#mososaur

[cauldron-burn-and-fire-bubble]

you know the funny thing about snayer is that i did deliberately take inspiration from quite a few animals for its design but not one of them was a snake

[arcanehackist]

yes they are

TSA agents are always like sir you have to take off your belt before you go through the machine. Shoes as well. Yeah and now the pants... slower... mmm yeah like that... now get those balls jiggling...

[rainbow-femme]

Watching Prehistoric Planet

David Attenborough: And now, one of the greatest terrors the ocean has never seen.

Me: Ooh I wonder what it is.

David Attenborough: The Mosasaur!

Me: Ooh!

David Attenborough: Here we see one of the greatest predators of the deep.

Me: Ooh I wonder what it’ll be now.

David Attenborough: The Mosasaur!

Me: Oh ok, again.

David Attenborough: The herd moves through the open water, making their way to the breeding grounds.

Me: Aw.

David Attenborough: But what they don’t know, is they’re being stalked by a fearsome creature.

Me: … Is it the Mos-

David Attenborough: The Mososaur!

[welcome-to-cell-hell]

Ready to slay (some parasites, of course)

Sid was due for some new art and a proper introduction, so here they are! Sid (S-3288) is pretty much the polar opposite of the eosinophil from the series- they’re pompous and don’t take their job too seriously or care what anyone thinks about it. They think they’re so lucky that they don’t get called in too often, blissfully unaware that the other eosinophils know Sid very well, and that no one really needs a heroic white blood cell to swoop in, and.. do motorcycle tricks. But this works in their favor, because all that free time gets poured into songwriting for their one-cell rock band, Obsidian Rib. They play on their patrols, both at venues and little street performances here and there, and want nothing more than to become a household name. They have a long way to go, and a LOT of competition in the industry, but they stay hopeful. Singing voice claim:

And their talking voice claim is Leo from ROTTMNT

They were also Joe’s childhood best friend, and ended up reuniting with her years later*, overjoyed to learn that she made it out of the Thymus when they had expected never to see her again. Now that they’re back together, they’ve picked up right where they left off: by being chaotic little gremlins who expel an aura of secondhand embarrassment wherever they roam! Sid needed a freaky mutual and Joe needed a break from The Horrors of lymphocytehood, so this has been great for both of them.

*time and cell lifespans are a big mess, so just assume each cell ages like a human for simplicity. Joe and Sid are both in their mid twenties.

Eosinophil Lore under the cut. I might’ve mentioned some of this stuff already in posts and asks here and there but idc. Yapping on the yapping account? Oh my

The most glaring thing about eosinophils is that spearhead on their tail. That’s a cytotoxic granule, and it IS growing there naturally. It might be a little annoying to carry around, which is why eosinophils tend to have stronger tails than other immune cells, but it’s evolved like that for a reason (it’s largely based on the canon eosinophil spears bc they’re cool but shhhhh we’re gonna pretend I know what I’m talking about). Before cells developed weapons, they needed something sharp and tough to fight against parasites, who have thick hides. The proteins have evolved to be dense and strong, which gives them their shiny, almost metallic look. Eosinophils don’t actually fight USING their tails, though- when the granule is done growing, they can pinch it off and use it as a melee weapon, which soon turned into putting them on the ends of long spears. A new granule grows about every two weeks, and by then, the one on the weapon has started to denature and gets replaced. Since granule spearheads are a natural product, no two eosinophils will have the exact same coloration or shape.

Another, lesser-known strength of theirs is eosinophil derived neurotoxin (EDN), which I couldn’t find much research that my feeble genbio major brain could comprehend but that sounds BADASS so I’m just rolling with it. This is a liquified protein that they can secrete from their retractable fangs. A full dose can kill, but only a little bit leaves the victim temporarily paralyzed. This is more for fighting cell-sized pathogens, because if you tried to bite a giant worm-dragon, you probably wouldn’t be able to puncture its hide, and you’d probably get your fangs ripped out to boot!

As for the parasites themselves, I don’t have much development on them and they’re pretty close to canon with a little more fish and mososaur vibes (I did have an idea for a hagfish-inspired tapeworm tho). No matter what, the worms have slitted pupils and big ol’ teeth that get turned into overpriced souvenirs at tourist traps. And they shriek, LOUD!!! Again, just like canon. But this time around, they’re not the only vocal ones. Eosinophils are infamous for THEIR shrieking, which evolved as a way to distract parasites and lure them away from damaged tissue. It sounds ghoulishly similar to the real thing, and it’s even worse when the eosinophil in question is a self-proclaimed menace to society. They’ll shriek when they’re happy, when they’re scared, when they’re mad, “cuz’ it’s funny,” hell, they’ll roll down their car windows and shriek instead of honking their horns! And don’t even get me started on little eosinophils terrorizing the Marrow with their newly-discovered superpower.

[artist-issues]

You've talked about monster movies, and how they can be used to show the Truth, but from the posts I've seen (and I might have missed some, apologies if so) you haven't talked much about huge monsters, such as Godzilla. The bible mentions Dragons, Leviathan, and a huge fish capable of swallowing men whole, so there seems to be potential here. If you were given the ability to do so, would you make a movie, or tell a story, involving such a monster? What would the monster be And what would the story tell us?

Great questions!

Time to give you the key to unnerving me

I do not do large underwater predators, in general. I have galeophobia. Meaning I can’t even look at pictures of sharks without my body trying to do the fight-or-flight nonsense. I have grown up by the ocean, so my life policy is “punch it in the eye and keep on swimming,” it doesn’t keep me from going to aquariums or living life on the water. But it sure as heck has kept me from watching Jaws, The Meg, that sort of thing. I even flinch out of the room in the Jurassic World scenes with the Mososaur.

Sooo, it would be tricky for me to make a story revolving around a giant of the deep. I could maybe write about it. I don’t think I could direct or conceptualize anything visual for it.

Then again, I’ve never tried, and life’s about living despite fears.

But! Godzilla!

That’s different. That’s just a scowling underwater Reptar. I can do Godzilla. I just don’t see the appeal of Godzilla. (Rare subjective take.) A friend tried to get me to watch the originals, and I just sort of have the same problem with it that I do anime. Then the most recent remake, the one that spawned the Kaiju Cinematic Universe or whatever they’re calling it, came out, and that one was more my speed. But even still…

The thing is, when the monster is that big, it’s not what I’d call a monster movie. Characters aren’t really being preyed on by Godzilla, and he also isn’t strictly evil. Because he’s not out to just cause destruction for no reason, in that reboot. It’s more like calling a tiger evil for stepping on bugs.

It’s a natural disaster movie. It’s like watching Twister. Characters don’t really compellingly interact with The Danger. They just sort of …orbit around it, or try to get out of its path.

That said, there are some things about Godzilla or even King Kong that are monster-story-esque. The ones where the creature is representative of a massive problem caused by human hubris, which can’t be contained or controlled. Those are monster-y traits. But again, the fact that the monster isn’t always “out to get” humans, per se, is what tends to get in my way when I try to classify it as a monster movie. That, and the fact that the monster gets anti-hero or semi-heroic traits.

[home-and-having-tea]

I'm trying toget myself back into horror bc it helps rationalize my anxiety, but I started this one about like... reemerging prehistoric marine animals and they chose. THE MOSOSAUR. THE DUNKLEOSTEOUS. AND THE MEGLADON. THOSE ARE FROM LIKE. MILLIONS OF YEARS APART THEY WOULDN'T HAVE ALL BEEN EXISTING IN ONE PLACE SINCE THE FUCKING MIOCENE AT THE EARLIEST. THE DUNKLE IS FROM THE DEVONIAN YOU FUCKS, THE DEVONIAN

[spuddragon]

A mosasaur/pike hybrid this time. Although it really just looks mostly like a mososaur since they're both aquatic, haha!

[finding-flight]

Went to the antique mall. I discovered:

A somewhat distressing amount of uranium glass

An extremely distressing tricycle

A deer skull that I badly wanted but could not afford

Someone was apparently proud enough of bagging a two-point buck that they turned it into a trophy

Wexter

MOSOSAUR JAWS

And finally

Mine

Prehistoric wormy guys

And

Bunny

Inside of which is

Smaller bunny

[depressedwetnapkin]

Nidhwal?

You mean a Mososaur?

[tysonfurybattlepass]

incredibly shook to learn that every mesozoic marine reptile group except for thalattosuchians and mososaurs may have come from the same, likely already aquatic, ancestor

[hiimtracher]

So la lullah is a pirate and her ship is mounted on a mososaurous because her crew tame dinosaurs from the Jurassic island which is on the second half of the planet rasvin, dinosaurs are also in the water and that's why no one goes on adventures on the seas

So the ship looks like this

[wagahai-da]

and of course there's mososaurs and plesiosaurs which are like, what if a lizard was a whale

[rjalker]

I think Ichigo should turn into a mososaur

[draconesmundi]

SURE!

The first one I did was 'Rostral neurovasculature indicates sensory trade-offs in Mesozoic pelagic crocodylomorphs' (link here), the second one was 'Evidence for a novel cranial thermoregulatory pathway in thalattosuchian crocodylomorphs' (link here).

So, quick background about my research under the cut:

WHAT I STUDIED:

You know how birds are the last surviving members of a big group of animals called dinosaurs? There is a similar things going on with crocodylians being the last surviving pseudosuchians - there is a huge diversity of extinct animals related to crocodiles. Crocodylia (crocs, gators, gharials, caimans) is nested inside Crocodylomorpha. Some crocodylmorphs ran on land, some were huge, some were tiny, some were vegetarian etc.

There was a group of extinct crocodylomorphs called Thalattosuchia, which included Metriorhynchids - these were crocodylomorphs which evolved into 'sea monster' type animals. Less giant and badass than plesiosaurs, mososaurs or ichthyosaurs, but still vital predators in the ecosystem. Imagine, if you will, a crocodile but with flippers and a cool shark tail. That's a little what a metiorhynchid looks like.

HOW I STUDIED IT:

There are many ways to study a fossil - all my studies are based on CT scans. CT stands for 'computerized tomography', and it means slice-by-slice studies of something. Normal, non-computerised tomography is done by slicing a specimen up and looking at each slice, usually on microscope slides. This was how they used to do it historically, but it means destroying the fossil just to look at it. Now with SCIENCE (MRI machines) you can look at every micrometer of a fossil inside and out!

There are many benefits to a fossil scan: you can see INSIDE a fossil (brain case, canals for blood vessels, sinuses), and you can fit MANY fossils on a computer hardrive. You can EMAIL a fossil to someone. You can amass a group of fossils from allover the world - for example, some of my scans came from America. Also meant I could work on the scans from home during 2020 covid lockdown.

There are softwares you can use to draw and annotate each slide of a fossil, and you can collate these slices into 3D models - this is called 'segmentation' as you 'segment' the interesting bits. So, if I highlighted each slice of a blood vessel canal, I could export a 3D image of the shape of the blood vessel canal. I could compare canals between metriorhynchoids and modern crocodylians. I could compare them to ancient protosuchians.

ROSTRAL NEUROVASCULATURE INDICATES SENSORY TRADEOFFS?

My first paper was 'Rostral neurovasculature indicates sensory trade-offs in Mesozoic pelagic crocodylomorphs' (link here). This compared nerve and blood canals (neurovascular canals) in the snout (rostrum) of metriorhynchoids vs crocodylians.

Extant crocodylians have little black 'freckles' on their faces - these are actually sensory organs. Their skulls are full of tiny nerve channels in the snout to supply each tiny black dot with blood and nerves. Metriorhynchoids did not have these tiny channels, but they likely relied more on sight than the snout-sensory-organs, so there is a tradeoff between using tactile sensation (useful in murky river water for crocodiles) and eyesight (useful in open ocean for metriorhynchids).

NOVEL CRANIAL THERMOREGULATORY PATHWAY?

The second paper was 'Evidence for a novel cranial thermoregulatory pathway in thalattosuchian crocodylomorphs' (link here). Metriorhynchids had strange canals in the roof of their mouths (the palate). We theorized that maybe this was used as some sort of cooling system, as some whales use soft tissue in their mouths to cool down (by shunting hot blood into it, keeping the hot blood AWAY from the brain and eyes to stop them overheating).

Disclaimer

btw I'm not a mythology expert, I haven't studied anthropology or folklore I just think dragons are neat!

My actual science degrees are an undergrad in zoology and a masters in palaeontology (plus 2 published papers on fossil crocodylomorphs!)

[scalestails]

FOSSILS

[doorbloggr]

Sunday 6/6/21 - Your Dinosaurs Are Not Dinosaurs

Links to previous posts in this series:

Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong

Your Pterosaurs Are Wrong

Dimetrodon, Mark Witton

You know how when you're really into something, like a fandom or maybe a hobby, and you're like "I know outsiders to this thing won't know everything, but there's surely some information on my thing that's common knowledge", and then you're wrong? That's me after every time I make a Dinosaur post.

In the previous two blogposts I made about extinct giant reptiles, I explained the inconsistencies between scientific knowledge and common knowledge on how Dinosaurs and Pterosaurs actually looked. But it seems there's also a gap in the public's knowledge of what actually constitutes a Dinosaur.

The Mesozoic Period was an age between 252-66 million years ago, often called the Age of the Reptiles, and although Dinosaurs were definitely the dominant clade of animals on land then, other reptiles and reptile-adjacent animals were successful too. Today I'll enlighten readers on what non-dinosaur animal groups were successful during that age, and what they were actually related to.

Pterosaurs

Cladogram of the evolutionary relationship of Archosaurs. Crocodilians diverged first, then Pterosaurs, before Dinosaurs.

I covered a lot about pterosaurs in a previous post, but just so it's covered in this post, let's talk about them again. Since writing that last post, I heard a good way to describe the relationship between Pterosaurs and Dinosaurs. With a lot of the animal groups covered in this post, it's like "No this is definitely not a dinosaur", but with Pterosaurs, it's more like "They're technically not a dinosaur", in the same way a rabbit is technically not a rodent. They're closely related sister groups, but they diverged long enough ago that scientists agree they're separate.

Pterodactylus antiquus, Mark Witton

As an aside, something I wanted to discuss in the Pterosaur post, is that a lot of people mistakenly use the name "Pterodactyl" to refer to all pterosaurs. There was no such animal named that. There was a species called Pterodactylus, but it is probably a smaller and less impressive Pterosaur than what you have in your head.

Synapsids

Top: Gorgonopsid, Jonathan Kuo

Bottom Left: Dicynodont, Gabriel Ugueto

Bottom Right: Dimetrodon, Gabriel Ugueto

In the early Mesozoic, when dinosaur's ancestors were all tiny and had yet to take over the world, a group of animals called Synapsids were the dominant force. Mammals eventually branched off from this group, so they're sometimes called stem-mammals or mammal-like reptiles. Dimetrodon, arguably the most commonly dinosaur-labelled non-dinosaur, was in this group. Others include the beak faced Dicynodonts, and the sabre toothed Gorgonopsids, which all look almost dinosaurian but they're not.

Pseudosuchia

A collection of Pseudosuchians, ColinM_Art on twitter

People often refer to Crocodilians as living dinosaurs (even though birds are the closest living relatives). Although it is true that the crocodile/alligator shape has persisted for millions of years, ancient relatives (collectively referred to as Pseudosuchia) experimented with lots of different forms. The very ferocious Postosuchus was an apex predator in the Triassic, and the suspiciously dinosaur-looking Desmatosuchus was an armoured herbivore, and many other Triassic relatives became bipedal predators like Poposaurus. Later in the Mesozoic, a lot of these more specialised crocodile relatives were replaced by more successful dinosaur counterparts, but the big aquatic ambush predator type still persists to this day.

Plesiosaurs

Top: Thalassiodracon, Mark Witton

Bottom: Liopleurodon, Kuzim Art

I sometimes see books or publications discuss "Aquatic Dinosaurs" or "Sea Dinosaurs", and most often they are talking about Plesiosaurs. Plesiosaurs were a member of flippered, streamline shaped reptiles with necks of varying length that specialised in hunting sea life. Scientists aren't certain of their origins, but most refer to them as Pantestudines, sharing a common ancestor with turtles and tortoises. Elasmosaurus and Liopleurodon are some of the more popular members of the group.

Icthyosaurs

Top: Ichthyosaurus larkini

Bottom Left: Shonisaurus

Bottom Right: Cartorhynchus

(All 3 Arts done by Juilo Larceda)

Although less resembling a dinosaur shape, and therefore less often mistaken for one, Ichthyosaurs were another marine reptiles group that lived alongside them. Although early relatives were more reptile shaped, later ichthyosaurs developed a shark/dolphin body plan, and were the most aquatically agile marine reptiles. They could range in size from the dolphin sized Ophthalmosaurus to the whale sized Shonisaurus. They diverged from other reptiles groups very early, but some scientists think they share a common ancestor with lizards.

Mososaurs

Top: Mososaurus, Mark Witton

Bottom Left: Tylosaurus, Gabriel Ugueto

Bottom Right: Xenodens, Andrey Atuchin

Mososaurs evolved much later than most of these other non-dinosaurs. They superficially resembled short-necked Plesiosaurs, but would have likely used their tail more than their flippers for propulsion. Mososaurs evolved from aquatic monitor lizards in the late Cretaceous, and quickly reached sizes bigger than any other lizard would ever reach. Mososaurus, which featured (much bigger than it was in life) in Jurassic World, is one of the best known species.

Thanks for Reading

Tumblr only allows so many pictures in one post, but I've covered most of the main groups of animals people mistakenly call dinosaurs. Just as a final titbit, someone recently told me that they thought the "-saur" or "-saurus" ending on many ancient animals automatically means dinosaur, but it is just Greek for reptile, and scientists slap it on the end of many scientific names, many of which aren't even reptiles, just may look like them.

As an example, Basilosaurus was actually found to be a Whale after its fossils were better studied. But it kept its name.

Source: The7thSea, DeviantArt

If there's more you'd like me to cover on the topic of dinosaurs, any of the other cool animals I've discussed here, or maybe other animals you're unsure are dinosaurs or not, leave a comment or send us a message.

Cheers for reading, and hope you learned something today.