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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Jun 30, 2016 2:29:47 GMT -5
They just renovated the giant fish tank in the east portal of Union Station in Los Angeles. When the east portal opened in 1995, the tank was full of sharks and it was amazing.
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Hippo
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Post by Hippo on Jul 5, 2016 23:54:05 GMT -5
This week, say "hi, now get out of my trash" to the raccoon!
Raccoons are a species belonging to the procyonidae family which includes olingo and coati and is resident to North America and nearby Caribbean islands with some introduced colonies in Japan and parts of Europe. Their name derives from a corruption of an Powhatan word meaning "one who rubs and scratches with their hands" and many other languages also have root meanings for "raccoon" surrounding hands and dousing, more later. While we think of raccoons as the cat-sized grey animal with the creepy human hand paws and the eyemasks, there's around 22 distinct subspecies all with varying sizes and fur markings. The one most commonly called "raccoon" in the generic sense is the Eastern raccoon. The raccoon is the largest of all procyonids with an average length of 60cm and weighing around 6kg. Lifespans are short for the humble creature with around 2-3 years of survival with most of their deaths human related though in habitats can live upto 20 years. Coming back around to the dousing thing, raccoons in captivity have a tendency to "wash" their food which seems to be a strange instinctual thing from when they hunt for food in water in the wild to examine their food before eating it. It's not really clear why they do it in captivity or that they even do it in the wild but they've gained a "washing" part of their name in many languages. They're nocturnal creatures, considered incredibly smart and happen to have a lot of interesting features that enabled them to deal with and thrive in human settlements. They can be bipedal though quadripedal motion is their norm, their five clawed paws are incredibly tactile similar to humans with a lot of their sensory information coming through them. Similarly to the squirrel, they too can rotate their hind paws by 180 degrees to help scamper their way down trees. Their eating habits are generally "get what you can" for urban raccoons but for most it's an omnivorous diet with bugs and small animals in spring months and nuts and berries closer to winter. Human encounters with raccoons are somewhat mixed, some good but others bad. They're not endangered, much of their existence outside of North America is due to simply being randomly released with Japan owing their population to an anime series called "Rascal the Raccoon" in the late 70s causing a spike in raccoon ownership and then escape or release. Further back in history though, they were seen as respected among the indigenous people with various powers ascribed to them and then later abused by the non-indigenous people. Pet viability is not great being a wild animal so not really recommended but it's possible, just expect a lot of hijinks and shenanigans from these little scamps where it's legal to own one or two.
Here for you now are more pictures of these monochrome animals that have nothing to do with tanuki or red pandas or even lemurs for that matter.
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Post by 🔪 silly buns on Jul 6, 2016 0:30:53 GMT -5
I enjoyed that write up. Thanks, Hippo.
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Post by Logoboros on Jul 6, 2016 0:36:30 GMT -5
Obligatory "Racoon tries to 'wash' some cotton candy" GIF:
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Post by Lord Lucan on Jul 6, 2016 20:02:19 GMT -5
I like to think this is the same raccoon, before and after. That was a good write-up!
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Post by 🔪 silly buns on Jul 7, 2016 8:42:47 GMT -5
I like to think this is the same raccoon, before and after. That was a good write-up! Like, he doesn't trust the existence of the food people hand him so he timidly approaches everything now.
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Post by Lord Lucan on Jul 7, 2016 9:09:32 GMT -5
Like, he doesn't trust the existence of the food people hand him so he timidly approaches everything now. Ha! Because of the cotton candy; I didn't think of that. I just imagined it cautiously verifying the food in the first, and then showing up at the table to boorishly scarf down after.
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Post by Hippo on Jul 12, 2016 23:16:03 GMT -5
Gradually making its way up here (it started the journey on Friday), please welcome the tortoise as requested by moimoi !
Tortoises are a type of turtle, commonly found everywhere but are very reclusive. You might be wondering what the difference is between tortoises, turtles and terrapins and it's a little varied. Tortoises are typically considered to be the land-dwelling type with turtles being aquatic with terrapins being the tiny types also called box turtles though they're land-specific. Thing is than elsewhere you might find tortoise being used widely for all sorts of shelled slow-moving animals but in this case tortoise means small, land mammals. The tortoise is a slow creature, much like other herbivores this is due to energy conservation as plants do not give much energy once broken down. Their quickest walking speed has been recorded at 8km/h but generally it's a far more sedate 0.3km/h. In total there's around 22 subspecies of tortoise (which does include the Galapagos turtles) with 80 members in total. As with other big genetic pools, they vary in size greatly going from tiny ones only measuring a few centimetres long to giants measuring some two metres. Tortoises are mostly herbivores so their diet is made up of whatever plant life it can find such as leaves, grasses and fruit. Those species which are omnivorous will additionally take in insects and worms. Physiologically, tortoises like turtles are very much a part of their shell with the lower half fused to their ribcages and the upper half fused to their spines. Still on the subject of shells, it is alleged that you can count out the age of a tortoise based on the rings on their shells like a tree trunk. This is true but it's also a really rough estimate, more rings will of course mean an older specimen but the shell doesn't grow consistently, might be two rings in a year or simply there's no variation between years. While tortoises are long-lived way upwards 100 years with some reaching 200 years of age, they are not smart animals. In experiments conducted in the 17th century, it was found that a tortoise could live for around six months without a brain and just under a month without a head. Grisly but also informative. They make good pets, the smaller the better and are very low maintenance though make arrangements for someone to take care of it should you die before it does which is pretty likely. The collective noun is a bale or dole of tortoises.
Little short on info this week, caught for time. Have these pics and remember to offer your suggestions for season four!
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Post by moimoi on Jul 13, 2016 0:00:19 GMT -5
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Post by haysoos on Jul 13, 2016 16:08:15 GMT -5
Aww, I missed raccoons while I was camping last week.
I actually don't know much about raccoon fossils. One of the odd things is that despite all of the extant procyonid species (raccoons, coati, ringtails, kinkajous, etc) being in the Americas, the oldest procyonid fossils are from the Oligocene of Europe.
I also blew most of my tortoise fossil facts on the Galapagos tortoise post.
One interesting bit of fossil tortoise factiness: Remains of land tortoises are very common in the Badlands of South Dakota. These are also the earliest known tortoise fossils in North America (late Eocene/early Oligocene). These areas are also rich in fossils of a wide variety of early mammals, like clunky sheep-like oreodonts, three-toed mini-horsies, gazelle-like camels, primitive proto-cats and hyaenodons. The abundance and quality of these mammal fossils appears to be directly connected to the tortoises.
The tortoises (much like modern gopher tortoises) would dig pretty extensive burrows. Mammals of all types like to use these burrows for dens - sometimes even living right alongside the tortoise, who tend to be pretty good room-mates. In the southeast states today, rabbits, foxes, opossums, raccoons, bobcats and a variety of snakes all use these burrows. It's thought that the ancient mammals would climb in, some would die and make an excellent preservation when the burrows flooded - leaving a plethora of beautiful, articulated skeletons for palaeontologists today.
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Post by moimoi on Jul 13, 2016 17:29:26 GMT -5
Additional fun facts about turtles, because they are so fine: - Turtles are thought to have exceptional night vision due to the unusually large number of rod cells in their retinas. Turtles have color vision with a wealth of cone subtypes with sensitivities ranging from the near ultraviolet (UV A) to red. It has been reported that wood turtles are better than white rats at learning to navigate mazes. In the laboratory, turtles (Pseudemys nelsoni) can learn novel operant tasks and have demonstrated a long-term memory of at least 7.5 months. They do however have a very low encephalization quotient (relative brain to body mass); their hard shells enable them to live without fast reflexes and elaborate predator avoidance strategies.
- Researchers have recently discovered a turtle's organs do not gradually break down or become less efficient over time, unlike most other animals. It was found that the liver, lungs, and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its immature counterpart. This has inspired genetic researchers to begin examining the turtle genome for longevity genes
- They have their own Pokemon Go: TurtleSAt is a smartphone app that has been developed in Australia in honor of World Turtle Day to help in the conservation of fresh water turtles in Australia. The app will allow the user to identify turtles with a picture guide and the location of turtles using the phones GPS to record sightings and help find hidden turtle nesting grounds. The app has been developed because there has been a high per cent of decline of fresh water turtles in Australia due to foxes, droughts, and urban development. The aim of the app is to reduce the number of foxes and help with targeting feral animal control.
- Although turtle racing is generally a safe event, turtles on occasion can pose a danger to spectators. On one occasion, a turtle bit a woman who had given it a kiss to celebrate its victory in a race. Paramedics responded and injected the turtle with Valium after the turtle refused to let go of the woman's lip. The injection did not seriously injure the turtle, who soon returned to racing.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2016 21:57:25 GMT -5
Hippo --ThaaAaannnk YooOoouuUuu!
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Post by Hippo on Jul 18, 2016 9:18:59 GMT -5
Hippo --ThaaAaannnk YooOoouuUuu! Aw, thanks! Everything can be made better through Finding Dory gifs.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 18, 2016 12:45:08 GMT -5
Hippo --ThaaAaannnk YooOoouuUuu! Aw, thanks! Everything can be made better through Finding Dory gifs.
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Post by Hippo on Jul 19, 2016 22:49:18 GMT -5
Please give a nice welcome to the orangutan as requested by songstarliner and remember not to mispronounce their name, there is no g sound at the end.
Orangutans are a type of great ape who live in Indonesia and Malaysia of which there are two species living on different islands with the Bornean orangutan in Malaysia being the more common. The name is constructed of two words, orang and hutan meaning "person of the forest", that they happen to be orange furred is coincidental. As we know, orangutans are very rare with both species classed as critically endangered. Their main endangerment status is due to having their habitats damaged by logging for settlements and later palm oil plantations with the Sumatran orangutan getting hit the hardest losing around 80% of their population over 75 years. Currently, there's estimated around 40,000 to 60,000 in the wild with only 6,000-7,000 of those being Sumatran. As pets, they're not great for various reasons but also it's real illegal to keep them as protected species so if you have one, its mother probably died for you. Their diet is variable with much of their diet being fruit with ficus fruits being the most common along with the usual herbivore things like leaves and bark making up the rest. They have also been known to eat either soil or rocks, usually as a means to deal with issues like poisoning due to the nutrients in them. Most of the life of the orangutan is spent way up in the canopies, the most of any ape and each species has variations with Bornean orangutans preferring to stay at lower elevations while the Sumatran species prefers the higher mountainous slopes. Intelligence wise, they're incredibly smart as far as primates go. Many studies have been done with captive members and it's been found they're very adept at constructing tools, usually a major marker for intelligence. In addition, during the 1970s and 1980s, it was shown that two individuals could learn upto 40 sign language gestures over time. Orangutans are pretty solitary as far as things go, most of their interactions coming from other transient groups when gathering to eat in a given tree. While that might sound like they're lonely, they get to communicate quite a lot with others. The orangutan is also very big for an ape with only gorillas being larger, generally a given adult orangutan will weigh 50-70kg, be around 1-1.4m long and have arms which can measure upto 1.5 metres in length. Average lifespans are around 30 years. A collective noun for apes in general is a shrewdness.
Still short on info, I'm lazy. Please request new species!
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Post by Ben Grimm on Jul 20, 2016 7:47:00 GMT -5
Oook.
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Post by Lord Lucan on Jul 20, 2016 13:11:28 GMT -5
"and remember not to mispronounce their name, there is no g sound at the end" ?!!
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Hippo
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Post by Hippo on Jul 20, 2016 13:12:42 GMT -5
"and remember not to mispronounce their name, there is no g sound at the end" ?!! Some people pronounce it like "tang", not "tan".
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Post by Hippo on Jul 20, 2016 13:35:17 GMT -5
The name is frequently misspelled "orangutang"Hippo already covered it I did but it's more specific than a spelling error seeing as orangutan can actually be spelled with a g at the end, it's a pronunciation issue where there isn't a g pronounced but some folk can feel like there is one anyway because of the rhythm of how the word is said and the repeating "an" syllable.
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Post by songstarliner on Jul 20, 2016 13:51:26 GMT -5
The orangutan in Babe: Pig in the City is so wonderful; he's my favorite character by far.
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Post by haysoos on Jul 20, 2016 14:14:56 GMT -5
Most of the living great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans) tend to prefer forested and especially jungle environments. Only humans have appreciably spread from that habitat. Unfortunately, jungles in particular, with their warm, moist climate, abundance of scavengers, decomposers, fungi, and especially thin acidic soils make them terrible environments for fossil preservation. There are at least a handful of orangutan fossils, unlike gorillas or chimps. There are scattered teeth in Thailand that share distinctive characteristics with orangutans found in Thailand between 10-13.5 million years old. They've even found an entire mandible/jawbone with teeth in it! Thailand at the time was likely mostly jungle (much like today). So, not that surprisingly, it seems this quadrimanual canopy dweller evolved in places with a dense jungle forest canopy. There is also Gigantopithecus. This was a huge primate. Depending on the reconstruction, it has been estimated at up to about 3 m tall. Basically, it was sasquatch. Here's a picture of a mandible, showing the enormous size of the molars in particular, and a comparison drawing with a human jaw: Fossil teeth of Gigantopithecus were first discovered by a palaeontologist wandering through a Chinese apothecary shop, where the teeth were sold as "dragon teeth" to be ground up and used in traditional medicine. Since then, they've found fossilized remains throughout China, Vietnam and parts of India from between 9 million years ago up until just around 100,000 years ago. Unfortunately again, these fossils are fragmentary, and entirely of teeth and a few jaws. No other part of the skeleton has been identified. There's no evidence that it reached North America, but the Beringia land bridge existed several times during the period they were extant, so it's certainly possible. It appears that Gigantopithecus is pretty close to orangutans - either first cousins or maybe second cousins by way of Sivapithecus. Anyhow, they were closer than either of them are to gorillas, chimps or humans. Gigantopithecus teeth do have embedded phytoliths (protective silica spicules) from bamboo, that suggest they may have gotten most of their food from bamboo, like those pretentious black-and-white bears. This could very well be one of the big barriers keeping them from having migrated to North America, as well as a contributor to them finally going extinct.
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Post by Lord Lucan on Jul 20, 2016 23:44:50 GMT -5
"and remember not to mispronounce their name, there is no g sound at the end" ?!! Some people pronounce it like "tang", not "tan". I was one of those people my whole life. But no longer!
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Post by haysoos on Jul 24, 2016 9:09:44 GMT -5
Not actually related to orangutans. Or tortoises. Or raccoons or skwirls or any other critter we've discussed lately. But I just saw this video on reddit that displays the incredible hunting skill of the shoebill, that is basically a straight-up living dinosaur. The terrifying head-lock as it targets its prey is magnificent. gfycat.com/FlatClassicAstarte (it's one of those weird new web media style gif-type thingies that I don't know how to link)
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Post by Hippo on Jul 24, 2016 9:17:59 GMT -5
Not actually related to orangutans. Or tortoises. Or raccoons or skwirls or any other critter we've discussed lately. But I just saw this video on reddit that displays the incredible hunting skill of the shoebill, that is basically a straight-up living dinosaur. The terrifying head-lock as it targets its prey is magnificent. gfycat.com/FlatClassicAstarte (it's one of those weird new web media style gif-type thingies that I don't know how to link) Hah, I'm doing shoebills in five weeks too!
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Post by Hippo on Jul 26, 2016 11:11:50 GMT -5
A day early but this week's animal is the elusive Tasmanian devil as selected by songstarliner .
The Tasmanian devil is a type of marsupial resident to the island of Tasmania off the south-western coast of mainland Australia. The name derives from early settlers to Tasmania thinking their shrieking howls and fastidious carnivorous eating habits meant they assumed the devils to be completely vicious and as such referred to them as various names like "Beelzebub's pup", "bear devil" and "satanic meatlover". Generally speaking, that does somewhat hold up in their eating habits though around humans aren't too dangerous. Size-wise, the devil is the largest of the carnivorous marsupials though that is still reasonably small at a length of 55-65 cm in length and a weight of 6-8kg, no bigger than a small dog. Their diet is meat-based, they tend to go for already dead animals over hunting and killing their own due to their size. Most of their diet is of wombats, potoroos, sheep, small pets and dead stuff it might find though seemingly it'll eat what it can find including inedible items and buried corpses. Younger devils can climb trees and often do to eat small birds, bugs and eggs. Physically, the devil is built for being a vicious animal being someplace visually between a dog and a hyena, especially with their incredibly strong biting abilities which can bite through a cage but are mostly used for breaking down bones. They also have claws as a burrowing creature and use their many whiskers to help seek out prey as their eyesight isn't great during the night though they're most active at night. Tasmanian devils are currently considered endangered with an estimated 10,000~20,000 in the wild due to culls in the mid-90s, red fox predation, often just getting run over and a disease called Devil facial tumour disease which is what it sounds like, fairly cancer-like and is highly contagious among devils and generally inoperable though vaccines are being developed. Generally, the main contact for anyone with these creatures is Taz, the one that spins and has no physical relation to the actual species he's based on seeing as they're little known outside Australia but within those bounds have a decent rich history. Would a devil be an eligible for a pet? Probably not, it's a biter and pretty feral and stinks a lot so requires a lot more upkeep than you'd like.
Still short on info, it's obscure. Please request new species!
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Post by Hippo on Jul 26, 2016 11:39:00 GMT -5
I remember reading about their facial tumor disease. It was fascinating (if sad) since biting each other's faces is a feature, not a bug, of Tasmanian devil social interaction and communication, and that's how the disease is spread. It's sort of an analogue of how mononucleosis spreads among humans through kissing, except more fatal. I would like to see some pictures of those freaky river dolphins from Asia and South America, please. Yeah, it's not much good given its highly contagious too. Just pictures? Yeah, okay, I'll post some later this week.
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Post by Hippo on Jul 26, 2016 11:45:11 GMT -5
Yeah, it's not much good given its highly contagious too. Just pictures? Yeah, okay, I'll post some later this week. I mean, I would like a writeup too, I just didn't want to sound greedy. You could add them to the end of the current season if there's space. I getcha. There isn't space this season but it'll probably end up in next season should I do a writeup. Given I did touch on dolphins already I can put these snouty weirdoes in the maybe pile for season four.
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Post by songstarliner on Jul 26, 2016 13:06:13 GMT -5
More devil info!
Tasmanian devils make the most astonishing noises - growls and screams and snarls and screeches. They have more kinds of distinct vocalizations than any other marsupial. Mostly they yell at each other about food, though. LOUDLY.
Can you imagine having one of those in your house? Or a pack of them in the woods behind your house? Actually I would love it, but don't listen to me.
The Devil Facial Tumor Disease is a terrible thing, and just devastating to what's left of the already-endangered population in the wild. It's very gruesome, so I won't post any pictures here; I don't really recommend looking it up because it's awful, really upsetting. Up to you of course. The scary part about DFTD is that it's a contagious cancer. They communicate it to each other by biting, and unfortunately biting is what they like to do best, other than scream and eat. From How Stuff Works, animal edition:
'The typical lifecycle of DFTD begins with a showdown between two Tasmanian devils. If one of the animals is already infected with DFTD, a bite will deliver the virus into the other devil's healthy flesh. After that, the Tasmanian devil will develop the symptomatic facial tumors. As the tumors metastasize, they may destroy the devil's jaw and cause their teeth to deteriorate. Eventually, the animals lose their ability to eat and starve to death. This process takes place over a period of three months to a year. Scientists have found only a handful of cancers that are contagious like DFTD. Viruses can trigger cancer, but rarely does cancer itself act as a virus, jumping among individuals. That makes not only DFTD easy to catch, but also highly fatal due to the genetic isolation among Tasmanian devils. The marsupials live in the wild only in Tasmania, which has resulted in a lack of genetic diversity among the species. In addition, the genetic sequencing of DFTD is so similar to that of a Tasmanian devil that the animal's body doesn't recognize the virus as a threat. Consequently, the animal's immune system doesn't respond to fight off the virus before it develops into full-blown cancer.'
So messed up, right?? Those poor devils.
I love them because they're feisty little things - loud and crazy and bitey. I really hope scientists are working hard on a vaccine for that dreadful disease.
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Post by haysoos on Jul 26, 2016 14:14:43 GMT -5
Tasmanian devils were once more widespread, being found across Australia as well as their current restricted range on the island of Tasmania. They seem to have gone extinct on the mainland about 3000 years ago, after having been driven down into just three little pockets of deviltry. Perhaps not so coincidentally, this would be just about the exact same time that the dingo was introduced to Australia. Although they are the largest living marsupial predator, it wasn't so long ago that another Tasmanian relic held that position. The thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian wolf or Tasmanian tiger (because it was stripy). It was about the size and shape of a dog (up to about 70 lbs). It also was widespread in Australia until about 3000 years ago, and then got restricted to Tasmania. There it carried on until European settlement, and the last known thylacine in the wild was shot by farmer Wilf Batty in 1930. The last captive thylacine died in 1936. There were other large marsupial predators further back in the past, though. One was Thylacoleo carnifex. It was about the size of a (smallish) leopard, had retractile claws (like a cat, but unlike any other known marsupial), and had a thick, kangaroo-like tail which it could use to prop itself up in a semi-upright posture. It had huge jaw muscles, and probably had the most powerful bite, pound-for-pound of any known mammal. Its teeth were a combination of pointed incisors - like a vampire beaver - and long, broad slicing molars unlike any other mammal's. Some palaeontologists have claimed that Thylacoleo used these weapons to bite into really tough melons instead of chowing down on other Pleistocene critters, but those palaeontologists don't get invited to cool palaeontology parties any more. Especially when there's a site by Lancefield, Australia with thousands of bones with odd cut marks on them. These cut marks match the physiology of Thylacoleo's weird slicy teeth. Thylacoleo evolved about 2 million years ago, and went extinct about 46,000 years ago. There's quite a few critters (and plants) that all go extinct at about that same time. There are no known major climatic shifts at that time, although Australia had been going through general drying and loss of biodiversity for about 700,000 years. It happens that 46,000 years ago is when Australian aborigines really started growing in population and began using fire to clear the landscape. Another coincidence? Another big marsupial predator was Thylacosmilus atrox. Rather than Australia, this one lived in the other haven of marsupial diversity, South America (the North American opossum is a successful descendant of this region). It was up to 260 lbs, about the size of a jaguar, and had canine teeth even longer than the famed saber-toothed Smilodon. Unlike Smilodon, the canines of Thylacosmilus were open rooted, meaning they would keep growing throughout the animal's lifetime. For once, humans had nothing to do with the extinction of Thylacosmilus. It lived between about 10 million years ago and 2.5 million years ago, going extinct about the time of the Great Faunal Interchange, when North American and South America joined together and cats, llamas and raccoons rushed south and armadilloes, porcupines and opossums moved north.
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Post by Lord Lucan on Jul 26, 2016 20:07:20 GMT -5
"Fastidious" isn't the first thing that comes to mind with these guys, but it will now.
How many more animals have you got on your list right now? I'll try to think of others.
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