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Description
Ranamonarchia is a diverse lineage of endothermic Sheatherian anurans which first diverged in the late Jurassic on the southern landmass of Aenvarna where they remain most numerous today though now occur throughout the southern and to a very limited extent northern hemisphere of the Sheatherian world. Ranamonarchians are defined by endothermy, an upright posture, hair-like integument, and live (ancestrally) non-placental birth, the result of soft-shelled eggs which hatch within the mother's body. The earliest Ranamonarchians were roughly 12 centimeter tall leaping bipeds, most comparable to upright toads and with a dry but smooth skin, which fed on small arthropods and invertebrates. From this primitive stock, provided with the bounty the Sheatherian world offered, one of the planet's most widely successful clades would spring forth and develop as different lineages adapted to land, sea, and even sky and to a wide range of diets and subsequent bodyplans. Some groups would change drastically, with frogates and the subsequent bubucks being the most extremely divergent with toothed beaks, dense fur coats, very highly-developed bird-like brains and placental reproduction, while groups such as the dim-witted hoptoads would remain relatively unaltered over hundreds of millions of years save for superficial alterations to the primitive bodyplan. Groups would go on to produce both lineages exhibiting mobile mammal-lipped forms as well as entirely lipless avian-like beaks depending on ecological needs. Though predominately carnivorous, exclusive herbivory evolves multiple times in groups as widely divergent as the intelligent but physically primitive froglemurs, the highly advanced frogates, and at least three distinct times in the unusual flightless flutterfrogs of Wumbus.

The extant Ranamonarchian groups of the Holocene are the primitive Flutterfrogs, the Frogates (including Bubucks and Dragons), the Hoptoads (including Umbuls and Ranatees), the Bambaeos, the Bufolopes, the Trunkos (including Mumps), the Bunkinya, the Froglemurs (including the Viperneck), and the Drackels, primitive carnivorous theropod flutterfrogs which fall just short of being included amongst the true Bufolopes.

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Description
Ranamonarchia is a diverse lineage of endothermic Sheatherian anurans which first diverged in the late Jurassic on the southern landmass of Aenvarna where they remain most numerous today though now occur throughout the southern and to a very limited extent northern hemisphere of the Sheatherian world. Ranamonarchians are defined by endothermy, an upright posture, hair-like integument, and live (ancestrally) non-placental birth, the result of soft-shelled eggs which hatch within the mother's body. The earliest Ranamonarchians were roughly 12 centimeter tall leaping bipeds, most comparable to upright toads and with a dry but smooth skin, which fed on small arthropods and invertebrates. From this primitive stock, provided with the bounty the Sheatherian world offered, one of the planet's most widely successful clades would spring forth and develop as different lineages adapted to land, sea, and even sky and to a wide range of diets and subsequent bodyplans. Some groups would change drastically, with frogates and the subsequent bubucks being the most extremely divergent with toothed beaks, dense fur coats, very highly-developed bird-like brains and placental reproduction, while groups such as the dim-witted hoptoads would remain relatively unaltered over hundreds of millions of years save for superficial alterations to the primitive bodyplan. Groups would go on to produce both lineages exhibiting mobile mammal-lipped forms as well as entirely lipless avian-like beaks depending on ecological needs. Though predominately carnivorous, exclusive herbivory evolves multiple times in groups as widely divergent as the intelligent but physically primitive froglemurs, the highly advanced frogates, and at least three distinct times in the unusual flightless flutterfrogs of Wumbus.

The extant Ranamonarchian groups of the Holocene are the primitive Flutterfrogs, the Frogates (including Bubucks and Dragons), the Hoptoads (including Umbuls and Ranatees), the Bambaeos, the Bufolopes, the Trunkos (including Mumps), the Bunkinya, the Froglemurs (including the Viperneck), and the Drackels, primitive carnivorous theropod flutterfrogs which fall just short of being included amongst the true Bufolopes.

Download for full size.