Created Creatures @monster-creator-12 - Tumblr Blog

Ok, lets have a look at this: Over the last few days a new paper in Science has led to MANY discussions in the paleo community and it appears to have breached containment into the wider world, judging by headlines and google results.

"Earliest octopuses were giant top predators in Cretaceous oceans" by Ikegami et. al describes a new beak of the basal octopus genus Nanaimoteuthis. And yeah, it's a whopper! Just look at the specimen next to a giant squid beak in this figure! They also note that...

...beak shows some intense, asymmetrical wear, indicating a lot of hard objects being processed by this beak. On top of that they assign the genus to the group Cirrata (finned octopuses and relatives) instead of Vampyromorpha as it was in past papers. This is were the hard facts end though.

Don't get me wrong: This must have been a huge animal, but I also think that anything beyond this is purely speculative. The authors give a total length of 7 to 19 meters, an enormous range, with an estimated mantle length of max 4.4 m. They base this on the proportions of finned octopuses and other close relatives but I would argue that is just math for the sake of math. We know VERY little about early octopuses. Their beaks are often the only thing preserved and their diversity in the Cretaceous remains murky.

That's the size part, what I have an actual problem with though is the way they deduce behavior, died and even cognition from this fossil. Based on the size, wear and asymmetry they propose that this animal would compete, maybe even hunt large marine reptiles, in a smart way.

That's plain bullshitting in my eyes. Intense wear on a beak suggests this animal would be durophagous, going after armored or hard shelled prey. cracking the bones of marines reptiles feels very contrived and modern day octopuses (that often eat crabs) don't look much different.

The asymmetry of the beaks is an interesting detail but I would NEVER derive an argument for higher cognition from that. Cognitive abilities are next to impossible to grasp from the fossil record even IF you have the brain. Which leaves the question what was this guy doing?

Short answer is: we don't know. As I hopefully illustrated here we have simply too few data points to make any concrete arguments for this animals appearance or lifestyle. HOWEVER

As people pointed out on Discord: crushing shells in an pelagic habitat is something that was a breeze in the Mesozoic. Ammonites in the cretaceous come in many different shapes but also sizes. 50 cm plus species are not rare.

We also know from the Jurassic there were likely other cephalopods that went after ammonites. So if the ammonites grew in the Cretaceous why shouldn't their predators as well? Beyond ammonites the Late Cretaceous also gave rise to a large to gigantic bivales like many inoceramids

This abundance of durophagous prey is also reflected in the predators, large sharks, mosasaurs and even giant chimeras took advantage of this plentiful food source. I therefore think a large ammonite predator is a much more likely niche for Nanaimoteuthis.

In my interpretation I pair the octopus with the giant ammonite Parapuzosia, these animals aren't known from the same localities but their time ranges overlap which makes it plausible to me that these guys, or close relatives, could have met.

Lastly I want to quickly talk about the promotion and reception of this publication. While I don't completely fault the authors for their writing - after all LOOK AT THE MODERN ACADEMIC CLIMATE - I do think it's troubling that the editor's note, the journal itself, immediately evokes the image of the Kraken, a mythological creature, to sell it's new paper. This in combination with Science being a high profile journal makes it feel as if the claims in this publication are standing on more solid ground than they do. This is just my personal opinion but I think this is just bad science communication. It is something that will echo through the online sphere for years to come and does not in any way promote the caution that I would expect when claims like these are presented. Subsequently the ideas and evocative speech of the paper have already spawned a large amount of paleoart that goes for the largest and most speculative sides of it. Again: I think the size estimates in the paper are certainly possible, but I also think a more critical examination of the text is warranted when presented with such incredible claims. I am not here to kill your fun. But I also think that we are maybe looking at something even more interesting that the (at this point) already rather old trope of the mosasaur eating squid. At least to me a giant mollusk eats mollusk world is cooler.

AS ALWAYS, these are simply my opinions on these matters, but I thought there was enough uncritical yay and nay saying about this paper that I felt like it should warrant a reaction. I think the paper describes fascinating material and I eagerly await more!

cheapsweets

I'll be honest, (still) giant (but not overestimated *cough*Leedsichthys*cough*) octopus which eats giant ammonites is at least as cool as what was theorised in the paper.

julianova44

Minor addendum: I heard about this from The Deep Sea Podcast and found it really interesting. Their latest episode went over this with a cephalopod expert, who pointed out a lot of issues, including some of the same ones that Knuppitalism did, such as:

while beak size is broadly indicative of overall size, a great way to realize how much variation there is is to compare the beaks of a Giants vs Colossal squid and then compare mantle shapes and sizes.

The differing wear on the beaks could be related to any number of things, up to and including mating habits.

“Handedness” as a correlative of intelligence doesn’t have a super strong support for it

Also, from the episode but not related to the paper: Apparently there are people in this world who can look at a modern squid beak and defuse the species, sex, and coital status of certain squid

bunjywunjy

How much bigger is a wolf than a coyote? Is it just noticeably larger and bulkier or is it a massive size difference?

Also they're normally natural enemies in the wild but sometimes they occasionally hybridize?

depends on the wolf! for this exercise we'll assume a median coyote size of 30 lbs.

while all north american wolves are technically grey wolves (except the mexican red wolf!) there are more than twenty subspecies of the damn things, all of which can differ significantly in size and appearance! (many now displaced with some extinct)

for example, the mexican wolf is only barely bigger than a large coyote, with adults reaching the 50-90 lb range.

whereas the northern rocky mountain wolf has any coyote massively outclassed, ranging between 80-150 lbs!

most other north american wolves range somewhere in between. but this is why we don't say "the size of a wolf" much as a figure of speech, because they come in so many different sizes!

and when wolves and coyotes hybridize, it's generally because there's no other potential partners in the area for either animal, so they start being willing to look a little farther up the family tree, so to speak!

paluboligo

Species Profile: Bonebill

The Bonebill (Palubucorvus Gore) is a large Clawed Bird native to the Ponelis Savannah and multiple species of the Supergenus can be also found in the Midraib region and the Siman Forest.

Like other Social Scavengers, this bird also a highly social animal, they can be usually seen patrolling in groups of 7-9 individuals, hunting small prey or collecting fruit and seeds. They are known for swallowing bone and perhaps surprisingly the skulls of dead animals. While they are a common sight among the Gore scavenger crew, these birds are usually seen without other scavenger species around.

These animals are very affectionate, unlike True Palubolígolian Birds they are very Palutheropod-like in their behaviour and are quite happy to bond to people. Falconers of Apokalypsa describe them as the best companion of their size range.

pokemonpalooza

my babieeeesss! :D

catandcrown

Ah i miss these ones

catandcrown

#646 - Kyurem

Kyurem – The Boundary Pokémon.

Pokedex Number – 646

Type – Dragon/Ice

There are few Pokémon considered as dangerous or as odd as the creature known as Kyurem. Alien in origin, it is known for its ghastly, unnatural appearance its ferocious power and its appetite for human flesh. The legends that surround it are many, all of them sinister, the entry that follows is to be taken seriously, as the Legendary status of the creature matches its body count.

Keep reading

cinemamind

Killer Klowns From Outer Space✨💫

hazard-symbols-that-fuck-hard

do not ride on

bogleech

We should fix this and start saying "stupible"

charlesoberonn

We need more scary infinite variants of manmade environments like the Infinite IKEA or the Backrooms.

May I suggest, The Lot:

charlesoberonn

I'm sorry to disappoint you but this is a real parking lot. I didn't edit it.

charlesoberonn

Check out the lot-to-building ratio in any large American sports stadium

toawk

Some lots are so big they have bus services specifially inside it. The lots are broken into sections and buses go around to their sections at a set amount of times before the start of something and drive people to the main building.

charlesoberonn

The societies of lost people inside The Lot would probably operate something like that to locate and pick up new arrivals and bring them over to one of the major settlements.

charlesoberonn

In the Infinite Ikea or Backrooms you can convince yourself there's gonna be a door round the next corner or behind that wall.

But despite it being completely open, there is no hope of escape from The Lot. Whereever you look it's just more cars from horizon to horizon.

bonediggercharleston

Sheesh, man, that's

a lot

charlesoberonn

Any artists interested in illustrating some The Lot concept art? Things like

A new arrival realizing a they're lost

Scavengers systematically going through cars for supplies

A small farming community that dug up the asphalt to plant crops

A veteran traveler coming across two sun-bleached skeletons wearing old-timey clothes next to some old cars, implying they've been there for more than a century

asteroidtroglodyte

How Eldritch do we want this location to be?

More ideas:

Agriculture is impossible; all the food available is truck-stop fare, scavenged from cars. A group of people had the idea to dig up the asphalt to find dirt to grow crops, but the top layer is just laid down on top of a layer of an older kind of hardtop. At one point a group of people excavate a pit several meters deep, uncovering progressive layers of asphalt, concrete, tile, brick, cobblestone, etc. but they never reach dirt.

Since all food is scavenged from cars, groups have to stay on the move. Although, if you want, you could have unobserved cars reset according to some occult criteria, enabling cyclical migratory patterns. Or, if you want, you could have them have to keep moving outwards and hope they don’t cross a patch that’s already been cleared by someone else.

Any foods that actually contain any appreciable amount of fiber become the most treasured kind of food, as everyone gets constipated from eating only the most refined and processed of foods for every meal.

Part of the uncanny feeling of the place is that it is perfectly flat. It’s not immediately obvious because the only things you can climb to get a better view are lampposts, but there’s no curvature to the earth in this place. A cult forms around disassembling cars to build a tower to try and see to the edge. It’s unclear what’s going on with the sun, given there’s still a day/night cycle.

There are plenty of cars to shelter in, but the geomorphology of this place would lead to incredible windstorms at dusk and dawn, with a very still, hot midday, and a bitterly cold night.

feyosha

As tempting as it might be to populate the space with some kind of intelligent threat (I’ve seen predatory planes and shadow monsters in the notes) I feel like the concept is better served by having the environment itself be the threat.

Maybe there’s never enough drinkable water; it’s mostly soda in the cars; most of the foods available are either very salty or full of sugar. After enough time in The Lot, everyone inevitably ends up pre-diabetic and chronically dehydrated.

Maybe we kick up the weather: black asphalt can get fucking hot at midday; hot enough to fry an egg if the sun is bright enough. Besides sitting in the cars (which may or may not be feasible depending on whether or not they can provide air conditioning), shade is in very short supply, and the abundant reflective surfaces of the cars means you’re gonna get sunburned, bad, if you don’t figure out what to do about noontime.

Conversely, blacktop radiates heat extremely quickly once the sun goes down, and with no plants or rivers to provide humidity the temperatures at night could easily get below freezing.

Flat topology also encourages cyclonic winds; regular, fully fledged tornadoes, flinging cars about and ripping people off their feet could be an actual serious concern.

Write it up like one of those 18th century Adventure Journals. “Day 127: the Swede has scurvy; Johnson’s foot continues to degrade; I would sell my soul for a bran muffin. Thought I saw a bird but it was a hallucination. Tornado at dusk again; we lost the Turk to a falling sedan. I miss waffles.”

charlesoberonn

We actually used The Lot as one of the prompts in my collaborative worldbuilding Discord server

every-living-beast

on behalf of isoetes I’m offended, Mr. Senator.

botanyshitposts

dragongyrlwren

@botanyshitposts so what exactly is a quillwort, and what’s the big deal on this particular one?

botanyshitposts

imagine if there was a single remaining mammoth species on earth, and it only was able to get by into the modern era by sacrificing it’s status as a huge landscape-changing roaming herbivore to evolve into a small animal the size of a dog. it looks a lot like a dog, actually. people often mistake the tiny mammoth species as a dog, and will just casually say it’s a dog.

small-mammoth enthusiasts, however, will avidly remind people that they are not in fact a dog, and their organs, although shrunken to the size of a dog’s organs, are still wooly mammoth organs. you actually have to seek out special vets for the small wooly mammoths because even though it looks remarkably like a dog to the untrained eye, when you’re faced with the internal anatomy it’s so far deviated from anything living today that it’s difficult to understand and work with.

this is because there is, quite literally, no animal anatomy quite like the small woolly mammoth’s left alive on earth. this means that there’s no living approximation of how their organs work, or what the fuck is going on in there, even though they look like a dog from the outside. the closest living relative of the small woolly mammoth is so far deviated from it’s anatomy that’s literally of no help to anyone to compare the two, because the only thing they have in common is how they reproduce. scientists studying the wooly mammoth’s anatomy are forced to debate with each other constantly about what a certain organ might do, or what it at least used to do based on the fossils of the giant wooly mammoths that once dominated the landscape, but they just…have no idea.

so the small woolly mammoth is not at all like a dog, even though it looks like one. how it works, how it reproduces, how it functions on a basic anatomic level are so utterly and completely prehistoric that they’re not at all like any other living animals. this makes them the subject of infinite fascination to paleontologists trying to approximate the biology and ecology of the giant woolly mammoths that once lived…but it’s incredibly challenging. it’s also incredibly challenging to explain why they’re different to people who just don’t care, or just see them as dogs because they look like them, because the significance of something like it is so easily lost when something looks ‘normal’.

isoetes –Quillworts– are that tiny wooly mammoth. their ancestors lived 400 million years ago and included the giant prehistoric spore-reproducing trees lepidodendron, which made up the bulk of massive prehistoric forests that were eventually compressed into the coal we’re still using today. they’re so old that the roots aren’t roots, they’re leaves, and it took botanists 100 years of bickering to finally confirm this. they’re so old that the change that weeded out all the giant 100+ foot tall members of the lineage was literally the original shifting of the continents, as in, like, when pangea split. they’re so old that it reproduces through ENORMOUS spores contained in spore packets on it’s leaves. they’re so old that we just have no fucking idea how to process it.

quillwort anatomy is, quite literally, that of a comically small 400 million year old spore tree with the trunk squished into a woody structure so small that you could miss it if you didn’t know what you were looking for on a dissection. the anatomy of this genus doesn’t function like any other modern plant genus on earth. quillworts have organs and cell structures that we still don’t understand in the year 2019.

quillworts are incredibly valuable finds to paleobotanists because they’re so easily passed over in botanical surveys, and their habitats are constantly being threatened, making a great deal of species endangered. although they’re still around on almost every continent– see the earlier point on them evolving before the continents split– there are a lot fewer of them out there now; like anything, they can be more common in some areas than others, but my state has only found one recorded colony in the past 50 years to give an idea of what we’re dealing with here.

and yes. they look like grasses.

do not let this prehistoric spore tree fool you

ylkl

Monster x

heyyoufriendthere

S. snuffleupagus, a newly described species of fish, is named after the beloved Sesame Street character, Mr. Snuffleupagus, to which it bear

SNUFFLEUPAGUS REAL

psappho-loves-staurozoans

PRISMAFORMS | More notes I forgot to add in there:

They don't age, first off. Secondly, they seem like they'd take over everything however they don't for a number of reasons. Their young are highly susceptible to disease and few of them manage to live long enough to produce the protective mucus and make it to adulthood. When they are adults, they are totally sessile and dependent on the water around them for sustenance, so a simple stroke of bad luck can easily kill one. Especially since their feeding method is so inefficient, despite not aging they do not grow indefinitely, and reach a maximum size. Basically they are always getting *just* enough sustenance to not die. Also several species are covered in little hairs that help with catching food. And if one *does* get detached, then they cannot reattach.

jayrockin

I’ve been drawing gnomes (as one does) for a gnome setting! They normally wear clothes, hence the carefully placed fig leaves to protect their decency. There are four distinct races common to different regions, but they’re all one species and mixed race gnomes are pretty common in bigger cities. PATREON | KO-FI

jayrockin

The dragons of gnomeworld (better name coming eventually) are carnivorous psittacines with sharp, hook-like talons and non-motile external ears. Although they don’t form agrarian societies like gnomes, they are very intelligent, easily picking up tool-use skills and gnome languages in addition to their natively spoken dragon tongues. They live in small family social groups of 5-7 with a common nest, where they will hoard colorful and sparkling items of all of kinds. They’re also very long lived, averaging about 120 years old compared to the gnomes’ 45. For many of them, gnomes are both a food resource and a potential trade ally.

Green dragons are the most elusive, often only seen as a brief flash of pink among the dense temperate rain forests of the coastal hills. Despite their large size they’re usually not much of a threat to the endemic forest gnomes, as gnomes are a challenging meal without a lot of meat. Although they are obligate carnivores, green dragons can digest some plant matter. They are known for their sweet tooth and can often be traded with in exchange for candies and fruit.

Gold dragons are found widely throughout the desert, grasslands, and chaparral. They are known for congregating in groups of over 20 to socialize and hunt, using chasing and attack strategies to subdue prey that would be too large or difficult for a single dragon. These groups pose the highest threat to gnome villages in drought years with low wild prey density, which incentivizes attacking the relatively more stable populations of gnomes and their livestock.

Blue dragons, like their green cousins, are not usually gnome hunters. The majority of their diet is scavenged from marine carcasses and intertidal zones, though some prefer to hunt fish in a manner similar to osprey. Blues are most common on the coast but can be found inland along rivers. They have thick bills ideal for cracking open shellfish and snails, though they will avoid breaking the prettier shells, keeping them instead as nest decoration. They are about the size of a royal albatross, but with shorter and broader wings.

Of the four, red dragons are the biggest threat to local gnomes. They often hunt in mated pairs, with the cryptically colored female sneaking into burrows while the occupant is outside. The colorful male then spooks the victim, who rushes out of the open to “safety.” Their bill is their main weapon, with a shape perfect for grabbing and snapping the necks of small vertebrates. Reds build their nests in the abandoned mountain burrows of gnomes and other animals, but will often expand these using their thick talons and beak-held tools.

PATREON | KO-FI

jayrockin

Grindel is a rare “white” dragon from gnomeworld, being a blue dragon with a late-onset leucistic condition. She started turning white after maturity, and her mate rejected her because she lost the attractive blue color. Heartbroken by this, she left the coast of her childhood and now lives alone along a high mountain stream. The protagonists encounter her during their journey, and after a very tense first meeting they strike an uneasy deal– passage over a ravine in exchange for medical help on an injured leg. Grindel trails them afterwards with the excuse of needing fresh bandages and disinfectant, but it eventually grows apparent that she’s mostly returning because she enjoys their company. Non-canon: I drew her in crew socks because someone on Discord said her legs looked cold.

jayrockin

The gnomes of gnomeworld domesticated these small ratite descendants with nonexistent forelimbs and hooved toes, usually called pighens. They’re the size of a kiwi bird and are ridden like horses, but will eat anything you put in front of them (including meat). Pighen eggs are a staple protein for many communities, and a single cooked egg can be a meal for about 6 gnomes. They are bred in a variety of colors and are kept most extensively by desert gnomes, since pighens are ideal for traversing the wide flat chaparral and grasslands of the east.

PATREON | KO-FI

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