#megamammals

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

"THE LINEAGE OF ELEPHANTS TRACES BACK SOME 55 MILLION YEARS..."

PIC INFO: Spotlight on a prehistoric elephant piece titled "The "Micro"-Evolution of Elephants," undated, depicting the evolution of our planet's proboscideans over the course of over 50 million years. Artist unknown.

"The lineage of elephants traces back some 55 million years. Ancestors gave rise to various branches as well as to the direct line leading to living elephants. Early proboscideans originated in Africa and southwest Asia and migrated via land bridge to every continent except Antarctica and Australia.

Changes in climate and food supply -- and perhaps overhunting in the Pleistocene -- caused widespread extinctions, leaving modern elephants as then only survivors."

-- "THE "MICRO"-EVOLUTION OF ELEPHANTS"

The proboscideans featured here are: Moeritherium, Deinotherium, Palaeomastodon, Mammut, Gomphotherium, Stegodon, Primelephas, Mammuthus, Elephas (Asian elephant), and Loxodonta (African elephant).

Source: www.pinterest.com/pin/omniologycom--799107527601417193.

[thatoneredscout]

I must bring specific attention to the "Boneless Megamammal" It speaks to me on a personal level.

first day of doing 2 word creature prompts

if you wanna give me any suggestions feel free to reply

[loquaciousnesssesquipedalian]

Verden Chronicles background

To start off at the beginning, thousands of years ago, an alien civilization came to the planet their evolutionary ancestors evolved from millions of years before. Their purpose of arriving as ultimately because of their pursuit of knowledge, no matter the cost. Thus, they decimated the populations of what sapient inhabitants there were and created a select few species from modified DNA of a certain group of the sapients. The resulting beings were highly adaptable and literally designed to be slaves, and they ultimately rebelled against their creators, driving them away but with so much of a resulting loss that they were driven to a stone age.

The slaves were humanity, or more specifically, those and closely related others. The creators/masters served as the inspiration of angel and demon equivalents alike in many mythologies. The period before the Stone Age was what would eventually be called the Golden Age, but that’s a misnomer. Sometime after the Fall, as the event became known as, other extraterrestrial civilizations decided to take advantage of humanity, driven particularly by the unique circumstances involved. As the native Terran sapient civilizations finally fell one by one and resulting ones to humans, other extraterrestrial civilizations posed as either the gods of their preexisting faiths or were directly involved in the creation of new religions, and those combined factors ultimately resulted in literally all modern Terran religions, tribal or otherwise. This is what would become the Aeon of Gods, succeeding the Aeon of Tragedy.

After the Aeon of Gods came the Aeon of Monsters, with dwindling populations of megafauna still posing a serious threat to many human civilizations. These included more well known prehistoric Cenozoic mammal megafauna as well as dragons and persisting dinosaur populations.

Megamammals: These included various rhinoceros-like mammals, elephant types, and now extinct big cats and megamarsupials, and they are at least the partial source of the concept of several mythological creatures.

Dinosaurs: The Grand Bleak Death, the extraterrestrial plague that wiped out most dinosaurs all those millions of years ago, did not entirely do so, at all. The result was barely persisting populations, and also the ancestors of various civilizations that left Terra for other Telluric (habitable to Terran life) worlds. The “gods” that created humanity were among the latter. The still Terran populations also had some of the sapient species that came before the creation of humans. While some may claim that birds are dinosaurs, that’s like saying that humans are monkeys.

Dragons: Very far from what modern fantasy cliches imply, these “successors” of dinosaurs in general are simply any animal of the rhynocephalia order, the sole surviving Terran population of which are the tuataras, natives to what is now New Zealand which look and act almost exactly like common lizards. As for the exact variety, there were limbless, winged, and tetrapodal ones, but not hexapodal ones outside of some rare mutations. Some of the megadragons, or dragon megafauna, still persist on other planets due to having been introduced to other Telluric planets, along with some other microdragon species.

After these megafauna populations died out, then came the Aeon of Heroes, corresponding to the late Bronze Age. The Aeon of Heroes saw some alien interference, but only at very certain events.

After the Aeon of Heroes came the Aeon of Myths, which lasted until after the Renaissance. After the Aeon of Myths comes the modern Aeon of Hunts and Wars, or as some like to call it, the “Aeon of Horus”, and it’s the single worst period of human existence since the Aeon of Tragedy because of evil ruling the world.

As for who keeps tabs on the hidden history of humanity and monsters from here and beyond, that would be the Secretarians, and the Secretarians have many enemies.

Secretarians: Beginning in Bavaria as one of several groups calling themselves “Illuminati”, the Secretarians relatively quickly changed their name to avoid confusion with the others. While those other groups were fighting with each other for a chance of male-heterosupremacist dominion over Terra, the Secretarians chose to stay back and focus on preserving the more fantastical elements of human history. The Secretarians were once a Gnostic group, but eventually allowed non-Gnostics in out of convenience, but they have always been advocates of democracy and heavily critical of false democracy. They operate through some morally questionable methods, but they prefer not to and ultimately seek to preserve history as other Illuminatis try to destroy it.

Mandate: One of the other Illuminatis, these white-male-cisheterosupremacist-antitheist fascists were ultimately responsible for people no longer believing that dragons, dinosaurs, and extraterrestrials are real if having ever existed. They operate through infiltration, bribery, and terrorism, and among their ranks were Michael Moore (he infiltrated the Catholic Church and deliberately put a Catholic and Antisemitic spin in anti-everybody-else propaganda), Ayn Rand, and Jeffery Epstein (murdered not just for the huge public scandal but also for his knowledge of the Mandate). Notably, they began as part of the Roman Catholic Church and existed to hide various atrocities committed by the Church and its subjects against nonhuman sapients and also being responsible for mass abductions of humans, but they broke off and more or less declared war on theists because they see theists as “knowing too much” because of their warped attempts at logic.

Mirage Men: A secret part of the US government with a twofold function of trying to learn the secrets of the Secretarians and keeping top secrets by making shit up. They are popularly known as “Men in Black” but find that hilarious, especially considering they usually wear normal clothing. They make fantastical stories up to cover up real events both fantastic and mundane, mostly involving aliens and intentionally inspired by Hollywood movies. They play the part of “concerned” civilians and have been known to steal identities of actual civilians just for the sake of the act. Their ultimate goal is to keep the truth hidden but not to erase knowledge of it outright but instead preserve it, because they’re exactly the liars to do it. Other countries eventually formed their own versions for similar reasons, but often with a more Mandate-like approach.

[gynandromorph]

my dog is so patient with my stupid and nearsighted tailless megamammal ass considering i'm like 20x her size

[only-cats-photos]

Leaping Lantat - A CHarismatic Megamammal https://ift.tt/2qCKGNb - Follow me https://ift.tt/Roy1qi

[paleololigo]

All Your Carcass Are Belong in Carnivore Belly - #365papers - 2017 - 138

All Your Carcass Are Belong in Carnivore Belly – #365papers – 2017 – 138

#365papers for May 18, 2017 Chichkoyan, Figueirido, Belinchon, Lanata, Moigne, Martinez-Navarro, 2017, Direct evidence of megamammal-carnivore interaction decoded from bone marks in historical fossil collections from the Pampean region: PeerJ 5:e3117; DOI 10.7717/peerj.3117 What’s it about? Trace fossils (scratches, pits, fractures) on the fossils large mammalian herbivores from the Pampean…

[ammph]

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#MaMmoth #Steppe #ResistedColonisation #BipedalApes #INCLUDINGUS #Shelter #Habitat #MEGAMAMMALS #TIMESCALES #HEREINEARTH

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

TO MEGATHERIUM -- THE GREAT BEAST.

PIC INFO: Resolution at 2303x1924 -- Spotlight on a close-up shot of a giant ground sloth, a.k.a., Megatherium, an extinct genus of ground sloths endemic to South America that lived from the Early Pliocene through the end of the Pleistocene. 

PARY II: It is best known for the elephant-sized type species M. americanum, sometimes called the giant ground sloth, or the megathere, native to the Pampas through southern Bolivia during the Pleistocene.

EXTINCTION: "Megatherium became extinct around 12,000 years ago during the Quaternary extinction event, which also claimed most other large mammals in the New World. The extinction coincides with the settlement of the Americas, and a kill site where a M. americanum was slaughtered and butchered is known, suggesting that hunting could have caused its extinction."

Source: www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/rise-mammals.

Source #2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatherium.