#tetrapodomorpha

[pansylair]

Drew a rhizodus, an absolute monster of an animal that lived during the carboniferous period, roughly 5-7m in length (making it the largest freshwater fish that we know of) and a tetrapodomorph meaning it breathed air and is more closely related to us than to true blue and gilled fish!

We’ve even found land track marks from another genus of rhizodontid, they certainly got around!

I’d love to make some big stickers (and prints) of this fella if anyone was interested :-)

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Trick or treat 🎃

TREAT!!

[quark-nova]

Why tetrapodomorphs are way cooler than you think

Tetrapodomorphs. Today, most often remembered as "that stepping stone towards tetrapods conquering land". But, if you were one of those early tetrapods in the Carboniferous, you probably wouldn't be seeing it that way.

Let me explain.

We humans have a tendency to interpret the past through the lens of the present - and, most often, of our present. This causes a teleological bias, that is, seeing past creatures as part of a "march of progress". Tetrapodomorphs destined to become tetrapods, then amniotes, etc. It's even in their name!

The truth is, evolution is far branchier and messier. And, in the swamps and rivers of the Mississippian, 330 million years ago, our ancestors cowered in fear of other tetrapodomorphs - the rhizodonts.

The group's namesake, Rhizodus, was the was the largest freshwater fish to ever exist. Seven meters long and weighing more than a ton, this ambush predator hid in a niche similar to that of crocodilians today.

Rhizodus and its kin preyed not only on fish and freshwater sharks, but also on early tetrapods resting on the shore. Their lobed fins, less flexible than those of early tetrapods, had instead became broad and paddle-like, helping them push themselves through swampy waters, and throw themselves on their shorebound prey.

Thanks to their powerful fins and long, flexible body, rhizodonts could even slither on land for tens of meters in chase of their prey, with body trails stretching over 60 meters having been discovered. Even on dry land, limbed tetrapods did not stand unchallenged.

Two fangs at the edge of their mouths, up to 20 centimeters long, allowed them to firmly take hold of their prey. While we can't know for sure what happened next, it is likely that they dragged the unsuspecting creature into the water, thrashing and death-rolling it around to eat it piecemeal.

The heyday of rhizodonts would last for the entire Carboniferous. With climate quickly changing by the end of the period, rhizodonts would go away with it. In the waters, they wouldn't be matched by actual tetrapods until the Triassic, with the rise of various clades of aquatic reptiles like phytosaurs.

[stxllarvision]

[justgoji]

Ichthyostega stensioei, one of the earliest known four limbed vertebrates in the fossil record.

With Hatsune Miku for scale:

[rebloggingrexan]

#the irritator becomes the irritated

An Irritator is out fishing as it begins to rain.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Birds are class Aves.

Sure, under Linnaean taxonomy. But, well,

A) Linnaeus was a eugenecist so his scientific opinions are suspect and his morality is awful

B) he didn't know about evolution

C) he didn't know about prehistoric life

so his classification system? Sucks ass. It doesn't work anymore. It no longer reflects the diversity of life.

Instead, scientists - almost across the board, now - use Clades, or evolutionary relationships. No rankings, no hierarchies, just clades. It allows us to properly place prehistoric life, it removes our reliance on traits (which are almost always arbitrary) in classifying organisms, and allows us to communicate the history of life just by talking about their relationships.

So, for your own edification, here's the full classification of birds as we currently know it, from biggest to smallest:

Biota/Earth-Based Life

Archaeans

Proteoarchaeota

Asgardians (Eukaryomorphans)

Eukaryota (note: Proteobacteria were added to an asgardian Eukaryote to form mitochondria)

Amorphea

Obazoa

Opisthokonts

Holozoa

Filozoa

Choanozoa

Metazoa (Animals)

ParaHoxozoa (Hox genes show up)

Planulozoa

Bilateria (all bilateran animals)

Nephrozoa

Deuterostomia (Deuterostomes)

Chordata (Chordates)

Olfactores

Vertebrata (Vertebrates)

Gnathostomata (Jawed Vertebrates)

Eugnathostomata

Osteichthyes (Bony Vertebrates)

Sarcopterygii (Lobe-Finned Fish)

Rhipidistia

Tetrapodomorpha

Eotetrapodiformes

Elpistostegalia

Stegocephalia

Tetrapoda (Tetrapods)

Reptiliomorpha

Amniota (animals that lay amniotic eggs, or evolved from ones that did)

Sauropsida/Reptilia (reptiles sensu lato)

Eureptilia

Diapsida

Neodiapsida

Sauria (reptiles sensu stricto)

Archelosauria

Archosauromorpha

Crocopoda

Archosauriformes

Eucrocopoda

Crurotarsi

Archosauria

Avemetatarsalia (Bird-line Archosaurs, birds sensu lato)

Ornithodira (Appearance of feathers, warm bloodedness)

Dinosauromorpha

Dinosauriformes

Dracohors

Dinosauria (fully upright posture; All Dinosaurs)

Saurischia (bird like bones & lungs)

Eusaurischia

Theropoda (permanently bipedal group)

Neotheropoda

Averostra

Tetanurae

Orionides

Avetheropoda

Coelurosauria

Tyrannoraptora

Maniraptoromorpha

Neocoelurosauria

Maniraptoriformes (feathered wings on arms)

Maniraptora

Pennaraptora

Paraves (fully sized winges, probable flighted ancestor)

Avialae

Avebrevicauda

Pygostylia (bird tails)

Ornithothoraces

Euornithes (wing configuration like modern birds)

Ornithuromorpha

Ornithurae

Neornithes (modern birds, with fully modern bird beaks)

idk if this was a gotcha, trying to be helpful, or genuine confusion, but here you go.

all of this, ftr, is on wikipedia, and you could have looked it up yourself.

[helmetjellyfish]

hello! this post is going to be a little different from anything i've written before, because today we're looking at fish.

this fish, to be exact.

this fish is one of the many prehistoric creatures we see in minato's dreams from ch. 48. the translation team did a wonderful job identifying several creatures and explaining them in general, but i haven't seen any specific discussion about this one yet. so i figured i'd talk about what i think this fish is and what i think it represents.

the rest of this post will be under the cut, because there's lots of images and it's going to get quite long. here we go!

so what fish is this?

let's start by looking at these three images for reference:

(you may have noticed that the head shape of the fish in the first image is a bit different from the one in the second. however, since the rest of their bodies are very, very similar to each other, i'm assuming that they are intended to be the same fish and the head shape of the second one is closer to the 'correct' bodyplan.)

to begin with, we can see that the fins are attached to the body with these fleshy lobes, meaning that this fish is probably a "lobe-finned fish" belonging to the clade Sarcopterygii.

Sarcopterygii can be split up into three more clades:

Actinistia - the coelacanths and their close relatives

Dipnoi - the lungfishes and their close relatives

Tetrapodomorpha - the tetrapods (four-limbed vertebrates) and their close relatives

just based on morphology, we can narrow it down to Actinistia. so coelacanths! the thing with coelacanths is that one of their most notable characteristics is their weird tail:

this is a replica of the West Indian Ocean coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae), which is one of the two species alive today. here you can see that the tail is split up into three lobes: the top and bottom lobes are the same width and length, while the one in the middle is smaller and protrudes further out. their tail is diphycercal, which means that the vertebrae extend all the way to the tip of the tail and the tail itself is symmetrical.

both living species of coelacanth have a diphycercal tail. in fact, almost every single genus in Actinistia has a diphycercal tail. but our fish doesn't. its tail has only two lobes, where the bottom one is much bigger than the top, which is a heterocercal tail. why is that?

it turns out you have to look really, really, really far back in Actinistia to find fish without diphycercal tails. and when you look back far enough...

you find Miguashaia, a fish that lived during the Devonian period 365 million years ago. a fish that also happens to be the most primitive coelacanth we know.

in other (slightly more overgeneralizing) words, it's the oldest coelacanth, so old that it doesn’t even have one of the main features we now associate with coelacanths. neat!

okay. why do i care about this fish?

isn't it odd that we see this same fish following minato for multiple pages during the dream sequence, when most of the other creatures only appear for a single panel or two?

it's especially weird by the time we get to the reunion with nagiko, when we stop seeing any other prehistoric creatures in the foreground (save for the basilosaurus skeleton). but this fish still stays next to minato, and neither him nor nagiko seem to acknowledge its presence. it... doesn't really do anything either. it just hangs around at minato's side or right behind him, like it's watching over him.

doesn’t it look a bit out of place in this scene?

and then what’s stranger is that we see it again later on. when haruno voices his concerns about minato's mental state in ch. 50, the implication being that he thinks minato might follow his wife to the grave, we get this panel to go with it:

there’s the whale skeleton and lion’s mane jellyfish, both of which have been previously used to represent nagiko. there's minato, reaching out to the jellyfish with the hand he wears his wedding ring on. and then there’s... the fish again. as before, minato doesn't interact with it at all. in fact, his back is completely turned to it, but the fish is still continuing to watch him from afar.

i already had some suspicions even before ch. 50, but this panel is the one that made me go "oh, okay, so that's definitely supposed to be a person, right?".

nagiko isn't the only character in the story who's connected to a particular deep sea creature or two: there's nagisa with the dumbo octopus, shizuka with the basket star, ryou with the cookiecutter shark, etc. we haven't had anyone with a prehistoric species yet, let alone a prehistoric coelacanth, but we do have someone who's depicted with modern day coelacanths pretty frequently:

so who would be a likely candidate for its ancient relative: a fish that's distinct enough from its kin to be recognized as a separate entity, while still sharing many visual similarities?

who's the person that's the most likely to come to mind whenever minato thinks of nagiko? a person who had always been at his side in his younger days? a person that minato can't truly see or talk to in his dreams, because he remains out of his reach?

a person who still continues to haunt him, even now?

wonder who that could be.

[misfit-and-escapist]

Gotta tagged by @ahalal-uralma to post my no-skip albums, thank you! 😊

So I'm not gonna include Nightwish or Avantasia or Edguy albums because they are no-ship ones for me anyway. 😅

Tagging: @swampespresso, @isntlifestrange, @danceswithwolves-blog, @tetrapodomorpha, @walk-among-us, @nikkivenomized, @klump-kloss, @kladivonacarodejnice and @makebelieveee

[identifying-prehistoric-wildlife]

Capetus palustris, Diplocaulus magnicornis

getting high so i can more fully imagine early transitional amphibians

[callmemossbrain]

ahhh!!!@ tagged by @brainmoss !!!! sorry for taking so long to get to this, but it made me overjoyed to participate <3 I wish I could make the format smaller but 😵‍💫

Game is: A simple challenge! A gif from 10 favourite shows, then tag 10 people :)

my order is 1. Fleabag /// 2. Bluey /// 3. Good Omens /// 4. Fionna and Cake /// 5. Gravity Falls /// 6. Madoka Magica /// 7. Over the Garden Wall /// 8. Regular Show /// 9. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off /// 10. Avatar the Last Airbender

I TAG

@skeletal-decay @tetrapodomorpha @goblin-crow @leonidas-king-of-sparta @technicallyaminecraftsimp @cheruib @midwestemoloser @folkmetaltransfag @sevenswansmp3 @neptunediary

also tagging @mrghostrat cause your art/stories are mwah.

feel free to join in or not!

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

I desperately need to know what strawberry soup is that sounds awesome

Okay! Strawberry soup reveal:

It’s this kind of juice soup, I suppose one could call it. It is literally called a “soup” but it’s like a sweet soup and not a soup you eat for dinner, it has added sugar and the main ingredient is obviously berries! It’s recommended for smoothies and things like that. Very tasty and indeed awesome!!

[quark-nova]

You might not have noticed this before, but fish have four nostrils!

They are a bit different from ours, as fish don't breathe using their nostrils - they're only used for smell, with water flowing into the front ones and out of the back ones!

Surprisingly, our nostrils actually descend from such a configuration! Our ancestors were choanate fish (Tetrapodomorpha), a group in which the back nostrils migrated inside the mouth, with the amazing transitional fossil Kenichthys showing nostrils caught "in migration" between the teeth!

[ratsalad]

I posted 12,159 times in 2022

That's 10,631 more posts than 2021!

1,021 posts created (8%)

11,138 posts reblogged (92%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@theropoda

@odekirk

@miseryannie

@cannot-copia

@tetrapodomorpha

I tagged 10,327 of my posts in 2022

Only 15% of my posts had no tags

#ghost - 1,948 posts

#vaaya moodu - 1,364 posts

#better call saul - 1,035 posts

#house md - 931 posts

#art - 468 posts

#laugh rule - 459 posts

#breaking bad - 290 posts

#remember - 249 posts

#bcs 6b - 249 posts

#metalocalypse - 245 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#so he decides to live. he decides to fake his death because he realized he’s capable of finally honoring his and wilson’s love for each othe

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

753 notes - Posted August 7, 2022

#4

thinking about how mike got to see neither nacho nor jesse extract themselves from the game. thinking about mike losing 'sons' one after the other, his own or symbolical, as if doomed to the same fate over and over

thinking about how jesse was mike's redemption, because of course he saw it in him. the same way he glimpsed it in nacho but couldn't do anything about it. and when jesse did finally break free, he wasn't there to see it. nobody talk to me

838 notes - Posted June 2, 2022

#3

See the full post

876 notes - Posted July 27, 2022

#2

i’m losing my WHOLE goddamn mind

> house challenges wilson to choose at least ONE piece of furniture for their new condo instead of letting other people make choices for him/define who he is, bc according to him, the kind of furniture you get says something about you

> wilson spends ages at a shop looking at chairs and tables but in the end he caves and hires a decorator 

> house calls him a wuss

> but oh, what’s this? wilson’s bought an ORGAN. FOR HOUSE TO PLAY. i’m going to die screaming the implication of this..... that this is what wilson chose, that he looked at an organ that house would love to play and thought “this is me”

> the HOPEFUL APPREHENSION on his face when house uncovers the organ

See the full post

1,400 notes - Posted August 11, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

totally heterosexual things to say to your best and only friend with whom you’ve shared a rich history of unspoken love and sacrifice and being there for each other when no one else was

9,651 notes - Posted August 17, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[allegaeon]

@tetrapodomorpha

[gaetaniu]

Fossili di 380 milioni di anni fa di pesci tetrapodi che respiravano aria trovati in Australia

Harajicadectes zhumini. Il paleontologo Brian Choo della Flinders University e i suoi colleghi hanno descritto un nuovo genere e una nuova specie di pesce tetrapodomorfo del Devoniano, basandosi su alcuni crani e scheletri postcraniali quasi completi. “I Tetrapodomorpha comprendono i tetrapodi palmati e i loro parenti più stretti, la cui più antica documentazione proviene dal Pragian della…