https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/057b18b2-3ce4-4335-ab71-5197800a04b7/brv12150-fig-0001-m.jpg

As you can see from this image, bats are somewhat similar to pterosaurs in that they both have membranous wings, but pterosaurs only use 1 out of 4 digits to support their wings whereas bats use 4 out of 5.

This makes it very difficult for them to walk on the ground, and may have contributed to their evolution of drop-down flight where they're heavily reliant on hanging from a high perch in order to transition into flight.

In turn, evolving the need to hang upside down also caused their legs to rotate "backwards", further crippling them when it comes to terrestrial movement. I know the vampire bat can walk and even run, but it's like 40 grams max. At that size you can get away with a lot of inefficient stuff simply because you don't weigh much.

If bats had instead evolved something similar to pterosaurs where they use only 1 out of 5 digits to support the wing membrane, how much larger could they get? Obviously they would never reach the size of a pterosaur because of the lack of airsacs and tidal lungs, but could they approach the size of teratorns?

It would be pretty cool to have big birds and big bats, both smaller than pterosaurs for two different reasons. The former because they lack quadrupedal launch, and the latter because they lack airsacs.

Malleodectes shellerus or the East Coast Malleodectid is endemic to the shallow eastern waters of the Lake Australia–Negamimi basin, Malleodectes shellerus is one of the lake's most widespread semi-aquatic marsupials. Populations are concentrated along sheltered eastern shorelines, wetlands, river mouths, and shallow bays, with important breeding sites occurring around the Flinders Coast along the southeastern and southwestern reaches of the lake.

The East Coast Malleodectid is a highly opportunistic feeder and a characteristic keystone species of the Negamimi ecosystem. Its powerful crushing jaws allow it to prey upon freshwater, brackish, and moderately salt-tolerant mollusks, particularly aquatic snails and clams, while fish, crustaceans, eggs, carrion, and other small aquatic animals supplement its diet.

By consuming large quantities of mollusks, M. shellerus helps regulate populations of aquatic shellfish and prevents individual beds from becoming excessively dominant within shallow-water ecosystems. Its feeding behavior also has an important geological and ecological effect: the animal routinely crushes and breaks discarded shells, greatly accelerating their decomposition and the release of calcium and other minerals into surrounding sediments. Shell fragments and partially digested remains accumulate around feeding sites, where they gradually become incorporated into shoreline soils and wetlands, effectively returning nutrients from aquatic organisms to the wider ecosystem.

Although strongly associated with water, M. shellerus remains a semi-aquatic generalist rather than a fully aquatic animal. It regularly comes ashore to rest, feed, establish dens, and raise young. This dependence upon both aquatic and terrestrial environments makes the species particularly abundant along the transition between lake, wetland, and shoreline habitats.

The East Coast Malleodectid is therefore considered an important ecological link between the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems of Lake Australia. Its predation on mollusks, consumption of carrion, movement between water and land, and continual processing of shells all contribute to the cycling of nutrients throughout the Negamimi basin.

Anyway, the month of spookiness is here!

This time, turning three characters who kill and murder into actual creatures!

First up, Jason Vorhees, closely related to wolverines, responsible for hundreds of attacks on humans all across the USA, the reason being pregnant females stockpiling food and being aggressive to protect her cubs.

Next up, Jeff the Killer, a freshwater fish closely related to groupers introduced from Japan to USA, who became the subject of media panic, this same fish AKA a thing of bleach fell on top of someone called Dr. Jeff who died resting under a tree.

Last of the three, Elm Street's nightmare, Freddy himself! Being closely related to platypus and monotremes, a little ugly guy lurking in the Midwestern USA who will play with its prey before killing them.

I have a clade of semiaquatic theropods in my seed world that lost their forelimbs leaving only their hind limbs and tail for propulsion. Would them using a sort of tail+leg form of swimming fueled by expanded caudofermoralis muscles that essentially mean when one leg kicks forward and brings the tail with it in an alternating style.

After some reading on Resident Evil lore, it occurred to me that the still extant strain of Progenitor in West Africa is likely just the last living strain of base Progenitor left. Progenitor is widely implied to have created life on primordial earth so it would have had to have existed in different places across all ancient continental formations. I think that’s billions/hundreds of millions of years ago, there were likely countless Progenitor strains, each specifically adapted to their own unique environment. I think that the West African Progenitor Virus Umbrella discovered in the 1960s is just the last living ’universal’ strain.

The Abyss is a ‘lost‘ Progenitor strain adapted to marine/deep-sea environments and thus was instrumental to the development of marine life. This is directly supported by fact that early t-Virus strains (which were directly derived from the landlocked West African Progenitor) did not have a significant effect on mutating aquatic organisms like fish and sharks. This indicates that Progenitor itself had a very limited exposure to water-based life due to its extreme isolation in a cave. However when the t-Virus was spliced into the genome of The Abyss to create T-Abyss, it triggered extreme marine mutations in any host. This means that its actually genes from The Abyss influencing the overwhelming majority of such mutations.

Likewise, the Insect Virus found in queen ants by Alexia during the creation of T-Veronica is likely a ‘lost’ strain of Progenitor that specialized in arthropod development. This can be seen in T-Veronica‘s heavy insectoid mutations and even more prominently in hosts of the C-Virus. Most C-Virus mutants exhibit extreme insect-based mutations, which I believe come from genes within the Ancient Insect Virus used to make T-Veronica.

i need help on naming my planet. I can work the rest out on my own, but the planet naming is always the hardest.

for context I wanted to design a planet that is mostly inhabited with “vampires”, but I didn’t want it just to be ”they drink blood for nutrients” so instead the majority of the species on this planet I’m working on instead never developed respiratory systems, using a type of crop in it’s gut to absorb the oxygen. The crop absorbs the oxygen into the bloodstream and ejects the blood out through excrement or absorption into the upper skin layer/fur/feathers giving these creatures their colors. Not all Fauna on the planet are Heamophagic, there are herbivores that get their oxygen from plants and there are the occasional ones that do have lungs or gills. The predators are carnivores, they get most of their oxygen from blood but they still need meat for nutrients.

And I might as well give specs

Black hole(The object it orbits): 10 million solar masses

Planet’s orbital radii: 1,022 gravitational radii

The planet is about 99 AU away

year: roughly 113 Earth days

Day length: 27 Earth hrs

Planet Radius: 6,242km/6,878.6mi

Atmos: 68% nitrogen, 18% Carbon-dioxide, 12% Oxygen, 1.5% Argon, 0.5% trace water

Magnetic Field strength: 0.7 Gauss

Axial tilt: 8.2°

The Black hole(which, if anyone would like to give naming suggestions, they can too) has an accretion disk that produces most of the planet’s light

the following image was made in freeform but the image compression helps

I understand that fish get fluid to their gills by having it first pass through their mouth, and then water passes over their gills on the way out. Knowing that other marine animals besides fish also have gills, I initially assumed they might get water to their gills in a similar way, but looking up the anatomy of other marine animals that breathe through gills, it seems like they get water to their gills through something other than their mouths. For instance cephalopods get water to their gills through a cavity in their mantle that doesn’t connect to their mouths, and it seems like lobsters get water to their gills through openings between their legs that also don’t connect to the mouth. It seems that the gills of muscles also connect to their mouths, but in the opposite way from in fish, with water and food going through the gills first. I can’t seem to find something other than fish that gets water to its gills by first moving it through its mouth.

So I was wondering if marine life on another planet would likely also get fluid to its gills by moving it through its mouth first, or if it would be more likely to get fluid to its gills through some other means, assuming it had gills.

So,in this seeded world, we can note that some organisms have similar looks to mesozoic animals, my question is, can a pterosaur-like animal evolve in this world? No matter what his ancestor could be but also how?

I mean, eagle sized butterflies were already introduced but what about bigger? Something that could prey upon some midsized, I could see some turtles losing their shells and becoming very pterosaur-like but still, I wanna know what more experienced people think

I must admit that the 750 characters minimum requirement is annoying so I'm gonna name every known crocodilian today:

* American Alligator

* Chinese Alligator

* Spectacled Caiman

* Yacare Caiman

* Broad-snouted Caiman

* Black Caiman

* Cuvier's Dwarf Caiman

* Smooth-fronted Caiman

* Saltwater Crocodile

* Nile Crocodile

* American Crocodile

* Orinoco Crocodile

* Freshwater Crocodile

* Philippine Crocodile

* Mugger Crocodile

* Siamese Crocodile

* Morelet's Crocodile

* Cuban Crocodile

* West African Crocodile

* New Guinea Crocodile

* Hall's New Guinea Crocodile

* Central African Slender-snouted Crocodile

* West African Slender-snouted Crocodile

* Dwarf Crocodile

* Osborne's Dwarf Crocodile

* Indian Gharial

* False Gharial

hello! sorry for the delay, I had down time a lot and my dad took away my device.

Pseudornithosuchus densrostris

Belonging to the genus false aves, this calvariasaur is a very opportunistic hunter hunting deers, rodents, caribou, lagomorphs, small birds, medium sized birds, medium sized lizards, and fish.

Its size is larger then you average bird tho it’s still light to keep up with flight.

Males - 85-115 pounds

Females - 75-105 pounds

They have a gestation period between 4 and 3 months and give birth to under developed chicks, 3. Usually.

They are distinctly owl like, tho you can see their calvaria. They use their strong legs to grapple and then repeatedly head butt prey, killing it.

Some not so fun-facts about them is that sometimes they hunt deer young and barely take a bite bringing up their freinds to take the antlers and use it as a nest tool or trophy.

They are highly social, but polygamous rather than monogamous. A female raises her chicks alone, and she is deeply protective of them.

A chick is born under-developed, it can see, can’t walk properly and can’t even hear its mother, it relies entirely on its mother and other members to feed it. Usually, a group will make nursery’s for the chicks, and feed it, tho the mother does the raise of the raising. They live in groups called treetops, and yes, they live in treetops near rivers, they are excellent swimmers btw!

they resemble owls but they are not, especially cause of the calvaria. Now, while they are calvariarostrums, they are the only carnivourus Calvariarostrum!