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Eurwentala β Snow Day
#cynodont #paleoart #permian #synapsid #winter #thrinaxodon #nonmammalian #playful #prehistoric
Published: 2017-11-12 10:01:49 +0000 UTC; Views: 8989; Favourites: 399; Downloads: 0
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Young cynodont siblings are having fun on freshly fallen snow, somewhere around northern Antarctica, during the Late Permian. Mom is somewhere nearby, keeping an eye on the kids.A while ago, I did some reading on Permian nonmammalian synapsids for a popular science article I was working on. Around the same time, I started this piece, but it took me ages of short sessions between work to finally call it done. My inspiration was the fact that while Late Permian climate was dry and there were large deserts, it was not particularly warm. Earth's mean temperature was some 2 C above modern pre-industrial levels - that is, basically the Paris Agreement world.
Antarctica and southernmost tip of Africa were located well into temperate climates, and would no doubt see at least an occasional snowfall. Recent research seems to suggest at least the most mammal-like species of Permian synapsids were already endothermic, and some or all of them had fur. This was not meant to depict a specific species, but it's probably something pretty close to Thrinaxodon.
Markers on sketchbook page and Photoshop, referenced from photos of my parents' dogs playing in the snow.
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Comments: 66
Β If this were any cuter you could sell it as a Christmas card! (just as soon as you worked out some seriously slushy message to go with it).
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Awww, they're so adorable! They look a bit like little kittens without (visible) ears!
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This is really, really cute, I love their fat little baby bellies and the way you rendered the snow is very well done. 
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i've seen quite a lot of depictions of snow in mesozoic and cenozoic. but quite a few about ice and snow in the palaeozoic!
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That's a bit odd, because there is plenty of plausible and interesting Palaeozoic scenes with snow and ice. I guess people still have the general idea that anywhere before the Ice Ages was hot and tropical.
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yeah but lacked in paleoart about palaeozoic i've seen. the idea of hot and tropical before ice age was probably came from the cold blooded reptile world imagery in the old days or the global warming issue in the modern days. people most likely to think about there were no glaciers, or ice, or snow before the pleistocene ice age because many scientific papers of that tells about the average temperature of our planet was higher than today (which is true). but despite the temperature, there were varied climate from tropical to snowy, lots of oxygen, and the only extinction came from the forces of nature (except the great oxygenation event an the holocene mass extinctions). the fossil record tells that glacier came and melt several times in geological time period, but that doesn't mean we're safe to be ignorant about global warming as many species died out when climate changed....
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adorable
apart of me even wonders if it did snow back in the triassic
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Thanks! I don't know - Triassic was mostly extremely hot and dry. But it very likely did snow in the Permian, which is the time depicted here.
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your welcome
if it was like a desert in the center of pangea i can see it getting cold at night, and i now some deserts have snowed before so it isn't TOO out there
also the Triassic existed for millions of years at last ONE of the days in those millions of years has to have had snow at some point in it
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I agree, sure there was some snow at some point. 
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I wonder if fur of these synapsid could have strange non-mammalian colors like blue, green or purple. I think mammals lost color vision during mesozoic, when most of them was nocturnal (most mammals see only color yellow and blue and their vision ir rather poor). So now there is no reason for mammals to be red or blue, as olfaction is more impotrant for them than vision (with exception of primates, which often have colorful markings on their skin, even humans have red mouth for this reason). Also mammalian predators cannot distinguish brown from green, so brown is great colors to hide in vegetation and now there is no reason to evolve green fur. Maybe these mammal ancestors before age of dinosaurs could have exotic colored fur?
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Could be. I explored this idea earlier in my colourful depiction of Lystrosaurus:
I'm not sure how well mammalian fur would lend itself to complex structural colour, such as blue or purple, but I wouldn't dismiss it as impossible.
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I would think the predatory ones would still be dull in colour.
Especially if their prey can see colour
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Quite likely. Though 'dull' is relative: when viewed outside of their natural habitats, creatures like leopards, tigers, and moray eels seem quite colourful. What I'm meaning to say here is that camouflaged does not mean ugly.
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Ok, I forgot this drawing. You know this of course.
Well, bird feathers like mammal fur are also built from keratin. And turaco has green color, what is not structural, but pigmental. Amphibians, reptiles (both are more primitive groups than mammals), fish and birds have much more possible colors than mammals. Some ancestors of mammals were certianly more colorful than mammals themselves. It is even strange that color of mammal fur is based only on two pigments. I think there could be similar situation like Cacatuoidea. They lost blue color from their feathers, when they divided from rest of parrots and so, their feathers are never blue or green.
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Agreed, the early synapsid ancestors of mammals were highly likely more colourful than they are now. That, of course, doesn't mean all of them were colourful all the time. There's still space for grey-brown reconstructions as well. There are plenty of little brown birds, lizards, frogs and fish too, after all.
Fish, amphibians and reptiles have a multilayered skin pigmentation with cromatophores. They are pigment cells that can move pigments around to change the animals' colour. These were probably ancestral to all vertebrates (or at least Osteichthyes), but archosaurs and mammals lost them separately. I think early synapsids could well be depicted with scaly or naked skin with all the colours of the rainbow, even some chameleon-like abilities. As for the furry species, I would be slightly more conservative. Depending on when and how fur evolved, there might never have been colourful furs. Or perhaps there was, we just don't know. 
I do have to comment on the 'more primitive than mammals'. While it's a very common mistake even among scientists, there truly is no such thing: all species alive have had exactly the same time to evolve, so no group is more primitive than the other. 'Primitive' only applies to taxa that lived earlier.
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But in case of today amphibians and reptiles they were stuck with very many primitive traits of early tetrapods (cold blood, imperfect heart structure with at least partialy connected chambers, not very complicated lungs and in case of amphibians uncomfortable need to reproduce in water). So maybe they had the same time to evolve, but mammals and birds make much better use of this time.
Fish not, most of today living fish species are very advanced in many aspects compared to fish from Paleozoic (from which only relic species like gar or coelacanth survived competition), but as they live underwater, they changed very different way than tetrapods.
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I think you are only partially correct in there. In some ways, amphibians and some reptiles (remember, birds are a branch of reptiles) are more conservative than warm-blooded tetrapods. However, they are also underestimated simply because people rarely know much more about them than vague generalities (like 'amphibians breed in water'). Much is only recently discovered or still unknown.
For example, reptiles have evolved endothermy multiple times (in archosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs at least), and complex unidirectional lungs have recently been found on both monitor lizards and crocodilians. Actually, mammals are the exception here, with our simple sac lungs. In case of amphibians, I think actually some half of living frog species don't need to reproduce in water. There are directly developing frogs (with no tadpole stage), mouth-brooders, pouched frogs, frogspawn glued to leaves, nests built from foam, eggs buried in the ground, etc. Morphologically, frogs are extremely specialized, with little similarities to basically any other tetrapods. As are snakes, of course, with their highly sophisticated hunting tactics.
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Most frogs tadpoles still need water to develop. Even if their parents lay their eggs above surface. Those, which completely skip aquatic phase and breed completelly on land are as far I know, minority. And way frogs move is rather only way to cope with their oxygen problems, but not to solve it. They get tired extremely quickly as their breathing method is imperfect (single heart chamber with single conus arteriosus instead of aorta and pulmonatory artery, it is VERY inefficient solution condemning amphibians to constant oxygen deficiency), so they jump to make their short-lasting moves a long ones. Still shortage of oxygen availible to body cells is very uncomfortable for them. They cannot be herbivores (as adults, tadpoles can eat plants, as cardivascular system attached to gills is more productive in oxygen transporting than attached to amphibian lungs), must rest for some time after every effort and must have REALLY low intelligence (amphibians are dumbest vertebrates, it is visible in the way they behave)
Well, I know "reptiles" are artificialy separated group, but you know what I mean. Well, we, humans have urge to name and categorise everything.
Some fish from ocean pelagic zone are also endotermic and they developed this trait separately many times. Hot blood gives mammals and birds some advantage but it is not the most important reason of their success, heart and lungs structure areΒ much more important. Insects are ectothermic (well usually) and many species of them are among the most active animals on Earth. Becouse they have efficient breathing system. Likewise fish and cephalopods.
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All animals need water for everything. 
"And way frogs move is rather only way to cope with their oxygen problems" - then how come there are walking, climbing, gliding and burrowing amphibians too? Actually, there's even species that walk and climb around that completely lack lungs.
I know fully well amphibians have a more simple respiratory and pulmonary system than, say, mammals, but they of course need far less oxygen because of their slower metabolism, and complement it by breathing through their skin. I find it doubtful to say the least that there's 5000 species-strong group of animals that spend their whole lives just about to suffocate. Besides, frogs show remarkable endurance during courtship apparently without dying from hypoxia, and some species, like poison dart frogs, are highly active animals.
Sure, most amphibians are rather slow, and don't exactly seem smart. However, their cognitive skills have hardly been studied at all. I'll suspend my judgement until we have some actual evidence on the matter. Common sense has been spectacularly wrong before.
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About walking, climbing and burrowing amphibians, they do it usually slowly and clumsy (comparing to non amphibians).
Some amphibians indeed lack lungs, in case of tailed amphibians it is even majority. Its interesting how unimportantΒ organ are lungs for amphibians, that some lineages could simply lost it and their skin can take over their function. But these lungless amphibians tend to be even more slow than others. (By writing "slow" I am not exacly coorect, amphibians can be active and even fast for short time, but after that they always need to rest and regenerate oxygen level in blood).
Of course they need less oxygen for their slow metabolism, but it works also other way, their metabolism must be slow becouse they have not much of oxygen. They have no other choice with their heart anatomy. And they must save oxygen on organs, which could work much better if they would have more of it. The most oxygen hungry organs are above all brain and then muscles. And these are systems, which dont work wery well in amphibians. And that is what I was saying before.
And they are not about to suffocate, they accomodated their body to work constantly on low gear. It works, but could be better. Poison dart frogs are quite active, but still less active than most amniotes.
And yes, among mammals there are also species with behaviour more suitable for amphibians, the sloths. And reason is very similar, they save energy!
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Also much smarter than people give credit for. The idea of non-mammals or non-birds being βinferiorβ has to die.
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Well, I breed many animals including fish, frogs, geckos, snake and birds, I dont have any mammal on the moment, but I had family of gerbils 10 years ago. And I can tell, there is HUGE difference mental capabilities between cold blooded tetrapods (reptiles, amphibians) and other vertebrates (birds, mammals, fish). Reptiles and amphibians behave very much like machines. If there is nothing interesting to them around, they sit motionlesly or sleep. If they walk, they move from place to place to find good spot to lurk on passing prey. And if they have full stomach, they can sleep for days. Mammals, birds and fish are far more active, they interact among each other, find something to do even if it is not eating and if they see something new, they obviously pay attention to it. Reptiles and amphibians ignore everything what is not possible prey or possible predator. So they obviously have more important organs to invest their precious energy than into than brain. Their cardivascular and breathing systems are not so efficient like ours (or bird or fish one), so they would easy become oxygen deficient it they would move and think too much. They can't do this. And so they must be dumb. At least most species.
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My personal experience is slightly different.
We have a leopard gecko that seems to be highly alert of his surroundings and will come to check out new things put into his terrarium. He's obivously not as smart or as quick as the cockatiels I had previously, but he's actually equally or more curious and very expressive. You can see his emotions for meter away. My fish - I have some dozen species - are highly variable in this regard. Some, like climbing perches and bichirs, are active and seem smart, just like you described, while others, like talking catfish, resemble your idea of amphibians.
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Not all fish must be active, some can be slow (the most obvoius are camouflaged sit-and-wait predators like frogfish). But fish can be active and aphibians cant.
My leopard gecko is uninterested in its (it was bought as female-incubated, but its to young to be sure) surrounding. It sometimes walks around terrarium or dig in substrate but beside it, it is sleeping until it hears I bought cricket delivery. Then it wakes and waits (as well my tokays). My tree frogs never showed any anticipating behaviour before feeding. But when I put crickets in their terrarium, they attack and try to swallow tips of my fingers. As I said, not very smart. Fish of course wait for feeding under aquariums surface when they expect to be feed, and budgerigars understand that when they run out of food or water I am the one who can replace it. When they chirp enthusiastically at the moment, when they see me (they have about 14 sounds with diferent meanings I can recognise), I know they expect me to give them new food.
All molluscs and arthropods I have (beside only jumping spiders, which obviously can learn and observing them I sometimes have feeling that they understand much more than geckos in their tiny brains), behave like pre-programed robots, all their reactions are very easy to anicipate (for example arboreal species of insects almost always walk upward if they have choice).
By the way, taming tokay gecko to the level it stops running away when it see human in room lasts more than half year. Sometimes it can be taught later to eat from pincers (NEVER from hand, they bite with force of clenched scissors!), but not always. And I have never seen tokay what accepts to be touched, but some rare pictures in internet shows it as possible.
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I do think you are partially right. However, I think you are quick to assume the lack of expressions and vocalizations in reptiles translates to them being stupid. They are mostly non-social: they don't need to be very expressive. As the new studies (linked by Acepredator earlier) have shown, many reptiles seem to have learning skills of mammalian levels, when they are tested fairly. Not just monitors and crocodilians, but also anoles, tortoises, and lacertids. I think they are like some people: seemingly slow and quiet, but surprisingly sharp when given time to think.
Yesterday night, our leopard gecko actually run after me, when he saw me exiting the room without feeding him. He was in such a hurry he ended up elbow-deep in his water bowl! He has quite obviously learned I'm the one who feeds him and shows clear anticipation - though he does that only when he's hungry, while my fish do it every time they see me (I think that's the difference their faster metabolism makes). The gecko did get a roach for his trouble.
Taming even obviously intelligent animals is sometimes far from easy. Earlier, I had a rescue cockatiel that was afraid of hands. I started training her by first giving her treats from my fingers, and when she was ready for it, rewarding her every time she touched my hand. We did this literally thousands of times during a period of about one year, without her having any bad experiences about hands in the whole time. And yes, she was still afraid every. Single. Time. It was beyond frustrating. You would think she was an idiot, if she didn't otherwise act reasonably intelligently.
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If you would have tokays you would never say reptiles lacks vocalizations, tokays bark very loud. In the night males scream they calling song, which sound exacly like "ererererErEr! erErErErErEr! ErErErErErEr! Gek-Ko! Gek-Ko! Gek-Ko! Gek-ko! Gek-ko! Errrh..." And that can be heard every night when male cannot find any female, or when it lives in terrarium with a female, who is about to lay eggs in next 10 days. It took some time for me to accomodate to sleep during this performance. And both males and females emit sound which sound like something between dog-barking and duck-quacking. It is a warning, tokay always threaten with it before biting and you can hear it when they feel at risk of being caught. And when they bite, blood later drips from wound on the floor. Literally.
So they are very nice animals, unless you try to touch them or their eggs
Parrots (and parrakets, in Polish ith simpler, there is single word for all Psittaciformes) are not always tamable. In my budgerigar flock there is only one female, who completelly trust me. She hatched from egg in my cage and she knew me long before she learned to fly (but she was feed by her parents). I can hold her in my hand and when I try to catch her, she simply wait for my hand. Her father hates to be caught and he always fly away, but when I finally hold him, he almost never bites. My other budgerigars are not tamed and its hard to hold them without gloves, becouse they bite with full strenght.
Parrots see big mammal as their natural predators, extremelly scary. Its hard for them to overcome this fear. But they are obviously intelligent, they can understand quite complex things*, even if their way of thinking is simple. They obviously have problem with thinking about things they dont see at the moment, unless there happens something what reminds these thing to them (I think it works similar to smell memory in humans, I cannot recall how something smells, but when I smell it I immediatelly know what it is and when I seen it). All my budgerigars obviously understand "No!" command. Funny thing, even if my budgerigars dont like to be touched, they like to chew my shirt sleeve trough cage bars. So looks like I am not so scary when they touch me, and not me them. Also they dont have problems with eating from my hand, as long as there are cage bars between my hand and them.
* Complex things like for example glass, when budgerigar hits window two or three times, it would remember to never fly there again, when there was transparent plastic box in my tokay terrarium, whre I used to let all crickets, tokay needed a YEAR to understand to attack these crickets only from above and repeatedly hitting transparrent wall with their head is pointless.
And geckos can walk on glass, so they should easily undestand that when they can touch sonething, then there it IS. Fact is they often walk on dirty glass, but feel obviously uncomfortable on truly transparent wall. Unless you would stick something not transparrent on the other side or put something on glass celling. Then they have no problems with sitting on the other side of it.
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"Parrots see big mammal as their natural predators, extremelly scary. Its hard for them to overcome this fear. But they are obviously intelligent, they can understand quite complex things, even if their way of thinking is simple."
Exactly what I meant - failure to learn something specific does not necessarily mean the animal is not intelligent. The situation just might be too scary, stressful, or confusing to the animal. Or their sensory system can't cope with something. Or the individual has a problematic history, like my cockatiel. For example, it has been well demonstrated that many animals will be bad learners and suspectible to stress for the rest of their lives, if they are raised in bland surroundings without enrichment. I don't think many reptile breeders, for example, give any thought to enriching their young animals.
That said, your tokays sure don't sound they are the sharpest critters.
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I seriously pointed all these issues out and he/she still thinks these are things that indicate lack of cognitive capacity.
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So it seems. I just now read most of your comments. Oh well, it's an interesting discussion, regardless of the result.
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Yeah. Shame that reptiles are still wrongly denigrated in the eyes of the public
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Solitary or sedentary behaviour does not equal less intelligence. Being able to learn and reason is intelligence and neither requires high activity levels or social behaviours.
So it is false to say reptiles are stupid because they donβt do much.
blogs.scientificamerican.com/tβ¦
mobile.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/β¦
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Well, these articles show only that most intelligent of reptiles (Varanidae and Iguanidae are known to be most intelligent lizards) instincts ar equaly or almost equaly complicated like those of simplest birds and mammals. There are no more intelligent reptiles that these described here, while there are very many more intelligent birds and mammals. And there are also very many less intelligent reptiles species.
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I think that you are just greatly overestimating mammalian intelligence in addition to underestimating reptilian intelligence.
The thing is that the majority of mammals arenβt anywhere as smart as a dog.
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I am comparing reptiles rather to rodents than dogs. Still, there are rodents more intelligent than all reptiles, while only most intelligent of reptiles are as smart as rodents. And there are animals as smart as dog or even smater among mammals and birds and not among reptiles.
By the way small parrots can also be quite intelligent, its quite iteresting how many tricks budgerigar can be taught (try search for "budgerigar tricks" on youtube).
I observed behaviour of many animal species. Reptiles learn much slower and are far less interested in what is happening around them (if around them there is nothing they can eat).
I also once made autopsy of dead tokay gecko and rat. I was surprised how small is gecko brain compared to rat one. Rat have brain the size of peanut, tokay gecko brain is the size of rice grain (and 1/3 of it are olfactory bulbs!). And tokay is 25 cm long. Also brain of tokays is not enclosed within brain cavity. From underside it is not protected by any bone but only tendons and jaw muscles (jaw muscles are biggest muscles in tokay body. Well, tokays have oppinion of being not very smart, even among geckos.
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