Welcome everyone, to a very educational thread about life before people! In are wonderous journey through history we will encounter many strange beasts, with amazing adaptations.

 

First we shall visit a super preadtor from Devonian Period (417-354 million years ago)

 

The Devonian period was a time of great change throughout are world. At the beggining of this period, the land was barren with very low oxygen levels, plants for the most part were no exsistant until later on , and even then they were small weed like things.

 

But the ocean was a different story, it was exploding with new life, from primitive sponges and corals to the jellyfish we know today. As creatures entered the race to evolve, primitive predators began to appear.

 

The first of these was a super predator named Anomalocaris, meaning "odd shrimp"

 

 

Anomalocaris is thought to have been a predator. It propelled itself through the water by undulating the flexible lobes on the sides of its body. Each lobe sloped below the one more posterior to it, and this overlapping allowed the lobes on each side of the body to act as a single "fin", maximising the swimming efficiency.The construction of a remote-controlled model showed this mode of swimming to be intrinsically stable, meaning that Anomalocaris need not have had a complex brain to cope with balancing while swimming. The lateral lobes overlapped. The widest part of the body was on the third to fifth lobe; it narrowed towards its tail, and had at least 11 lobes in total. The more posterior lobes are difficult to discriminate, making an accurate count difficult.Anomalocaris had a large head, a single pair of large, possibly compound eyes, and an unusual, disk-like mouth. The mouth was composed of 32 overlapping plates, four large and 28 small, resembling a pineapple ring with the center replaced by a series of serrated prongs. The mouth could constrict to crush prey, but never completely close, and the tooth-like prongs continued down the walls of the gullet. Two large 'arms' (up to seven inches in length when extended) with barb-like spikes were positioned in front of the mouth. The tail was large and fan-shaped, and along with undulations of the lobes, was probably used to propel the creature through Cambrian waters.Stacked lamella of what were probably gills attached to the top of each lobe.

 

For the time in which it lived Anomalocaris was a truly gigantic creature, reaching lengths of up to one meter.

 

This is the first creature we shall meet, I'll probly do another one tommorow.

What is this I don't even

 

o.o I thought I'd finally escaped school.. at least for a few days..

What is this I don't even

 

o.o I thought I'd finally escaped school.. at least for a few days..

 

Hey, Its interesting.

Dont you dare compare my teachings to that glorified prison!

ahh, finally another thread from Eterna. I have been enlightened.

5th grade all over again.

 

What is this I don't even

 

o.o I thought I'd finally escaped school.. at least for a few days..

 

Hey, Its interesting.

Dont you dare compare my teachings to that glorified prison!

 

B-But, I can't help it... D:

Hey...

I think this is pretty awesome.

 

Thats a good thing, right?

I would eat that giant shrimp.

Alright I'm back, and with another amazing prehistoric creature!

 

We are going to zoom ahead millions of years to the Carboniferous Period (354-290 Million years ago)

 

The world has matured and Is now much different than the world Anomalocaris thrived it. This period is best known for its greenhouse climate, It saw rich humid temperatures from the arctic to the antarctic circles. Most of the world at this time was covered in lush swamps, dense humid forests, and large exspanses of water. Oxygen levels were also very high compared to today, This enabled many creatures to grow to enormous proportions. For Example, Meganura (meaning "giant Nerves") was an Eagle sized dragonfly.

 

The creature we shall look at today was called Arthropleura, meaning "side joint" (340-280 mil years ago)

 

 

What Arthropleura ate is a matter of debate among scientists, as none of the fossils have the mouth preserved. However, it is reasonably certain that it would have had a sharp and powerful set of jaws. Based on this assumption, it used to be thought that Arthropleura was carnivorous, but recently discovered fossils have been found with pteridophyte spores in the gut and in associated coprolites, suggesting that the creature ate plants.

Fossilized footprints from Arthropleura have been found in many places. These appear as long, parallel rows of small prints, which show that it moved quickly across the forest floor, swerving to avoid obstacles, such as trees and rocks. When moving at speed, its body would stretch and become longer, giving it a greater stride length and thus allowing it to move faster.

 

As it moved about, Arthropleura would have brushed against many different types of plant, and may have helped the forest reproduce by spreading spores about the place. It is also thought that Arthropleura was capable of traveling under water, and that it may have returned to lakes and rivers in order to moult its shell. This would have made it vulnerable to attack by large fish and amphibians. On land an adult Arthropleura would have had few enemies.

Arthropleura evolved from crustacean-like ancestors earlier in the Carboniferous, and was able to grow larger than modern arthropods, partly because of the high percentage of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere at that time, and because of the lack of large terrestrial vertebrate predators. Fossil tracks of an arthropod dating back to the Silurian are sometimes attributed to either Arthropleura, or a Silurian- to Early-Devonian millipede called Eoarthropleura. Arthropleura became extinct at the start of the Permian period, when the moist climate began drying out, destroying the rainforests of the Carboniferous, and allowing the desertification characteristic of the Permian. Because of this, oxygen levels in the atmosphere began to decline to more modest levels. None of the giant arthropods could survive the new dry, lower-oxygen climate.

 

-sources, My own amazing brain, wikipedia (for classification of Arthropleura)

So basically, thats a giant centipede. A giant, drooling centipede.

So basically, thats a giant centipede. A giant, drooling centipede.

 

 

no

F*ck that's the creepiest centipeded EVER!

 

Strangely I'm starting to find this sort of entertaining

Coming soon will be Gorgonops, the top predator in a dying world.

 

and by coming soon I mean whenever I have the will to write and research

So basically, thats a giant centipede. A giant, drooling centipede.

 

/faint

Looks like a centipede to me. Or a mutated multi-limbed shrimp.

Looks like a centipede to me. Or a mutated multi-limbed shrimp.

 

Your right and wrong at the same time, Imagen it as Centipede prototype 1. In other words, despite it's looks, Its very primitive, as all life was at that time.

..wut?

Lexi fails at history class

ask my teacher

oh eterna. you and your awesomeness.

At the end of the Carboniferous period a small Ice age occured, this event Killed most of the lush tropical swamps that inhabited the land; thus wiping out 20% of life on earth, these included the giant bugs this period was famous for , never again would they grow to such sizes.

 

The Swamplands were transformed into barren rocky crags, similar to deserts we would see today, only much worse. This signaled the beggining of the Permian period (290-248 million years ago)

 

The large land mass that was the earth at this time was transformed by the ice age, which ended shortly before the period began. The land was dry and soon 90% of it was covered in desert.

 

Throughout the period Life on earth was dying out, never before had the earth experienced such a mass extinction, untill the arrival of humans Millions of years later which would be known as the greatest mass extinction to date.

 

But despite this evolution was still in the works, and a new genus of creatures arised, The Mammal Like reptiles. These animals were very reptile looking, accept for 2 things, they had Canine teeth (saber teeth) and were warm blooded. Scientists have determined that they are infact, the missling link between reptiles and mammals.

 

Near the end of the permian the mammal like reptiles were in their prime, many had become ruthless predators.

 

On of these was Gorgonops, meaning "gorgons arch" (258-248 mil yrs ago)

 

Gorgonops is the name given to an extinct genus of therapsid which lived about 255-250 million years ago, during the latest part of the Permian Period.

 

It was a typical representative of the Gorgonopsia, the dominant predators of their day, which in the largest forms grew to over four meters long. Gorgonops possessed highly developed, 12-cm long "sabre" canine teeth, similar to those found in sabre-toothed cats in the Cenozoic. Arguments have even been made for therapsids of its time being endothermic, though no strong evidence exists either way. All of the gorgonopsids are believed to have died out in the Permian extinction.

 

Gorgonops itself was a medium to large-sized representative of the group, with a skull length of twenty to thirty-five centimeters, depending on the species. It ranged from 2 to 2,5 meters long from nose to tail. Gorgonops derived superior speed from long legs held beneath its body.

 

 

Next up we are going to the Triassic, that means Dino's AWWWWWWWWW YEAHHHHHH

Is this creature an ancestor of the Tyrannosaurus Rex?

Is this creature an ancestor of the Tyrannosaurus Rex?

 

no, Its a distant relative of mammals, Mammal like reptiles have been extinct since the Triassic, its an evolutionary dead end.

Ahh I see. I just made that assumption based on the picture.

 

So you said this was the "missing link" between reptiles and mammals. Was this some kind of hybrid?

Ahh I see. I just made that assumption based on the picture.

 

So you said this was the "missing link" between reptiles and mammals. Was this some kind of hybrid?

 

A missing link is an animal the fits in the middle.

 

Sort of like this

 

Reptiles-------> Mammal like reptiles--------> Mammals.

 

Or Fish -----------> Amphibeans---------> Reptiles-------> Dinosaurs----------> Birds

 

Scientists always wondered how mammals came to be, Creatures like Gorgonops where the in between, not yet Mammals, but not reptiles.

 

The most famous missing link is Archaeopteryx

 

 

Archaeopteryx is the link between dinosaur And birds, simply meaning Its not a dinosaur, but not yet a bird Either.

 

So Gorgonops was on its way to becoming a mammal, but due to the mass extinction it was never able too, and instead others of its genus who survived did.

 

Its really hard to explain, so I hope I did alright

That's what I meant when I said hybrid. That these animals weren't exactly mammals or reptiles, but kind of a mix of the two. And as time elapsed, they evolved into either mammals or reptiles, depending on how close the animal was to the species. Am I correct with this?

 

And yes, you've done a great job explaining this.

That's what I meant when I said hybrid. That these animals weren't exactly mammals or reptiles, but kind of a mix of the two. And as time elapsed, they evolved into either mammals or reptiles, depending on how close the animal was to the species. Am I correct with this?

 

And yes, you've done a great job explaining this.

 

For the most part you are right, but Animals never evolve backwards, So mammal like reptiles would never have become reptiles again.

 

Reptiles were still alive and thriving in the permian, it was only after the Mammal like reptiles disapeared that many reptile species evolved into Dinosaurs.

I see. So the MLR's (Mammal like Reptiles) disappeared for a period of time, and the reptiles went free and evolved during the Triassic period, and the other periods where dinosaurs roamed free. After dinosaurs became extinct, the MMRs had evolved into mammals, and became dominant. Am I right about this?