#pisco formation

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

Result from the Pisco Formation, please leave all your angry comments below! The Miocene of the Pisco basin is an absolute insane hot spot for marine life, over the course of millions of years the sediments recorded dozens of large mammals, especially whales...

which are often times recorded in astonishing details. Because of this abundance of megfauna, it became necessary to narrow it down for this piece. We went with the Sud Sacaco locality which records life of a large bay, making it possible to include some coastal and benthic...

species, importantly the sloth Thalassocnus and the whale Odobenocetops. Nowadays the Pisco basin shows little of this former biodiversity, being largely desert with many specimens laying on, or just below the surface. This makes it easy to spot them but the high levels of...

erosion also means we are losing many fossils to the elements. And of course that means that small stuff is lost quicker than big whales. Subsequently, and because of other reasons, small stuff from here is little understood while...

when you look at the 1m+ animals you are getting swarmed by fantastical creatures. Weirdly enough, you will notice that Livyatan is in our size chart but it's actually not in the piece and it would not be in the locality, not just geographically but also temporary...

And speaking of the large stuff from here: there is of course a certain shark in the room that i reduced to a pile of verts and jaw fragments. The nature of this assemblage makes it next to impossible to include it Size charts by Discord members Tim, Armin and Avery

[saritapaleo]

Archovember 2024 Day 19 - Pelagornis sandersi

After the K-T extinction, the last remaining dinosaurs began to diverge, trying on many different shapes and sizes. While most birds stayed in the small forms that had kept them alive for so long, some achieved massive sizes. Some even reached these sizes while still retaining their ability to fly. One such genus was Pelagornis, a group of “pseudotooth birds.” While the gene for teeth was lost in birds, the Pelagornithids found a work-around, evolving tooth-like edges to their beaks. These were seabirds, using their saw-edged beaks to grip onto slippery fish and squid. The largest species of Pelagornis was Pelagornis sandersi. P. sandersi was not only the largest Pelagornis, but also had the widest wingspan of any known bird, estimated at 6.06 to 7.38 m (19.9 to 24.2 ft) long. P. sandersi had short, stumpy legs, and likely spent most of its time on the wing. It would have had to take off by dropping from cliffs, utilizing air currents to glide into the air. It would have been able to travel long distances like this, without landing, similar to modern day albatrosses.

Fossils of Pelagornis have been found worldwide, including in the Aridal Formation of Morocco, the Chandler Bridge Formation of South Carolina, the Bahía Inglesa Formation of Chile, the Black Rock Sandstone of Australia, the Molasse Coquilliere Formation of France, the Calvert Formation in Virginia, the Pisco Formation of Peru, the Castillo Formation and Capadare Formation of Venezuela, the Greta Formation of New Zealand, and the Purisima Formation of California. This worldwide distribution means they would have been living alongside a large variety of Eocene to Early Pleistocene animals, and eating a large variety of fish species. It is unknown why these giant seabirds went extinct, but they may have been encountered by archaic humans in the Early Pleistocene.

This art may be used for educational purposes, with credit, but please contact me first for permission before using my art. I would like to know where and how it is being used. If you don’t have something to add that was not already addressed in this caption, please do not repost this art. Thank you!

[katborg82]

Acrophyseter deinodon, a small macroraptorial Physeteroid whale from the late Miocene off the coast of Peru, playfully shows off a very fashionable fish hat. (~8.5-6.7 Mya)

[arminreindl]

Odobenocetops is a profoundly fucked up whale. The younger species, O. leptodon, had tusks way over a meter in length yet they were too fragile to be used for fighting or digging. The neck in both species was incredibly flexible as shown above O. peruvianus lacked a melon and couldn't echolocate, instead relying on binocular vision (O. leptodon had a small melon, which is better than nothing I guess) and they fed much like walrus, which means they would spit compressed water at the ocean floor to uncover shellfish, grab them with their lips and use their mouth as a vacuum pump to suck out all the soft parts only oh yeah and some speculate that it might have had whiskers covering its face

[veloci-raptor]

Fossil Novembirb: Day 24

Some Spheniscus urbinai swimming near a Livyatan

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

Another #paleostream sketch

Piscogavialis, resting on the beach together with some Thalassocnus, semi-aquatic sloths, as well as some penguins.

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

Results from the #paleostream!

Cadurcodon (a trunked rhino), Otoceras, Pangerpeton and Ninoziphius (the whale)

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

The #paleostream just started a diorama challenge, I did an example during stream. It shows the Pisco formation.