#amniote — Public Fediverse posts

On a moonlit night in the early Carboniferous, two Pulmonoscorpius do a mating dance in the Lepidodendron swamp. Although the giant scorpions have little interest in prey right now, a Balanerpeton amphibian wisely decides to swim away, while several Casineria sleep through the night in the copious tree litter.

#Pulmonoscorpius #scorpion #Lepidodendron #Balanerpeton #Casineria #Amphibian #Amniote #Carboniferous #paleoart #MyArt

It’s a good time to be alive for those of us fascinated by things that no longer are. 🙂 Big #paleontology news today:

1. A new #Tyrannosaurus species. Unlike most of the other proposed new T. whateveri of the last few years, this one looks quite well-supported. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-47011-0

2. The earliest skin impressions ever found from any #amniote. Amniotes are #reptiles and #mammals, basically: animals which can lay eggs on land (or give live birth, in more derived forms) because the #embryo is protected from dessication. This is in contrast to #amphibians, the first #vertebrates to live on land, which absolutely require a long-term water source for reproduction. In that sense amniotes are the first true terrestrial vertebrates, and we wouldn’t be here without those distant ancestors. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01663-9

The first will no doubt get about a million times more attention, because Tyrannosaurus, but the second is at least as big a deal IMO. Links via Thomas Holtz. I’ll try to have my own relatively insignificant thoughts when I get time.