I had a lot of fun with those Permian drawings, so I decided to do another quick set of designs for my red bubble! Link will be in a reblog. If you’d like other flags or flag combos, just ask!
[ID: Several versions of the same drawing, showing two cartoony Opabinia facing each other. They are aquatic arthropods with segmented bodies with fin-like appendages, five eyes, and a single long facial appendage with a grasper at the end. The two are forming a heart shape with their curved facial appendages. Cursive text above them reads, “Gaymbrian Period.” In each image, the animals’ segments are colored with the colors of a different pride flag. In the first, one is the color of the original 9-stripe gay flag, while the other is trans flag colors. There are also two in gay flag colors, two in pan colors, two in bi colors, and two in lesbian colors. End ID.]
That rabbit/hare post is messing me up. I’d thought they were synonyms. Their development and social behavior are all different. They can’t even interbreed. They don’t have the same number of chromosomes. Dogs, wolves, jackals, and coyotes can mate with each other and have fertile offspring but rabbits and hares cant even make infertile ones bc they just die in the womb. Wack.
These
are more genetically compatible than These
and that’s why morphology-based phylogeny has Issues
The problem is perspective. People always think dogs are the ‘standard’ animal, the metric to use for whether or not two organisms “look like” they’re related. When in fact they’re a massive outlier due to the fact that we fucked up this lineage of wolf beyond recognition with selective breeding. It’s why people always say “breed” when they mean “species”, especially when talking about groups like lizards which can’t even be defined cladistically since some of them are closer to snakes than each other. To say nothing of fish.
I once read an article that emphasized there is no such thing as a fish.Sharks and rays, lamprey, lobe-finned fish like lungfish and coelacanth, bichir and sturgeon, and of course the multiple infraclasses of more “modern” fish groups are all only very distantly related to one another. They’ve maintained semi-similar body structures only because there are limited ways to efficiently move through water as a vertebrate.
This
And this
Are more distantly related from one another than you and I are from a lungfish
Which is absolutely fuckin wild.
Not only that, but all of us air-breathing land vertebrates, all the lizards and chickens and people and frogs, are closer to one another than those three “fish” are to one another as well.
these
are genetically closer than these
and…
these
are genetically closer than these
and my personal favorite, it really fucks with people…
these
are more genetically similar than these
COOL.
Some phylogeny for your evening reading, folks. :)
Is it true that some lizards are more closely related to snakes than to other lizards? Holy crap, I did not know that!
Amargasaurus cazaui was a sauropod dinosaur with a very distinctive-looking skeleton, sporting a double row of long bony spines along its neck and back. It lived in what is now Argentina during the Early Cretaceous, about 129-122 million years ago, and was fairly small compared to many other sauropods, reaching about 10m in length (~33’) with a proportionally short neck compared to its body size.
And despite being known from fairly complete skeletal remains there’s still a lot we don’t know about this dinosaur – especially what was actually going on with those vertebral spines. While it’s sometimes been depicted with skin sails over the spines, for the last couple of decades the general opinion has trended towards them being more likely to have been covered by spiky keratinous horn-like sheaths.
But recently that’s been brought back into question. A detailed study of the microscopic bone structureofAmargasaurus’ spines shows no evidence for keratin attachment and instead found textures associated with skin coverings, along with an extensive web of ligaments connecting the spines to each other along each row.
Masks are probably still going to be part of our daily life for a while. So why not wear a nice one! This one has over 20 critters from the Cambrian fitted into a pattern.
Mask has resizable ear loops and a nose wire for a perfect fit. You can even insert a filter for better protection.
Therizinosaurus lived in the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia some 70 million years ago. It is also one of the latest dinosaurs to be turned into a movie monster by the Jurassic World franchise. Available as a t-shirt in multiple sizes and colors.
Like most paleonerds, you probably have a favorite type of dinosaur. Maybe you are a fan of theropods, maybe you are more into sauropods or maybe you are more of a ceratopsian person. No matter what sort of dino you prefer we’ve got you covered! Choose one of out t-shirts and let us know what you fancy.
Do you ever wish you could get the chance to talk about paleontology more often? Of course, you do! Well, problem solved with any of these fun t-shirts. Get conversations started with strangers over topics like pterosaurs, dinosaurs (even feathered dinosaurs!) and evolution.
These prehistoric amphibians, ranging from the tiny Microbrachis to the 30 ft long behemoth Prionosuchus, roamed the earth’s swamps and wetlands millions of years ago. They are now gathered together for a primordial swamp party in this charming full-color poster.
