Some dinosaurs that I played and liked from Prior Extinction
Dinosaurs are my secret small interest. Calling it like this bc I drew and posted them very rarely with things needed to be too perfect and relevant in their depicturing that was making me more nervous to do.
I didn't get into the game for a year or two, and turns out there's a new Recode version with things being changed drastically. But the new version seems to have no dino stats as the older one, and I'm confused (or I can't find it/doesn't work for me for some reason). Not like I played a lot, and I may lose my focus in it, and I don't like to socialize. Even tho in older days I played funny as galli in packs when lagging on my older laptop and getting into troubles. I even managed to get told and shown where're the caves for the Prismatic event and crystals. Thank you random galli player. I think it was a peak of my socialization for 3 (idk or more) days playing it in these times.
My only other players encounters now were being attacked by some carni as tenonto at night and surviving somehow with running (after I was thinking if I could fight back fully bc they got my dino's health to 75% with three bites on the spine/neck. Idk abt all these stats again) and as gigantoraptor with carni abruptly running through with its business. I'm completely unfamiliar with PvP. And so I picked small servers just to grow/farm masteries with a bigger chance of it being peaceful (even here it's not always calm and idk what these peoples' logic for not going to more crowded servers for this), cuz at least the growth isn't halved on small servers. I can't imagine how chaotic it may be on the big ones.
But I don't like that tasks with being for 2 hours with high wellbeing can be disrupted by random server crash. And looks like seasonal/day/night task don't work for me (?).
So I thought that maybe it would be logical to get to 100 lvl masteries for smaller critters, so they can give a boost to bigger ones (if it works). But it's a long way with having only undisputable wellbeing and gluttony quests + finding fossils. And so I didn't endure to not to buy and play Therizhino bc I wanted to do 100 mastery for Beipiao firstly, cuz it goes before it with boost. I have Beipiao only at 60 uhh. And I guess living on a beach for Therizino might be not a good choice but idk what is the best with food/water/ash and safe place for it is, and when it's slow.
I was choosing between Therizino and Deinocheirus. I'm still able to buy the second one tho. But it needs even 3 dino masteries to get better. And for unknown reason I was spending some fossils on Quetz, tho I don't want to hunt others with it, bc I don't like attacking firstly and to bother (yea weird for such survival games) and it's better to do it on big servers bc I consider smaller ones for calm farming.
I also was surprised that there's such a realistic dino game on Roblox. And I like eating all plants and trees and see them getting smaller
Time and Place: Sometime between 129.7 and 122.1 million years ago; most likely about 124.4 million years ago, in the Aptian age of the Early Cretaceous
Jianchangosaurus is known from the Yixian Formation of Jianchang, China; it is uncertain which bed it was found in, but the Dawangzhangzi Bed seems most likely
Physical Description: Jianchangosaurus was a basal Therizinosaur, a group of birdie dinosaurs most notable for their long scythe-like hand claws and, somewhat more importantly, the fact that they evolved to be herbivorous, something that was once seen as unique for Theropod dinosaurs (we now know this happened multiple times - for example, Ornithomimosaurs were also herbivorous). Jianchangosaurus, being an early member of the group, helps to show how the Standard Theropod evolved into this weird group of dinosaurs.
Jianchangosaurus is known from a nearly complete skeleton. It would have been about 2 meters long and 1 meter tall, making it in general shorter than people, but not much so; it was also very lightly built. It had a long shin compared to its thigh, indicating that it was built for fast speeds and agility, which is not really a trait associated with more derived Therizinosaurs (which often feature a pot belly and weird upright gait, and thus, were rather slow moving animals). It did not sport the extra long claws of its later relatives, though it did have fairly thickened claws on its hands.
Jianchangosaurus is especially unique because of its jaw. It had a long and straight jaw, which supported large numbers of teeth that were very similar in shape to those of Ornithopods and Ceratopsians - two groups of herbivorous dinosaurs famed for their chewing ability. Jianchangosaurus also supported a beak at the end of its mouth, covered with a sheath of keratin. The front of the lower jaw is down-turned to aid in plucking off leaves. This indicates that herbivory evolved very early on in Therizinosaurs. In addition, this jaw was very resistant to high levels of stress, allowing it to exert more force when eating (having a higher bite force) and resist the strain of chewing on tougher vegetation. This would have given Jianchangosaurus more range in what it could eat in its ecosystem. In fact, the long length of the jaw and its downturned end gave Jianchangosaurus one of the highest ranges of bite force of any Therizinosaur.
Feather impressions of Jianchangosaurus are known, including wide, unbranched feathers that were probably used for display. Unfortunately, only the ends of these feathers are known, rather than the entire structure.
Diet: As an herbivore with a strong jaw, Jianchangosaurus was probably an opportunistic browser, feeding on whatever it could in its ecosystem in terms of plant material, including tough vegetation. It would have been restricted to a low browsing level due to its relative shortness. It may have also used its hands and claws to grab vegetation, but it did not show the sloth-like adaptations for such that is seen in later members of the Therizinosaur group.
Behavior: Jianchangosaurus would have been a fairly fast and skittish animal, living as it did in a very complex ecosystem filled with many animals, including the larger predatory Yutyrannus. As with many of the small, bipedal, fast herbivores of the Ornithopod group, it would have spent most of its time browsing around larger herbivores, and running away at the slightest sign of danger. Given the main fossil of this animal is a lone juvenile, it doesn’t seem likely that Jianchangosaurus would have lived in extensive groups, but that’s hard to say without more remains and more study. Still, if its feathers were primarily display structures, it’s possible that it would have had interesting sexual behavior, especially when it came to flapping proto-wings to impress mates.
By Ripley Cook
Ecosystem: Jianchangosaurus is from the Yixian Formation, one of a few very well known and highly diverse fossil formations that showcase the evolution of birdie dinosaurs at the beginning of the Cretaceous Period. Many other dinosaurs are known from the region, but it’s difficult to tell what exactly would have been contemporaneous with Jianchangosaurus, given we don’t know exactly what level of the formation it’s from. The general environment of the formation was a coniferous, temperate forest, marked with seasonal changes and high humidity, interspersed with notable dry seasons. There would have been fairly cold winters as well, and potentially even snow. Primitive flowering plants were also present in the region (though not the first ones as once thought; turns out flowers evolved in the Early Jurassic. The more you know!), along with ferns, horsetails, ginkgoes, cycads, seed ferns, and many other types of plants, giving Jianchangosaurus an extremely wide variety of food sources.
These forests were associated with a series of freshwater lakes with abundant minerals due to extensive volcanic eruptions. These eruptions, in addition to wildfires and poisonous gas from lake bottoms, lead to periodic turnover of the environment; this lead to the extremely rapid diversification of dinosaurs in the region.
Other dinosaurs from the same specific region as Jianchangosaurus include the dromaeosaur raptors Changyuraptor and Zhenyuanlong, which were probably from the same general environment as Jianchangosaurus. Neither were big enough to eat Jianchangosaurus, however, and would probably have been more likely to eat their young. Yutyrannus, the medium-sized feathered Tyrannosaur, on the other hand, probably would have been the main predator of Jianchangosaurus. Other than that, it is impossible to know what sorts of dinosaurs Jianchangosaurus would have encountered, without a definite determination of what bed in the formation it is from.
Other: Jianchangosaurus is known from one fossil on a slab that shows unfused bones; this indicates that the individual was a juvenile, though without more fossils we do not know if its body shape would have changed much as it aged.
~ By Meig Dickson
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