#fun fact: crocodilians are actually my favourite animal

[phantom-of-the-501st]

Have some random gator/croc pics I took today 🐊

[an1d10t]

Hmmm.. Facts about

✨turtles✨

(Yk, I might actually make a seperate blog for these)

Anyway, I’ll be talking about the difference in tortoises and turtles first. Tge difference in turtles and tortoises is their shell.

Tortoises have a more rounded and thicker shell while turtles have a more water-dynamic and thinner shell. Turtles are also more used to water while tortoises spend most of their time on land.

Turtles don’t only have flippers and are able to walk on land. Here I’ll take the eastern box turtle as example.

They have ‘legs’ but can still swim quite good, although they are not the best swimmer, sea and pond turtles can obviously swim faster and therefore better, they will still want to spend most of there time by water. This is because they are a semi-aquatic species. They need humid and damp conditions, that is because their hatchlings dehydrate very quickly.

And what kind of monster would want to dehydrate and kill this little creature??

Anyway, I’m pretty sure that what I said about box turtles also counts for other semi-aquatic turtles. Now moving on to sea turtles,

So I’m pretty sure we have all heard atleast once about sea turtles. Sea turtles, sometimes called marine turtles, are in the reptiles of the order Testudines. Sea turtles are one of the kore ancient animals of the planet. There are only 7 species, and if anyone wants I can make a whole post about every single one of them.

One of my personal favourites is the leatherback turtle. So I’ll probably be talking about them for the biggest part. Like you can see, tge leatherback turtle is the biggest one.

Leatherback turtles are the heaviest non-crocodilian reptiles, reaching up to length of 1.8 meters, in other words, as big as the average grown male. (68% of the grown men are around 1.75 meters, which actually makes the turtle bigger than most of them). They also weigh over 500 kilos. (Although I’m not sure. The source is saying that they weigh 500 kilograms, which would not be logical at all).

Now, about sea turtles, they are not fish. They are reptiles and have lungs. Those lungs are obviously not the same as mammalian lungs. They need to go up to the surface to breathe. When in a resting state they can stay underwater for 2 hours.

Sea turtles can also get stranded. This in sadly not uncommon and happens quite often in the winter. They pretty much get frozen and become ‘cold-stunned’. This happens to loggerhead and Ridley turtles.

Fun facts about sea turtles, they don’t have teeth. Their mouth is similar to one of a snail. Now, some people might find this picture a bit disturbing, so im just saying, if you don’t like a black hole with spikes sticking out, you might want to skip this picture

Not something I’d want to stick my hand in.

Sea turtles eat jellyfish btw. I think it’s pretty easy to tell how they eat those jelly fish.

Now moving on to the pond turtles,

There are 50 different pond turtles species. The largest species of pond turtles are the Heosemys grandis’. (Also called the giant Asian pond turtles)

I can’t really find a lot about them.

So, now we can get to my favourite part, the fun facts. (Jeez this was fun to research lol)

Okay, so, turtle is actually an umbrella term for approximately 200 species of terrapins, turtles and tortoises. Aquatic and semi-aquatic turtles have webbed feet. They live in ponds. And sea (marine) turtles have flippers.

Sea turtles have to get onto land to lay eggs. They always do this at night to not get disturbed. Also, touching turtle eggs is actually illegal. (So don’t do it. Please)

You know how turtles have shells, right? Well, that shell is made of around 50 bones combined! The top part of the shell is called ‘carapace’ and the under side is called ‘plastron’.

I’ve talked a bit about the leatherback turtle, right? The fun facts about them is that they’re actually named after the shell. Their shell is pretty much made out of leather/a leathery texture.

Now, turtles (talking about the umbrella term thingy) can all get quite old. Tortoises can get up to 100 years old! Sea turtles can get to the ripe age to 50. And sweet water turtles can get up to the age of 30-40 years.

See this silly thing? This is the African helmeted turtle. He looks very innocent but they are actually carrion eaters and can be quite vicious in its quest for food. This silly little thing has been witnessed drowning doves and other prey, dragging them to the depths of ponds to dine. No thank you.

And that was all (for now).

Have a great day! :D

@butterfly-with-wings-writes

[arminreindl]

Very late on this one but I think theres some cool stuff to talk about.

I actually covered this formation extensively a few years ago when giving the Wikipedia page a major overhaul at the request of someone on discord, so the research phase for Josch was mercifully easy (at least for me, not so much for those making the reference size chart).

Really one of the main things that the research focused on was which localities to choose. For reference, Jebel Qatrani spans the Eocene-Oligocene boundry and has localities representing different time intervalls. For example, locality L-41, which is the single most specious, was deposited during the Late Eocene, localities A and B right after the boundry and localities I and M are among the most recent. After some debating I and M kinda cristalized into the main ones to use, they are pretty close together so the fauna was likely to overlapp a good deal, they had some iconic animals and they also preserve a bulk of the bird fauna, which really helped fill lots of the space to not overcrowd with mammals.

Obviously my personal highlight was the featured crocodilian, Eogavialis africanum. Right out of the gate its an interesting one. Traditionally, Eogavialis, like other closely related forms (informally "thoracosaurs") have been recovered as some type of gharial, generally closer to Indian Gharials than Tomistoma (in old phylogenies featuring Tomi as a crocodylid, thoracosaurs are still deemed gharials proper).

Now I initially had like three whole paragraphs typed on why I don't think this is the case, but for brevity's sake I'm going to save that for a future post on thoracosaurs in general (perhaps its something to cover after I'm done with mekosuchines). So for now, just know that tho it could be an early African gharial, its also possible that Eogavialis is a member of a much more ancient, non-crocodilian group of Eusuchians that just happens to look similar to gharials and that went extinct during the Miocene.

Also fun fact, the patterns and colours are based on modern day broad-snouted caimans.

Also while not featured in this piece I wanna give a shout out to "Crocodylus" megarhinus, a more robust crocodilian from the formation. As you can guess from the "", its no longer thought to belong to Crocodylus but is its own, still unnamed genus, interestingly closely related to the enigmatic mekosuchines endemic to Oceania. The size chart below also features Crocodylus articeps, the slender jaws at the very bottom. Though this species was long deemed a juvenile "C." megarhinus, comparisson with actual juveniles of the latter shows this to be obviously false. Alas the holotype has been lost and it is now deemed a nomen dubium.

I also wanna give a brief shout out to the bird fauna, which is quite interesting in its own right and features a lot of taxa that match the swampy environment depicted here. For instance there's Palaeoephippiorhynchus, a large stork related to saddle-bills, marabous and jabirus and in a similar size range. There's also Goliathia, a "giant" shoebill. Though, as it turns out, the holotype is smaller than a modern shoebill and one of the referred specimens is only slightly more robust in some ways and not in others. So while interesting, its name (envisioned for what was assumed to be a heron) is not that fitting anymore. Speaking of heron, there is also Xenerodiops, with its uniquely shaped bill. Some researchers have argued that this genus was a type of night heron based on a humerus, though here it is depicted as more generalized given that the humerus and holotype bill have no direct evidence for having belonged to the same animal.

My personal favourites among the birds are the local flamingos and lilly trotters. Flamingo are represented through remains similar to those of Palaelodus (which I talked about in greater detail here and here) and thus likely belonged to that genus or another palaelodid. In short, these birds likely already had a diet not dissimilar to modern flamingos, but lacked the extreme bill curvature. Lilly trotters are better known from the formation and represented some of the earliest records of this family. Three species in two genera have been named, with this one in particular being Janipes, here depicted similar to a pheasant-tailed jacana, which is closely related to at least one of the two Jebel Qatrani jacanas (Nupharanassa specifically). It's been noted that all jacanas from this formation are larger than their modern kin.

Obviously theres a lot more cool stuff about the formation, including the incredible diversity of hyraxes, the presence of the weird ptolemaiids, three different elephants, the bizarre Arsinoitherium, early sirenians (really this place was a hot spot for afrotheres) and a vast number of primates. But all this goes beyond what I'm most familiar with.

Results from the Jebel Qatrani formation #paleostream!

Arsinoitherium might be the most iconic animal from here but that doesn't make the rest of the fauna less interesting!

[malwarechips]

ok so i want to ramble about dinosaurs idk what im gonna talk about but i will talk about something (special interest moment) putting it under a cut bc it WILL be long

FEATHERs. FEATHERS ON DINOSAURS. /POS i love it so much, its so cool. even if its thought that larger dinos such as t-rex didnt have feathers, dinosaurs like Archaeopteryx?? BELOVED!! its so fucking cool! AND VELOCIRAPTOR, TOO! murder chickens... /pos

ALSO TEETH.. THEY HAVE SUCH COOL TEETH DUDE... AND CLAWS TOO! i feel people forget that dinosaurs are animals too, and they'd adapted to their environments, as animals do! people also seem to forget that dinosaurs arent some movie monster made up by jp or something, they didnt kill everything in sight bc that would take more energy than just killing one or two meals to fill themselves would what's the point in chasing after that other alive thing when you just killed something and its right in front of you to eat?

i also also dont think some people realise quite how incredibly rare finding things such as preserved skin and tails and feathers is!! the amount of events that have to line up for that to happen is amazing!!!

AND DINOSAURS WERENT THE ONLY COOL PART! theres pterosaurs, reptiles, bugs, plants, fish... EVERYTHING!!! theyre all so cool! hell even the Earth itself! its all so fuckin cool dude! have you SEEN how big those ancient bugs are? how cool pterosaur skeletons look? even leaf-prints in rocks are cool! and its so interesting to think how we'll probably never truely know how things like prehistoric sharks looked. cartilage n all that!! its why we only have the teeth!

everyone knows dinosaurs and birds are related, but more specifically; birds, dinosaurs, and crocodilians are all archosaurs! IIRC crocodilians have been super helpful in figuring out certain dinosaurs' muscles! so have birds, actually!

onto my favourite dinosaurs: AUSTRORAPTOR! my favourite dromaeosaur.

its thought to have been piscivorous!!! which is super interesting and i love it so much! its also a pretty obscure raptor from what i know, which is kinda sad ive always loved dromaeosaurs and how bird-like they actually are; theyre among the dinos thought to be feathered.

and theres also BARYONYX! my first ever favourite dinosaur.

theyre spinosaurids, and therefore related to spinosaurus! unlike spinosaurus, they lack a sail, but were also likely mostly piscivorous (if you cant tell, i tend to lean towards piscivores for some reason) their headshape is so interesting to me and im not sure why but. look at it! its so funky! /pos fun fact; their name means Heavy Claw, after the large claws on their hands!

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back to misc dinosaur rambling;

its always really annoyed me when people 'shrinkwrap' dinosaurs, (referring to when dinosaur reconstructions will be very close to the bone, almost like. starving-looking) give em some muscle! give em some bulk! but not too much they werent balloons either theres a nice middle-ground somewhere in there, im yet to personally hit it with my style, though that weird bone that some skeletons have between their legs? thats part of their pelvis! it doesnt stick out weirdly, its nicely tucked away, yknow, inside them, like a skeleton should be! their stomach doesnt stick tight to their ribs, theyve gotta have organs somewhere. and thats where those go!

i always love it when reconstructions go a little wacky with colours and crests, though! crests we see on skeletons (dilophosaurus for example) may not have been the full size of the crest, as its possible it was larger, but composed of mostly cartilage instead of bone!

and i dont mean to push herbivores out of the spotlight, they deserve one too! their feet are rlly cool! yknow how so many toys of dinosaurs like triceratops have those weird elephant-sorta feet? iirc thats not accurate!! they had more obvious toes! as for biped herbivores, duckbills are so cool! their skulls look awesome! (and the sounds that scientists and palaeontologists have speculated they may have made are even cooler!)

AND DINOSAUR PARENTING/EGGS! oviraptor, right? that egg-thief? those were actually its own eggs! that was a mother guarding its nest, not a little guy stealing another dino's eggs! iirc its thought that t-rex was actually a very good parent and would mate for life! (im not sure on the accuracy of that one anymore, though, it was a while ago that i heard it) occasionally we find fossilised eggs with IN TACT SKELETONS OF THE UNHATCHED DINOSAURS IN THEM! its so cool! (and very helpful for figuring out a dinosaurs life cycle, i assume)

Coprolites are fossilised animal shit! cool, right? no? well theyre actually very helpful in figuring out an animal's almost exact diet! and sometimes even behaviour! how cool is that???

dinosaur ramble over because i cannot think of anything else to say and my brain is now tired (i should do that more it was nice to ramble for so long)

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TL;DR: dinosaurs are fucking incredible animals. animals, not movie monsters. and i wish more people saw them like that! and herbivores are just as cool as the carnivores everyone knows like t-rex and velociraptor! also, appreciate ALL prehistoric life, not just the dinosaurs and pterosaurs! (although dinosaurs are my main interest when it comes to prehistoric life)

[allegaeon]

🐦🦂🦎🦈

🐦- Recommend a song with environmental imagery? Oof SO fuckin many. Globus Hysericus by The Agonist you already know, Krieger by Null Positiv is about environmental destruction which is fun. On Va Tous Crever by Sidilarsen same topic n music video is baller. Accelerated Evolution by Allegaeon has one of my fav lyrics around that topic it fucks so hard. Amaranthe's Do Or Die also goes on environmentalism n features Angela Gossow so that's pretty sic

🦂(I'm pretending this is a eurypterid) - Favourite extinct invertebrate? Ammonytes cuz of their fossils but as an animal god I'm such a sucker for Meganeura. Biggest dragonfly that ever lived was a fuckin apex predator the goddamn raptor of the carboniferous

🦎 - Random biology fun fact. Because of the way phyllogeny works, it is impossible to create a group of animals that includes all the ones we consider "reptiles" AND excludes birds. This is because Birds have a more recent common ancestor wit Crocodiles than crocs do with any other, so either birds includes fuckin crocodilians or bird are a type of reptile. Also Tuataras look almost exactly like normal squamates (lizards n snakes) but are actually from a completely different evolutionary line, and the only extant species left is the one n only Tuatara that lives in New Zealand.

🦈- Favourite overall animal? Literally fuckin impossible to decide lmao. I'm gonna go way too general and say saurischian dinosaurs, very much including birds. This encompasses an ASSLOAD of animals extinct and not but like, that's about as narrow as I can get. A LOT of my fave dinos were therapods especially the lil ones and modern birds genuinely bring me so much fucking joy from chickens to canaries to raptors and peacocks. That's what I'm goin with lmao

thank you!!!!