New Family Posted: Earless Sea Monkeys

I have posted another family, the highly-advanced earless sea-monkeys. They evolved along the same ways that modern phocids did. There are going to be 2 groups of sea monkeys, there is an earless variety, and an eared variety. The earless are the more advanced species that most of them use sonar to locate prey. Though not all develop this ability. The differences between the eared sea monkeys and the earless are more than obvious. Eared sea monkeys have external ears, a short, diamond-shaped tail and none of their species have the ability to use sonar to detect prey or each other. Earless sea monkeys have no external ears. The closest is with the species Hyphydronexus, which has fleshy flaps that cover the ear openings. The tail is eel-like and sways from side to side, and the rear flippers are greatly reduced and more or less useless. In the eared sea monkeys, the flippers are all the same size and all used for paddling through the water.

Unlike dolphins, these sea monkeys occasionally come to land to relax and take to water to hunt and mate. Anyway, here is the link: http://www.metazoica.com/earless.html. Also I am working with someone who wants to do cladograms for my site. I always wanted to do something like that but I am not that great. This person knows how to do them and even sent a sample. So I am letting him do them.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJanuary 8, 2009 at 10:54 PM

    Cassandra, just try to estimate... Can we call these creatures "monkeys". Of course, we KNOW they are descendants of primates (I keep silence, keep silence, keep silence...). But imagine their discovery. First we see and name them, and only second we recognize their systematic position. I think their name is not so good for such animals.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dee TimmyHutchFanJanuary 9, 2009 at 7:05 AM

    Well, it'll do until I can think of a better one.

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  3. AnonymousJanuary 11, 2009 at 12:16 PM

    I propose the name "Lutrodelphiformes" for this group. It means "otter dolphins" and emphasizes the otter features in dolphin-like animals. Also names like "Paracetacea", "Pseudocetacea" or even "Enantioceti" ("not true whales") may be used.

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  4. Dee TimmyHutchFanJanuary 11, 2009 at 2:35 PM

    Well, I kinda want to keep the idea these are closely related to the lemurs. Maybe "Enantioceti" could be like a major sub-order. I like the name. "Paracetacea" is already in use for a group of cetacean-like descendants of elephant shrews.

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  5. MetalraptorJanuary 24, 2009 at 8:26 PM

    Not to mention that Proletarian used Pseudocetacea for the his seal-whale creatures. I personally like the sea-monkey name, because it is sort of a pun on one of the myriad of common names for brine shrimp. But if the name must change, I would recomend a name that emphasizes their primate relationships, or their similarities to mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, or seals, since they do not look very whale-like to me. Perhaps if calling them Delphinadapids, meaning "dolphin-lemurs" and also after the type genus of the more advanced family, would make more sense.

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  6. Dee TimmyHutchFanJanuary 24, 2009 at 8:29 PM

    Well, if anyone else has an idea for a better common name, let me know.

    ReplyDelete
  7. MetalraptorJanuary 26, 2009 at 5:11 PM

    Of course, these guys are descended from tree shrews, who are not exactly primates (but then again, they're more monkey than shrew).

    ReplyDelete

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