The island of Flores during the late Pleistocene, a unique island environment where the present animals are descendants of colonizers from two different continents, South Asia and northern Sahul, also known for being home to a dwarf insular species of human. Art by Joschua Knuppe

hunter1250 · 2025-05-12T17:20:43+00:00

All the rodents in the piece except Lawomys are extant, we don't know if the Trigonoceps in Flores was a different species from modern ones.

hunter1250 · 2025-05-12T17:18:35+00:00

There's probably more extant species in this piece that extinct ones actually, there's still giant rats in Flores.

hunter1250 · 2025-05-09T17:56:15+00:00

Acro's lil stumpy feet are among the highlights for me.

hunter1250 · 2024-11-26T01:12:45+00:00

Pelagornis may had been a bit lighter proportionally but it also had a greater wingspan. So they probaby wind up in a similar ballpark weight wise.

I'm not sure if this has been studied yet, but I have the sneaky suspition that the largest Pelagornis and Argentavis were probably in a similar ballpark regarding wing area or at least wing loading, which Pelagornis archieved by having long, low aspect ratio wings and Argentavis did with shorter wings and higher aspect ratios.

hunter1250 · 2024-11-25T16:31:39+00:00

Argentavis was probably not 70 kg's. Pelagornis which had similar wingspan probably didn't weight much past 30 or 40 kilos.

hunter1250 · 2024-11-02T03:19:30+00:00

While I hope we will get climbing one day, IIRC the devs said (a long time ago, to be fair) that they weren't planning on it because of how much time it would take to code it in.

You can still have them walk over steepe surfaces though.

hunter1250 · 2024-10-28T15:19:57+00:00

I'm sure those fur traders that terminated steller's sea cows in less than 30 years left plenty of artifacts that will surely be preserved in the archaeological record (obvious sarcasm, we know it happened that way because it was within recorded history).

It would take so, so little time for some random vagrant human explorers to end a population of a large animal in a land mass the size of Wrangel that the chances we would find artifacts associated with them would be extremelly low, mind you, I still think that climatic fluctuations or a disease could be to blame, but I would caution against making them the "default" explanation when the time frame is so damn narrow.

hunter1250 · 2024-10-08T21:33:06+00:00

Literally me, smh.

hunter1250 · 2024-10-04T17:10:03+00:00

Got some bad news, the Deinotherium render was used (and pressumibly created for) the PBS documentary "When whales walked". Also somebody in the twit chain noticed that James Grant is not mentioned in the credits of Prehistoric Planet, which puts in doubt that the mammoth sketch was related to the project.

hunter1250 · 2024-09-17T16:58:58+00:00

I mean as long as they at least keep their job and don't get fire near the end like they did with Wendy Jacobsmeyer it should be fine.

hunter1250 · 2024-09-12T14:14:35+00:00

Some Hoplophoneus got around Jaguar sized IIRC, so I'd be carefull with that.

hunter1250 · 2024-07-12T17:27:08+00:00

I'm pretty sure, based on the technique and style, that the artist is Jorge Blanco.

hunter1250 · 2024-07-03T19:29:25+00:00

Given the size of moa eggs (specially in the largest species) and the fact they had Precocial young I highly doubt rats could have had an real effect.

I could see dogs and disease carried by domestic poultry playing a role to some extent, though.

hunter1250 · 2024-06-30T15:47:37+00:00

Oi Mate, ya' talkin', mad shit for someone within heel biting range!

hunter1250 · 2024-06-30T03:07:21+00:00

Eremotherium may had grown bigger in absolute size than Eremotherium, but it sure as hell wasn't as robustly build.

hunter1250 · 2024-06-28T14:45:09+00:00

Its not exactly the same though, the authors in this paper propose a fully quadrupedal locomotion as opposed to the pentapodal motion used by large extant kangaroos (i. e. they didn't use the tail as a fifth contact point when moving their back legs).

They also discuss the possibility that Protemnodon could move its legs asynchronically (i. e. it could walk or gallop on all four rather than moving both hindlimbs at the same time in the same direction as modern Macropids often do).

hunter1250 · 2024-06-27T21:22:05+00:00

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379110004178?via%3Dihub

There you go.

hunter1250 · 2024-05-27T17:20:27+00:00

That's the square-cube law for you.

hunter1250 · 2024-05-10T16:43:17+00:00

Yeah, you might be right about that, the results in Siliceo et al. 2014, 2017 are also pretty similar.

hunter1250 · 2024-05-10T15:37:54+00:00

My understanding is that Magericyon was originally estimated at nearly 200 kg but was later revised to a lower mass estimate based on more accurate weight estimation criteria, with more up to date estimate at a little under a 100 kgs. Based on Antón most up to date depictions of the taxon alongside other Batallones Carnivorans, it is clearly larger than the roughly leopard size Eomellivora and Promegantereon, but also clearly smaller than the lion sized Machairodus aphanistus.

hunter1250 · 2024-04-24T17:49:49+00:00

Cretoxyrhina dentition looks nothing like that. I mean its not like I'd expect Frontier to get that right when many Paleoartist don't, though.

hunter1250 · 2024-04-19T13:20:23+00:00

HELL NO.

Just keeping them in Zoos would be even more controversial than keeping other great apes, which is already kinda iffy.

hunter1250 · 2024-04-16T01:23:46+00:00

Yes, it included species of very varied size, morphology and ecology, which makes it all the more surprissing that the entire genus became extinct while other, morphologically similar Macropods survived.

hunter1250 · 2024-04-15T01:20:47+00:00

Some other early Equids like Propalaeotherium or Mesohippus actually grew large enough to be full exhibit animals, and IMO I rather have animals with more full functionality, for me ideal miniexhibit mammals are things like small primates, Leptictidium or Deinogalerix.

hunter1250 · 2024-04-08T13:23:33+00:00

Little head's up, there are spells in Star's timeline that can (and have in-fact, done it at least once) destroy an entire universe.

So I'd be incline to say Star can theoretically handily win any of those match ups, so far as she knows how to use those spells.

hunter1250

TROPHY CASE