the first part, because we have atsumu’s character based off of owen grady, the animal behaviorist and raptor trainer

it says slow burn for the romance.. we’ll see. i’m not good at that lol. it's already so obvious

the only ones who are already together (romantically) are osasuna! and trust me, the way motoya gets added is very interesting 

originally kageyama was going to hate hinata just as much or even more… i don’t know what happened. i blanked and all of a sudden i had half a chapter written where kageyama was a huge softie and hopelessly in love, and i kept it because i’m not sure where i’m going with it. that’s what makes it fun!

unlike the franchise, there’s no malicious intent in why the park goes down- it’s completely an accident! did i do this so i wouldn’t have to pick ‘good’ and ‘evil’ sides for the characters…. maybe. 

okay last one! i have some songs i associate with this au, for some reason, so here are a couple of them: Roman Candles by Death Cab for Cutie, Wake Up by Young the Giant, Beds Are Burning by AWOLNATION, Dark Side of Your Room by All Time Low, The Sound of Letting Go (also by All Time Low), Level of Concern by Twenty One Pilots, and No Chances (Twenty One Pilots… you know the drill)

hope you liked these little tidbits/spoilers/idk what to call them.. love you <33

[next-hero-in-line]

In a spontaneous act of bravery, I have decided to ask the first person on my feed some questions.

1) What is your third favorite dinosaur?

2) What is your favorite color combo?

3) Do you like my pets?

Hello Cal!!!

1. Archaeopteryx lithographica is my third favorite Dino- beat out by Ankylosaurus and Stegosaurus ❤️

2. My favorite color combo has to be either be teal and purple OR green and gold!

And 3. , ABSOLUTELY!!!

Here’s my baby too!

[ask-the-magic-schoolbus]

For the gang… if you can be any species of dinosaur (avian and non-avian), which one would you be?

Phoebe: I would be an eastern phoebe, my namesake bird.

Ralphie: Oh, that’s easy. Archaeopteryx!

D.A.: Hmmm. Either a peregrine falcon or a great horned owl.

Carlos: If we’re talking birds, definitely a falcon. But if we’re talking about dinosaurs that aren’t birds, then I think I would be a velociraptor.

Tim: Something colorful, like a painted bunting or a parrot!

Wanda: A Microraptor!

Arnold: I think I would be an Ankylosaurus.

Keesha: I’d be a Stegosaurus.