#paleozoic era

[makairodonx]

An Anomalocaris canadensis hunts down a trio of Isoxys acutangulus 510 million years ago out in the open ocean of what is now the Burgess Shale of Alberta, Canada. The 37-cm-long radiodont was once thought to have glided over the seafloor and used its raptorial appendages to crack open the shells of small trilobites, but since 2023 it is now thought to have been an early example of a pelagic pursuit predator.

[ur-fav-is-older-than-discokid]

The Cambrian explosion from the early Paleozoic Era is older than Disco Kid!

Began: Approximately 538.8 million years ago

Requested by: @ohshy

[blaiddydsaurus]

Repost of my paleozoic fellas drawings

[gay-caveman]

*grabs you by your chest hair* you WILL look at memes about my special interest

[ihavea-natural-curiosity]

one thing about me is that i will always, always be mad about trilobites being dead.

like, come on. you’re telling me they lived for about 270 MILLION years (the dinosaurs were on earth for approximately 165 million years, btw), they showed up early on in the fucking CAMBRIAN (~521 million years ago), and managed to diversify into approx. 25,000 identified species, they managed to survive 2 (TWO!!) mass extinctions and they just fucking. died at the end of the Permian???? like what the fuck?????? they should be kicking around today!! i should be able to own some in a fish tank!!

their closest living relative is the horseshoe crab, which looks INCREDIBLY similar to them, and they’re so well evolved to survive that they’re known as ‘living fossils’ (they’ve been virtually unchanged for 445 million years, most notably the same for the past 200 million), THATS how effective that body structure is!!

just to give you perspective, they evolved before jaws, before bones were even a THING, before PLANTS, before FISH!! and they lived until the fucking DUNK was an apex predator!! and they were around so much that they are used as index fossils because they are some of the OLDEST FOSSILS WE HAVE. and there are so many of them that scientists don’t even know what to do with them! you can buy them from any store that has cool rocks for like, 10 bucks!!

i am forever going to be pissed off about it because what the FUCK!!!!

[doumekiss]

So one of my favorite science youtubers is making a series about zoology on early earth and she posted this compilation with the videos covering the paleozoic era. So here is a rec for anyone interested in zoology, paleontology, or who just likes science and wants to watch an interesting long video.

[smmnh]

Fulcra Mauritania

Most life was limited to the sea 450 million years ago, and the majority of these creatures had soft bodies that did not fossilize very well. Their fossilized remains often appear as blurry stains upon a rock, but now and then a specimen is found with a well preserved body part. By combining the better parts from a variety of specimens a paleoartist can illustrate what many of these creatures may have looked like in real life.

You can see this specimen on display at the Southern Minnesota Museum of Natural History in Blue Earth, Minnesota! Click here for more information!

[onenakedfarmer]

Reading

Andy Secher TRAVELS WITH TRILOBITES Adventures in the Paleozoic

[funcambrianfacts]

fun Cambrian fact #9

the Cambrian era was a long time ago. At least 5

[ndostairlyrium]

I was tagged by @vakarians-babe (hi O:) & @greypetrel 💛✨ thank you so much!!!

I'm working on um, different things I can't show here (or yet lol), so I'll just present you with the things I'm carrying forward at the moment, among the moltitude of wips I'll finish after the armageddon, probably :'D

Hopefully I'll finish Ankhie's outfits before the next artfight ;; send help

So! Here we have:

A back! Which I'm trying to render correctly (along with the rest). I was looking through my old notes of Anatomia Artistica 2, but everything looked very off because that sketchbook has um, almost 15 years of existence lol so I had to make new studies from scratch. tl;dr: it's taking me a while. From the skintone alone, you know who the subject is :' also it's the base I'm using for her new outfits so you already saw the front

A stranger! O: you'll get a small post before the weekend 👀

Two familiar idiots <3 I'm trying to finalize it but I went for another approach on some sections and I think at this point this picture can be used under the definition of self-sabotage hahah <3

Cassandra being all cute and fancy <33 I'm not super sure on that palette, maybe I'll ditch the greens (argh)

I'm tagging (no pressure, no obligation <3): @daggerbean @shivunin @underneathestars @alienturnipp @magspy & @herearedragons

[makairodonx]

A decent skeletal reconstruction (made after seeing just only life-restorations) of D.giganhomogenes, a particularly large-sailed species of the famous Early Permian stem-mammal genus Dimetrodon

[slushiebonez]

GRRRRRRR I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS AND IDEAS AND AUS AND HEADCANONS BUT I DO NOT KNOW. HOW TO START EXPLAINING THEM RAAAAAAAAAAA. AND MANY OF THEM NEED ART TO BE PROPERLY CONVEYED BUT I KEEP GETTING BUSY OR DISTRACTED ABD NOT DRAWING AUGH

ok next weekend I'll have done semester exams so I will get rlly silly and you will all see it :3

[blaiddydsaurus]

Some ordovician fellas

[whatsorryiwasntlistening]

is anyone else getting ads longer than the Colours of the Sky post

[gay-caveman]

REAL !!

[critter-creature-or-beast]

Just a reminder! Polls and reblogs for this week-- other than last week's results-- will be for Cambrian Period animals only. They may be long gone, but it's their time to shine!

That means no Peturday this week. You can still send submissions, including pets, but they will be saved for later.

Happy September!

This month will mark Critter, Creature, or Beast's one-year anniversary. The first poll was posted September 18th and featured Noodles the bunny, an official critter.

To celebrate the anniversary, starting Sept 15th will be Cambrian Week, featuring some very, very old little guys.

Anomalocaris!

Hallucigenia!

AND MORE!

Thanks for being here, both new followers and those who have been around for a while. I hope that, in a couple of weeks, everyone has fun classifying Cambrian Critters, Creatures, and Beasts. 🐿❤️