Category: Uncategorized
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Symmetrodonts: A Missed Opportunity
(Special thanks to M.) Chronoperates paradoxus by Diego Ortega Anatol. Symmetrodonts are a group of mammals that is distinguished by, what else, semi-symmetrical molar tooth cusps – an in-between between the triconodont condition of earlier synapsids and the more complex cusps of more derived mammals. Most of the clade seems to be a wastebasket taxon,…
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Zealanditheria: An island of misfits
(As with all animal pages so far, this only goes so far into the Mioceneā¦ for now) Zealanditherium worthyi by Dylan Bajda. In our world, the Saint Bathans Fauna provided a mandible and femur belong to a non-therian mammal, on the Miocene of New Zealand. In our world, this was merely a curiosity of time, as…
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Saint Bathans Fauna
Zealanditherium worthyi by Dylan Bajda. The non-marine fossil reccord of New Zealand is scarce. This is because through most of the Cenozoic New Zealand was underwater. However, some land must have remained, as when the fossil reccord does pick up again, we find terrestrial animals and plants that must have been vicariants. The Miocene age…
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The first great intelligence
Mazda sraosha individual with ceremonial tools before it: a bone hook, a wood staff, a perforated conch and an obsidian dagger. By corvarts As noted before, multituberculates were already fairly intelligent and social. This did not meant they would inherently develop sapience should they have continued to survive. The evolution of higher intelligence is known…
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Miocene
Two apex predators, the microcosmodontid Shah rajah and the kogaionid Arsinoedon mastix. The latter is dominating the kill, but the former will ultimately outlast it due to it less specialised diet. By corvarts. Balmier than the previous Oligocene, the Miocene in our timeline was pretty much “out with the old, in with the modern”, creating…
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Enantiornithean Earth
(Note: is an AU, not canon to the main project. Essentially, just replace our birds, the Neornithes, with Enantiornithes and its the same world, otherwise ruled by multituberculates and other crap) Yungavolucris and Halimornis by midiaou and xenopleurodon respectively. Both are real life Cretaceous taxa, showing that these birds were already diversifying into aquatic ecologies.…
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Multituberculate Sounds
Multituberculates A) have a modern mammalian ear and B) are inferred to have a functional larynx (based on all three extant mammal branches as well as evidence on other therapsids). There’s evidence of complex social behaviour and taeniolabidids at least have deep nasal chambers, so all in all they must have been as vocal and…
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The three Multituberculate Earths
There are three iterations of this project (four if you include the Nyctosaurid Earth and Enantiornithean Earth AUs): The first is irreversibly lost due to Google being a bitch and terminating my account for no explained reason (they’ll compensate me monetarily for this and several important legal files lost on my drive due to this).…
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Iberia: The tip of the world
Illyriolestes piscimimus, a freshwater dryolestoid from european waterways during the Oligocene. By lizardsaurus. The Iberian Peninsula is an odd player across the history of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic. It served as a land bridge between Europe – and by extension Asia and North America – and Africa – and by extension the southern continents as…
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Nyctosaurid Earth
(Note: is an AU, not canon to the main project. Essentially, just replace birds with nyctosaurs and its the same world, otherwise ruled by multituberculates and other crap) Nyctosaurids were a clade of pterosaurs from the Cretaceous. They first appear right at the beginning, a humerus from Transylvania a mere few million years after the…