Creature/365

Platybelodon - Platybelodon grangeri

2009-09-03T22:01:00.000-07:00

Platybelodon. We're going back to the Miocene to find these relatives of elephants, particularly between 15 and 4 million years ago. As the name obviously suggests to those who know their greek, these guys had built-in shovels. Flat tusks, anyway. Where elephants have only one pair of long upper-jaw incisors jutting out from their upper jaws, Platybelodon had those and a pair of flattened incisors on their lower jaw.

Whether Platybelodon actually used those curious lower tusks to shovel up swampy wet muck or used their edges like a knife to slice off vegetation is up for debate, but they're pretty sharp items of dentition that were certainly capable of slicing through feed for that gigantic body.

While that's an impressive jaw on the image above, it doesn't quite show the sheer weirdness of the short & wide front tusks. For that, take a peek at the lower jaw, viewed from above.

Impressive, no?

Other than the built-in eating utensil, the rest of Platybelodon is similar to modern day elephants. Large solidly built plant munchers with short skulls - oh, and a short trunk.

Let's celebrate

2009-09-03T20:49:00.001-07:00

Has it really been more fifteen months of publishing Creature365? No not really. OK, I can admit I started it fifteen months back, but as all too many scattered fragments of blogs attest, beginnings are all too simple and attractive and EASY.

Journeys of a thousand miles might start with a single footfall, but once that step's done you still need to start another then another, the attraction of the beginning wears off, and the hard work of reaching an ending ramps up and oh look shiny new beginning let's start something new!. Not terrifically productive, and all these pieces of beginnings don't just sit about online taking up space, but they're in my head fluttering about taking up room. The more I do this, the more I discover something wonderful and realise it's reminded me of another thing I started long ago and...

Zeno's dichotomy paradox be damned, I'll stop that level of self referential pondering and get on with it. Beginnings might be all too simple, endings hard yet fulfilling, but thinking in that false dichotomy misses the point that the fun is in the doing. All that cleverness means is that I wasn't enjoying the more factual writing I was attempting; being a touch more irreverent (or focusing just on the cool factor) is going to keep us both happier, dear reader. I'll give you interesting beasts and if you really need to know the minutiae of wear patterns on the lower pair of tusks of a platybelodon, you've got google.

And look! a new beginning - now you know platybelodon had four tusks!

Giant Isopod - Bathynomus giganteus

2008-06-08T05:42:00.000-07:00

There are a few species of isopods (creatures in the same order as the woodlouse, or slater to Australians) that have been given the generic name Giant Isopod, but we'll concentrate on the biggest one here, simply because that's what we're all about.

As I mentioned above, Isopods are an order that includes arthropods related to pill bugs/woodlice/slaters, and the giant isopod is a deep-sea cousin of theirs. It lives down to a bit over 2Km below the surface, and is one of the ocean's scavengers; it lives on everything from dead fish, to whales and squid that have expired and dropped to the sea floor.

Much like some more familiar oceangoing arthropods, the Giant Isopods can be eaten, and are served much the same as lobster or crab. They're not a terribly common catch, but do come to the surface in nets of other seafood.

These guys are a rather old and stable species, appearing in fossils up to 160 million years back appearing very similar to today's creatures. One of those bodies that's found a long stable niche and been fine keeping on doing just what it does.

Patagonian Mara - Dolichotis patagonum

2008-06-06T23:35:00.000-07:00

Another one for the multiple-creatures-rolled-into-one file*, the Patagonian Mara, which could also be named the kangaroobunnydeer. Walking like a deer, with feet a little more reminiscent of a kangaroo, and head & ears a little like a rabbit, it's another rodent. Like yesterday's porcupine, it's most closely related to guinea pigs and capybara, and more distantly related to more familiar rats, mice & hamsters.

Maras live in central & southern Argentina, and are one of the few mammals that are monogamous - Once they pair up, it's a bond for life. One pair will usually have two young each litter, three or four times a year. The fourth largest rodent, they're up to 75cm long and can weigh over 15kg.

These guys are seriously good runners, able to keep up a speed of 45km/h for more than a kilometre at a time.

* I feel I must note I'm writing from the perspective of an Australian who's more familiar with cats, dogs, horses and rabbits than the awesome variety of animals in the world. Insert your own mix of creatures if you need; if you're Argentinian, you'll just have to wait for a unique beast from elsewhere :).

African Crested Porcupine - Hystrix crystata

2008-06-05T16:50:00.000-07:00

Here's another common one that most know by name, but mightn't have taken a close look at. Porcupines are, of course, spikey beasts that are often mixed up with hedgehogs and echidnas - unlike the others porcupines are rodents, and of the well-known rodents they're most closely related to guinea pigs and capybara.

The largest of the porcupines, Crested Porcupines can grow to almost a metre long and weigh near 30kgs. Their quills aren't the quills of the North American porcupine and its short sharp spikes interspersed with fur, but long black & white ringed spines that can grow up to half a metre long. The spines are anchored in deep muscled layers within the skin, and can be flared up or rattled depending how annoyed the little one is. Sufficiently annoyed, they make best use of their business end by launching backwards at attackers. Take a close look at the image above - that's not just a slightly spikey creature that relies on its spikes to be merely uncomfortable; its rear end is only a little less painful than diving head first into a pit of kitchen knives.

The business end, relatively laid back.

Along the top of their body down to the middle of their nose is the line of bristle that gives them their name, and it to can be voluntarily raised - just in case the massive spray of ringed needles out the other end wasn't warning enough.

The closely related Indian Crested Porcupine. Angry

The quills themselves aren't poisonous, and a porcupine can't throw them - but they're loosely enough connected that they're happy to leave a few stuck in any attacker. The spines are such an effective deterrent that a closely related Indian species has been known to fend off attacking tigers & leopards.

Not to put too fine a point on it, yes mating is performed very carefully. The quills can be voluntarily laid flat, and when receptive to a bloke porcupine, the female can lift her tail, which has no spines underneath, and lay it over the top of the spines on her back. As for giving birth, the littlest ones are born with short soft quills that only harden later.

Sue - Tyrannosaurus rex

2008-06-04T03:48:00.000-07:00

Today's entry is a little different; instead of picking a particularly interesting species to take a look at, I'm going to concentrate on a single interesting individual of a well known common (if still interesting!) species, just because there's so much information on some of how she lived.

"Sue" is a Tyrannosaurus rex who was named after her discoverer, Sue Hendrickson. Sue the palaeontologist found Sue the Tyrannosaur almost by accident during the last days of a summer dig in 1990 in South Dakota. Sue ended up being the largest, best preserved, and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex yet found. While there's no certain evidence on the sex of Sue, some have suggested the shape of her pelvis lines up with other female reptiles who have adaptations to provide a passage for delivering eggs.

While there's an interesting story about the ownership and sale of the eventual Sue skeleton, I won't go into that here, instead I'll look at the injuries on the individual creature.

Due to the remarkable preservation of Sue, more clear info can be gathered than just her size. Lines of growth within her skeleton show she was old for a Tyrannosaur, having died after at least 28 years of life. Her bones bear the marks of a hard life that consisted of recovery after recovery from serious injury until her death, when she was quickly covered by sediment, preventing the usual scattering of bones.

Among the injuries discovered on Sue are:

A broken and healed humerus (upper arm bone)
A torn and healed tendon on one arm
Multiple broken and healed ribs on both sides (some ribs broken multiple times)
An embedded tooth fragment in one rib
Multiple skull injuries from bites and disease
Damaged tail vertebrae
Bony growths on vertebrae showing possible age-related back problems
Infections or other disease marks in jaw, arm and leg bones
Broken and healed legs on both sides

All of these except for one injury on the left of Sue's skull appear to have been breaks, bites and tears that she recovered from. It's unclear if the skull injury was caused after death or was the cause of Sue's demise, but it was just one in the lifetime of what was a very resiliant animal. Some of the injuries, such as broken fibulae, have been suggested as showing a level of social interaction beyond being isolated predators; being unable to hunt but having access to food from a mate or peer group would have helped survival after debilitating but recoverable injuries.

As for her size, Sue is larger than all previous Tyrannosaurus rex specimens. She stands 4 metres tall at the hips, and is a shade under 13 metres long. In life she would have weighed around 6.5 tonnes. The longest of her teeth was 30.5 centimetres in her 1.5m long skull.

Therizinosaurus - Therizinosaurus cheloniformis

2008-06-03T23:37:00.000-07:00

Just for one feature, today's beast is a unique extinct one named Therizinosaurus. The first dinosaur in our exploration through the curious animals in the world, Therizinosaurus looks unlike most others for its bizarre claws, up to a metre long - indeed, it could have been labelled Freddykrugersaurus for the bizarre proportions of its hands.

First discovered in Mongolia in the late 1940s, it was the claws discovered first - they were guessed to be ribs of a turtle like creature. It wasn't until more fossils and limbs were discovered that it was clear they truly were claws, and northern chinese digs discovered substantial amounts of other Therizinosaurs, and the general body type could be determined.

Therizinosaur appears to be herbivorous, and to fill a similar niche to our first creature, the Giant Grount Sloth. Large, herbivorous, and with giant claws able to be used for grasping high and far strong vegetation. Weighing up to six tonnes and standing almost six metres tall, Therizinosaurus was a similar mass to African elephants, but far taller.

Chinese water deer - Hydropotes inermis

2008-06-02T23:10:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy day, so just a quickie until tomorrow. This is a currently living creature that's pretty cute all up. Only weighing about 10-15kg, it's quite a small deer, but has a curious extra feature that most don't. Fangs!

Or tusks, to be correct. I understand some UK friends are quite familiar with the existence of these guys, but they're new to me - and the photo of its skull is quite striking.

The males have the larger canines-turned-tusks, where females have very tiny ones that usually aren't large enough to see from afar. The tusks are quite loosely held in their sockets, and can be moved around by attached muscles - out of the way for eating, or drawn together in order to go head to head with other males.

Dimetrodon - Dimetrodon grandis

2008-06-01T20:22:00.000-07:00

Going back a long way here, to another extinct creature, the probably-instantly-recognisable Dimetrodon. First things first, this one isn't a dinosaur. It's ancient, sure, and it certainly looks reptilian, but it occupies a different and pretty special place for us in evolutionary history.

First, some basic detail. Let's start with some familiar numbers and a creature most of us know, Tyrannosaurus rex, who was one of the last dinosaur species alive at the very end of the Cretaceous period. Tyrannosaurus died out when the Cretaceous ended 65.5 million years ago, at the same time as a massive number of other species during the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event.

For some scale, look back at the entirety of recorded human civilisation, which covers the last 5,000 years (I'm rounding to nice even numbers here for the sake of scale) to the early Egyptians. Civilisation goes back a lot further of course, as do humans - forty times further back to 200,000 years ago, we have the earliest modern humans. Five times further back is just one million years. Five times further is five million years, before recognisable humans existed on the planet. Another ten times that is fifty million years, and the rise of the mammals is well underway.

A little further back, we're again at 65.5 million years, and Tyrannosaurus has just keeled over from (probably) a massive asteroid hit. It's a long way back, and even viewing the numbers above probably doesn't give us as humans a sense of the time scale involved, but numbers are all we have here.

Back to Dimetrodon. This fellow lived from 265-280 million years ago. They were walking about at least 200 million years before Tyrannosaurus, who is almost a neighbour of ours in comparison. It lived so far back it pre-dates all of the dinosaurs.

If Dimetrodon isn't a dinosaur, where does it fit? Its sideways splayed legs were like primitive reptiles, unlike dinosaurs with their legs underneath. While it was reptilian-like, it had already split from the true reptile side of the family and developed some interesting features that would eventually takes its family (the Synapsids) down the path to becoming mammals. It likely no longer had scales to the level of reptiles but naked skin instead, and its teeth had differentiated into multiple specialised types - that's where it gets its name, Dimetrodon literally means two measures of teeth. This same specialisation of tooth types lead to the range of teeth we have in our own mouths.

The massive sail on its back seems to have been an aid in controlling body temperature. When faced into the sun it may have reduced the time to wake up to an operating temperature by almost two thirds. It may have been able to wake up and move around energetically hours before its prey were able to warm up and escape.

As far as size, Dimetrodon reached up to 3.5 metres in length, and looks to have been the largest predator of its time. We can perhaps be thankful that even though Dimetrodon died out at the end of the Permian period before the rise of the dinosaurs, its kind (the Synapsids) survived; we too are Synapsids.

Okapi - Okapia johnstoni

2008-05-31T19:11:00.000-07:00

Today's beastie is a bit interesting not just for what it is, but for its history. The Okapi could very well be called a Zebrahorsegiraffe, it looks so much a mix of all three. It's another that's substantially larger than I imagined, and with a close look it's pretty clear how closely related it is to the giraffe. It has the same uniquely shaped head, the same skin covered ossicones (horns) on the males (giraffes have them on both sexes), and the same tough dark extremely long tongue, capable of cleaning its own ears. Like you'd want to, but there you go - clearly their ear wax tastes better than mine.

As for their size, they're comparable to a large horse, standing 1.5 to 2m tall at the shoulder, but with a more upright stance, including a neck longer than the horse. Okapis are for the most part solitary, living along or in a mother/juvenile pair.

Their habitat is relatively limited, only being found in the north east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo - and each Okapi takes a range of a few square kilometres for itself. Their patterning is completely unlike the giraffe, with the zebra stripes presumed to work as part of their camouflage, and as a recognisable pattern for the young to easily find their mothers.

On to its history. Okapis were unknown to the western world until very early in the 20th century, and its name Okapia johnstoni is named in part for the work of Sir Harry Johnston, who acquired the first specimens. Being such a latecomer to western science, the Okapi has taken place as a symbol for cryptozoologists, a creature that existed in large numbers in a then-remote part of the world, that seemed to only be myth for many years.

Minute Leaf Chameleon - Brookesia minima

2008-05-30T05:01:00.000-07:00

After a couple of decent sized mammals, let's swing the other way and take a quick look at a small reptile. A very small reptile, Brookesia minimi, one of the family of chameleons known as Leaf Chameleons. These are relatively poorly studied little beasts, native to Madagascar - minima lives on the north west coast, and on the rainforest floor of Nose Be Island to Madagascar's north west.

As to their size, most pictures I've been able to find have them somewhere between half to one inch in length, although being such scarsely described beasts it's possible they're being mixed up with others in the Leaf Chameleon family, all fairly small and from Madagascar.

Still, they look quite like any other chameleon, complete with disapproving look, that strange stance, and boggle-eyes - they're just absolutely miniscule. The exception is their huge belly, which I'll presume is to fit important things like internal organs.

Giant Anteater - Myrmecophaga tridactyla

2008-05-29T17:02:00.000-07:00

An interesting fellow, this one. Odd looking to my westerner eyes, with a few unique features that don't show up on terribly many other animals around the world. Like Megatherium, it's also a lot larger than I expected at over two metres long. Having had an image of the shape of the animal in mind, I'd thought they were perhaps a metre or less - closer to the size of the Tamandua, the Giant Anteater's smaller cousin. Weighing 30-60kg, they're relatively light for their size - much of their length and apparent bulk is in the wiry fur-covered tail.

So, to its shape. Bluntly, it looks built backwards. A large tail that could have a big typical mammalian head in there, and a long thin snout that looks a lot like the proportions of other creatures' tails. Built of course, as its name suggests (Myrmecophaga is literally eater of ants) to nose around and lick up ants & termites with its 60cm long tongue. As well as the tongue, its hands are an amazing proportion too, giant thick fingers, some of which are tipped with an equally disproportionally huge claw for digging into the nests of ants, and termite mounds. In order to protect the tools it depends on for accessing food, it walks on the sides of its hands with claws tucked up into its palms, protected.

With such a specialised skull (the snout is indeed all bone), comes another surprising feature - they have no teeth whatsoever. That might make them sound pretty innocuous beasts, but they're on record as having killed some of its big cat predators, and sadly at least one human zookeeper. Those massive claws and strong front legs that rip through insect nests can do the same kind of damage to other animals.

As far as housing, these guys are pretty nomadic. They do have territories that they'll defend, but don't make permanent nests. Sleeping is just a case of finding a quiet place when it's time to rest, curling up in their own tail, and dozing. Observations show they're pretty flexible when it comes to when they're active - some individuals do their ant-eating business in the day and curl up asleep at night and others, especially those nearer human populations, do the opposite and only come out at night.

Giant Ground Sloth - Megatherium americanum

2008-05-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

The giant megafauna have always been a favourite of mine, and while almost any kid knows of dinosaurs, the mammalian megafauna in recent history (with the exception of woolly mammoths, perhaps) just don't seem to inspire the same awe. No head full of gigantic reptilian teeth in this guy, but South America's Megatherium, the Giant Ground Sloth, is interesting in its own way.

First up, its size. Modern-era sloths are pretty easy to relate to, they're at a very human compatible size, little different to dogs. Megatherium americanum was around the size of an African elephant - the largest estimates of its size put it near 5 tonnes - and when standing upright (freeing its hands for grasping foliage), it was twice the height of the elephant.
What impresses me is the size of the hands on a creature that large. This image of a single claw in comparison to a human hand says it all.

Like the elephant, the Giant Ground Sloth was a solid built animal, and in order to support its body standing upright, its rear legs have proportions not found this side of... well... anywhere. I haven't seen a creature with such solid limbs in proportion to its size. Some of the largest sauropod dinosaurs have femurs near the height of the entire sloth, but they're still not as thick and stocky in proportion.

This fellow looks to have had no natural predators in its healthy state, although weaker members may have fallen prey to the sabre toothed cats of the time. Certainly a swing from a two metre long arm tipped with those giant claws would have made Megatherium worth avoiding for smaller safer prey, even to such heavily built predators.

Megatherium lived from two million years ago, and only went extinct about 8,000 years back. So close.

Introduction

2008-05-27T08:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know enough about life on this planet. Sure, I'm living one, and blogs are quite often devoted to a single person's experience of that life - I'm guilty of having started and left a few of those to rot myself.

With this one, I'm aiming to write a year's worth of posts about the awesome creatures who've shared the same planet with us. Recently, I've revived a childhood passion for extinct creatures and found there's so much more information available than there was when I grew up in the 1970s. I've somewhat shocked myself at how little I knew, and at how strange I saw many animals that still exist today. It shouldn't be that way; my (and your!) experience of animal life on this planet shouldn't be dogs, cats, and other.

I want to fill in the other. I want to look at everything from tiny creatures that have almost no record from hundreds of millions of years ago, to extinct megafauna, to modern living breathing animals that we may only know by name - but have no concept of how truly unique they are.

I'm not a biologist, and my childhood dream of becoming a great palaeontologist who traveled the world naming dinosaurs after her friends and publishing papers out the wazoo has long gone. I'm sure I'll make mistakes in the science (please correct me if you notice!) but I hope I'll inspire a few people to look more deeply into the wonderful beasts who've walked with us on this earth.