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DK's Conceptualisations
Topic Started: Dec 16 2013, 09:44 PM (843 Views)
the dark phoenix
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the dark phoenix of wonderland
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DK1000
Dec 10 2014, 02:08 AM
the dark phoenix
Dec 9 2014, 07:39 PM
I keep hearing somewhere that archosaurs as a whole had the feather gene only it was dormant in some branches. So "Dracofuzz" is a gene even found in real animals.
My personal take on things was that the potential for filamentous integument goes back as far as reticula, which is why I found it reasonable to suggest "dracofuzz" in the first place, especially given their small endotherms that can fly.

the dark phoenix
Dec 9 2014, 07:39 PM
Also I'm ok with the amphibians.

BTW Salamanders appeared in the middle Jurassic, can a already present group replace them?
Key word there being "appeared", the fossil record for salamanders may begin in the middle Jurassic, but molecular clock estimates suggest that frogs and salamanders diverged from each other before the early Triassic during the Permian, so they were already present when this project begins (hence why they're on the list I made).

Competition may not necessarily be a problem in this instance, as salamanders coexisted with a very similar (now extinct) group of amphibians called albanerpetontids for pretty much their entire existence until the last 2.5 million years, so another set of similar amphibians probably isn't going to be a big problem. When in doubt, niche partitioning.
Maybe they can carve a niche and eat their competitors XD
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DK1000
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DK1000
Aug 13 2014, 04:46 AM
We interrupt your regularly scheduled nothing for some actual content.
S-S-S-S-S-S-S-SKETCHDUMP.

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Rather smudged and spotty, but eh, sketches are sketches.

Super-duper close ups and details:


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"Dicyrenian": I'm thinking of making this more or less the general body shape for the dicyrenians. I'd originally been toying with using the tail as the main mode of propulsion, and I had sketches of dicyrenians with a very cetacean- or dugong-like tail, with horizontal flukes and having it move up and down vertically. Then I remembered dicynodont spines moved from side to side, not up and down like mammals. I was considering giving them a vertical fluke instead, although I wasn't very fond of that honestly. In the end I copped out decided that dicynodont tails were too small for generating propulsion in the first place, so I opted for a more pinniped- or turtle-like approach instead, having the hindlimbs function as both propulsion and as steering organs. I'm rather pleased with how that turned out actually, quite suites it I think.

The head on this one is a little more specific, the idea in mind being that this dicyrenian is a durophage, with a short, broad, rounded snout like that of walruses or Odobenocetops. The beak shape was inspired by Baby Joe the Parasaurolophus and overgrown turtle beaks, but I think this shape works for such a lifestyle. Some other more general features of the head include raised nostrils and eyes, since you know, aquatic and what not.


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"Gallumph": Oh hey, it's the long-headed dicynodont again! Or the gallumph as I've been calling it without ever mentioning before! Not much to say about this one, I just like drawing gallumphs.


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"Giant terrestrial drepanosaur": This idea goes fairly far back, and it hasn't particularly changed much so why I never brought it up before is a mystery (hint: the answer is I'm lazy).

The inspiration came from sloths. Since tree sloths and drepanosaurs are vaguely similar(?), and since sloths have came down to the ground multiple times, I thought to myself 'Why not terrestrial drepanosaurs?', and thus this thing came into being. As you can tell, it's a knuckle walker to protect its large claws, and like some ground sloths, it walks on the sides of its hindfeet. This is both a deliberate homage as well as trying to keep with drepanosaur anatomy, since their hindfeet are like chameleons, with inverted toes suited for gripping branches rather than walking on flat surfaces. It retains the tail-claw for really no reason other than Rule of Cool, except maybe for defence or something (I have it curled up over the tail to stop it from dragging against the ground and dulling). I pictured this sort as being a large herbivore of sorts (although I can easily picture it scavenging carcasses just because it can), but I can envision related species or totally independently terrestrial lineages being insectivores like anteaters (and since ground sloths and drepanosaurs appear to have made burrows, perhaps some big burrowing terrestrial drepanosaurs too? (Try saying that three times fast)).

That bowling-pin looking thing behind its head is supposed to represent a person for scale.


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"Parasitic temnospondyl; "Terrestrial lamprey"": A preliminary sketch of that parasitic neotenous temnospondyl I talked about over in Dilo's topic. I'm not particularly happy with this sketch, and I'd have preferred to have had some references to how the mouth should look and the legs and so on, but I think it gets the point across. You can read more about this thing in Dilo's topic, since I'd just be repeating myself if I wrote about this thing.


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"Giant filter-feeding temnospondyl": You may recall a long while back I said something about 'giant filter-feeding pleurosaurs'. A slightly-less long while back I took a look over the entire idea, all the crude sketches and doodles I had of the things and realised 'This is really stupid'. The whole thing was convoluted and (to me) pretty implausible; it involved making the assumption marine pleurosaurs were either around by the Triassic or the exact Jurassic forms would evolve here anyway (Chaos Theory pls), their anatomy and evolution was ridiculously convoluted, and the idea was basically stolen from a Specworld mosasaur design that I thought was neat. Those were dark times, and I am ashamed.

Naturally the idea was scrapped before it ever saw the light of day (RIP in peaces). Then I got interested in marine temnospondyls and the allure for giant filter-feeders reared its ugly head again, but this time in a much more plausible (and IMO more exciting) way. So what exactly's going on here? For starters, these things don't use baleen plates like the pleurosaurs and whales do for filtering food, they use their gills. Initially, I was held back by the thought that marine temnospondyls would have feathery gills, but apparently some(?) tadpoles do have gill slits as well as/instead of feathery gills, so I think I'm in the clear for this one. Like large filter-feeding sharks, this thing has gill rakers on the inside of its gills to catch food as water passes over the gills. The sketch on the left shows it feeding, mouth open and throat expanded, whilst the bottom right shows it with its mouth closed and looking a bit more like a regular temnospondyl. Sort of. Not really.

Basically it's like a big ol' basking/whale/megamouth shark, except its an amphibian.


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Aaaaand finally, it's everyone's favourite flying, fuzzy crocodylomorph, a dracosuchid...!

...and that's about. Honestly this thing was just to fill in the empty space in the top right corner of the page. But it does show off the fuzz, wing attachment and nifty leg scale things I keep drawing them with, so that's something.


>And thus, his contribution completed, DK crawls back into his hole to aestivate for another twenty years.
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DK1000
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Twenty years? Make that four months.

Posted Image

Full sized image

Alright, starting from the top left and moving clockwise:

  • A giant azendohsaurid which I have opted to name Rhedosaurus harryhauseni due to the superficial resemblance these things bear to the "dinosaur" in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (at least in my opinion), while the species name was (in canon) to honour Ray Harryhausen who animated it (the name is misspelt here since these were all drawn at school and I couldn't recall his last name correctly). Bowling-pin Guy returns to represent a person for scale.

    Rhedosaurus (and any other large azendohsaurids) would be a relatively high browsing animal, probably from around the Jurassic and perhaps either being outcompeted or fizzling out into extinction at some point before the present.

  • A fragment of rubber (or "eraser" as you yanks would say) irrelevant to the project.

  • Sketches of Teraterpeton and Smok based on memory (because school).

  • A bipedal(?) shuffling drepanosaur of some sort (along with a traditional one on a branch). Not necessarily designed as a specific species or for a clade, just a form/movement I wanted to draw.

  • A giant aetosaur, featuring a mace-tail with spikes derived from osteoderms. This sort of concept will be familiar to those of you paying attention to Dilo's topic, and this represents my take on the subject. Bowling-pin Guy makes yet another appearance.

  • A fossorial aetosaur, with enlarged hands and feet, short tail and either a shovel-shaped snout or a sensitive nose of soft tissue, not sure which at this point. I wanted to go full on mole with this one, the idea that this aetosaur doesn't just live in burrows and comes out to feed and such but lives a completely subterranean lifestyle, with reduced eyes and the like.

  • A marine, durophagous doswelliid; this concept reaches back to when I proposed we wipe out the durophagous placodonts during the Toarcian Turnover as something that could evolve to refill that sort of niche. I'm not entirely happy with this sketch, but it gets the main elements I wanted to show across.

    As with my previous descriptions, the snout is long and narrow while the back of the skull is wide, and the body is made up of a tubular (or cuboidal I should say) carapace made of either fused or overlapping ribs and/or other armour (think Parahupehsuchus). In a sort of reversal of Lariosaurus, the front limbs are webbed and retain their claws and fingers to hold on to the seabed and rocks, while the back limbs have been adapted into paddles. It might make more sense for the reverse, so this configuration may change in the future. The "fin" at the end of the tail is made up of raised osteoderms, a la Vancleavea, as opposed to elongate neural spines. The neck is like that purely for aesthetic reasons (for now).

  • The Stegosaurus and unfortunate Allosaurus are unrelated to the project and are just a concept for another drawing, while the head above it is supposed to be a Carnufex drawn from memory.



So there we have it, another sketch dump. If you want me to elaborate on any of these concepts or others I've posted before, just ask, I'm terrible at writing down everything clearly and concisely.
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the dark phoenix
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I didn't know about azendohsaurids. I guess they'd compete with the giant dicynodonts and the silesaurs. Since they are only known from teeth and a skull, perhaps we can manipulate them into a more therizinosaur niche? I'd honestly would like to see a reptilian non-dinosaur megatherium or chalicotherium.


A while back before we redid the site I think I mentioned borrowing aetosaurs before... Just more for the geosuchids to eat unless this thing is huge.

Also with the extinction of the poor placos I support this box ribbed croc.
Edited by the dark phoenix, May 10 2015, 05:10 AM.
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Dilophoraptor
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the dark phoenix
May 10 2015, 05:09 AM
I didn't know about azendohsaurids. I guess they'd compete with the giant dicynodonts and the silesaurs
they can always be in different areas.
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the dark phoenix
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I think we said Silesaurs would live in the Americas while the rest of the world had the gallumphs.
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DK1000
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the dark phoenix
May 10 2015, 05:09 AM
I didn't know about azendohsaurids. I guess they'd compete with the giant dicynodonts and the silesaurs.
I think you'e exaggerating the level of competition that would be present between large herbivores in an ecosystem. "Large herbivore" isn't all that specific of a niche, and there are numerous ways that large herbivores are able to partition their niches within ecosystem so that they can coexist. The ridiculously high number of sauropods present in the Morrison Formation and the high diversity of species in the Dinosaur Park Formation are examples of this, where numerous large herbivores are able to coexist by adapting to different methods of feeding.

In the Dinosaur Park Formation, for example, hadrosaurs like Lambeosaurus and Saurolophus were high browsers, ceratopsians like Chasmosaurus and Styracosaurus were low browsers, and ankylosaurs like Euoplocephalus and Panoplosaurus were grazers. Furthermore, these herbivores all had varied sets of teeth, beaks, jaw strength, etc. that means they were feeding on different plants and so would further avoid direct competition (compare the masticating jaws of hadrosaurs to the shearing jaws of ceratopsians, or the broad mouth of Euoplocephalus to the narrow-snouted Panoplosaurus).

Likewise, large herbivores in MN would be able to coexist with each other by partitioning their niches. Silesaurs, dicynodonts and azendohsaurids already have quite varied jaws and teeth that imply distinct feeding methods, so partitioning their niches should be fairly easy.

This illustration by Dilo illustrates the concept rather well, with a high browsing "silesauropod", a low-to-mid level browsing aetosaur feeding on vegetation and a dicynodont tucking into a log (based on the presence of wood in dicynodont coprolites).



the dark phoenix
May 10 2015, 05:09 AM
Since they are only known from teeth and a skull, perhaps we can manipulate them into a more therizinosaur niche? I'd honestly would like to see a reptilian non-dinosaur megatherium or chalicotherium.
Azendohsaurus is actually known from rather complete remains discovered in Madagascar which were described as:

"Azendohsaurus madagaskarensis possessed an elongated neck, short tail, and stocky limbs. The manus and pes have unexpectedly short digits, terminating in large, recurved ungual phalanges. Together with the skull, knowledge of the postcranial skeleton elevates A. madagaskarensis to another highly apomorphic and bizarre Triassic archosauromorph."

This description more or less resembles the mid-Triassic archosauriform Pamelaria, and it may be related to Azendohsaurus, so that would probably be an alright frame of reference.

As for reptilian, herbivorous knuckle-walkers, I think I've got you covered.



the dark phoenix
May 10 2015, 05:09 AM
A while back before we redid the site I think I mentioned borrowing aetosaurs before... Just more for the geosuchids to eat unless this thing is huge.
I was thinking that burrowing aetosaurs of this sort would be pretty small, around the same size as modern moles and the like.



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Also with the extinction of the poor placos I support this box ribbed croc.
Don't fret, the placodonts will live on with the henodontids.
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the dark phoenix
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As much as I'd like to add some ideas to these or make animals out of these, I think I'm just gonna stick with the animals I am working on and know a bit better.
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DK1000
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An entelodont/Andrewsarchus-esque traversodont of some sort, modelled after the frightfully badarse skull of Diademodon with (what's intended to be) a more carnivorous set of nashers and a very wide-gape (a la entelodonts).
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the dark phoenix
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Would the proto-mammals get a chance to use this form?
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DK1000
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I can't think of anything preventing such a morphology and lifestyle off the top of my head. Traversodonts were already reaching large sizes during the late Triassic, so they're already established as large animals in their ecosystems.

Granted, traversodonts were mostly, if not all herbivores, but the common ancestor of cynogathians appears to have been a carnivore, and large carnivores are known from this branch of the cynodont tree (*coughcoughCynognathuscoughcough*). Plus, it wouldn't be the first time a group of classically herbivorous animals (e.g. artiodactyls) has produced carnivores (looking at you, cetancodontomorpha!)
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the dark phoenix
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I think we should have some guys that specialize in killing proto-mammals.

All I picture at the moment is these guys slowly getting into bigger niches until we get reptilian bears and wolves instead of retrosaurs, false dinos, and rauchies.
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