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I thought this was an interesting article here, animals that play dead risk getting others killed. I know some animals like opossums play dead, that's what they are famous for. Often, like all other animals that put on the same act, they smell dead too. This makes them unattractive to predators. That's the whole purpose. Not too complicated! But this article talks about how the same act that saves the opossum just puts other animals at risk of being hunted. That could be why opossums have survived for so long. Even though other seemingly smarter and better adapted mammals have gone extinct. It says humans also fein death. I don't know I never have, and I wouldn't think such an act would work if you are being attacked by another person. Anyway, here is the article: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/04/29/playing-dead-survival.html Animals that Play Dead Sacrifice Others Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News April 29, 2009 -- Many insects and animals, including humans, enter i...

These animals were inspired by Dixon's tapimus, presented in After Man, and the Shag-rats presented in The Future Is Wild. I took the two, did a little tweaking with their anatomy and made them my own, putting both together in this family. Though I did decide to keep the names. They are descended from modern rats, and instead of making them like they appear in Dixon's creations, I made them look more like great dane dogs. Only pudgier. Since rodents do have the long incisors, I had to keep the square shaped muzzle. The ears are larger and more pointed in the genus Tapimus , but smaller and more rounded in the shag-rats ( Lasiomus ). If you get a good look at the modern maras, you could get a great idea of what I figured these animals to look like, only with tails in tact. The tails are not long, it reaches just past their hocks, and it's enough to keep the animals well balanced when trying to make a quick get-away. The necks are not very long, but not very short. The legs a...

I don't usually talk about the famous (or to some, infamous) blog Pharyngula, since I try to talk more about the science of paleontology and evolution here, rather than the current political and social battles the scientific theory (which is not the same as one getting drunk one night and coming up with something) is facing in the United States. Not to mention PZ Myers doesn't talk much about speculative biology. But recently, he posted something so good I just had to link to it...vampire math. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/theoretical_ecology_of_vampire.php Basically, Brian Thomas, a theoretical ecologist, decided to do some calculations to try and calculate the overall population dynamics of vampires in Sunnydale based on a bit of predator-prey dynamics in the wild. Now it must be mentioned that these population calculations were done on the aspect of vampires from the Buffyverse, and so are affected by the in-show continuity (the Hellmouth and such), but we can ...

An illustration of Puijila darwini by Carnegie Museum of Natural History artist Mark A. Klinger I just heard about this new, great discovery from the Canadian Arctic, Puijila darwini , a new primitive semi-terrestrial pinniped. For a long time, the origin of pinnipeds, seals, sea lions, and walruses, was a highly murky and highly controversial subject in mammal palentology. Some have even argued that "pinnipeds" are a polyphyletic, or artificial, grouping, true seals being closer related to weasels and their kin, while sea lions and walruses were cousins of bears. Lacking good fossils of pinnipeds (especially early ones), Huxley thought he saw a connection between the teeth of modern pinnipeds and the primitive teeth of creodonts, which to him suggested that seals were descendants of these ancient carnivores. This made sense at the time, seeing as there were no good early seal fossils and the other major group of aquatic mammals, the whales, were thought at the time to desce...

Yes, this is an example of "doing exactly what it says on the tin". But this isn't for me, or Metazoica. In fact, its for a new exciting up-and-coming speculative evolution project that is due to hit the world full force in May. Zach Miller of When Pigs Fly and Will Baird of The Dragon's Tales are planning a new and exciting project; what might the world look like if the P-T extinction never happened. Now this is probably one of the hardest speculative evolution projects to do, the fauna and flora we have today is descended from the mere 10% of life that survived the end of the horrific P-T extinction, so one really has to bone up on their Permian knowledge before they take this project on (as in study the remaining 90%). Before the extinction, there were heavily armored pariasaurs, ferocious gorgonopsids, and numerous dicynodonts, just to name a few. No one has really attempted this project before, since it covers such huge spans of time and few have really taken the...

This is the family Cervainiidae, and they are quite closely related to the tusked sinecrus, only these animals do not have tusks. They do however, live the lives similar to their tusked relatives and the modern manatees of today. These animals are generally larger than the tusked sinecrus. They are solitary animals that spend their entire lives in or near the water. They feed on the vegetation that grows in the water. Either aquatic plants, grasses, even algae. Sometimes they will even crawl out of the water to feed on the leaves of low-growing trees. Some species do this more than others though. The foreflippers are very long and powerful, and equipped with elephant-like fingernails. The tail is very long and propels the animal in an undulating fashion, much like whales. The eyes are relatively small, the mussle is short and blunt, but the mouth is rather flexible, almost like those of most land-based herbivores. The hind flippers are very small, and almost useless. In a small way tho...

In the spirit of my habit of bringing rare, obscure dinosaurs to your attention, I’d like to introduce you to Labocania anomala , a theropod dinosaur from the peninsula of Baja California. A well-kept secret of paleontology, Baja California is rich in fossils of the Late Cretaceous period, about 70 or so million years ago. Compared with “Alta California”, a slang name often given to our own state of California, Baja contains approximately twice as many Cretaceous dinosaurs in the northern half of the peninsula than the entire state does as a whole. In addition to Labocania, the peninsula has also revealed specimens of Lambeosaurus , Albertosaurus , and even specimens of strange polyglyphanodont lizards, strange iguana-like herbivores related to skinks. But what kind of theropod is Labocania ? That’s what makes Labocania so fascinating, the fact that we don’t know. Gregory S. Paul has suggested that Labocania was an allosaur, a Late Cretaceous specimen of a group that was supposed to ...

Many speculative evolutionary scenarios have primates going extinct. However, as we shall see, primates are actually very adaptable and successful creatures, and will very likely survive into the future. The first primate, Purgatorius , appeared in the Late Cretaceous or Early Paleocene of North America. If one were to look at this animal, the idea that these animals led to monkeys, or even us, would not come to mind. This animals was about the size of a possum, and if one could not tell that this animal gave live birth, one might mistake it for an odd possum as well. The actual age of Purgatorius is in debate. Some fossils of Purgatorius seem to suggest that it was present in the Late Cretaceous, while other scientists seem to suggest that Purgatorius is earliest Paleocene in age, and the Cretaceous fossils in question were washed out of their original burial position and reburied in Cretaceous strata. However, if the former idea is true, then the primates would have been around duri...

As a mammal paleontology enthusiast, I have come across numerous reconstructions of prehistoric mammals. However, one particular group is always reconstructed the same way. The ground sloths are always portrayed as omnivorous opportunists, feeding on leaves and plant matter, but also eating meat and carrion as well. The entire idea that ground sloths could have eaten meat comes from a single paper entitled “ Megatherium , the stabber”. In it, the scientists suggest that Megatherium and its ground sloth kin were carnivorous superpredators, on the sole basis that the muscles of Megatherium were strongly anchored, and could thus move fast. This claim is rather dumb. While being able to move an react fast does mean Megatherium was bad-ass, it doesn’t make it a carnivore. We know that ground sloths were more energetic than their slow, tree-climbing kin today, so it makes sense that they could react and move faster. In short, if you tick a Megatherium or an Eremotherium off, it will take y...

This is a small family of animals that are derived from elephant shrews. They somewhat resemble the modern manatees, and are found only in what is today the Hawaiian Islands. They are rather more slenderly built than manatees, and have a long tail and small hind flippers. The front flippers are large and strong and tipped with short, flat fingernails. They are very flexible and used for grasping the aquatic plants and grasses that these animals feed on. The body is long and barrel-shaped, the head is short and blunt, the canine teeth have become tusks that grow outward rather than up or downward. There is no fur, but the flesh can be very brilliantly colored, especially in the males. The tail is like those of whales, only somewhat longer. They propel themselves through the water with an undulating motion of their tail. They are considerably faster and more high-energy swimmers than manatees. Like manatees though, they inhabit lakes and ponds. The forelimbs are powerful enough that thes...

So what is parallel evolution? What are some good examples? Well, parallel evolution is when different species are alike in either physical features or natural habits. Modern examples of parallel evolution are how tree shrews are like a lot of modern lower primates. Both families live in trees, have opposable fingers and toes, and tree shrews even closely resemble the earliest primate families. However, they are not really related. Though that is still a subject of some debate. Or like the similarities between beavers and otters. Both are adapted for an almost fully aquatic lifestyle. But they are in no way related. The list of parallel evolution just goes on and on. I was looking at some of my own animals of the future and noticed I took advantage of this theory quite a bit! For example, the similarities between the family Promonsamiidae and the species Oreolemur . Both are pentadactyls of the Metazoic that take to the water, instead of the trees. They resemble each other in a lot of ...

Don't mind me, I'm doing a test. For some reason, the comment option was eliminated from the last post and I don't know why.

I re-watched my old copy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail recently, and it got me thinking, specifically about this scene here... My question is, if the world actually does go nutters and a rabbit does develop carnivory, what exactly would it look and act like? Its not exactly as far-fetched as it seems, rabbit mothers do eat their own young on occasion to hide the smell of a dead baby, though it is highly unlikely. So for the sake of discussion lets look at the biology of Carnilagus montypythonorum The first think one has to ask about this rabbit is the teeth. Lagomorphs, like their cousins the rodents, have large, evergrowing teeth, which allow them to tear through tough plant matter. However, unlike rodents, rabbits also have a second, smaller pair of incisors in the front of the mouth, which help to reinforce the first pair. The first pair of incisors will become our killing tools for the rabbit. The incisors will become hypertrophied, forming long, spear-like fangs. But what of ...

As many of you may have guessed, yesterday's post was a humorous prank, for April Fools Day. I wanted to just mention a disclaimer that there is no feathered crurotarsian named Agriosuchoides inexpectatus . In fact, that's why I called it Agriosuchoides instead of Agriosuchus , so as not to make a cool name a nomen dubium. I hope you all enjoyed my little joke as much as I did, and be sure to keep tuning into Metazoica.

Hot on the heels of the recently discovered feathered ornithiscian Tienyulong confucusi from China is another amazing discovery, one that shakes up our idea of archosaurs as we know them. For years now, the Fergana region of Kyrgyzstan has been known to produce amazingly preserved fossils, mostly insects and invertebrates, but occasionally strange and unusual vertebrates, such as the enigmatic Sharovipteryx and Longisquama. Well, today, another strange critter made that list. Meet Agriosuchoides inexpectatus, a crurotarsian archosaur from the Late Triassic (Ladinian/Carnian time) of Kyrgystan. This find is important enough by itself, the anatomy of Agriosuchoides appears to suggest that it is the most primitive crocodylomorph ever found, possible related to the sphenosuchians or other primitive, gracile crocodiles. But that is not even the most exciting part. The most exciting part of all is that the fossil appears to be preserved with what appear to be protofeathers around the should...