#prehistoric kin

[theriancultureis]

Dino culture is seeing so many mammals surrounding you and asking yourself: Where are my scaly fellas? Why did they shrink?

.

[confused-canid]

I'm a paleontology nerd lol

[citizenoftmrrwlnd]

self care for : a kaprosuchus without specification

x | x | x x | - | x x | x | x

[tavs-kin-korner]

mASCULINE FASHION KIT FOR A MOSASAURUS!! }:D

hOPE YOU ENJOY! tOMMY HELPED WITH THIS ONE, tOO! }:)

🌊|🫧|🌊

🫧|🦴|🫧

🌊|🫧|🌊

[tor-the-tyrannosaur]

What the food in my fridge sees in the middle of the night

She’s spotted you.

[howlsnteeth]

let's fucking gooooooo

[wyvernstuff]

sometimes i doubt myself as a nonhuman but then i imagine myself running and i automatically picture my paws, all four hitting the ground rhythmically. When i imagine myself swimming i picture a great tail beating against the water or claws grabbing onto rocks. When i picture freedom i can feel myself flying among the clouds and stars, reality at my very fingertips.

I know this new experience and body can still be wonderful, i choose to experience this life for a reason, but it’s impossible to deny it is not my true form. I know I hold so much more power, and it brings me great comfort in this life to believe i will get back to it again.

[markhors-menagerie]

†Sinomegaceros pachyosteus

Art credit: RudolfHima

Sinomegaceros was another genus of recently extinct giant deer, this one found in Asia, including Tajikistan and Japan. The species shown here, S. pachyosteus, lived in China until about 12,000 years ago.

[tor-the-tyrannosaur]

*Me at 3am trying to get some snacks (the ghosts join me occasionally)*

mama bear caught on a trail cam

[california-condork]

EXTINCTION: a poem by a very old bird

I do not deal in decades.

I deal in eons, in epochs,

in tens of thousands of frigid, dead, bone-petrified years.

I picked clean the holy bodies of our ancestors’ ancestors.

I stripped the flesh from what would become the first flutes, the first rattles,

the first weapons of war.

I threw myself into an eye-stingingly ice blue sky,

and I soared aloft, gore-soaked and glorious and free

on air so crisp, our modern throats would choke trying to breathe it.

My shadow fell against tundras, grasslands, and cliffs,

against fire and so, so much ice,

against the living and against the dead.

I circled silently through star-spattered nights our eyes can no longer take in.

My talons clung to boulders and boughs that now lie, fossilized, miles beneath our feet.

If anything remains of me, one may think it cannot be found.

But that is a foolish thought.

I haunt the present with power lent to me by the past.

The eternal beast, Extinction, believed I was birdbrained enough to be its prey,

but I mauled it, while it could not pluck so much as the littlest feather from my wings.

I now soar hungry circles above Extinction as it bleeds,

waiting, as patiently as always,

until it finally perishes beneath me.

Then, and only then, will it learn what happens

when you attempt to predate a vulture that feeds on death itself.

[lxvenderskies]

REQUEST: mosasaurus care package with themes of the ocean, fidget toys, chew stims, and plushies for 🔧🪨 anon

shark chew necklace | mosasaurus plush | shark plush | tangle shark gummies | sea animal squishies | sensory shark water bead | articulated starfish fidget

[theriancultureis]

argentavis therian culture is buying the argentavis in feather family and getting super euphoric. then you Realize.

yes it’s me again hi

next time i get an argentavis in ark, its being named after you, jsyk (<- hasnt played ark in months and prolly will not play again soon)

[confused-canid]

OK, so- I've figured out that my Spinosaur kintype isn't just one species of Spinosauridae, but instead I'm a Spinosaurus cladotherian! I also feel like this kintype is Melanistic. I don't really know why either? Anyways yeah peace out bros ✌✌

[raptorish]

Being 'Kin Without A 'Heart

Written by Max on October 28, 2024.

I think I have an interesting disconnect between being otherkin and being otherhearted. I see people who feel as though the two terms are nearly indistinguishable, and for some reason it's not like that for me! There's a clear line between them in my brain, and I wanna journal about my personal experience with that.

I'm a velociraptor, velociraptor therian, raptorkin, raptorkind, a prehistoric bird, a wereraptor. I use those words interchangeably, since they all convey the proper information: I'm a raptor. I also strongly identify as human. I have two species, equal in value, and they fluctuate in intensity - in my daily life, I'm content to see myself as human, and my raptor side is almost a separate creature entirely, but not quite. It's a median headmate, an important part of me, and also different from me. We are the same until we are not.

And I'm not raptorhearted, even when I'm only partly identifying as a raptor, when I'm feeling more human. I don't identify with raptors, with the traits humans have given them or with their reconstructed biology - I don't feel a sense of belonging, or home, or love for their species in a way that's beyond what I feel for other animals. Raptors are, for some strange reason, not very special to me. I just happen to be one.

Even when I'm not a raptor, when I'm a human with a raptor side and raptor instincts, I don't relate to my raptor brain - that's why I separate it from me! I don't feel a sense of familiarity with it, beyond the familiarity of being it and knowing how it works from being it.

Other raptors aren't inherently family to me. I'll call them cousins, as an affectionate shorthand, because they're like me and not quite the same, but I don't feel a sense of caring for them simply because they're raptors. I feel familiar with them because they're like me - I enjoy seeing how much we're alike, what ways we might differ! But I don't deeply care about them, in the same way someone who's raptorhearted might.

Here, for contrast, let me tell you about how I experience being fictionhearted with a particular canon, and why I'm confident in calling that a hearttype.

My heartcanon, the fictional canon which I'm connected with, is a personally-created alternate universe of the video game Detroit: Become Human, which I've named Detroit, Machina. I've named it, given it a different title, because it's so fundamentally important to me and feels so different from the original source from which it was derived that calling DBH in general my heartcanon feels painfully wrong.

I don't identify as any character from Machina. I identify with the beats of the story, with the characters and their struggles, with the joys and failures and everything about creating it. I say I have a heartcanon because I could tell someone about it as a story, as a fanfic, and it would not convey the depth of how this story is embedded into my psyche. I would not be the same person if I hadn't written about it for years of my life, put pieces of myself into it. I'm not fictionkind, I'm not anyone in this story, but the story is an integral part of me anyway. I have such strong feelings about it that I don't know how to put it to words, and I don't feel comfortable trying in a public post. It's important to me. If you told me I could never talk about Machina again, I would crumble to ash.

Contrast that with being a raptor. If you were to tell me I could never have any piece of dinosaur paraphernalia ever again, I would shrug. They're cute, sure, but I don't care about raptors that intensely. I would be just as disappointed if you said I couldn't ever have any cat paraphernalia, and I'm not a cat in any alterhuman sense.

Basically - I don't care about raptors in such a strong, personally intense way that they've changed who I am. I am a raptor, and that's changed who I am, and that doesn't mean I necessarily love them. And that's perfectly okay.

[meirimerens]

MEIRI!!!! i am taking a class in art history and i wanted to ask about your favorite paleolithic cave paintings, cause i know you're very passionate about that!

OOOHHAHHGRGHH MY GODDDD

YOU'VE AWAKEN MY EVIL POWER......

okay so this is gonna be real hard for me to choose. like reallll hard. but i think i can narrow it down. i don't know how much #info you need or how much Lore you care for me to add, but you've activated my trap card, so now you're stuck in the cave with me, i have the torch, and if you try to leave you won't find your way back. okay. let us start.

GENERAL LORE:

at least in the Franco-Cantabrian geographical and paleo-cultural area [this thing], which contains some of the most famous painted caves such as Lascaux, Chauvet, Pech-Merle, Altamira, etc, one main currently reigning hypothesis, because it allows to explain the most amount of [gesture] Stuff Going On, is that cave art exist within a magico-spiritual system of belief of the animist persuasion likely with shamanic elements. The places where walls were painted in the caves, were very, very rarely Living quarters. paleolithic tribes prefered to make camps outside, or just at the very entrance of caves: the depths were Hard to navigate, dangerous, possibly inhabited by predator animals. you didn't got to these places to fuck around; you went because you had a drive, you believed in something about them.

Jean Clottes (one of our main prehistorians in France, who wrote Pourquoi l'Art Préhistorique ?, or "Why Prehistoric Art", translated into english as "What is Paleolithic Art" which is fucking stupid, the "why" is the whole question he's trying to answer in the book, is this guy fucking stupid) identifies 4 main concepts that exist within indigenous, nomadic or semi-nomadic, hunter-gatherer, animist & shamanist societies and peoples, that are widely distributed (as such having "universal" elements) and could, likely, have been found within paleolithic societies, and possibly give us clues to their belief system, which are:

the INTERCONNECTEDNESS: of animal species between one another (explaining the numerous accounts of paloelithic art depiction species together, or separated), and of human and animal: including through mythologies in which humans were created from animal(s), or animal(s) later changed into human(s).

the FLUIDITY of the living world: animal species are recognized as kin, for they can become it; animal species are given, or projected-onto attributes that make a tribe, a clan, recognize themselves in it

the acceptation of the COMPLEXITY of the world: paleolithic people likely had deep, complex mythologies and cosmogonies, which we might Never, Ever, know anything about (this drives me insane.) their language, and their rites, might (have) reflect(ed) an understanding of the complixity of nature, or animals, that sedentary, then later capitalist societies might have lost the nuances of.

the PERMEABILITY of the living world(s). this again is seen in beliefs in the permeablity between human & animal, human a animal, animal as human: this is also where Shamanism might come into play. shamanism(s) rest(s) upon the conceptualization of the world as divided-but-permeable between a physical, living world, and an unseen, spirit world: the Shaman is the mediator, the person who can freely go between these two worlds, to communiate, to heal, to direct, to plead, etc. AND, and this is where it gets real interesting for The Caves: potentially, the belief in the permeablity of the cave rock itself: multiple painted sites might contain hints of a belief in the cave being the place where spirits dwell; and painting them is less "calling" or "invoking", even if there might be some of it, but rather "revealing". the cave itself, maybe, could (have) be(en) considered the place where spirits dwell, and come forth/from. more about that later.

WITH ALL OF THAT IN MIND. at least in the franco-cantabrian area, the placement of cave art is, very Very likely, extremely deliberate. it is not just the art that counts, but where it was made. we can ask ourselves, why it was made here, and not elsewhere. i am picking my answer on this axis. some caves might be so beautifully painted, but are The Vibes here? if the expression of this potential magico-spiritual complex and tens-of-thousands-of-years-spanning(!!!!!!!!!! this is nother thing that's fucking insane btw. did you know we are as close to Lascaux as Lascaux is to Chauvet, another very ornate painted cave. MULTIPLE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS) is visible, or #feelable, let's mention it. now onto the good part

CAVE ART THAT DRIVES ME CUCKOO CRAZY:

THE NIAUX (pronounced "Nyo") CAVE

reason: i've been there. twice. sobbed both times. came out changed like genuinely. made me go back to uni. the Niaux Cave is located in the Ariège (a-ryeh-juh) département [think smaller than a state bigger than a county] of southern france, in the Pyrénées (pee-reh-neh) mountains making the border with spain.

the almost entirety of the art is concentrated in the "Salon Noir" of the cave.

now. come close and listen to me. the Salon Noir is some 700 meters from both the modern entrance and the prehistoric one. today, like back then, you have to navigate rough, slippery terrain, crouchspaces, and generally accident-inducing (source: my dad slipped & fell just like our guide warned us about) walking space. for most of the way, the ceiling is 5 to 10 meters above, and the walls relatively close together (but not claustrophobic). the Salon Noir seems to be "indicated" by, on both of its sides, red symbol markings. now listen to me. the Salon Noir's ceiling is twice as high. even with modern lamps, you struggle to see it. now imagine. having walked all the way there, in the Wet, the fire of your torch or your grease hand-lamp to guide you, and suddenly not only can you not see the ceiling anymore, but the rock seems to speak back to you. the echo is intense, in the Salon Noir, way more than anywhere in the lower-ceiling'ed cave. your voice carries on for 5 full seconds, if you sing the rock continues singing after you. did you know? in france and spain, studies have shown that most parietal (=cave wall) art corresponds to particular acoustic features. did they sing? did they play the flute, the drums? did they use lithophones: the stalagtites & stalagmites, hit of small sticks, to make them ring? in the Salon Noir, most of the animals are bisons, as is very common in the franco-cantabrian area. now this is just something fun that our guide told us, possibly nothing more than an interesting coincidence, for its truth would rest on an unproven-hypothesis-within-an-unproven-hypothesis, but did you now that the female bison has the same gestational period as the human? 9 months.

the bison to the right, with the red markings and the "eyebrows", is my dad's favorite: he says its profile looks like him, with his beard and his big nose, which to be fair, truly it does. in a previous-previous-previous-previous life my dad as an upper paleolithic era bison. this is my dad's paleolithic fursona.

my favorite is this horsie. see? she smiles.

so does this one on the left, a protome (= name for the depiction of only the front of an animal, of a human)

PERGOUSET (pronounced per-goo*-zeh) CAVE

(* but the "oo" sound is short)

i'm cheating a little. because this is not painting, it's carving. but i consider sculpture an art, and parietal carving to be as important and interesting as parietal paintings, so. take it or don't!

yeah the whole cave. you'll see why. basically if i think about Pergouset for too long my skin starts melting i foam at the mouth etc. anyways. since the cave is closed to the public, and basically only available to researchers' viewings, it is quite hard to find images of it, so we'll just ball on this one.

Pergouset is located in the département of the Lot, in southwest-central france. this region is Plentiful with caves, including Pech-Merle that is basically next door, and Lascaux 1.5h away. why this one & not any of those two? well. come closer.

okay. the pussies & this guy with his penis out cave. what's her deal. Well, first piece of lore is to know that, in the grand scheme of franco-cantabrian paleolithic cave art, human representations are minimal. animals make up the majority of depictions, however, "archetyped" or "stereotyped" human figures that insist on sex characteristics are Plentiful. and within representations of that, "female" archetypes outnumber "male" ones by a lot. basically you cannot cough on a paleolithic "human" depiction without landing on a vulva frankly. many such cases in life as well. one of the hypotheses, which Michel Lorblanchet brings forth in his book La Naissance de la Vie: Une Lecture de l'Art Parietal (from which the picture above is from) is that it could be part of a belief system in which the cave, the whole cave, itself could be a "female" principle or archetype: the whole of the cave a matrix, a uterus. basically its giving, it's giving birth. one of the biggest data point he has for that hypothesis is the Pergouset cave. in the Pergouset cave, carvings of vulvae rhythm a long narrow passage following an underground river. the 3 vulvae could represent that of pre-birth, that of currently-pregnant (with the line in the middle, like the pigmentation line on pregnant belly + carved over a convex part of the stone), and that of currently-actively-giving birth: "vulva 3" is just two streaks in the rock, surrounding a naturally-occuring hole in the rock: as if that feature of the cave itself had been recognized as It's Giving Birth / hereditary voice I Am Your Mother. as you can see on the picture, vulva 1 is all the way back in the #depths, in the #dark, and vulva 3 the closest to the exit, indeed to the light ( -> it's giving birth). now. and this is the insane thing. foaming at the mouth like unwell arms shaking rn. i've had to go pace 4 times since i started typing. in the depths of the cave, the animals that are carved are less (see the numbers on the picture). but also, they're... more fantastic. stranger, more unusual. lacking the realism that is typically associated with parietal art. they're... as if from a dream, an undetermined land of weirdness, of amorphousness. as they get closer to the light, they get more numerous, they proliferate, life crawls the walls: they become also more and more realistic. as we reach the last carved vulva, as it is giving, what is it: giving BIRTH, animals are numerous, abundant, fully formed, their visible selves in the world outside: it is as if the cave itself, the depths of cave itself, gave birth to these animals, formed them inside of itself, let them out from this unknown, amorphous, strange land beyond the stone, where human cannot reach. humans went in, and meticulously, sometimes using a natural relief in the stone for an eye, a feature, "released" the animals from the stone, "revealed" them from their state of hidden-inside-of-the-depths-ness. the whole cave this Mother from which all the animals drawn on the walls emerged.

tldr

[teabo]

Nonhuman shoutouts:

Shout-out to fictional versions of animals

Shout-out to fictional objects

Shout-out fictional plants

Shout-out to prehistoric animals

Shout-out to anthros

Shout-out to former human species

Shout-out to fictionkins that literally no one recognizes

Shout-out to hybrids

Shout-out to ockins

Shout-out to the oddly specific concepts

Shout-out to the extinct plants

Shout-out to the niche songs

Shout-out to the myths

Shout-out to the animals with little scientific knowledge

Shout-out to the paleotherians that identify as the older version of their kintype

Shout-out to the alterhumans/nonhumans that don't like saying what they are

Shout-out to historical objects

Shout-out to historical locations/places

Shout-out to fictional locations/places

Shout-out to the atheist angels/demons

Shout-out to kins that are related to mental disorders

Shout-out the beings that always question if they're faking

Shout-out to the beings who don't want to come out

Shout-out to the therians that hate going outside

Shout-out to the herbivores that love meat

Shout-out to the beings who don't relate to their kintype(s) at all

Shout-out to the beings that hate/scared of their kintype(s)