New Family Posted: The Cryptopters!!!

Another family to be presented in Metazoica, the Cryptopteridae. I was talking about them on here yesterday and decided to create their page on my site. You can view their page here: http://www.metazoica.com/Cryptopters.html. I "stole" Dixon's idea for Arbovespertilio, only instead of making it a predator, I made it a harmless plant-eater, like a modern sloth. I think it makes better sense, since the animal would not be able to move fast enough to capture mice and such fast-moving animals as that. In their world, which is the Hawaiian (or Batavian--according to Dixon) Islands, their main predator, Cercomoloch, lives in the top level. So these bats live at lower and ground levels, and all have lost their wings. Most do however "fly" in different ways. Acronurus "flies" in the same manner as lemurs and monkeys do today. Another species, Pitheconycteris, brachiates like modern gibbons do. And Cryptopterus "flies" along the ground, like deer and antelope can.

In today's world we are already seeing some island bats turn somewhat flightless. It's almost a stones-throw to these animals losing their wings completely and adapting to using other methods of "flight", even if it is mock-flight. Most of these animals do not get very big. Since they are confined to the small Hawaiian chain, they can only get so big. The 2 largest species are Cryptopterus and Arbovespertilio. Arbovespertilio gets up to about the size of a modern orangutan, and is tailless. Cryptopterus is about the size of a St. bernard dog, and has a very short tail. The longest tail belongs to Acronurus, a strictly tree-dwelling animal the size of a domestic cat. The tail is longer than the head and body length.

Future Chiropters

This is an on-going discussion on the Spec. Evolution forum and I just wanted to give a little bit of my own hypothesis on this subject. In my view, bats will take over from birds. Today, it is the pteropods that are the most intelligent forms, so it is my opinion that they will most likely be the ones to "muscle-out" birds in the competition. Birds are not going to be an easy group to defeat. There are some things that could wipe out birds and leave that niche open to bats. Nobody really knows what wiped out 99% of all living things at the end of the Permian period. It is thought that increased volcanic activity is among the culprits. It could happen again. The same thing could happen to wipe out birds. Let's say bats survive because they live in caves. Only 3 families of birds inhabit caves, whereas almost all bats shelter in caves. So IMHO, bats would survive. This is of course one of those "it could happen this way" kind of scenarios. Bats are among the most successful animals of all. The only thing they would need is to learn how to walk around on their hind legs. In the Metazoic, I figure pteropods (also known as Megachiropters) will fill in these niches.

At the end of the Permian Period, there were but a few survivers. Among these were dinosaurs and synapsids. Among the synapsids was a pig-sized Lystrosaurus that survived, and became the prototype for all mammals today. If a large animal like that could survive an extinction event that killed off 99% of all other creatures, then there is no reason some other rather good-sized creatures couldn't survive again, and I'm thinking bats could be among the species to survive, and even take over. Birds are small, and can live on limited amounts of food, but then again, so can bats. Bats can gradually grow to larger proportions. In the Metazoic, there are even flightless bats. These bats, I call them the Cryptochiropters, are more monkey-like and live in what is today Hawaii. They have lost the use of their last 3 digits and the thumb and index fingers have become their forefeet, same arrangement on their hind feet, and they use these for walking, not flying. This family evolved off the pteropods, but went down a different evolutionary route. Most of these animals are tree-dwellers, but there are some ground-dwellers as well that graze on grasses, and watch out overhead for the vicious Cercomoloch. Cercomoloch I figure will be a giant, predatory pteropod that feeds on other animals, killing them with their talons, like in modern eagles.

Well, who knows what can happen, birds are adaptable, but then so are bats. Dunkleosteus was a great survivor in the age of fish. But they were unexpectedly muscled out by sharks. One would have thought sharks, whose internal body structure is made up of cartilage, would have died off hundreds of millions of years ago. But they survived and beat out Dunkleosteus!! Sometimes evolution and nature take unexpected paths.

New Family: The Opossums

There is a new family completed on my site, the opossums. The family Segniidae can be viewed here: http://www.metazoica.com/Opossums.html. It is not the typical family of opossums, the Didelphidae, that has been around since the age of the dinosaurs. But then again, almost nothing on my site is the same. These animals do not "play dead" as do their modern relatives, the largest species in this group is equipped with sharp, curved claws ready for battle. Other species have their own methods of defense. One species bounds around like a modern lemur.

Revised Group

I was working on my Metazoic site today and I finished the group of Typical lemurs, the family Chirosapidae. It is one of my favorite groups because it is so varied. It can be viewed here: http://www.metazoica.com/TypicalLemurs.html. Basically all I really did was fix the pics and remodel a couple of species that I think needed better representatives. Only 7 of the 14 genera in the family is discussed on the site, but these are the most interesting. These include the last of the bushbabies, which are the root of this family in the Metazoic. With the African, Eurasian and Australian continents colliding, these lemurs will colonize every corner of the Old World. One species, Oreolemur, will also colonize the old world oceans, as far west as Bermuda and as far south as south Africa, possibly into the northernmost part of the Southern (Antarctic) Ocean.

Aside from this group, I have been going around my site breaking the connections to the flash movies, and just sticking with the regular site pages.

The Propithecines

Another family has been added to the line-up. The propithecines, we know them as sifakas. I have retained the family Indriidae during the Metazoic, and made them far more varied than they are today, which is pretty much!! I find much more variety in the sifaka family of today than I find in many other larger mammal families. Anyway, the Propithecines can be viewed here: http://www.metazoica.com/LeapingLemurs.html. I am also slowly making progress in fixing the pictures on my site. I am also totally eradicating the flash presentations, except for maybe a few. But even those I may turn into regular movies like on YouTube so anyone can view them even with dial-up. I am trying right now to concentrate on fixing the mystery of the missing pictures on my site. I hope to have this problem completely fixed by the end of this weekend. I will work on the movies some other time. Later on down the road perhaps.

I am glad to see I am getting honest opinions on my site. Really, I am! I don't mind. One person on a forum that belongs to a friend is totally opposed to all my animals except the bats. I just told him that everyone has their favorites! Paul didn't like my bats, so everyone's opinions differ. That's one thing I learned well over the years. I will just continue doing what I've done and move foreward. Though I must admit that even now I look back on some of the animals I thought up and ask myself "Why did I ever come up with that one?!" One thing I get a lot of is people saying that I have too many of such and such a group. What people don't seem to understand is that these animals are really spread over a period of 60 million years. Some families and even species are going to be placed at the foreside of that 60 million year period, while others may be at the last end of the era. I have divided up the Metazoic era into 2 periods. Just as the Mesozoic era was divided into 3 periods: the Triassic, jurassic and cretaceous periods. The Metazoic is divided in 2: the Posthomic and the thermocepian periods. The Posthomic covers the first 30 million years and the Thermocepian covers the last 30 million years. I outline this in a bit of detail in my timeline. Viewable here: http://www.metazoica.com/Timeline.html.

When you look at the history of the dinosaurs and even mammal evolution, not all species depicted were around at the same time. Some died off or became others. Modern horses (Equus) were not around when Eohippus (or Hyracotherium) walked the Earth. That is what I did with my site, I have depicted all species, including the earliest mammal forms of the Metazoic. Many of which we are familiar with today.

New Family Posted!! And New Update!

The futuristic "camel" family, Chameliidae, has been posted! You can see them here: http://www.metazoica.com/camels.html. Of course these are only 4 of the 7 genera in the family, I never post them all. The "camels" of the future are actually "throw offs" of the deer family. They just deeply resemble camels of today. They are tall and appear to be all legs! They have no humps, and are tailless. Also, I updated the deinognathids. They can be viewed here: http://www.metazoica.com/Deinognathids.html. I made the necessary changes, and I put back the pics that had apparently been deleted!! I don't know how that happened! But if it happens again, I'm going to write a very strongly-worded e-mail to my host provider!!!!! That has happened more than once even when I have gone back in and tried to put the pics back up!

Well anyway, enjoy! I would also appreciate some input from other evolutionists.

Welcome to Metazoica's Blogspot!!

Hello and welcome to Metazoica on Blogspot. Here we will be discussing the future of evolution and also some about animals in today's world. If you have not yet visited my Metazoic site, I would like to recommend it, as it has all kinds of ideas about how I believe tomorrow's animals will look. Some of the ideas are all my own, but there have been some that were aided by friends and comrades who are also into studying future evolution. I will also be discussing some of the ideas they have given me, some of which I have decided to use on my site, which will soon be new and improved all the way!

When new things have been added to the site, I will announce them here. I had a forum, but due to the lack of new activity and being taken over by spammers instead, I have decided to delete it. I will have links here to friends who have forums and/or e-mail groups that deals with the subject of future evolution. Any pornographic images posted on this blog will not be accepted. I will set this blog only to post a person's comments after they have been accepted. As with Dougal Dixon's book, "After Man: A Zoology of the Future", I talk about these animals like a time traveler who has visited the world of the future and studied these animals. So don't be surprised if I talk about them in the present tense.

Those visiting this site may find some of the material on here to be offensive or inaccurate. You of course have a right to your own opinion, just as I have a right to mine. The animals depicted on my site were my idea to put there. Any ideas you may have to improve on any of my views may be taken into account. But it is not guaranteed.

Anyway, enjoy yourself on this blog! I will discuss each animal family as well on here, and a lot of other info can also be found on my Metazoica web site: www.metazoica.com. Hope to see you there!