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.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Beaks May Have Transformed Dino-Diets
http://news.discovery.com/dinosaurs/dinosaurs-beaks-vegetarian-carnivore-101220.html#mkcpgn=rssnws1
Beaks Transformed Dinosaurs, Expanding Diet
The beak was like nature's Swiss Army knife because it provided many tools in one unit.
By Jennifer Viegas
The emergence of the beak on dinosaurs was "an evolutionary innovation," according to a new study that found this seemingly simple trait is like nature's Swiss Army knife because it functions as many tools in one.
Over time, many dinosaurs replaced their toothy grins with beaks to aid their transition to plant eating, according to the new study that is published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"As modern animals such as birds and turtles demonstrate, a beak can be adapted to function for a variety of purposes from processing different food types -- nuts, fruits, leaves and meat -- to grooming and other behaviors," co-author Lindsay Zanno told Discovery News.
"The evolution of a beak was an evolutionary innovation because it was a new anatomical structure that hadn't been available to theropods before, therefore it provided a new means for theropods to process foods and engage in other behaviors that they hadn't had access to up to this point," added Zanno, a researcher at the Field Museum.
She and colleague Peter Makovicky came to that conclusion after collecting dietary data for theropods, a group of two-footed dinos colloquially known as "predatory" dinosaurs. The group includes some famous flesh-eaters like Tyrannosaurs rex, which turns out to be a very primitive, old-school dinosaur.
"Carnivory is always rare relative to herbivory in animal communities because food availability becomes more scarce as you move up the food chain," said Zanno. "It takes a ton of plant material to sustain a lot of herbivores and a lot of herbivores to sustain a few carnivores."
Many of T. rex's closest relatives were therefore content with vegetarian fare, according to the scientists. The researchers looked at evidence that included fossilized dinosaur dung, stomach contents, tooth marks, gastric stones and even two dinosaurs locked in the throes of combat. All helped to reveal what theropods ate.
Zanno and Makovicky found nearly two dozen anatomical features that are linked to plant-based diets.
Zanno explained that important traits associated with herbivory are tooth loss, beaks, different tooth shapes (leaf, peg conical), multiple tooth types in one animal, tooth elongation (including rodent-like incisors), and long necks.
The researchers believe beaks evolved at least five times in theropods alone. Other dinosaurs, like ceratopsians and hadrosaurs, had them too.
"The ancestors to birds had teeth as did many early birds, so none of the toothless forms are directly ancestral to birds," Zanno explained.
The researchers conclude that "the ancestor to birds was likely to be at least omnivorous," which raises some interesting questions. For example, the scientists hope to find out if the shift to a more vegetarian diet led to the evolution of four-winged gliding and flight.
Thomas Holtz, director of the Earth, Life and Time Program at the University of Maryland, told Discovery News that he agrees that T. rex was a more primitive dinosaur that "inherited the ancient theropod condition of meat eating," and that many other T. rex relatives were either 100 percent vegetarian or transitioned from eating large prey to eating insects.
The new look at "predatory" dinosaurs also reveals "that the unquestionably carnivorous dromaeosaurid 'raptors' (such as Velociraptor and Deinonychus) evolved from plant-eating ancestors," Holtz added.
Living birds include carnivores, herbivores and omnivores, so their diversity and complexity today appears to be echoed in their distant dinosaur past.
2 comments:
Interesting article. I wonder what you have in store for 2011. I had some ideas for a group descended from the ocean Sinecrus. Over the remaining 40 million years of the metazoic (it ends at 100 million AD right?) they outcompete most seals and sea genets and take over marine niches. They lose their body hair and develop proper fins. Since they move side to side, they don't lose their back limbs, the only reason whales did was because with an undulating movement, the back limbs get in the way, in some metriorynchids, the back limbs got bigger. They would evolve into various creatures, including gigantic predators, that eat squid, fish, crustaceans and even other sinecrus, becoming like killer whales, sperm whales, and dolphins, and maybe even superpredators like megalodon. this group would probably have at least 100 species at any one time period. Another group would specialise in eating sessile molluscs and become like narwhals, walruses and that ocetanops or whatever it was called. These would have probably only 10 at the most. The third would become massive filter feeders in teh much warmer waters of the metazoic and feed on krill and plankton. I guess that without things like whale sharks and other competitors, they could have at least 20 or even 30 species, including gargantuan krill guzzlers akin to balaenoptera. They could make some very interesting creatures. And since they have big eyes, like icthyosaurs, maybe there could be more diving species than in whales, so the genets would be made marginal by such a group. Hope you like the idea. :)
So far, I have the Metazoic ending at 100 MYAM. I have also been considering an extension of that. Your ideas for sinecrus are fascinating, it'd take some tweaking though. I have one that does act like modern killer whales. I named it Agriopetes. It is a late Metazoic animal that feeds on other marine mammals, including other sinecrus. But it is smaller than the sea genet.
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