mudskippers maybe?
the other day I asked which sea animals would take over the role of land based Tetrapods if they all died.
If there was a drastic mass extinction like that would Earth's aquatic biomes be able to continue on as before?
This is a thought i had some time ago: tetrapod means four limbs. Now snakes are tetrapods, but they do not have any limb (and some salamanders have only two). What i mean is that what tetrapod means/defines and what a tetrapod is are different things. Same goes with the famous whales are fishes thing. Do whales breathe underwater? No, but they descend from fishes. I mean do humans have fins or gills? No, But still we technically are fishes, or better, if i recall correctly, osteichtys (i hope i'm not wrong on this one). In short, a definition may mean something general or observable/simplistic. So if someone says a whale is not a fish, it's fine.
Seed worlds such as serina and hamsters paradise generally feature one tetrapod/vertebrate which thrives as a single species and eventually speculates over time, but thereβs one concern I have with this. How the initial ecosystems at the very beginning of the seed world even be able to support the vertebrate? Usually in ecosystems there are various predator and prey species and various flora to sustain them, but in a seed world the primary vertebrate which is usually a herbivore there is no competition or predation, so my concern is that the population of the tetrapod would explode early on due to no predation, consuming most of the flora available and collapsing the ecosystem. How would an ecosystem and the species within it survive this (I assume) inevitable collapse? Would it cause an extinction event early on? Or is there a reason as to why this wouldnβt occur?
The time span Iβm talking about is only several decades, maybe even a couple centuries, so just the earliest time after introduction of organisms
this is in equal part shitpost and an tought i had somethimes :
have you guys noticed how many times there are animals that do a similar task but use different body part to do so ?
for examples : naked mole rats use their theet to dig , while moles use their front paws to dig , while burrowing snakes use their muscular body and a reinforced head to burrow trough the ground
in the same way in wich elephants use their lip/nose ( we could call it trunk but you'll see my point ) to browse , and giant sloths, calicotheres and therizinosaurs (wich btw are an amaizing example of convergent evolution) used their front legs to accomplish this task , giraffes , hiracotheres and sauropods instead lenghetend their neck to reach things
and how wolves and hyenas use their strong jaws to take preys down , while big cats and bear dogs used their paws to restrain the prey , while on the other hand big constrictor snakes use their body to coil around and strangle their prey ,
or sea iduanas and crocodiles using their long tail to swim in turbulent waters , while sea turtles use their legs instead
this could also be seen in speculative evolution : humans use their arms to manipulate tools , while things like the avisapiens use their mouths to manipulate tools ,
this is because there are mainly three parts of the skeletal structure of tetrapods : the neural spine , the skull and the jaws , and the legs ,
these three structures can be used to create different results and can all be functional ,
this is i guess was kind of the opposite of convergent evolution : similar creatures using different strategies to do the same thing , and sometimes converging with species wich are completely different from them ...
idk honestly what is the point of this post i just wanted to point out somenthing i notice ofthen ,
it's looks like different martial arts almost ...
As the title implies, would the anal fin disappear when the fish is fully terrestrial or could it become some type of extra limb?
so typically what most spec evo projects do is take existing animal groups and like add to them, like Serina is mostly about seeing how far you could possible take Avian evolution.
recently it occurred to you could take a fairly basic reptile or amphibian and have it evolve into a whole new kind of large endothermic tetrapod, one that would be as different from its reptile/amphibian ancestor as like an emu is from a basal Archosaur. Has any one tried to do that?
Lungfish, the closest living relatives of the tetrapods, as well as all other sarcopterygians, posses large interlocking plated scales. Why did early tetrapods loose this, only for amniotes to re-evolve their own version? Wouldn't large scales be beneficial to a belly-dragging early tetrapod?
Ok I have the idea of a spec project of evolving 6-legged dragons from a 4 legged animal with tissues of the same structure as teeth and I wonder is it plausible for 4 legged animal to evolve limbs with the same structured tissues as teeth
A while back I asked if it'd be possible for hummingbirds to redevelop their legs if they were the only Tetrapods left in the world.
someone suggested they could just develop really long toes to walk on instead. Is that possible?
I casually mentioned the idea of a lizard seed world in my last post, and thinking about that idea made we wonder about about this. Suppose you create a lizard seed world and that seed world has extremely cold polar regions, will the lizards have to become endothermic and develop something like fur to survive in that part of the world?
Like I assume becoming endothermic is an absolute necessity, but is there an alternative to covering your body in fuzz to conserve heat?
Title basically says it all, just wondering what the general consensus is on whether or not all Tetrapods descend from one animal, and what species it's believed to have been (if there is just one). Thank you in advance!
like do you think it would possible for them to redevelop ribs from their riblets, or would they have to evolve some other way to protect their organs like a shell?
