mammal – Nix Illustration

Spectember/Spectober 2024 #10: Nosey Sea Monkey & Louse Mouse

Okay, let’s finish up this year’s round of speculative evolution concepts with one last post before we get back to normal paleoart content.

~~(…what do you mean it’s November 3rd? how did that happen?)~~

Belial Lyka asked for a “marine proboscis monkey with a somewhat buoyant nose”:

A shaded sketch of a speculative semiaquatic descendant of proboscis monkeys. It has a large trunk-like nose, a fat body, long arms ending in flipper-like hands, short legs with webbed feet, and a short thick tail. A second image shows its head with its nose inflated into a balloon-like display structure.

A descendant of modern proboscis monkeys, Phusarhinus beliallykae is a large semiaquatic primate found in shallow marshy coastal areas of what was once Southeast Asia. Around 4m long (~13′) it has a lifestyle somewhat similar to ancient early sirenians, feeding on soft aquatic plants and hauling out onto land to rest.

Its dense rib bones and long flipper-like grasping forelimbs make it rather front-heavy, allowing it to naturally float with its head and arms hanging down closer to the bottom for energy-efficient foraging. When it needs to resurface to breathe it shunts air from its lungs into its large inflatable nasal sacs, altering its buoyancy enough to tip its head back up towards the surface.

Unlike its ancestors the elaborate nasal structures are found on both males and females – although they’re more brightly colored in males and are also used for visual courtship displays and as resonating chambers for loud booming calls.

And somebody who only gave their name as “bunny” suggested a “parasitic rodent”:

A shaded sketch of a speculative parasitic descendant of semiaquatic rats. It has a wide flattened body with thick armor-like bands running down its back, a small head, stubby limbs tipped with long hooked claws, and a short fat tail.

Sanguichelonamys bunnyi is a highly unusual descendant of a rakali-like semiaquatic rodent that had a symbiotic relationship with early members of the Phusarhinus lineage. The rodents initially just removed algae and external parasites from the bodies of the increasingly bulky aquatic monkeys, but things have recently started to turn more parasitic.

At just 3cm long (~1.2″) Sanguichelonamys is one of the smallest mammals to ever exist, with a wide flattened body and sharp hooked claws used to cling onto its host monkey’s thick skin. Although it still does remove other parasites, during haul-out periods it will also use its sharp incisors to deliberately enlarge the wounds left behind – or even open up new ones – and directly feed on fresh blood from its host.

The thickened keratinous skin along its head and back has a specialized hydrophobic surface that traps a layer of air while underwater, acting as a “rebreather” bubble similar to that of water anoles. Along with the ability to drastically slow down its metabolism and respiration rate, this allows Sanguichelonamys to survive being submerged during its host’s lengthy foraging dives.

Spectember/Spectober 2024 #09: Big Bad Wild Dogs

@poshtearexdoodles asked for “African wild dogs evolved to fill the larger pack animal niche of lions”:

Although in this particular timeline the endangered and fragmented wild painted dogs in Africa didn’t survive far past modern times, that wasn’t the final extinction of the species – captive groups persisted, and after the [REDACTED] of humans an escaped population managed to carve out a niche for themselves in the grasslands of southern North America.

A shaded sketch of a speculative descendant of painted dogs. It's a large wolf-like animal with short thick hyena-like jaws, a mottled shaggy coat of fur, and and small hoof-like nails on its feet.

Their most notable descendant is Megainolycos poshtearexi. At nearly 1m tall at the shoulder (~3’3″) it’s one of the largest canids to ever exist, comparable to present-day lions in size and general ecology, with short thick bone-crushing jaws convergent with those of hyenas.

It also retains the complex variable coat coloration of its ancestors, with each individual having a unique disruptive pattern of black, white, and brown blotches.

Much like its ancestors it’s a highly social pack predator specialized for endurance hunting. Along with some surprisingly horse-like limb ligament morphology, its feet now sport hoof-like nails rather than claws, and it pursues prey over long distances to the point of exhaustion – mainly targeting the larger ungulates across its prairie habitat such as hogs, horses, bovids, and deer.

Spectember/Spectober 2024 #08: Saberatel

Roy (@roygattero) requested “ratel becoming the new african big predator”:

A shaded sketch of a speculative descendant of honey badgers. It's a somewhat cat-like animal with a short snout, long saber-teeth, small ears, semi-digitigrade limbs, a mottled coat, and a short tail.

Perforictis royi is the latest in the long and venerable tradition of various synapsid lineages discovering the ecological niche of “big stabby saber-teeth“.

A descendant of the modern ratel/honey badger, it stands around 80cm tall at the shoulder (~2’8″), and convergently resembles the feline-like build of some of its more ancient relatives. Inhabiting the tropical forests of the rifted-off island continent of East Africa, it’s an ambush predator specializing in tackling larger prey – primarily ungulates and primates, but also occasionally giant rodents and hyraxes.

Usually cooperatively hunting in mated pairs, these mustelids stalk close to their targets before attacking, with one individual focusing on toppling and immobilizing their target while the other positions itself to deliver a swift precision killing bite to the throat with its saber-teeth and powerful neck musculature.

Perforictis scent marks its territory using extremely pungent secretions from its anal pouch rubbed onto vegatation, along with making loud scream-like vocalizations.

Spectember 2024 #05: Most Weasel

GayCoonie suggested a “future legless mustelid”:

A shaded sketch of the head of a speculative descendant of the least weasel, shown in both side view and bunched up clinging to a branch. It's a very elongated animal with no obvious limbs, having just small hooked spurs where its legs should be. It has a small weasel-like head with front-facing eyes and small ears, a long neck, a long slender chest and torso, and a thicker fatter back end with a tapering semi-prehensile tail.

Descended from an arboreal offshoot lineage of the modern least weasel, Maximagale gaycooniei is a bizarre mustelid that appears to have converged on the lifestyle of ambush-hunting tree snakes, evolving in northern latitudes where actual snakes are largely absent.

Growing to about 1m long (3’3″), it’s not truly legless but its limbs are all reduced down to tiny vestigial single-clawed spurs, which are used to help anchor its body while climbing and as claspers during mating. It moves around with a distinctive inchworm-like looping gait, alternating grasping and releasing with its front and hind spurs.

Its build is bottom-heavy, with most of its mass concentrated in its thicker back end, and its tail is semi-prehensile. It clings to trees with its body bunched up, camouflaged with cryptic coloration, and rapidly whips its long flexible front half out to snap its powerfully-muscled jaws at prey – such as insects, birds, lizards, frogs, small mammals, and pretty much anything else that comes within its reach.

It will also opportunistically raid the nest of birds and arboreal mammals.

Due to the less frequent meals its ambush-hunting tactics provide, it has a much slower metabolism than its ancestors, and it conserves energy with daily periods of torpor and longer hibernation during the colder months of winter. It has also retained its ancestor’s tendency to seasonally shrink its brain size to reduce energy requirements even more.

Spectember 2024 #04: Forest Gelada

Someone who identified themself only as Pendrew asked for a “ruminant-like Old World Monkey”:

A shaded sketch of a speculative descendant of geladas. It's a baboon-like quadrupedal monkey with front limbs longer that the hind limbs giving it a sloping back. It has a long almost horse-like snout, small high-set eyes, small ears, a rather long neck for a primate, and a short tufted tail. Its front limbs are digitigrade and have large curved claws, while its back limbs are plantigrade with smaller nail-like claws.

After much of East Africa rifted off into a separate continent, shifting climate turned the alpine grasslands of what was once the Ethiopian Highlands into into warmer subtropical forests – and the highly terrestrial grass-eating geladas that inhabited the region adapted to new sources of food.

Yedenigelada pendrewsii is a large quadrupedal herbivorous monkey, about 1.5m tall at the shoulder (~5′). It has a specialized pseudoruminant digestive system with a three-chambered stomach, similar to that of camelids, and it occupies an ecological niche convergent with the ancient chalicotheres, selectively browsing on trees and shrubs while sitting upright and using its long clawed forelimbs to pull branches within reach.

Unlike its highly social ancestors this species is mostly solitary, although during the breeding season groups of males come together in leks to compete for female attention. Displays consist of inflating large colorful throat pouches to make loud resonating calls, and flipping upper lips to bare teeth and gums.

A shaded sketch of the head of a speculative descendant of geladas, showing its upper lip flipped up to display its teeth and gums, and an inflated red throat pouch.

Spectember 2024 #02: Swimming Swine

An anonymous submitter asked for a “buoyant ungulate that runs atop the sea”:

A shaded sketch of a speculative semi-aquatic descendant of feral pigs. It's a long-bodied chunky hippo-like animal with short legs, wide paddle-like hooves, and a tapir-like head with a a short trunk, small high-set eyes, and small ears.

Pontoporcus plotus is a 1.5m long (~5′) amphibious pig descended from a feral population of domestic pigs left on a small tropical island. After inadvertently wreaking havoc on much of the local ecosystem, its ancestors eventually turned to a more marine-based lifestyle foraging along beaches and in coastal waters.

Naturally highly buoyant, Pontoporcus actually floats so well that it’s mostly limited to the water’s surface, unable to dive to any significant degree. But despite this it’s a fairly good swimmer, using broad hooves with wide fleshy pads to paddle itself along in an aquatic trotting- or running-like gait.

It forages both on land and in the water, mainly eating soft vegetation and marine plants, but much like its ancestors it will also opportunistically feed on whatever smaller animals it can catch or scavenge. Its semi-prehensile trunk-like snout is used to grasp at food items, to probe and root around in soft sediment, and as a snorkel.

Its hairless skin is very susceptible to sunburn, but it secretes a thick oily red-brown substance (similar to modern hippo “blood sweat”) that acts as a natural protective sunscreen.

These pigs are accomplished island-hoppers, regularly traversing the relatively shallow seas all along their island chain – but their natural flotation and long fat bodies also make them prime targets for large aquatic predators attacking from below, so these journeys tend to involve groups of Pontoporcus “running” along the sea surface aiming for their next destination as fast as they possibly can.

Spectember 2024 #01: Sea Dog

It’s September, it’s #Spectember, and I’m still plugging away at that big ol’ pile of speculative evolution idea submissions from a few years ago.

~~I will never be free.~~

Much like last year I’m not setting a definite posting schedule for this month; it’ll just be whenever and whatever I can manage to get done.

(Also, a reminder: I’m still not currently taking new requests!)

So let’s get started with an anonymous submission that requested a “swimming piscivorous canid”:

A shaded sketch of a speculative semi-aquatic descendant of modern short-eared dogs. It has an otter-like body with a long flat tail and four webbed feet, and a wide head with a long narrow toothy snout and small close-set eyes.

Descended from the short-eared dog (a species that in modern times already has partially-webbed paws and eats a large proportion of fish in its diet), Pelagicyon salsus is a 2m long (~6’6″) semi-aquatic piscivorous canid with a stocky body, short webbed limbs, and a long flattened tail.

The back of its skull is very wide, anchoring its thick neck musculature and accommodating huge cheekbones with powerful jaw muscles, but in contrast its snout is elongated and slender – a combination of features that allows it to sweep its toothy jaws through the water to rapidly snap at fish in a similar manner to gharials.

Most other members of its lineage inhabit freshwater rivers and swamps, but Pelagicyon is an unusual marine offshoot that has developed enough salt tolerance to swim, feed, and even drink exclusively in seawater.

Eons Roundup 14

It’s been a while, but let’s catch up with some more work I’ve done for PBS Eons:

An illustration of both a fossil example and the reconstructed internal structure of the enigmatic Paleodictyon, a hexagonal network of tunnels in seafloor sediment created by an unknown organism. — *Paleodictyon nodosum*

The enigmatic Paleodictyon, from “Something Has Been Making This Mark For 500 Million Years”

An illustration of Loxolophus, an extinct mammal related to early ungulates. It somewhat resembles a modern coatimundi, with a slender snout, long legs with plantigrade feet and claw-like hooves, and a long bushy tail. It's reconstructed with a mottled and striped camouflage pattern of brown and cream fur. — *Loxolophus hyattianus*

An illustration of Arctocyon, an extinct mammal related to early ungulates. It has a dog-like head with large canine teeth, a stocky bear-like body with plantigrade legs and claw-like hooves, and a long tail. It's reconstructed with an orange-brown pelt with white stripes along its limbs. — *Loxolophus hyattianus*

The archaic ungulates Loxolophus, Arctocyon, and Eoconodon, from “How a Mass Extinction Changed Our Brains”

An illustration of Aturia, an extinct relative of modern nautiluses. It's reconstructed with an orange-brown shell patterned with zigzagging darker stripes. — *Aturia sp.*

And the nautilid Aturia, from “When Nautiloids Met Their Match”

Heterohyus

Apatemyids were a group of unique early placental mammals that lived during the first half of the Cenozoic, known from North America, Europe, and Asia. Due to their specialized anatomy their evolutionary relationships are rather murky (they were traditionally part of the convoluted mess that was “Insectivora”), but currently they’re thought to be a very early offshoot of the Euarchontoglires, the branch of placentals that includes modern rodents, lagomorphs, treeshrews, colugos, and primates.

Living in what is now western Europe during the mid-Eocene, around 47 million years ago, Heterohyus nanus was a small apatemyid about 30cm long (~12″) – although just over half of that length was made up of its tail.

Like other apatemyids it had a proportionally big boxy head, with large forward-pointing rodent-like incisors in its lower jaw and hooked “can-opener-shaped” incisors in its upper jaw.

Example of an apatemyid skull from the closely related American genus *Sinclairella*.
From Samuels, Joshua X. “The first records of Sinclairella (Apatemyidae) from the Pacific Northwest, USA.” PaleoBios 38.1 (2021). https://doi.org/10.5070/P9381053299

The rest of its body was rather slender, and fossils with soft tissue preservation from the Messel Pit in Germany show that it had a bushy tuft of longer fur at the end of its long tail.

But the most distinctive feature of apatemyids like Heterohyus were their fingers, with highly elongated second and third digits resembling those of modern striped possums and aye-ayes. This suggests they had a similar sort of woodpecker-like ecological role, climbing around in trees using their teeth to tear into bark and expose wood-boring insect holes, then probing around with their long fingers to extract their prey.

Aureia

Aureia rerehua was a toothed whale that lived during the late Oligocene and early Miocene, around 23-22 million years ago, in shallow coastal waters covering most of what is now Aotearoa New Zealand.

It was closely related to the waipatiids – a group traditionally classified as platanistoids (the South Asian river dolphin lineage), but more recently proposed as instead representing a separate earlier branch of the toothed whale evolutionary tree.

About 2m long (~6’6″), Aureia had distinctive tusk-like teeth that splayed outwards from its snout, interlocking when its mouth was closed. Along with a flexible neck and its fairly delicately-built skull and jaws, this suggests it was specialized for catching small prey in a “fish trap” of teeth, a unique feeding strategy for a toothed whale.

Along with different feeding specializations in other close relatives like Nihohae, Aureia shows us how multiple species of these ancient Aotearoan cetaceans were able to coexist in the same place and time by diversifying into different novel ecological niches.