Devonian

So I have nailed down the first three formations of dinopedia prehistoric park expeditions:

Episode 1: Baharia formation, Egypt(Target species: Carcharodontosaurus)

Episode 2: Chilga Formation, Ethiopia(Target species: Arsinotherium)

Episode 3: Red Hill Shale in the Catskill formation,Pennsylvania USA(Target Species: To be announced)

First of all, happy Halloween! 🎃

On the occasion of such a day, I want to tell you a little about my horror story, which I wrote three years ago and which, perhaps, I will publish in printed form in the future. I’m not going to retell the entire plot here for fear of plagiarism, and also because I described a couple of bloody scenes, and, for this reason, the story is rated R. But I will tell you some details of the plot and what inspired me.

The title of the story is "The Diving into Abyss." In the story, diver Andrew dives with friends into a large reservoir to find a village that was previously located on this site. He finds one house, but also discovers a tunnel at the bottom that leads somewhere down. Andrew and his friend swim there and find a rock ledge at a depth of about 50 m. And underneath it they see emptiness. No supports for the strata of rock on which the dam and the nearest town are located, only dark water. A real underground sea. There, the characters encounter several unusual and scary animals, but the greatest danger comes from those who look like both fishes and salamanders. These animals attack the divers in a pack, Andrew's friend is killed, and Andrew ends up in the hospital, partially eaten. Discussing what happened with his wife and friend, he realizes that he has found living Ichthyostega and other Devonian relics, and now these animals will probably try to get out of the underground sea.

My close friends who read the story say that I made a thriller because I paid a lot of attention to suspense and murder. While writing, I remembered photographs of eaten whale carcasses and people who were bitten by sharks. And I tried to convey in words what sensations arise from such bites in the water.

But why did I choose Ichthyostega for the story? First of all, I should say that I really love water. I also love the Devonian period and in particular Ichthyostega, the our ancestor, which is rarely mentioned outside of encyclopedias and school books. However, I thought about a horror story involving it thanks to... cryptozoology. A friend once gave me a book about monsters like the Yeti, and there I read that European tales of encounters with Tatzelwurm and similar monsters may have been inspired by encounters with surviving ichthyostegalians that had fish scales similar to those of reptiles. Of course, such claims are unscientific, but I wondered if our amphibian ancestors might actually have been such aggressive predators? Could they kill a human? Another reason to think was one article about Devonian chondrichthyans. The author assumed that the spikes on their heads were intended to protect them from larger carnivores, including the first stegocephalians. And there was another source of my inspiration. Several years ago, I read on the Internet a controversial but interesting assumption that, despite having paws with toes, Ichthyostega could not walk and even crawl on land. They could breathe air, but they could also breathe underwater and spend their entire lives there without surfacing. Summing it all up, I imagined not a defenseless fugitive from water to land, but a dangerous predator. It attacked prey by rising from the bottom, and moved to neighboring lakes through muddy shallows only in search of new victims.

Characters in the story suggest that Ichthyostega and other Devonian animals were transported to continental underground reservoirs by strong tides that occurred before the mass extinction. It's ironic that I wrote the story before I learned that geologists actually report short but significant changes in sea level during the Late Devonian.

Well, now I'm waiting for your comments. Would you watch a film with such a plot and what do you think about the lifestyle of Ichthyostega? While I was writing this post, I thought that I should probably partially rewrite my story and add even more suspense and attack scenes. I also plan to write horror stories in the future with little-known prehistoric animals: Megaraptor, Omnidens, Praelepas and conodonts.

I really like the Paleozoic. Many important events in evolution occurred during this era, and the spread of land vertebrates is by far the most important of them. Now I want to share some thoughts about what was happening in the late Paleozoic. As you all know, from the Cambrian to the beginning of the Middle Devonian, mollusks and arthropods were the dominant animals in ecosystems (mollusks most likely until the end of the Ludlow epoch of the Silurian). But then noticeable changes occur: vertebrates become the dominant group, first in the seas, and then on land.

The number of trilobites steadily decreased from the Silurian to the Permian, chasmataspidids became extinct in the Devonian, eurypterids moved from the ocean to rivers and lakes from the mid-Devonian, large myriapods and insects became extinct by the middle of the Permian period, and large arachnids even earlier. Why did this happen? I haven't seen any reputable research on this topic, but it seems to me that the whole point is that vertebrates beat the competition with arthropods thanks to their jaws. The jaws of vertebrates turned out to be the best weapon in the fight for survival, since they made it possible to effectively hunt arthropods that were vulnerable, especially during molting.

If we consider this issue in more detail, then... In the Silurian and Early Devonian, many eurypterids lived in the seas. But after the number of jawed fishes increased and large fishes appeared, the giant eurypterids disappeared, and their relatives began to seek salvation in fresh waters. Scorpions, their relatives, have long occupied the safe land and have been apex predators there for at least 30 million years. But after the first amphibians began to walk on land, large scorpions also began to decrease in number. The last giant scorpions are known from Mississippian (Early Carboniferous) deposits. It can be assumed that some of them also lived in the Pennsylvanian period ("late Carboniferous), hiding in deserts from vertebrates that could not yet move far from water. As far as I know, there were no longer any large species among the Mississippian marine arthropods, since cartilaginous shark-like fishes became widespread during that time, and in the Pennsylvanian eugeneodontiforms appeared with teeth ideally suited for chewing shells and carapaces. Large myriapods and insects lived in swampy forests, but there were no aquatic forms among them. The only possible exception is griffinflies. They probably spent the first part of their lives in water, where they risked becoming prey to numerous amphibians. The end of the Carboniferous and beginning of the Permian is characterized not only by the drying of the climate, but also by the appearance of large terrestrial vertebrates, each of which had muscular jaws. And soon after that, large land arthropods also disappeared. In my opinion, the conclusion suggests itself that large arthropods appeared not because of the high concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere, but due to the absence of terrestrial predators. When these predators appeared, large arthropods disappeared. And mostly small species remained, unable to compete with large vertebrates. My conclusion is that our Paleozoic ancestors, beginning in the Devonian period, became dangerous animals. More dangerous than arthropods. And they became like that thanks to their jaws. What do you think about this?

"we entered onto our universe, in the devonian period about 375 million years ago where we saw a tiktaalik reaching to land then go 365 mya where we saw a hynerpeton, we then skipped to the carboniferous period, 312 where we saw the first reptile which is hylonomus and the first ever synapsid called archaeothyris, then to the cisuralian part of the permian about 280 million years ago where a dimetrodon is basking in the sun, skipped to the lopingian epoch of the permian period, 251.9 mya into the great dying where the last individual of the inostrancevia alexabdri species literally died (yep, thats ino's real counterpart, don't get confused.) fast forward into the jurassic period, the golden age of the dinosaurs and also the time period where the first mammals ever appeared, a young morganucodon was chased by a large predator, fast forward to 66 million years to the end of the cretaceous. the K-T extinction happend, hitting mexico causing sudden shaking and smoke comming out blocking sunlight so plants can't even perform photosynthesis. a few months later, a few mammals, birds and other animals survived and thrived again which is the same for few surviving plants, fast forward to the miocene (ok yes, this is an epoch but i always see cenozoic epochs as....time periods yeah yeah, time periods, moving on) and ok theres a quinkana encountered a obdurodon(yeah, heard of durodon? but obdurodon is not a cetacean, it's literally a monotreme! a giant platypus to be exact) and we finally entered onto the holocene, the eopch that still continuing today, a group of crocodile are attacking a migrating herd of zebras and yeah... idk anymore and we finally entered onto the paleo isles universe, let's see what's ino doing now"

Inostrancevia:i'm getting tired of swimming i need to rest- wait.... this must be the place...*reaches ashore*

"inostrancevia then wondered again if this is really the most "peaceful" place on this planet. it's full of ice & snow with a bunch of dead trees and a few discovered footsteps that could be from a large theropod, a few bone fragments and the feeling of deep loneliness giving extreme anxiety..."

Inostrancevia:this place is freezing cold, how will creatures survive here......???

"suddenly, a tarbosaurus came"

Tarbosaurus: *growls* i just wanna sleep and h- what the heck.....???? is that a synapsid? who are you anyways?

Inostrancevia:i'm ino and i would like to use this a refuge from the "stuff" yeah, the "stuff"

Tarbosaurus:what stuff are you talking about?

Inostrancevia:you'll will not expect this "stuff" going on, you'll be suprised...

"and yep, there are some creatures who don't even know about the archosaur vs synapsid chaos, tarbosaurus is one example and that js good! because if they know, more chaos will happen..."

To Be Continued...

@Cooner21

@SpinozillaAegypticussucks

@Ankysareawesome

@Mediterranean Mapper

@DinoDude112

Janaspis, an osteostracan from the Early Devonian

Brochoadmones, a climatiiform acanthodian from the Devonian

Life on earth has achived on walking on land.

But were fosusing on the vertabrates,not the arthropods who already reached land over 400 mya.

This is the devonian period 419.2-358.9 mya named after devon,england where it's rock formation from this time period were discovered...

A tiktaalik took it's first steps to land 375 mya.

This is belived to be the earliest known fish to walk on land & also the first to possess lungs to help them breath in the air.

But one of tiktaalik's relatives did opting to return to the open waters instead of venturing onto land.

This is qikiqtania wakei (illustration by alex boersma) found in the fram formation of nunavut,canada.

This large dunkleosteus was the largest predator of it's time.prehistoric armoured fish called placoderms have articulated bony armoured plates and the rest are just smooth of scaled skin. depending on what species it is

Placoderm jaws are likely evolved from the first of their gill arches. there also the earliest fish to evolved pelvic fins, the precursors to hindlimbs in tetrapods.as well as "true-teeth"

A dunkleosteus is swimming across some frightened acanthostegas who reached land to rest. when a stethacanthus hunts it down. the creature is about 1.5 meters while other stethacanthus species like S.productus is about 3 meters long being 2 times larger than S.altonensis the dorsal fins help to stablilize the holocephalian preventing it from rolling over or to scare other fish with its tooth brushes hence, he's nicknamed the anvil shark or ironing board snark

But even holocephalians like the stethacanthus are no-match for other flesh-eating fish...

(artist's illustrations of hyneria lindae)

Hyneria is about 2.3-3 meters long .

She's a freshwater predatory lode-finned fish lurking in the murky waters below. with sensory canals to aid in detection of prey.

Since 360 million years ago, the first trees evolved covered the landscape forming forest pumping oxygen into the air.

Fast forward a little few million years into 358.9 and we witnessed the late devonian extinction.

Triggering the extinction were low temperature stress and oxygen deprivation. the devonian saw oceans getting choked killing 70-80% of species that lived during that time into extinction but there still survivors,

Like our early tetrapod ancestors, bony fish and a few trilobites reaching to the next time period of the paleozoic: the carboniferous

@Nizaluddin

@Friendly Kelbeam of the Hood

@Rexyisdebest

Double page feature. Decide: is it accurate, outdated, or just dead wrong?

This is the first half of the timeline pages, so decide: is it accurate, outdated, or just dead wrong according to modern science?

Are creatures from the paleozoic era and cenozoic era alowed here