Squamozoic sneak-peek

When I see Gary Larson's pictures of pre-historic sceneries, there is always Elvis somewhere peeking out from his hiding-place. You have neglected to show him in this image, even tough Elvis is apparently the most long-lived life form of the phanerozoic. Also, there are no pterodactyl cows in the sky... :-)

This deserves a good visit:

Latest Cretaceous hadrosauroid (Dinosauria: Ornithopoda) remains from Bulgaria
In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 17 July 2010
Pascal Godefroit, Neda Motchurova-Dekova

Comptes Rendus Palevol

Eryops in a tree?

Sorry, spelling error. Is the tree supposed to be a pine? I cannot see the claws well, is it a deinonychus holding its victim?

Eryops in a tree?

Nah, the head's too small and rounded. Some sort of caseasaur, I reckon. In a tree.

In a parallel timeline, mammals never diversified much during the Cretaceous, and it is squamates that have become the most important group of big-bodied Cenozoic tetrapods. This is what we refer to when using the term Squamozoic (background here). The Patagonian scene here shows an assortment of endothermic teiids and iguanians. Anoles have diversified like crazy in the Squamozoic: the big animal in the tree is a sloth-anole. I'll be coming back to the Squamozoic world at some point in the future...

Hooray for the squamozoic!
:)

Yay. :-)

So, about the speculative biology.
David, glad to see you here.
I'd like to talk with you about Spec. I see the project is into something like catalepsy. But people from my forum started the translation of pages of Spec project into Russian. Some pages are completely translated, btw. So, I'd like to know - are you going to update Spec project?

Pavel, A lot of that is my fault, I promised to update quite a bit of the various fauna, never got around to it. Plus, the discovery of "Tianyulong" and that land crocodilians (notosuchians et al.) may have had an intermediate "cool-blooded" metabolism and possibly even quilly integument has really,REALLY messed things up. Spec is "supposed" to be a mammal, maniraptor(+tyrannosaur) dominated world. We've got a LOT to iron out. Plus all the original contributors are in cognito. David is the last member.

Sloth-anole? I dunno...

Hey, that does remind me of a squamate question I've had for awhile: who are chameleons descended from? Are there fossil chameleons known that are clearly more basal than modern taxa?

Zach - is your anole-fu weak? Sloth-anoles are just souped-up versions of Chamaeleolis.

I don't have time to properly answer the chameleon question, but you could have a look at this.

Raymond - Wait, what's this about "cool-blooded" notosuchians and land crocodilians having quilly integument? Are you just speaking broadly in terms of the evidence from phylogenetic bracketing or has something new been discovered?

Ranjit-

"Raymond - Wait, what's this about "cool-blooded" notosuchians and land crocodilians having quilly integument? Are you just speaking broadly in terms of the evidence from phylogenetic bracketing or has something new been discovered?"

Several of the south american crocs show evidence of extensive vascular openings on their snouts.

http://felipe-elias.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2m4sba

However, it seems that land-crocs all through-out the jurassic into the cretaceous were BIG time competitors with mammals. Both land-crocs and small quadraped ornithischians may have prevented mammals from being larger than 20 pounds (8 kilos) until the Maastrichian, when North America had an abundance of "large" mammals around 20 to +40 pounds 8 to +20 kilos)from widely diverse lineages.

I apologize that there are no real peer-reviewed works to pour over, however, it is becoming fairly obvious that both small ornithischians and the diverse crurotarsan metasuchians* prevented almost all synapsids (aside from the lingering dicynodonts) from getting to really large sizes.

*I know, I know, it is wikipedia (shudders) but...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasuchia

So, I'd like to know - are you going to update Spec project?

Yes. Just not before the defense of my PhD thesis, which is supposed to be in the first half of September. And by then someone will probably need to find new webspace for it.

Pavel, A lot of that is my fault

No, it's not. There are lots of great essays, including some Tiina wrote in two thousand fucking six, that I never got around to upload. Spec is currently on my university webspace.

David, can you point the stable and not-going-to-change pages to translate it first? To tell the truth, I do not take part in translation of your project, just discuss the possible versions of translation of Spec inhabitants' names.
In Russian it is a proverb: "Later is better then never". And I hope Spec will be even more interesting after renewing. Maybe, new ideas will come from Russia?

OMG ! Hey Darren, I'm not sure if you remember me, but we had e-mailed each other concerning this project, as I was taking it under my wing. I haven't done much lately, though I did work rather tediously do eventually scrap all of those ideas, and come up with new ones. If you check my DA page (I'm Chimpeetah there), I did upload a weird sentient iguanid, but I haven't really focused on many projects since then...

Anyway...

This illustration looks great, and I love the radiation of anoles ! If you would like a few cool suggestions and designs for this I will surely help...this has really sparked my interest in it again :D

an assortment of endothermic teiids and iguanians

with no insulation?

It's a warm bit of Patagonia. And they're not _all_ endothermic.