A small community of Selkirkia, a tube dwelling cambrian priapulid, in the peritidal Pika formation in Alberta Canada.

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@cambriandude
A small community of Selkirkia, a tube dwelling cambrian priapulid, in the peritidal Pika formation in Alberta Canada.
Peytoia nathorsti
Everyone's favorite five eyed freak of the cambrian, Opabinia regalis. An animal that's weird even when compared to it's closer relatives.
The giants of a shallow world.
---------------------------------------------------- Ramskoeldia platyacantha is one of the largest known cambrian radiodonts at over a meter in length.
Reconstruction of Olenoides serratus,
Olenoides serratus is probably one of the most famous trilobites of the Cambrian and possibly the entire paleozoic. Despite historically being depicted as a simple prey animals, these arthropods would be vicious predators to any little worm.
Paucipodia inermis, an unarmored 15cm long lobopopodian from the Chengjiang Biota of Yunnan China.
A small pod of the newly described stem-group chaetognath Timorebestia koprii observed at a depth of nearly 400 meters. At a size of over 20 centimetres, it is the largest known gnathiferan.
Nectocaris pteryx, a relativity famous10 centimeter long creature from the Burgess shale formation. Being an active predator, It would have likely eaten soft-bodied swimming animals like isoxys and Metaspriggina.
Although it's taxonomic grouping has been up to some debate, the resemblance between the recently described Timorebestia and other nectocaridids such as petalilium leads me to believe that nectocaridids could stem-group chaetognaths. (A proper study is required to confirm this!)
Despite being one of the most recognizable radiodonts, Schinderhannes bartelsi is probably one of the most challenging radiodont to reconstruct due to being known from one fossil and having such strange morphology.
omg ok so i was trying to look up how to sex a centipede and one of the first results was an obviously ai-generated article with these absolutely incredible images of “centipedes” lmao. they are so hilariously bad i just had to share
This shit is why I hate looking for art references now, 50% is ai generated dogshit being spammed by adobe and other sites. I just want coherent images for fucks sake, corporate techbro sludge muddying the waters for everyone not just artists.
Amplectobelua Stephenensis from the Burgess Shale Formation. Although being half the size of it's larger, older relative A. Trispinata, it was still nearly the size of the famous Anomalocaris from the same formation!
you should talk about your thoughts on rw fanon (looking with huge eyes)
Oh god, there's a lot of major misconceptions have concreted into fanon, mostly around ancient society and ascension.
First things first! Ascension is not death! They are entirely separate things treated entirely separately by the text of the game. I can see where the interpretation is coming from, but it doesn't really align with how the text treats either subject. Five Pebbles may want to remove the self destruction taboo, but from his reaction to the rot it's clear that he doesn't want to die. Conflation of ascension and death only comes up as an offhand possibility that pebbs makes on iterator 4chan, when he's going into the possibilities of scenarios that even the other sliverists are doubtful of! (let me make clear that I am not a sliverist by any means)
Ascension is more of talked about as a form of transcendence, yeah? A Bell, Eighteen Amber Beads talks about their sitution as being "To have grasped at the boundless infinites of the cosmic void…", not as them seeking an end to life.
The beta dialogue goes into more detail, mentioning the "infinities of time and space" and the "boundless fractal planes of spirit and reality...", though this dialogue was cut and it's hard to tell how much it reflects the concept as in the released game.
As for the cultural misconceptions... there's A Lot to talk about, but the first that comes to mind is the common conflation of the five natural urges and the christian concept of sin.
It is true that the negation of urges is mentioned by moon as an alternative method of ascension, but much of what we know about the culture of the people who the fandom calls the ancients (which makes discussion of the depths a mess but that's something for another post entirely) points towards the urges not being seen as shameful.
Even the first urge does not seem to be particularly scorned! Being a warrior is presented as a cause for bragging in the Shaded Citadel pearl, being comparable with being an artist and a fashion legend. The second urge, also does not seem to be suppressed. Multiple sources attribute some level of honour to parenthood! The aforementioned pearl also mentions Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel as being a "Mother, Father and Spouse" without any hint of shamefulness. Nineteen Spades, Endless Reflections expresses pride about having progeny, mentioning it alongside their owned land and esteem among their peers.
After some peer review, an esteemed friend has told me to add a section on purposed organisms as well! This is not so much my area, so I might be a bit off on some things.
As moon says, the majority of purposed organisms were tubes in boxes, and that the primal fauna of the world are almost entirely extinct. A lot of the fandom seems to ignore the first part, and i can't say I blame them, but the evolution of the creatures is so much weirder than people think.
Concept art for the creatures has this interesting quality to it, where the organic parts of the creatures have an almost... melty quality to them.
In the concept art, the flesh appears as if it's almost defying the machinery to form an animal shape. It's as if it's conquering its own artificiality the way the foliage grows over the (stone, brick and concrete, not mostly metal as some think!) ruins.
Of course, it's hard to really tell how much of this reflects the finalised concept, most of the integration is much smoother in the game, in line with a seamless kind of biomechanical design. There was always an intention of biomechanical strangeness, as shown in this screenshot of the devlog before the term "slugcat" even existed!
That said, the melty nature of the concept art shows a level of wild change inherent the biomechanical nature of the creatures, as if they truly are the result of these "tubes in boxes" almost revolting against their own boxes.
and considering centipedes... some tubes may not have had boxes in the first place!
You can not try and convince me that pomatrum and other vetulicolians weren't the most terrifying looking animals to ever live.
Speculative reconstruction of Peytoia Nathorsti with it's hypothetical median eye.
Reposting some of my paleoart from twitter here.
These are my newer ones I made from December 23rd 2022 to June 12 2023
Also made Sacabambaspis.