I personally mostly study plants, and in plants, organs that allow for long-term hibernation are extremely common. Most plants can survive for at least a few years in the form of seeds, spores, or storage organs. Plants are essentially immune to most mass extinctions, and this is a big reason why. But in tetrapods this seems sort of non-existent? Eggs can survive for a while, but they're extremely fragile. Some tetrapods hibernate, but in a way that seems much more vulnerable and short-lived. I only see things similar to seeds in invertebrates, like sponges and tardigrades and brine shrimp. Why is this?

I'm thinking of an arctic crustacean whose inner body water content is very saturated with salt which lowers it's body's freezing point but which has developed a way to excrete fresh water over its body so that the low temperature of the arctic freezes this water into something of a "shell" which protects their body instead of the usual chitin. Water/ice is a good insulator so their bodies should still remain above freezing compared to outside their bodies, and their bodies where the ice exoskeleton is in contact with should not get frostbite due to the lower freezing point of their bodies and maybe their blood plays a role here too as hemocyanin is actually more suited toward these cold temps than hemoglobin.

I'm not entirely sure how feasible the whole ice as exoskeleton thing is though, both for use as a body-supporting structure and whether or not an earth-like carbon-based life form would actually survive having ice as an exoskeleton.

This is my spec evo creature the butchering gardener .

Origins the Butchering Gardener is evolved from the sub branch of dromeosaurs that contains Utahraptor and Achillobater they began climbing into the trees in order to better take ambush positions till they gained better use of their hands and the more flexible tail of their ancestors to become prehensile.

Anatomy the Butchering Gardener possesses a facial disk of feathers and full body fluff similar to an ostrich on all their body save their hands feet and front of face. The tail and a crest of blue and red feathers run through its back as a display for threats and mating displays. They possess zygodactyl feet with two killing claws which are the only claws they cannot retract. They use powerful hands and strong toe pads to climb alongside their prehensile tail easily climbing like a spider monkey or squirrel. The claws of these creatures are both absurdly large and sharp their killing claws can be as much as 24 inches in total size used like a combination of scissors and a guillotine either shearing into flesh and sever arteries.

Behavior they have higher intelligence than their ancestors not only possessing sophont behavior and pack mentality where it can be done. The prefer ambushes from above aiming to either pierce heart and lungs with their claws or tear out the throat all at once. Preferred prey includes small to medium sauropods and Hadrosaurs which they aim to either remove the creatures heads or severing their throats then proceed to piece out their prey if small enough the creatures will be dragged into the trees if not they are severed to pieces and dragged up. Their name comes from their behavior of weaving vines through skeletons not only serving as a display of how good they are as killers but also displaying some sort of artistry. They also keep certain angiosperm plants in their territory which they enjoy eating and fertilize with the corpses of territorial intruders.

Potential interaction with other sentient creatures involve being easy to bribe and tending to be more friendly with smaller sentient creatures as they fall outside their favored prey ranges.

I’m eager to answer any questions about this creature.

In a world where Morganucodon still was a common ancestor of mammals but environmental pressures led to either the extinction or simply the non-existance of primates, which mammals would become "dominant" (for lack of a better word) on Earth?

I know we're not 100% sure why primates evolved, but possibly in this alternate scenario, it wasn't as beneficial to be able to grasp tree branches (perhaps trees were not as widespread), or possibly - if you believe vision is what led to modern primates - smell-based hunting was just more successful.

My first thought was honestly caniform carnivores of some sort (i.e. dogs, bears, mustelids, or pinnipeds). Cetaceans are also smart enough but their aquatic lifestyle would mean reshaping the world to that. Not necessarily a bad thing, but probably not easy to do with flippers.

I'm very curious about people's thoughts on this. This might eventually lead to the development of story ideas, but at the moment this is just asked out of curiosity about other people's opinions.

What is the maximum number of limbs a mammal or marsupial could evolve without completely changing the rules via genetic engineering or something like that?

My mind settles on 6 as the maximum (four in the middle, either 4 legs or 2 and 2 arms, plus one at each end - a tail and a trunk)

Would be interesting to see what wacky ideas people can come up with! Aquatic mammals are also viable

I personally think that the handfishes,abyssal batellites and the terrestrial snarks.

Handfishes had only 3 posts. The abyssal batellites 1 posts. The terrestrial snarks had 2 posts.

I've posted a number of times about this project, but I've only briefly mentioned the general premise of the project and it's planet and today is the day for it so let's explain.

SHAPE OF THE PLANET

Prometheus is a planet much like our own. It belongs to a moderately sized star, is composed of similar rocky minerals, has a magnetic core, an abundance of water and oxygen gas, fertile soil, seasonal variation, and a similar mass resulting in similar gravity. But it also has a variety of differences.

Prometheus is a slightly smaller planet (about 6,311 kilometres in radius) and also less heavy, with only about 95.2% of Earth’s mass, inducing a rather slight but still noticeable decrease in gravitational force at its surface, around 97% of Earth’s. The planet has a warmer global climate, around 22 degrees celsius to Earth’s current 15 degrees, and no permanent polar glaciation, with small ice sheets only forming briefly before breaking up, and a high oxygen and CO2 content, approximately 29.7% and 0.089%.

The star around which Prometheus orbits, called Olympus, is a smaller G8 class, compared to our sun’s G2, but Prometheus is also much closer to it. The moon of Prometheus is also smaller and slightly closer. These differences mean the sun appears larger in the sky, while the moon appears smaller, and this means that Prometheus does not experience total eclipses, only annular eclipses where the moon partly obstructs the sun.

Perhaps one of the greatest differences is that, being close to its star, Prometheus also has a much slower rotation leading to 50.5 hour day. Life on Prometheus must adapt therefore to long hot days and long cold nights, with temperature differences in many areas outside the tropics reaching 15 degrees or more over the course of a full Promethean day.

This slow rotation also means that the coriolis effect is much weaker and Prometheus has only two main circulation cells that transport heat more effectively toward the poles. Prometheus’s intertropical convergence zone is expanded, while the desert belt is pushed equatorward. Surface winds, meanwhile, are generally stronger.

The axial tilt of Prometheus is a few degrees lower than Earth, and it has a faster orbit with a shorter year, just under 255 Earth days, or very close to 121 local days, which combine to make its seasons shorter and milder with relatively modest changes in temperature and other conditions. At the poles, the environment is at its most seasonal, with very long 'polar nights' and 'polar days' caused by the extreme tilt experienced at these latitudes keeping it facing toward or away from sunlight. However, the shorter year limits the length of these periods, from up to 179 days on Earth to only 125 days on Prometheus, or a little over 59 local days.

The nature of the planetary characteristics of Prometheus induces some broad trends than can be observed to differentiate its life from that of Earth.

The high temperature variation across the lay days and nights of Prometheus mean facultative endothermy is relatively common as a way to keep animals warm during the cold nights while avoiding overheating and unnecessary energy expenditure during the hot day. Short term torpor is also used by numerous animals to conserve energy during prolonged periods of inactivity waiting for day or night to pass. Behavioural adaptations like burrowing that enable animals to escape the extremes of heat and cold are also more common.

Likewise, Promethean plants must also deal with these temperature changes to avoid losing water, from evapotranspiration. Many employ a variation of the crassulacean acid metabolism, often seen in desert plants on Earth where there is also high differences in day-night temperature. Such plants will separately photosynthesize during the long hot day and perform gaseous exchange during the long cool night.

The typical light spectrum receptory range of Promethean animals is slightly lower in frequency to match the output of its star, Olympus, which changes the colour of camouflage and display patterns. It is not uncommon for animals to be able to see light in the upper ranges of the infrared spectrum. Similarly, the prevailing photosynthetic pigment of plants and algae, especially on land, is yellow.

The long 25 hour nights have helped fuel the more widespread use of bioluminescence outside of the deep ocean. During these long nights, there is much activity, and bioluminescence provides a means for animals to display, to communicate, to lure in prey, to startle an attacker, or to light up their surroundings for visibility. A number of Promethean plants take advantage of the way its animals respond to light to attract night-time pollinators to spread their gametes, or in some rare cases as a trap used by its carnivorous plants.

Though some Promethean animals are specialised specifically for day or night conditions, many will use diverse senses to help them deal with different conditions, with more unusual senses like pit viper-like thermal sensing, echolocation, and electroreception being slightly more common.

Seasonal adaptations, meanwhile, like hibernation and long distance migration, are relatively less common in the shorter and milder seasons of Prometheus. However, in the poles the warm wet global climate makes these areas much more habitable to most organisms, and so they are a whole variety of animals that live here that must deal with highly seasonal conditions. Such polar animals make much use of seasonal adaptations to deal with long stretches of winter darkness and summer sunshine.

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Thanks to anyone for reading!

A few months ago, I found a youtube channel called The Ophuar Den. They release 1-3 minute videos describing an alternate universe where a therocephalian therapsid survived to the present day, and what this therapsid, known as an ophuar, is like. If that sounds interesting, go watch the videos. They're great and don't get enough views. Getting to the point, this inspired me to do a similar project, and the creature I chose was pterosaurs. Specifically a basal pterosaur, something like Rhamphorhyncus or Dimorphodon. The best way for this creature to survive the extinction would be to live underground, so I decided it would be a cave pterosaur. This has the added side effect of it being possible, however implausible, that this thing exists. There could be a few hundred rat-sized, blind, flightless pterosaurs in a cave somewhere and there would be no way to know. However, I ran into one issue, which is that I'm terrible at art. So I am accepting art submissions, if you want to submit something then tell me in the comments, I'll give you my email address. Of course I need to describe the creature for anyone to draw it. It is rat-sized, completely eyeless, has disproportionately long arms for climbing cave walls and long whiskers in order to feel around its cave habitat, it eats small insects and is entirely solitary, it has no fur other than its whiskers, and its life of exclusive insectivory has led to the loss of its teeth. It has small vestigial wing fingers but no skin membrane.

Part 3 of my Juba series of art. A tidally locked planet.

The picture, taken from probe ’Lamark’, shows a Arcternum Horse viciously ripping apart a ’Calvari’ in the tundra.

Arcternum Horse:

The Arcternum Horse is a common predator among the uncommon amount of fauna concentration in the tundras of Juba. It is a tripedal predator and a part of the Ternartoe family. On each of its three legs it uses three ’toes’. Though the use of these ’toes’ varies between species of Ternertoes the Arcternum uses its frontal and rear toes for stability and its middle as the main muscle. The Arcternum has a distinctive large and sharp skull in a crescent-like shape with a frontal pincher. The skull itself is tucked in a fat quilt of skin while being quite hollow in its structure. Underneath is the Arcternums primary ’mouth’. It uses a flexible appendage, being an exterior throat which releases warm stomach fluids to keep its meat from freezing. The Arcternum is a non-pack animal and rarely forms social bonds with other of its kind. Whilst not hungry it is largely dormant but aggressive.

Calvarian Scavenger:

The Calvarian Scavenger, or the Calvari is a common species along the temperate and tundra regions of the Terminator. It is quadrupedal, which is strangely rare on Juba suggesting an evolutionary tree distorted. It is one of the only terrestrial fauna that has two ’toes’ instead of 3 or more. Again a hint to a distorted evolutionary past. Notable among many terrestrial fauna is its top appendages that are stiff and tough, largely used for defense against aerial aggression. Other than its side reinforced plates on its head theres no more visual distinctions. The Calvari social network is fairly advanced and it moves with smaller groups.

Thank you for reading todays scene from 7 years ago on Juba:)

I know they'd very likely need to be insanely huge since water just doesn't have all that much oxygen compared to air, and human brains need a lot of oxygen. But part of me is still optimistic that there might be a way to make this work. Maybe I'm overstimating their size? Maybe if they're cold-blooded, their metabolism might be more efficient, and their brains may consume less power for the same brainpower? I'm grasping at straws here.

Under known biological and ecological constraints, how could a terrestrial land animal that isn’t an amphibian evolve or retain the ability to breathe in both water and in air?

Personally, I think such a creature could possibly be able to exist via possessing both gills and lungs, and I think it would’ve appeared as a mostly land-based reptilian or dinosaur-like animal in morphology.

Though admittedly I’m also curious if said creature could be able to breathe in both freshwater and in saltwater? Would that be too biologically improbable?

I made a project where the asteroid hit earlier where instead of hitting about 66 MYA it hit in about the Early Cretaceous. After the asteroid hit alot of the dinosaurs went extinct except for a few other avian and smaller dinosaurs living since the asteroid was smaller and less lethal. After the asteroid impact the mammals evolved since the surviving dinos didn't meet them yet. The Cenozoic then arrived with the dinosaurs still the same roaming and eating mammals. A few dinosaurs evolved to survive with the mammals or evolved to hunt the mammals, the environment would've been how it was in the Cretaceous with a few mammals evolving to survive in the heat. About the end of the Cenozoic (50 MYA) us humans havnt evolved yet but apes still live. Dinosaurs have evolved to fit with the mammal ecosystem and Pangea is slowly breaking apart to look like the Cenozoic but still look like a mixture of both.

Inspired by the portrayal of ice-breathing dragons in the fantasy genre, what would be the feasibility of the biomechanics behind “ice-breath”(bio-compatible chemicals to induce flash-freezing, organ structure to spray said chemicals at a target, etc.)?

More phytozoans from my alien planet Prometheus, but of a very different kind from the sylvan titan I posted last. The phytozoan anatomy and classes posts provide additonal background for those curious.

Giant Stingmaw

Edaciostium   (edāx + ōstium, ‘gluttonous mouth’)

Species: E. latens

Family: Limaxoididae  Order: Repoformes  Class: Myocampta

Size: 1-1.8 metres long (body)  Diet: ambush hunter, autotroph  Activity: cathemeral

Habitat: tropical forest

Lying amongst the detritus of the forest floor, a huge slug-like creature sits, motionless. A set of long tentacles extend out along the ground, partially concealed by the litter, leading back to the creature’s large mouth. It releases a meaty smell, attracting many of the small opportunists and scavengers of the forest. During the long promethean night, it even begins to glow. Once an unwary animal wanders into its tentacles, the giant stingmaw quickly wraps its tentacles around its victim and uses deadly stinging cells within its tendrils to subdue it and drag it back into its mouth.

The giant stingmaw is the largest of the stinging phytozoans called aculeovorans. Like all phytozoans, the stingmaw begins life in a plant-like form. In the dense forests in which the stingmaw lives, the forest floor is dark and so in order to take up enough light the stingmaw larvae are relatively large with broad leafy phyllobranchia rich in photosynthetic pigment, making them dark yellow-brown in colour, which are retained in the adult as a set of adornments on their back. As they grow, they start to slowly develop the anatomy of an adult stingmaw within a burgeoning cocoon.

Adult stingmaws have a relatively simple nervous system and largely act by simply reacting to stimuli. They have eight simple eyes which can detect patterns of light and shadow as well as movement. Crawling along the ground with a series of small suction cups, giant stingmaws are also very slow moving and not powerful for a predator of their size, but they also need only to eat very rarely. If threatened by another larger animal, like a wandering aradax or hungry thrasher, the stingmaw raises its deadly tentacles into the air and waves them about as the tentacles produces flashes of light as a warning.

Stingmaws can also use their scent producing abilities to leave markers behind for other stingmaws that they are in the area and are mature enough to mate. Stingmaws are all hermaphrodites so while they have some difficulty finding other stingmaws to mate with compared to more active animals, when they do come across other adult stingmaws they are always compatible.

The stinmaws mate by pressing their mouths against each other, allowing their reproductive tracts to connect and pass spem and eggs between them, ending with both individuals impregnating each other and producing fertilised eggs.

These eggs are then laid in a trail along the ground in suitable soil conditions, which after they hatch, can result in distinctive trails of phytoform larvae along the forest floor. Although many larvae will inevitably die, they are spaced out just enough to give each larva a chance of reaching maturity.

Tree Jelly

Arboraculeus   (arboreus + aculeo, ‘tree sting’)

Species: A. cerulea, A. malvaflos, A. tenebrae

Family: Brevisomidae  Order: Repoformes  Class: Myocampta

Size: 10-65 centimetres long (body)  Diet: ambush hunter, autotroph  Activity: cathemeral

Habitat: tropical forest

Like its much larger stingmaw relatives, the tree jelly is a predatory phytozoan that catches prey with its stinging tentacles. Tree jellies have short and stout bodies with an underside lined by suction cups, and are well suited for gripping firmly onto the branches of colony trees. Meanwhile, the tree jelly dangles its tentacles below, catching prey either running along lower branches or flying past. The manner of this hunting strategy and appearance of the tree jelly are what give it its name, resembling the medusozoan ‘jellyfish’ of earth.

Tree jellies release scent as a lure, sweeter floral scent that attracts mainly attracts small pollinators which are ideal prey for the tree jelly. Some tree jellies have a bright colouration to mimic the general appearance of citrinophyte flowers, looking for pollinators active during the day that use colour, and some use bioluminescent tentacles to mimic night blooming flowers and attract their pollinators.

When it comes to mating, like with many phytozoans the tree jellies differentiate based on age, with younger tree jellies daring to leave their host trees to search for mates elsewhere while older individuals usually wait for others to come to them.

The larval form of the tree jelly exists as an epiphyte, growing on the surface of a colony tree, taking moisture and nutrients from the steamy tropical forest air and the runoff trickling down their host tree, until they are old and large enough to metamorphose. When adults lay their eggs, they will create a trail that usually crosses between multiple branches of their host tree to give the best chances of some of the larvae surviving.

Many of these phytoform larvae will be eaten before they can metamorphose into their zooform. Those that do still face a dangerous journey, having to leave the tree of their birth and descend to the forest floor to look for a new tree to climb. Their survival relies on remaining unnoticed moving through the undergrowth. Although a flash of their venomous tentacles will deter some predators, the young tree jellies are too small to fend off some of the forest’s largest and most determined predators.

Once they find a new host tree, it will still take some time for the young tree jellies to climb up tens of metres up their sheer surface of the trunk with only their suction cups. But once they do, they will have a home that will last them for years.

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Thanks to anyone for reading!

I was watching Goji Center’s Indoraptor 2.0 Video, and they said that the new Indoraptor had fish scale, rather than the types of scales you’d find on reptiles or dinosaurs. Would this even work? I feel like it wouldn’t, because as far as I know (though my knowledge is limited to a few quick google searches), there aren’t any terrestrial species that possess fish scales, besides those that evolved from aquatic-terrestrial transition species, and a few modern day fish that can walk on land for short periods of time.

I’m working on a series of maps of my fictional tidally locked planet. This is a wind map I attempted and I’m requesting thoughts, critique and corrections. Wind patterns are complicated and tidally locked planets poorly understood. Many thanks!

So, I saw in some older historical art of gryphons that sometimes the wing starts from the elbow, which made me think it could work like I've drawn (?) with a separation of the radius and ulna in two sub-limbs. Seems more plausible than a six limbed creature.

Name: Sanglashes. Scientific Name: Linguivorus sanguinarius. Habitat: Plains, Forest. Diet: Meat, Fruits it hunts medium to large creatures. Planet: Flora after the goddess of Spring, fertility. Life cylce: Sanglashes live up to 50-70 Flora years Reproduction: the female mates with many males and leaves her eggs for the males to take care of it takes 4-5 Months for the eggs to hatch and they reach sexual maturity at 10-15 flora years old Description: dispite being a huge carnivores apex predator they are very tame and act like dogs when not hungry or threaten and like scratches.