#non mammalian synapsids

[dougdimmadodo]

April’s Fossil of the Month - Dimetrodon (Dimetrodon spp.)

Family: Sphenacodon Family (Sphenacodontidae)

Time Period: 295–270 Million Years Ago (Late Permian)

Although the 14-or-so species of stockily-built quadrupedal vertebrates in the genus Dimetrodon are commonly included alongside dinosaurs in popular culture, every member of this genus was already long extinct by the time the first dinosaurs developed (with the most recent known Dimetrodon species, Dimetrodon grandis, disappearing from the fossil record around 270 million years ago, while the earliest known dinosaurs appear some 25 million years later.) The morphology of the skulls of Dimetrodon species (particularly the shape of their temporal fenestrae, a pair of openings behind the eye sockets which housed muscles that operated the jaws in life) suggests that they were actually synapsids - a group of animals containing the mammals and their closest relatives, and while this makes them a “sister-group” to mammals they were still part of a separate group of non-mammalian synapsids with no direct living descendants. While the size of Dimetrodon species varied enormously (ranging from the 60cm/2ft long Dimetrodon teutonis to the 4.6 meter/15 foot long Dimetrodon angelensis, which was among the largest terrestrial animals of its time,) all were alike in possessing a distinctive dorsal “sail” made up of several elongated extensions of their vertebrae, likely with skin running between them. The purpose of this sail has been the subject of extensive debate; it was historically thought to have been used in thermoregulation (with the skin between the vertebral extensions plausibly containing blood vessels, allowing the sail to absorb heat and transport it around the body when exposed to direct sunlight, or to lose heat by flushing the sail with blood to allow it to disperse into the air when in the shade,) but more recently it has been suggested that it may also have served a role in courtship. The name “Dimetrodon” translates roughly to “two measured teeth”, in reference to the fact that, unlike reptiles, members of this genus had two different types of teeth suited to different functions - large canine teeth for gripping and tearing meat, and smaller “shearing” teeth that were likely used to more delicately remove meat from bones. Based on their dentition, it is likely that all Dimetrodon species were carnivores that fed on smaller vertebrates such as amphibians, reptiles and possibly smaller synapsids.

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Image Sources:

 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dimetrodon_incisivus_Exhibit_Museum_of_Natural_History.JPG and https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dimetrodon_grandis_3D_Model_Reconstruction.png

#dimetrodon #synapsid #synapsids #zoology #biology #paleontology #paleobiology #animal #animals #wildlife #prehistoric wildlife #evolutionary biology #permian wildlife #non-mammalian synapsids #prehistoric animals

[funnywormz]

"cardassians are mammals" ❌

"cardassians are reptiles" ❌

"cardassians are synapsids" ✅✅✅

#the answer has been right in front of us all along....... #(ik that mammals are technically synapsids shhh shut up) #(i mean non-mammalian synapsids but the post sounds catchier this way) #star trek #ds9 #tng #cardassians

[vickysaurus]

If I have one complaint about the Paris natural history museum, it's that there are not enough synapsids! This vitrine they share with other Permian creatures and a mounted Lystrosaurus are all there was of them in the massive gallery. Do not forget the ancestors!

#synapsid #dimetrodon #lystrosaurus #palaeoblr #*non-mammalian synapsids that is

[synapsid-taxonomy]

All non-mammalian synapsids can be fairly graded on three axes: lizard to rat, dog to potato, and little guy to gnarly beast

[extrajigs]

Haven’t posted in a bit because of holidays but I present Mirum’s two other sophonts! One is related to chimera, one is a derived non mammalian synapsid. Both of their wisdom is less honed than the chimera as their sapience is younger, but they make up with it by leaning on each other.    

The chimera adjacent are the Diagrevies, . And they do not rely on the chimeric way of using magic to communicate, instead having a language of clicking and stridulating using the teeth on their tongue. They are a lot smaller too, females barely a foot long and males only a few inches. They are also eusocial and not very mobile, with main hives consisting of a large female and her suitors, as well as her daughters and brood all residing in a large den. Young males live a mobile parasitic-esque life upon their species’ close companion.  The Histin are on the opposite end of the spectrum to the Diagrevies, very active and very rarely spending an extended period of time at home. A clan centers around a home den, but their territory extends for tens of thousands of acres to encompass their hunting grounds. Their family structure is based on a matriarchal line, and also sees males leaving the family once they reach maturity. Which is somewhat necessary as they not only help disperse Diagrevies males to other clans, but a Histin male can easily weigh triple what his female counterparts do, leading to an appetite that does not appeal to most matriarchs. Females will stay with their birth clan forever, unless they either run out of room, choose to split it in two, or get in serious enough trouble.

The two species have an interesting arrangement, Histin’s method of reproduction necessities a large gore pit within their dens.(To be expanded upon in later posting.) Diagrevies hives sustain themselves off of the scraps of meat and not only tend to baby Histin’s and keep them parasite free, BUT they produce an invaluable resource. Like the chimera the Diagrevies can metabolize magic only instead of casting with it, they secrete it with all the magic still inside until it hardens into a crystalline sort of deal. THIS is what the Histin’s rely on to reliably start fires, as it is HIGHLY flammable and the Histin’s love starting fires a bit too much. And seeing as some Diagrevies can spend years on the back of a male Histin, some guys end up with their mane pretty caked up with the stuff. Impressive, but can also lead to immolation. 

Over all there is a lot with these two going on. Chimera, at the point in time I’m writing for now, don’t know too much about the Diagrevies, but are terrified of Histin’s. They had historically had an issue with seeing them as a source of food, be it by stealing livestock or... other means. Or with straight up setting their towns on fire. Histin’s meanwhile, don’t appreciate weird mind speak or the advanced magic they do, it frightens them. 

Don’t worry their relations with the chimera get worse/better as time progresses. Depending on the point of view. 

#Mirum #histin #diagrevies #worldbuilding #speculative biology #fantasy #you thought there was was but there are two others #chimera honestly just sad to not be included #spec bio #art #no true north

[harpagornis]

What is a multituberculate?

Multituberculates were in our timeline a highly diverse group of non-therian mammals. They first appeared in the Jurassic, likely splitting off from our therian ancestors as well as the ancestors of monotremes around this time, and came to dominate Cretaceous mammal faunas, in some sites even more common fossils than dinosaurs; they reached an even higher peak during the Paleocene, before plunging to a few relics that lasted for a few tens of million years longer. In this project’s timeline, the last part didn’t happen.

Multituberculates are not as flashy as dinosaurs, pterosaurs or even some other stem-mammals like Dimetrodon or the gorgonopsians, but they are insanely interesting in their own way. This project might as well be an excuse to explain why I think so.

The first multituberculate ever described was Ptilodus mediaevus, by famous time-waster and petty eccentric Edward Drinker Cope, of the famous Bone Wars. While many of his interpretations of extinct animals are hilariously wrong, his initial assumption, that this was some kind of marsupial, wasn’t reasonably wrong at the time. It certainly wasn’t a placental mammal, and had some vaguely marsupial-esque traits like the presence of epipubic bones.

Yet, as more fossils came in and we got a clearer picture at both multituberculates and mammalian evolution in general it became extremely clear these were not marsupials, and indeed not part of Theria. That’s pretty much it, because multituberculates are seriously strange animals, as we will see in a bit.

There are three main interpretations of where multituberculates fit in the tree of life:

As mammals (slightly) more closely related to therians than to monotremes

As mammals (slightly) more closely related to monotremes than to therians

As essentially non-mammals but instead closely related mammaliform synapsids.

In general the first option is favoured by classical studies, but recent ones have shown that alleged straits securing this position are even less strong than previously thought. Therefore, all bets are off until we somehow get DNA samples, which probably will never happen (but I’m willing to do anything to obtain regardless).

Stranger still is if you factor two other extinct groups into the mix, the haramiyidans and the gondwanatheres. They are in some respects very similar to multituberculates, and sometimes they all get lumped together into the broader Allotheria, but several studies have suggested these similarities are the result of convergent evolution. More confusing yet is that haramiyidans first debuted in the Triassic; given that most genetic studies seem to suggest a Jurassic origin for the last common ancestors between monotremes and therians, if multituberculates are closer to haramiyidans then we can rule them out as true mammals altogether. Not helping is the possibility that gondwanatheres may very well nest within Multituberculata, making them an additionally problematic group to figure out.

The most recent studies on these three groups seem to propose a kind of compromise: multituberculates, gondwanatheres and Jurassic haramiyidans (in the proposed clade Euharamiyida) are all true mammals in a branch slightly closer to therians than to monotremes, while Triassic “haramiyidans” are more basal synapsids. But as seen above, the traits used for this conclusion are not guaranteed.

Trivia: if multituberculates are all by themselves then Allotheria essentially becomes synonimous with Multituberculata. Therefore “dead uncle Allotheria” technically still describes multituberculates in some capacity.

Though superficially rodent like, multituberculates are insanely alien in terms of skeletal anatomy. Unlike modern mammals, which chew in orthal (up and down, “normal”), lateral (side to side; think cows) and propalinal (back to front; mostly rodents and elephants) ways, multituberculates were only capable of engaging in a chewing style with no modern analogue, the palinal stroke, which involves extending the jaw forward and pushing it back. They were capable of using one or both rows of molars to chew food, but they could not engage in any of the other forms of chewing mentioned previously (most modern mammals are capable of using at least orthal + lateral/propalinal, like for example your pet hamster switching between all free or you trying to replicate them right now).

To these ends, the multituberculate skull is modified in rather odd ways. Scar attachment sites are pretty much inverted from the “normal” condition in most mammals, resulting in strange shapes and angles. The molar teeth not only have cusps pointing backwards but instead of the tribosphenic shape you’re probably more familiar with they instead are brick-like and have many tubercules (hence the group name). While their large incisors may remind you of rodents (and even then most have four upper incisors instead of just two), they are not ever growing and were deciduous like other teeth; the main gnawing tooth is instead a large modified lower premolar known as a plagiaulacoid, used to cut through food as the jaw moves backwards. In earlier species all four lower premolars were modified into a plagiaulacoid saw, but in more derived members only one plagiaulacoid remained with relictual peg-like ones in front of it; this single blade-tooth was non-replaceable and lasted throught the animal’s lifetime.

Most multituberculates had a modern mammalian ear bone structure, which evolved multiple times among mammaliaform synapsids anyways. Less familar are odd parts of the braincase, not seen in modern mammals; in general, multituberculates have larger brain sizes than other Mesozoic mammals (though smaller than the average therian’s), which combined with evidence for complex social behaviours seem to suggest several were fairly intelligent. Contrary to therian mammals, multituberculates seem to have a large premaxilla, though it might actually be some sort of entirely new bone. The latter might be of particular relevance in regards to whereas they had muscular lips or a philtrum, as the aforementioned study cites the reduction of the maxilla in favor of the septomaxilla as the origin for the unique muscular face therian mammals have.

Beyond the skull, the oddities didn’t stop. At least a few multituberculates seem to have lumbar ribs (albeit vestigial ones), and the coracoid, a bone vestigial in therian mammals, is well developed. The forelimb is relatively “modern”, with only a few differences from the normal condition in therians, but the hindlimb has a differently shaped femur head, femur dimensions and spurs similar to those of the male platypus (which were fairly common among early mammals and could imply that mammals were ancestrally venomous); this has lead to several debates on whereas multituberculates had sprawling limbs like a reptile or could raise them beneath the body like therian mammals and dinosaurs. Traditionally multituberculates are interpreted as obligate Gollum-walkers, but footprints from other groups once interpreted as sprawlers like phytosaurs and Dimetrodon imply that they might not have been as restricted. Most complete multituberculate skeletons show them spread horizontally rather than laying on the side like most therian fossils, but at least some multituberculates were digitigrade and the gondwanathere Adalatherium has erect limbs (so if gondwanatheres are multituberculates, there’s at least one unambiguous case).

In spite of their problematic relationships, the in-group structure of Multituberculata has mostly been consistent, barring the presence of absence of gondwanatheres within their ranks. A division between the basal ‘Plagiaulacida’ (always understood to be a paraphyletic rather than natural group) and derived Cimolodonta is well understood and consistently recovered. “Plagiaulacidans” are best distinguished for their less specialised teeth, including abundant incisors and plagiaulacoids, while cimolodonts have more derived teeth including the single plagiaulacoid mentioned above and more rodent-like incisors (which still weren’t ever-growing, as also mentioned above).

Some inner specifics may change from study to study. For example a large variety of ‘plagiaulacidans’ are sometimes lumped into Plaugialacidae (which may not be recovered as a natural group in some studies) or Paulchoffatidae, while kogaionids and taeniolabidoids are often recovered as sister taxa but more recently the former are in a basal position among cimolodonts. But beyond this, things are usually stable and consistent.

Multituberculates first debut in the Jurassic, which some take to be a sign of them being true mammals since this is where genetic studies place the division between monotremes and therians – though if they’re not a ghost lineage spanning to the Triassic it is. The earliest unambiguous multituberculates are from the Middle Jurassic (168-166 million years) of Europe and Russia; Indobaatar from the Early Jurassic of India (183 million years give or take) may be even older and imply that the group evolved in Gondwana, but this animal is still of contentious affinities, possibly being a haramiyidan instead. It is possible that multituberculates evolved from haramiyidans, thus making ‘Hamariyida’ paraphyletic in relation to them, though if they’re not related they essentially appear ex nihilo in the fossil reccord, a missing link between them and other mammaliaforms still waiting to be discovered.

‘Plagiaulacidans’ diversified across the northern continents in the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, though they’re typically rare barring a few sites. They can be assumed to have been prey of other groups like the carnivorous eutriconodonts, though hilariously there’s evidence of multituberculates scavenging on them. Regardless, everything changed in the mid-Cretaceous, where the spread of flowering plants greatly altered terrestrial ecosystems; as a result, many mammal groups went extinct. This includes all ‘plagiaulacidans’, but the newly nascent cimolodonts not only survived but became the dominant mammals of the Late Cretaceous in the northern continents (though curiously the oldest cimolodont known comes from Australia). In the southern continents there are a few unambiguous multituberculate remains, but for the most part mammal faunas are dominated by gondwanatheres (which again may or may not be multituberculates) and another mammal group entirely, the dryolestoids. Due to the rather incomplete nature of the fossil reccord of the south hemisphere during the Late Cretaceous it is possible there are many gaps in our current knowledge.

Come the KT extinction event, multituberculates took some time to recover, but once they did they not only kept their dominance but exceeded their Cretaceous relatives in diversity, achieving a golden age for the first few million years of the Paleocene. Some, like the North American Taeniolabis taoensis and the European Boffius splendidus, were the largest land mammals for a time, the former in particular possibly reaching as much as 100 kg. So successful were multituberculates they they seem to actually have constrained the expansion of therian mammals during the early Paleocene.

But all good things come to an end. After the Danian (early Paleocene, 66-61 million years), multituberculate diversity crashes while therians and placentals in particular rise. They still lasted until the Eocene/Oligocene boundary some 33 million years ago, but by then they were reduced to a few small carnivorous forms like Ectypodus. If gondwanatheres are multituberculates, then they lasted until the mid-Miocene 21-17 million years ago, though once again as only relictual forms.

Why fortunes turned on multituberculates has been extensively debated. The traditional interpretation is that they were outcompeted by rodents, but this implies a close ecological role that might be overstated. As shown above, multituberculates seem to have constrained placental evolution until after they were gone, implying that rodents and other placentals diversified in response to multituberculates being cleared out of the way. Additionally, its noted that the last unambiguous multituberculates were generalists, quite the opposite of the usual trends of competitive exclusion where specialised animals are the last to go (though the last gondwanathere, Patagonia peregrina, seems to have been a specialised tuco-tuco-like digging herbivore, which is more in line with that).

Possible explanations may include vegetation and climatic changes in the Danian, in which case it’d be very ironic that the very thing that caused cimolodonts to rise would also do them in.

…we come to an alternate history where this last decline didn’t happen.

#paleoblr #palaeoblr #paleontology #palaeontology #paleoart #palaeoart #multituberculate #multituberculata #multituberculate earth

[proflambeovt]

Paleovember 2022, Anteosaurus!

A non mammalian synapsid from the Mid Permian in South Africa, Anteosaurus had a Tyrannosaurus head before Tyrannosaurus! It was also similar to tyrannosaurs in that it went through similar growth stages demonstrated by its skull continuing to thicken throughout its life.

#illustration #art #artwork #digitalart #cartoon #creaturedesign #paleontology #Paleovember #Anteosaurus #dinocephalian #synapsid #permian #south africa #paleoart #artist on tumblr

[demi-shoggoth]

2022 Reading Log pt. 21

101. The Rise and Reign of the Mammals by Steve Brusatte. This book covers mammalian evolution throughout synapsid history, starting in the Carboniferous and ending in the present day. There’s a lot of good information in here, both about the species themselves and the history of their discovery and discoverers. But I found the authorial voice consistently off-putting. Brusatte writes about evolution alternately like a war or a poker game, and there are constant references to dominating, beating or tricking other lineages, particularly dinosaurs. After crowing about how mammals survived and thrived in the Mesozoic by exploiting small body sizes and niches like eating seeds and insects, he dismisses all of bird evolution (which in the Cenozoic did the same thing) in a paragraph, and never talks about Cenozoic animals other than mammals at all. What’s weird is I don’t remember his previous book, The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs, being so mercilessly jingoistic about its focus clade. Maybe the publisher told him to write more enthusiastically about a “less exciting” group; maybe it’s the zeal of the newly converted (Brusatte was primarily a dinosaur paleontologist until relatively recently); maybe the first book was this annoyingly written and I have forgotten.

102. The Accidental Ecosystem by Peter S. Alagona. This book is a short overview about how wild animals have moved into American cities, why American cities developed into places where animals can thrive, how humans are reacting to these and how we should in the future. The tone is generally optimistic but realistic—that cities can serve as oases of biodiversity during climate change and extinction events, but a world with only rats, crows and sparrows would be a depauperate one. Most of the book is organized around an incident of some charismatic megafauna making the news (like Pedals the bipedal bear of New Jersey, or a nesting pair of bald eagles blithely feeding their chicks fresh kitten), and then talking about that species in greater context. I’ve read several other books recently about human/animal interactions, and this one did the best job at being inclusive, talking about how parks can and have been used as agents of gentrification, the impact of economic decisions on the fate of cities and animals alike, and existing biases within ecology and evolutionary studies. Highly recommended.

103. Travels to the Otherworld and other Fantastic Realms, edited by Claude and Corinne Lecouteux, translated by Jon E. Graham. This is a collection of medieval European fantastic literature, although not all of it is necessarily fantasy in the modern sense. Some are religious visions, others historical fantasies, others excerpts from novels and folk tales. All of them are wild. Both as a look into the medieval mindset and for their various bizarre creatures and occurrences. Some highlights include multiple versions of the adventures of Alexander the Great, the Vision of Tundale, a German journey through Hell that’s much gnarlier than anything in Dante, and the adventures of Marcolf, the Sherlock Holmes to King Solomon’s Watson (!). Also highly recommended; this might be the most fun I’ve had with a book this year.

104. Empire of the Scalpel: The History of Surgery by Ira Rutkow. Just what it says on the cover. The book starts with trepanations of cavemen and progresses to the modern era. Rutkow follows the Great Man school of history, and many of the chapters are biographical sketches of a surgeon who was important in developing the field. It feels somewhat incomplete—not only are non-surgical advances in medicine basically ignored, the development of the modern American insurance state is glossed over, even as the book discusses how hospitals became prestigious institutions and surgeons very wealthy. The book also uses weird kennings, as if it were written by an Icelandic skald—surgeons are “scalpel wielders” or “students of the knife”, etc, as often as they’re just surgeons. I definitely learned stuff from this book (like the quack “orifical surgery”, which posed that all diseases could be cured by cutting out irregular shapes from the mouth, nose, anus and genital openings!), but found the book rather less than the sum of its parts.

105. Monster Anthropology, edited by Yasmine Musharbash and GH Presterudstuen. This is a collection of academic essays about monsters as cultural signifiers and participants. After a very good introduction (the Works Cited of which will keep me busy a long while), the bulk of the book looks at particular cultures and particular monsters. The book was published in Australia, and several of the essays are on the same group of Indigenous Australians, the Warlpiri, and their monsters (most of which have not penetrated Western consciousness, but the pankarlangu is starting to make some inroads). One minor note I found interesting—there’s an actual folkloric monster that fits the D&D concept of a rakshasa! The tepun of the Eastern Penan people in Borneo is a shapeshifting hedonist that has aspects of humans and tigers.

106. Scent: A Natural History of Fragrance by Elise Vernon Pearlstine. Gave up on 50 pages in. The book purports to be a natural history—what molecules are made by what plants, why, and how those plants live. The actual contents contain some of that, but much more cultural histories. I’ve read and enjoyed several books about the cultural history of plants recently, so I’m not inherently opposed to the concept. But the book is incredibly poorly organized. The narrative skips back and forth through time and space and species, words are used and then defined several pages later as if it’s the first time we’re seeing them, concepts will be repeated multiple times to the point of redundancy, and the preface and introduction contain the exact same sentences, twice! The fact that this book was published in this state is frankly embarrassing.

#reading log #bad books #botany #cultural history #paleontology #stem mammals #prehistoric mammals #anthropology #monster books #surgery #medical history #european folklore #medieval folklore #ecology #urban ecology

[thesnivy123]

hi I am curious. Have you done any rainworld spec bio. I’m sure you have (I know what you are [said politely and in jest of course])

Bonus question. What flavor of rainworld creature would the colourfucks be

OH BOY!!!!

While i haven't done a huge specbio project on any one species (aside from maybe vultures. blame grey wind) and iterator puppets (also blame grey wind), ive done a LOT of little bits and bobs over time. stuff like vultures being related to beetles, rain deer being the closest living relative to the ancients (both non-mammalian synapsids- mammals dont exist in rw!) and train lizards being a green-red hybrid... might be better to ask me about specific species so i can actually gather my thoughts lol

AS FOR THE COLOURFUCKS, EZPZ.

Wiggly slugcat because theyre the "main character" species and also slimy as fuck while still looking vaguely mammalian.

nibbly caramel lizard bc big fuckin hoooog beast. caramels are just gluttonous things in my minds eye

tnoy scavenger bc look at him. also what is the toybox but a weird square pearl

blinky overseer bc OBVIOUSLY

pokey noodlefly because they're weird bugs that make Noises. singular voice more like singular kazoo

webby. take a wild guess. spider

#rain world #colourfucks #<- my hatchetfield tag. eventually my grudge will subside enough to maintag my posts

[thesumlax]

More paleo stuff, this time it`s the synapsid ears. Oh, those goddamned jaw-ears!

Again, I'm not an expert but this is my educated guess. The best eardrum recontstruction for a Thrinaxodon-like animal I`ve seen is this, but it still feels kinda wrong to me, so I present a rough schematic of how I envision it (left is view from the outside, right from the inside of the jaw). I believe the eardrum (yellow) should be located horizontally in the notch of the angular bone (red) so that the articular/malleus (blue) can touch it from below and the nascent tympanic cavity (green) can easily reach it as it branches off the throat. In this configuration, if you simply flatten the angular and turn the whole thing 90 degrees you can get basically the modern mammalian condition.

Finding good reference for non-cynodonts is nigh impossible but I still attempted an Aelurognathus, assuming the gorgonopsid condition also features something like an eardrum and an earhole (also showcasing the proto-tympanic cavity bulging out of the throat). I don't actually know at which point and how exactly all that stuff first appeared.

Hey @albertonykus is any of this plausible or am I talking nonsense?

#my art #biology #paleo #synapsids #ears

[ask-palaeoblr]

Is it possible that non-mammalian synapsids like Dimetrodon could have had cat or dog-like noses? I wanna know if their snoots were boopable 😭😭

.

#ask #palaeoblr #synapsids #dimetrodon #ask-palaeoblr #Anonymous

[dougdimmadodo]

May’s Fossil of the Month - Thrinaxodon (Thrinaxodon liorhinus)

Family: Thrinaxodon Family (Thrinaxodontidae)

Time Period: Early Triassic (251-247 Million Years Ago) 

At the end of the Permian period around 251 million years ago, the earth experienced the most extreme extinction event in its history (known as the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event or “The Great Dying”,) in which some 70% of terrestrial species and 81% of marine species were driven to extinction. As such, the period immediately following the Permian, the early Triassic, was a period of slow recovery as the descendants of the few survivors of the Great Dying began to adapt and diversify to fill the ecological niches left empty by the extinction of their previous occupants. Thrinaxodon liorhinus was one such survivor; a small (roughly 50cm/1.6 feet in length) species of cynodont synapsid (making it a close relative of mammals, but not a mammal itself), it inhabited what is now southern Africa and northern Antarctica (which were fused as part of a single landmass at the time) in the period immediately following the great dying, and was seemingly among the largest and most common carnivores of its time. Thrinaxodon’s survival was likely enabled at least in part due to its lifestyle; the discovery of individuals fossilized in the remains of burrows show that Thrinaxodon, like many similarly-sized mammals today, was a burrower, and the presence of distinct divisions on its spine to aid in flexibility suggests that, like many burrowing mammals and reptiles today, it may have possessed the ability to travel deeper underground and undergo hibernation or aestivation in order to endure prolonged periods of harsh weather conditions and resource scarcity. In life Thrinaxodon would have likely appeared somewhere between a large lizard and a small dog, with its leg bones and joints suggesting that it stood in a “semi-sprawling” posture mid-way between the belly-to-the-ground sprawling of most lizards and the elevated posture of most mammals, while its dog-like skull and sharp-tipped teeth (including prominent canines on both the upper and lower jaw) suggest that it was likely carnivorous, feeding on insects and/or smaller vertebrates. The discovery of the remains of several Thrinaxodon individuals, sometimes including juveniles, preserved in close proximity to one another suggests that members of this species likely provided parental care and may have also been social, and one unusual but extremely famous fossil burrow containing both an adult Thrinaxodon and an injured Broomistega putterilli (a small species of superficially salamander-like amphibian) showing puncture wounds from teeth too large to belong to the burrow’s owner suggests that, like the Gopher Tortoise and Giant Armadillo today, Thrinaxodon may have been a habitat engineer, with its burrows providing shelter for other species of animal (although it is also possible that the Broomistega had been washed into the burrow during a flood that killed both animals, or that the Thrinaxodon had stolen the injured Broomistega from the larger carnivore that wounded it.)

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Image Sources:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thrinaxodon_liorhinus_BP_1_7199.jpg

and

https://www.pbs.org/video/the-oddest-couple-in-the-fossil-record-rcehau/

#thrinaxodon #thrinaxodon liorhinus #synapsid #Synapsids #non-mammalian synapsids #cynodont #cynodonts #zoology #biology #paleontology #paleobiology #animal #animals #wildlife #prehistoric wildlife #prehistoric animals #fossil vertebrates

[thicc-astronaut]

We need a non-cladistic word that means “big prehistoric animal that would be cool in a fight” because while “dinosaur” is popular, and carries connotations of anciency and power and strength, not all dinosaurs fit that “vibe” and a lot of creatures that do are not considered dinosaurs

So like 

We need a word to describe anything in that red circles section of the venn diagram

I want a term we can use for like when you want to make a video game with time travellers riding on ancient animals like horses. Animals that are now extinct but could probably kill you.

Animals that would be included in this group:

Tyrannosaurus Rex (dinosaur)

Ankylosaurus (dinosaur)

Diplodocus (dinosaur)

Titanis Walleri (dinosaur, bird)

Dimetrodon (non-dinosaur, synapsid, non-mammalian)

Mastadon (non-dinosaur, mammal, elephant)

Archelon (non-dinosaur, reptile, turtle)

Megalodon (non-dinosaur, cartilaginous fish, shark)

glyptodon (non-dinosaur, mammal, armadillo)

Animals that would not be included in this group:

Tiktaalik (non-dinosaur, fish)

Longisquama (non-dinosaur, reptile)

Archeopteryx (dinosaur, bird)

Microceratops (dinosaur)

#clearing out my drafts #honestly I don't know what I was thinking with this one but I went through the trouble of making a venn diagram #apparently #so I'm letting you guys see it

[vickysaurus]

New Prehistoric Kingdom dev diary! I love the adorable gif of Scelidosaurus and Protoceratops trotting past the camera. But most intriguing is of course the new animal teaser:

So we're getting something big, with neither scales nor much hair, and, although I could see it being a big non-mammalian synapsid like Moschops or Cotylorhynchus, I think I'll join everyone in calling this as Paraceratherium. The game has only three mammals, and it'd be so cool to see them hanging out with the sauropods, so it'd be a pretty good addition. What I think really makes it interesting though, is that the previous patch added three animals all from roughly the same time period (late Triassic and early Jurassic). If that's a conscious design choice and not just coincidence, we could be looking at some very cool Oligocene/Paleogene mammals filling out the roster. Andrewsarchus, maybe? Arsinoitherium? An amphicyonid or entelodont? Gastornis for a non-mammalian curveball? Even Ambulocetus might be an option, though the current lack of aquatic animals is probably a sign the game can't handle them yet.

#prehistoric kingdom #palaeoblr

[prof-cycad]

Like caffeine, Humans love spicy foods. Archaeological evidence suggests that humans started to grow pepper plants only soon after growing grains, hops and certain berries.

Unlike caffeine, spicy molecules aren't necessarily harmful to pokemon. Insects, reptiles, some draconids and most avians can't even taste capsaicin (the molecule that gives peppers their kick).

Mammals (like humans, Greedent, Slaking and Diglett) are very receptive to capsaicin. However, certain mammalian pokemon enjoy spicy food.

Even more curious is that almost all non-mammal synapsids (Nidoran, Kangaskhan and Rhyhorn) seek out spicy foods even if they are carnivorous. Nidoran in particular are very fond of Chople and Cheri berries!

#pokemon headcanons #professor cycad #pokeblogging #pokemon behavior #pokemon toxicology??

[moonlitcomet]

Atypical Digidevil bodymorphs, using non-humanoid sapient Cierian species as bases for their shapes.

Dragons, fauns, and kappas are three of the many sapient kinds of creatures in Soul Rune Cier, and though there are plenty of others I could have referenced for this, many are humanoid and would cause little to no change in the bodymorphs of a Digidevil raised by one.

None of these digidevils are any larger than a human, and all are sapient and capable of speech - it is extremely unlikely that a Digidevil will truly be raised by a creature that is incapable of speech, so finding one with a feline or canine bodymorph - for example - will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Digidevils almost exclusively take on reptilian forms, and if raised by mammals, will place more reptile features into their bodymorph. Every creature base here is a reptile or avian of some sort, since the only discovered sapient mammalian/synapsid species in Soul Rune Cier are stickfigures and sorcerers [which are very similar to stickfigures].

That is not to say one cannot use a different base for a Digidevil bodymorph; some might resemble centaurs, or birds, or even fish! It all depends on the world the Digidevil is being written in. 

#creative #digidevil #soul rune cier