Metazoica back-up

Not to take away from Metazoica, but this is something that has been annoying me for a while. Since the beginning of the 21st century (give or take a few months or years), we have known that all maniraptoran dinosaurs were covered in feathers, whether it be the fluffy down of Sinosauropteryx or the surprisingly bird-like plumage of the dromaeosaurs. So, everyone started to draw their dinos with feathers, feathered theriznosaurs, feathered tyrannosaurs (though there is a whole other pet peeve associated with this), feathered raptors, etc. Except one group. Ornithomimids. Despite the fact that every other member of their clade was fluffy, paleontologists insist on drawing their ornithomimids smooth-skinned and naked. I can understand because at first Pelicanimimus , the only member of the clade with skin impressions, was thought to be smooth skinned, but when dinosaurs like Shenzousaurus were discovered, it was now known that these dinosaurs too were fluffy. So why hasn't paleoart c...

Now that I am back, I can continue this. Also known as Lagomerycines, at first, this family was inspired by Dixon’s rabbucks. But myself and a friend have been working on these animals and we’ve made them our own now. Though we have kept the basic idea going that they are derived from modern hares. Most species have the longer ears of hares and superb hearing. The eyesight is also very good in these animals. But the sense of smell is no better than ours. The ears are highly mobile, and capable of swiveling in different directions. The legs are long, and the feet are soft, with small hooves, rather than the fully-hooved feet of the animals presented in Dixon’s book. The incisors are elongate and grow out of the roof of the mouth. The tail is rather longer than those of hares, and usually held high when running and carried low when at rest. They live in rather large herds, up to 30 individuals. In many places, at their time of the era, these animals take the place of antelopes. Unlike mo...

Has anyone seen this story yet, about the baby tuataras found at the Kaori Wildlife Sanctuary in New Zealand? I think this is fantastic news, it means that tuataras might, just might, rebound from their past losses and be around in our future for our children and grandchildren to see. And they should be around for our children because tuataras are, quite frankly, fascinating creatures. They evolve faster than any other creature at the molecular level. They can live for over a century, and still be sexually potent . Not to mention they are the last of the sphenodontians, an ancient group of reptiles that look the place of lizards through much of the Mesozoic. Tuataras have another features that makes them even stranger; a third, or parietal, eye in the center of their forehead. If one was to look at the head of a baby tuatara, there would be a third black eye centered in between the other two in the middle of their head. Really. And this eye isn't just a freak mutation or a non-fun...

(An interpretation of the site by UTA artist Clinton Crowley) As long as we are talking about new/unknown and fascinating dinosaur sites in the U.S., I might as well bring up the new Arlington Archosaur Site in Arlington, Texas. This site has garnered a bit of attention in the last few days, and is rather interesting to quite a few people, myself included. One reason the Arlington Archosaur Site has been given so much attention is because it is in Arlington, Texas. Arlinton is smack dab in the middle of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, a huge urban area. Most of the time, cities tend to be built on sites that do not contain dinosaur fossils, but Dallas and Fort Worth are exceptions. Like twin magnets, these cities seem to just draw dinosaur fossils to them, resulting in many fantastic dinosaur finds. There have even been dinosaurs found in the DFW airport! The Arlington Archosaur Site itself is situated in the Woodbine Formation, a strata of rocks dating back to aproximately the Early ...

I wanted to post this, as so many are fascinated by my site. Sure, I know I have probably the first spec evo project on the internet. It's been my dream to make a site devoted to my creatures of the future world, which I had been working on since the early 90s. I started off with a bunch of lemur families and projected outward to include more. Including predators and prey and those in between. I'm still creating. A lot with the help of my newest buddy, Metalraptor. He was the first (and ONLY) one to convince me that I need to add felines (cats) to my Metazoic World. I sure as Hell was not going to listen to JohnFaa and the other losers on the SE forum cussing me out! NOOOO Way!! Thus came the birth of the 2 latest post-feline families, Barofelidae and Ailurocyonidae. Barofelids are basically very large felines (larger than they are today) with stubby tails, manes and basically built like a tank. Ailurocyonids evolved off the Barofelids, and are knuckle-walkers. They walk the Ea...

With all the interesting dinosaurs coming out of China, the western U.S., South America, the Sahara, and other such areas lately, some other interesting finds have been rather overlooked. However, I find this one site quite fascinating, for a variety of reasons. The site is the Chronister site in Bollinger County, Missouri. Since 1999, the site has produced many fossils of animals from the Late Cretaceous, including fish, turtles, and the dinosaur Hypsibema missouriensis . What exactly is Hypsibema missouriensis ? Well, in short it is a hadrosaur trying very hard to be a sauropod. I have read in some texts (though I cannot, for the life of me, remember what they were) that Hypsibema was one of the largest hadrosaurs, while probably not as big as Shantungosaurus , certainly big enough to rival many of the other largest hadrosaurs of all time. In fact, it was so large that on its discovery it was mistaken to be a small sauropod. It was probably one of the largest dinosaurs of Eastern Nor...

(The cover of said book) I am sick in bed today, and so I thought I would dust off a few of my speculative zoology tomes and read them. One of the books I picked out was Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons . Yes, despite what one might think, speculative biology isn't just about aliens, alternate timelines, and future beasts. Essentially, speculative biology encompasses a wide variety of topics, but all share one common thread; they attempt to document and explain the natural history of fantastic creatures through science (for the sake of this discussion, I lump in heavily defined magic in with science). However, this was not the case with Dragonology . It is so irritating how much it screwed up. I only had to turn to the first page to see them screw it up. On the very first page, the book attempts to describe the evolution of dragons. Unfortunately, it does it incredibly poorly. For example, they claim that a "four-legged dragon with wings" can evolve through Darwi...

I typed something similar to this on my Timmyfan blog, but I wanted to tell my friends here all about it. My sis Anna and I won the film-making competition!! We were one of the top 2 finalists, and I never even expected to get that close!!! But we were not only one of the top 2 finalists, we won first prize!! I said before that I wanted to take up film-making as a second hobby, this might just give me the confidence to do it. Out of ALL the people who entered, Anna and I won first place! They said our doggies were adorable and that I have talent. HA! I wanted to take this time to rub this in the face of one guy (he knows whom he is, LOL!) who thought I was crazy because I wanted to take up film-making. Seems only he thinks that. This is proof that I truly do kick ass!! LOL!! To my friends, forgive me for bragging, but I feel like the right to do so was already bought and paid for. So this is my moment. I didn't want to say anything earlier because I wasn't sure if we were goin...

Like Batman returns. LOL! I am back. Opportunity has knocked on my door, and I answered. I ran into a bit of very good luck yesterday and I found an awesome computer at a great price. So, I got it and here I am! I'd like Metalraptor to stay on though as a second author, if that's OK with him. I kinda like the idea of having 2 authors here. I am still spending time getting used to this computer. Some bugs need to be worked out. I almost felt like I haven't left. My sis Anna let me use her computer most of that time. But this week she had finals in college, so she wanted her computer back. But then yesterday we happened to be window shopping and found this laptop on sale, we had the cash in the bank for it so we got it. I love it too! As soon as I work out the bugs on here, it'll be totally awesome!!! Well, tonight my sis and I are going to have a special night, I will write all about it as soon as I return. A certain someone and his friends will be eating their words if ...

This is a story almost too zany to be true. Since the discovery of feathered theropods and the quilled Psittacosaurus , paleontologists have had the sneaking suspicion that all dinosaurs were feathered to some extent, even if not fully feathered as adults somewhat partially feathered instead, or else fully feathered as juveniles. For a while, suspicions have just been that, but now, we have clinching proof! Meet Tienyulong confucusi (there is some debate on whether the name is acceptable following the ICZN), a new Early Cretaceous heterodontosaurid from China. While Cretaceous heterodontosaurs are weird, but not unknown (the dinosaur Echinodon is oftetimes thought of as a heterodontosaur), the really shocking feature of this animal is the coat of quilly feathers it has running down its back and tail! These are definitely protofeathers too, as they resemble the protofeathers found in other dinosaurs, such as Bepiaosaurus , to an extent. What's even more interesting is that the qui...

(A picture of an azdarchid pterosaur next to a giraffe and a human for comparison, by the excellent Paleo-Artist Mark Witton.) To clarify, the subject of this week’s post is not the same as in this Penny Arcade strip. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/18/ Rather, this post discusses the possibility of gigantic, monstrous birds developing in the future. For years, scientists have been fascinated and intrigued on how the pterosaurs, the premier flying animal group of the Mesozoic, achieved such colossal sizes, particularly the azdarchids. Azdarchids were massive pterosaurs, which grew to the size of giraffes and had wingspans of over 40 feet. For a long time the lifestyle of these animals was a mystery, until it was suggested by Darren Naish and Mark Witton that azdarchids were terrestrial stalkers, similar in lifestyle to ground hornbills today. Even more surprisingly, it has been suggested by several paleontologists, such as David Unwin, that the sizes of the azdarchids were no...

While most people know of the familiar lions, tigers, and bears, there are many other, more interesting creatures lurking around in this world that few people ever knew existed. Some of these are particularly interesting, because they are excellent survivors, and they have shown to be highly adaptable. Others show strange adaptations that are not normally seen in the rest of the animal kingdom. Regardless, here are Seven animals you probably never heard of... 1. Peccaries I was very surprised to find how few people knew of these animals...especially since they live in my country. Peccaries, or javelinas as they are sometimes called over here in the states (though javelina may be used just to refer to the Collared Peccary, just FYI), are not pigs, but actually a group of native North American mammals, some of the few to survive the extinctions of the Late Miocene (the other survivors? Pronghorn, canids...and I think that's about it. All the rest are extirpitated or extinct). Unlike ...

We won the blog of the day award! Keep watching for more awards like this in the future. Yea, Metazoica!!! Yea to those who made this possible too! Check it out! Here's a visual of our award: And the bouquet: For me and Metalraptor, a bit of celebratory bubbly:

Since Metazoica isn ’t really a cat fan, I thought that this would be about the only time this blog ever really talks about the possibilities of cats surviving into the future. Cats are a rather specialized bunch of carnivores, lacking hindmost molars and being almost completely restricted to carnivory , but hey, that hasn ’t stopped a group from being successful. Look at snakes, all of them are obligate carnivores, and they’re one of the most successful groups on the planet. So, in this post we are going to pick out some of the more outstanding members of the cat family, and speculate on their future. Please note that cats like the cheetah or the lion are not included here, as they are rather endangered and their future does not look too bright. Jaguar ( Panthera onca ) Of all the pantherines , or big cats, the jaguar looks to be the only one to have a really good chance of surviving into the future. Jaguars are spread across a wide swath of land, ranging from Mexico to Argentina. ...

I was going to post something to some people who thought that just because I would be away for a while that they could say things about me in another site and I wouldn't know about it. But then I said no. I won't do it. Not now that this blog has won a blog of the day award. I don't want to roast anyone or anything just yet. I'll do it when I get back. Sorry. Go on with the scientific posts! Certain people will get their's real soon. ;)

I was going to wait until Friday to post something new here, but something that came up that just couldn't be ignored. Namely, this... Meet Screature, the latest in a long line of robotic dinosaur companions, including Roboraptor and their kin. Like many other robotic dinosaur "pets", Screature can be put into guard mode, roars, responds to your touch, and can interact with you via an infared sensor. But wait, Screature is different, can't you tell? Still can't get it, well look at this... (Image Courtesy of Wikipedia) Meet Dilophosaurus wetherelli, a large coelophysoid theropod found across North America, known from both fossils in the Arizona Kayenta Formation, and footprints scattered across New England and labelled "Eubrontes". "Screature", is the first robotic dilophosaurus...with a frill. For those of you that have been living under a rock for the past decade or two, Dilophosaurus' first and only appearance in film was in the famous (...

Not to take away from Metalraptor, but I thought I would just do one last family of the week for a while. This week it's the roos, the family Macropodidae. This is a family that is even still around today. During the Metazoic, it is still a very extensive family, with 32 distinct genera and 91 species ranging from the GBM range to New Zealand. They have adjusted to competition from the invading placentals, so they pretty much go on throughout the era. They range from tree-dwellers to rock-dwellers, to creatures of the grasslands. They are basically long-legged, much like today, bipedal animals, with big pouches in the abdominal region. But unlike modern roos, which can only get around by hopping, these kangaroos move like ostriches. The ears are large and can swivel independently. The eyes are large and in most species face sideways, with the exception of the Peradoradines, which are actually monkey-like kangaroos. In most species the tails are long, usually as long as the head and...

Well, uh, in case you haven’t read the title, Metazoica’s going to be out for a while. My name’s Metalraptor, and I’ll be your temporary host for the next few months while Metazoica works on her drawings and tries to find a new computer. I guess I should tell you a little bit about myself. I’m a scientist-in-training who is fascinated with the “upper vertebrates”, archosaurs and mammals, but really love vertebrates in general. Among the vertebrates, I must say I am a mammal addict, specifically Oligocene-Miocene mammals of the world. I also have a speculative biology future world project of my own “Beasties of the Future,” but I don’t have the gall to put it on the web. Now, I hate blogs that merely tell you “I got up today, I brushed my teeth, yadda, yadda, yadda”. So, instead of telling you about my boring life, instead I will be presenting to you a variety of essays on biology. Most of these will correlate with Speculative Biology, though the connection between others and the subjec...