favorite prehistoric creatures!

[Finnick the Aquacat]

It's just as the title says, I wanna know y'all's favorite prehistoric creatures! There are so many funky and cool creatures throughout life's history, and I thought it'd be fun to get a little peek into everyone's minds and see why a particular silly little guy stands out to you!

For me personally, I'm not great at favorites lol, but I do have a handful of creatures I really like. I was a big dinosaur girlie as a kid, but now that I'm older I've really gained an appreciation for the life of the Paleozoic, in particular I think creatures from the earlier periods like the Cambrian and Ordovician are really cool. Life was still figuring things out then, creatures were evolving and refining themselves into brand new roles never explored before. With some creatures you can see resemblances to modern day animals in them, but others look completely alien when compared to creatures today.

Take, for instance, the Anomalocaris. This critter belongs to a group of extinct arthropods called the radiodonts, and it's thought to be one of the earliest examples of an apex predator in the history of life, living during a roughly 21 million year period in the middle of the Cambrian. Its name means "unlike other shrimp", and it got this because its initial fossil discovery only had one of its frontal appendages preserved, leading paleontologists to see it as the body of a shrimp-like creature instead.

I know Anomalocaris is one of the more popular Cambrian creatures out there, but I still like it, I wanna get a plushie of it someday. Radiodonts are cool, most of them were only around for the Cambrian period but a clade of radiodonts called the huriids survived past then. Most of these non-Cambrian huriids are only known from fossils showing up in the early Ordovician, but one called Schinderhannes bartelsi was actually discovered from a specimen preserved in rock dated to the early Devonian. We haven't yet found any other radiodonts in later periods though, so for now it seems like the Devonian was as far as they made it.

Another interesting creature from the Cambrian I like is called Wiwaxia, which sort of resembles a tiny armored sea cucumber. Wiwaxia was around for a roughly 15 million year period during the middle Cambrian, and scientists are currently still debating whether it belongs to the annelid worms or the molluscs, though recent evidence has been pointing more toward the latter. Wiwaxia is covered in these scale-like plates called sclerites and has spikes sticking up from its back, and it's thought these were evolved as defense mechanisms to protect their soft underside.

I dunno why, but something about this critter is just really cute to me. Maybe it's because it kinda reminds me of the pokemon Pyukumuku? Wiwaxia could actually make for a pretty interesting fossil pokemon in my opinion, I've tried designing one based on it before but I wasn't super happy with the concept, it felt too much like it was just a cartoon animal rather than a pokemon. Maybe I'll give it another try someday once I think up a secondary concept to work into the design, all the other Cambrian mons I've designed that I'm happy with have one incorporated so that's probably what it needs.

For one more group of neat little critters, take a look at the vetulicolians. These creatures lived for a roughly 19 million year long period during the middle of the Cambrian, though there are some possible vetulicolid fossils dated to the Ediacaran that may suggest they first came about before the Cambrian Explosion took place. How the vetulicolians fed is still up for debate, as some scientists think they were deposit feeders, sifting through the silt on the seafloor for food, while others think they were filter feeders akin to whale sharks and manta rays today.

What I find neat about these little dudes is how, despite looking like alien tadpoles, they're thought to belong to a stem group under the chordates. That means that they would've split off from the creatures that would one day evolve into vertebrates, making us more closely related to them than invertebrates around today. I just find that cool to think about, nature is weird and wonderful.

Anyways, that's enough of me rambling, I wanna see your favorite funky little prehistoric blorbos! Feel free to talk about them as in depth as you like, I love learning about ancient creatures!

[chamodon]

MY TIME HAS COME

my favorite animal is inostrancevia alexandri, a gorgonopsid from the permian era with saber-teeth and being considered the biggest gorgonopsians to roam the planet ( only rivaled by rubidgea atrox which was barely bigger ). they sported large jaws that had a wide opening angle that they used to bear down on prey, tearing them apart with their 15cm long saber-teeth!! they're SO cool looking, i love their shapes, and gorgonopsids in general are super interesting to me :D namely due to their reptilian-esque brains contrasted with their "dog-like" anatomy!! forgive me if there's a better way to describe that haha

^^^ artist: Dmitry Bogdanov ^^^

another prehistoric creature i like is andrewsarchus from the middle eocene!! it has historically been disputed as the world's largest terrestrial carnivore, though its size was likely overestimated due to "inaccurate comparisons with mesonychids" and it lacks the carnassial teeth of a hypercarnivore. evidence also suggests it was actually an omnivore with a fairly weak bite force! however that doesn't stop me from finding it super rad. though the only specimen we have is a top half of a skull ( from what i am aware ), people all over have made speculative artwork depicting it. this is one of my favorites

^^^ artist: Dmitry Bogdanov ^^^

and of course how could we forget the mighty smilodon ( specifically fatalis )! one of the most iconic prehistoric animals of all time, being alive during the pleistocene to early holocene epoch!! did you know that despite its extraordinarily wide jaw range ( up to 90 degrees and over!!!! ) , it had a bite force that was only a 1/3 as powerful as today's lions? that is due to today's lions having more pronounced zygomatic arches in comparison to smilodon, causing restriction of power in the temporalis muscles!

i focused on prehistoric creatures rather than dinos, but i love those silly guys too!! thank you for allowing me to gush about one of my biggest interests :P