Thomas Scaife

That shark looks suspiciously similar to a cookie-cutter…

MORE Seridic fish:

Well said!! Science isn't about one conclusion or the other. It is about the process by which we come to conclusions.

Here you go. Note: it is still the unformatted version!
Zanno, L.E., Napoli, J.G. Nanotyrannus and Tyrannosaurus coexisted at the close of the Cretaceous. Nature (2025). doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Let me attempt to articulate something. As a former participant in the "teenage nerds talk about dinosaurs online" scene, I think some of us who follow paleontology as adults or do dinosaur stuff professionally care too much about the specifics of what's being discussed there. (cont'd)

Ah yes- the five owl personalities: sleepy, grumpy, goofy, nonplussed, and menacing

Some mammals of the Seridic wetlands:

A sparassodont, a coati, an armadillo, a hydrochoerine, and a mylodont sloth.

Kaimere's Third Age began with the rapid turnover from a realm dominated by voracious greater demons to the rule of oppressive witch-kings. War not just between witches but also revolution by their subjects made this a far more violent era of Kaimere's history.

Link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj0W...

The Aznarith are an order of knights who form a symbiotic bond with enchanted weapons. The order was first established during the Age of Witches to protect common folk from demons like this sloth homunculus seeking revenge for their lost territory, but they later helped kill tyrannical witch-kings.

Without active mountain building the peaks of Lemuria slowly erode into hills. This dry and often times quite chilly habitat is not a good place for reptiles and so mammals dominate these highlands. This piece takes place during late morning on a spring day.

The Lemuria Phase 2 murals so far didn't have that many large predators, this isn't the case in the savannah! The central part of the composition is a large gondwanather being eaten by a large number of predators and scavengers. Over 4 m wingspan enantiornithines, huge...

We set this piece between the open woodland and the bushlands of Lemuria. This piece exists as part of the usual roster of our spec evo projects for a while to show of the many burrowing animals that otherwise are hard to show, especially the ones that live near exclusively...

It's easy to loose sight of how much worldbuilding goes into a project, it's hard zoom out and view all at once. That's why I like using size charts but. It puts things into perspective. In this case it also shows the enormous amount of glorious creatures the community gave us.

Lets keep this going on Day 26 of #Croctober
Simosuchus was not the only notosuchian with complex teeth. Look no further than Pakasuchus, which straight up just mirrors mammalian dentition down to the grinding molars.
Illustrations by Smokeybjb and Zina Deretsky

Woolly rhinos jousting observed by flock of barnacle geese #sciart

Once more some mammoths

I've received an 'exclusive' invite to try Nature's new 'research assistant', which will burn down a forest to provide a 'summary of the paper' I'm reading and I have SUCH exciting news for them, that's called an 'abstract' and the actual authors already wrote it for me, no forest-burning required.

Camarasaurus 🌲🦕

A Carnian theropod with unexpectedly derived features during the first dinosaur radiation - Nature Ecology & Evolution The authors report a new species of theropod dinosaur from the Triassic Period of Argentina. Despite being one of the earliest theropods, Anteavis crurilongus has derived features more in line with Ne...

New paper by Martínez et al. describing a new basal theropod #dinosaur 🦖 from the Late #Triassic of Argentina 🇦🇷 alongside an analysis of faunal assemblages that helps clarify how early dinosaurs diversified & expanded their ecological roles ⬇️

#Paleontology #Science

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I love the pose on this one!

Fish of the genus Brycon are found in freshwater habitats in much of the known world, though are at their most abundant and diverse in the Seridic Wetlands. They are omnivores, primarily eating vegetation with a range of small fish and invertebrates.

Though other subspecies of green alar (also just called alar) can get quite large, the Seridic alar is the smallest member of not only the species but the genus overall. It is generally believed living alongside the only living species of Ardeanax (the ba'khar) contributes to this restriction.

Some notes on the vision of the ba'khar and what their prey sees from below the surface...

A female kurajaku. While large aquatic males of this species are by up to a factor of three or four the largest theropods either planet has ever seen, females are restricted to the conventional maximums of the clade due to having to nest on land.

Tying the knot between morphology and development: using the patterning cascade model between cheek teeth to study the evolution of molarization in hoofed mammals - Journal of Mammalian Evolution Hoofed mammal premolars show a range of occlusal crown morphology from molariform to caniniform, and the position of taxa on this spectrum can be described as the relative molarization of the premolars. Molarized premolars function together with the molars in grinding mastication in which these unique premolars appear. The degree of molarization varies across dietary ecologies, which has led to cheek tooth morphology being designated as an important contributor to dietary predictions in extant and extinct taxa. Recent research into mammalian occlusal cheek tooth patterning have found independent patterning mechanisms of the premolars and molars. A research gap exists in understand how molarization of the premolars has occurred so frequently in hoofed mammals if these dental regions are independent in their patterning. In this study, we tested the application of the patterning cascade model to the lower premolar-molar boundary in hoofed mammals using a geometric morphometrics framework. We used 2D geometric morphometrics to study occlusal cuspid covariation at the lower p4-m1 boundaries of 16 artiodactyl and 18 perissodactyl species. Phylogenetically informed modularity analyses were used to test alternate a priori hypotheses originating from evolutionary, developmental, and functional considerations of cheek tooth morphogenesis. Our results showed artiodactyls and perissodactyls differ significantly in their p4-m1 boundary covariation patterns, which we hypothesize could be caused by heterochronic shifts between premolar and molar development. To our knowledge, our study is the first to contribute a comprehensive yet accessible 2D geometric morphometric method to further investigate the evolution of molarized premolars.

Ashbaugh, A.J., Jamniczky, H.A. & Theodor, J.M. Tying the knot between morphology and development: using the patterning cascade model between cheek teeth to study the evolution of molarization in hoofed mammals. J Mammal Evol 32, 23 (2025). doi.org/10.1007/s109...

Starshippe Captayne: "To complete thys mysterious taske given us by the council, we must fynde a strepsirrhine primate!"

Startshippe First Officer: "Aye aye, Captayne."

Starshippe Captayne: "No, just a regular lemur."

YouTube video by Technology Connextras LED replacement bulbs for cars are bad and you shouldn't use them.

This is a hill I will die on.
youtu.be/fDvxq7IF1W4

A female kurajaku:

The ba'khar, a massive fish-specialized megaraptoran endemic to the Crescent of southern Ni'Khar, most abundant in the Seridic Wetlands. Males have a sail on their back for display and to anchor lifting muscles and ligaments of the neck. They also sport a pronged midline crest.

A size chart of our megaraptoran mothers: a ba'khar and kurajaku.

Yodemi is a ba'khar in her late forties. A mother of over a hundred adults and many more young at the start of our story, including our protagonist, Fai Zhemi.

Mazhu is, conversely, a new mother, laying her first clutch.