#fishapod

[herpsandbirds]

PBS Eons: Crawling Out Of The Water Was An Evolutionary Accident

It’s beginning to look like our success on land, and that of all tetrapods, from frogs to dogs to dinosaurs, was just a lucky side-effect of fish trying to stay fish.

via: PBS Eons

[he-who-needs-to-be-silenced]

[alphynix]

Ever since the earliest tetrapods crawled onto land and developed limbs and digits, some lineages have just… decided the whole "legs" thing was overrated and lost them entirely.

And the earliest known group to do this were the aïstopods. These highly elongated amphibian-like animals had specialized lightly-built skulls with large jaw muscles, and they may have filled a similar ecological niche to modern snakes, hunting small terrestrial invertebrates.

Lethiscus stocki was one of the first members of this snake-like group, living in Scotland during the Early Carboniferous about 340 million years ago. Growing to at least 50cm long (~20"), it was already a very specialized animal despite its basal position among the aïstopods, with eyes set far forward on its face and no trace of vestigial limbs.

CT scans of its skull have shown some surprisingly fish-like anatomy, especially in its braincase, features that were lost very early in tetrapod evolution. This suggests that aïstopods weren't part of the lepospondyl amphibians like previously thought, but actually originated much much earlier in the tetrapod evolutionary tree – potentially placing them somewhere among the "fishapods" between Ichthyostega and Crassigyrinus.

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[jomadis]

Got this adorable custom from @/AlienSphynx and I love her!!! Her name is Tiiki and she's the ancient fishapod Tiktaalik!!! I can't even tell you how much I love ancient species aaa I'm so happy I have a character now

Drawing her was an experiment!! I'm not used to draw reptiles/amphibians/fish so I'd like to get better through her!

[comixqueen]

More derps! Tiktaalik has really fun shapes to draw! Such a cute, swoopy noodle of a creature. It's proportions and details are already leaning on cartoony, with it's broad flat head, top-set eyes, and nubby fins. I have no doubt that it would have been an interesting animal to observe in life, with many quirks and interesting behaviors. As for me, I find it difficult to draw a serious Tiktaalik when I could draw a cheery fishapod instead.

[theotheghostkid--moved]

a boy and his fishapod tempted to make a video about this in the future 🦐 he/they 🦐

[alphynix]

Eucritta melanolimnetes, an amphibian-like creature from the Early Carboniferous of Scotland (~335 mya). About 25cm long (10″), it had a mixture of anatomical characteristics similar to baphetid stem-tetrapods, temnospondyls, and reptile-like amphibians, making its exact classification difficult. It’s currently considered to be a close relative of both the baphetids and Crassigyrinus, and it was probably close in appearance to what the common ancestor of all later tetrapods would have looked like.

Its name means “true creature from the black lagoon”, in homage to the 1954 monster movie.

[matchbet-revolver]

Said this to my ma about a college assignment that had me seconds from ripping out hair: