Welcome to my Metazoic site! This site discusses the existence of the creatures to come along after humans will be extinct. I first became interested in a world after man when I acquired my first copy of Dougal Dixon's After Man: A Zoology of the Future in 1992. However, I unwittingly created creatures that did not exist from the time I was about 8 years old. But it was after I obtained a copy of that book (now a collector's item) that I decided to take these same creatures I created as a child and make them more realistic in an evolutionary sense. Though it may be hard for a lot of us to grasp, humans will soon become extinct. One of the biggest factors of how this will happen is the current overpopulation rate. Which is why I don't contribute to the population. I created this world with little more than mammals fulfilling all ecological niches with the help of some friends. I even gave the era of the age after man a name, I called it the Metazoic, derived from the words for "After-era" (Meta, meaning after, and zoic meaning era). We are now in the Cenozoic era. To view all the animals I have created since I began this project, you can go to the "Meet the Mammals" section of this site. To discuss your own ideas about what you think will happen in the future world, and share your ideas with others, please feel free to leave a comment.
One more thing, some of you may find this site quite offensive, and you have a right to your own opinion. But please respect my right to have an opinion too. I'm not saying there is no GOD, I believe it was HIM who got the ball rolling. But I believe after that, evolution took over. There is so much more evidence of evolution than there is of creation. Even that going on right under our noses. Other than that, enjoy yourself and visit our many links.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Bat-Eared Foxes Need Better Defenses!

Did anyone catch the NatGeo programs about dinosaurs that I mentioned last week? I did. Horner mentioned quite a bit on there. He spoke of dinosaur defenses. Triceratops for example may not have used it's horns for defense. You would think they would have, but being the fact that they had the horns on their heads it would be impossible for them to use the horns for defense. Horner stated the last place you ever want any defensive weapons would be on your head. It makes sense, since it would just give the predator an open invitation to bite you on the back of your neck. Though I don't know, maybe that is why Triceratops and all other ceratopsids had those big frills.

Though I have seen some modern mammals with horns use them as a defensive device. For instance, one time I saw a gazelle chase away a cheetah with it's horns. And wild boar often use their tusks for defense as well. So, it's not totally unheard of for an animal to use some of it's head dressing for defensive weapons. Some animals even use their teeth for weapons, like baboons. A male baboon has canines equally as long as those of a leopard's, and sometimes even gets the best of leopards with them too. They've even been known to kill leopards. The best protected animals however are the ones that have their defenses on the tails or on the backs. Like we see in porcupines. Think of the dinosaurs that had spikes and clubs on their tails, like stegosaurs and ankylosaurs. They could disable a predator with those defenses.

Old animals (like old movie stars) seemed to have a lot more character than they do today. No mammals today have spiked or clubbed tails. Though we do see mammals with spikes on their bodies. But very little energy is needed to raise your spikes, or curl up in an impenetrable ball. I wonder if this means that dinosaurs were much more active animals than modern mammals? Perhaps. The last mammals to employ such a mechanism as a clubbed tail were the glyptodonts. But no mammal around today has any of these kind of weapons.

Bat-eared foxes are probably one of the most victimized carnivores in Africa! Even the smaller felines, like the caracal, can bring them down. I think it would do these primitive foxes some good if they could evolve some kind of defensive weapons of their own. It seems their big ears are great for hearing for termites underground, but seem to be useless in hearing for some feline sneaking up behind them. They have a long crest of stiff hairs on their back that probably should evolve into porcupine-like quills. They have stiff hairs on their tails, that I think should evolve into hard spikes that they can swat at a predator to say, "Keep away from me, or I'll poke your eyes out you fool!!" Maybe get a little bit bigger too, to be able to stay out of reach of such felines as caracals. These are adaptations I think would keep these attractive foxes a little more safe.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Jack Horner on NatGeo Programs

Horner, who heads up the palaeontology department at Montana State University, will be on 2 different National Geographic programs airing on October 11, 2009. My sis Anna will be going to MSU in Bozeman next year, and I will be going there on a tour of the college myself to see if there's anything that I can get into. I'd love to join their palaeontology club, for the sake of Metazoica, as well as to learn more about dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts. I've been an admirer of Horner's for quite a while and this is exciting news! Not that he hasn't been on many programs about dinosaurs before, but this is just exciting news. I will be tuning in, hope you all will be as well. Learning about palaeontology helps a great deal in figuring out what evolution might do in the future. So it's always handy to watch as many of these programs as you can. And Jack Horner is one of the World's foremost authorities on the subject. Horner also lives in Bozeman and also works at the Museum of the Rockies, which Anna and I got to visit while we took a trip to Bozeman.

Anyway, here is the article:

http://www.montana.edu/cpa/news/nwview.php?article=7587

October 06, 2009 -- MSU News Service

BOZEMAN -- Montana State University paleontologist Jack Horner and MSU's Museum of the Rockies will be featured in two National Geographic Channel programs on Sunday, Oct. 11.

The first program, titled "Bizarre Dinosaurs," will air at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Mountain time. The second, "Dinosaurs Decoded," will air at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m.

"Bizarre Dinosaurs" says the planet used to be bunched together in one super continent that was inhabited by very small and similar creatures. Over millions of years, as the continent began to break apart, the creatures began to grow apart. They became bigger and weirder. Bodies with tiny arms grew massive heads. Tiny heads adorned giant crests. Long necks steadied long tails.

"Dinosaurs Decoded" uses animation to show how Horner, his long-time collaborator Mark Goodwin from the University of California, Berkeley, and other renowned paleontologists envision the growth of dinosaurs. They believe that dinosaurs underwent extreme transformations as they grew. They sprouted and lost horns and bumps on their skulls, for example. Males shed dull colors for startlingly bright ones. "A young Triceratops or T. rex may have looked so different from its parents that you'd have a hard time recognizing it," said Dan Levitt of Veriscope Pictures, producer of "Dinosaurs Decoded."

"Horner is shaking up his colleagues by suggesting that the transformations were so dramatic that up to a third of all known dinosaur species may vanish in cases of mistaken identity," Levitt said. "They may simply be misclassified youngsters."

"Dinosaur Decoded" is posted on the National Geographic website at http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/dinosaurs-decoded-3944/overview#tab-Overview

Crews for the show filmed at the Hell Creek Formation around Jordan, MSU's Museum of the Rockies and elsewhere. Veriscope's latest trip to the Hell Creek formation was in July 2008. Veriscope filmed at MSU in September 2008.

To read more about "Bizarre Dinosaurs," see http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/bizarre-dinosaurs-4041/Overview

Evelyn Boswell, (406) 994-5135 or evelynb@montana.edu