40 million kinorhynchs/AMT

@ceratosaurus.bsky.social

56 Followers 98 Following

Amateur artist, master procrastinator Adores anything living, but extinct stuff especially Jack-of-all-trades, I do drawings, blockbench models, pixel art and clay

A warm gray sea cucumber over a white background. The sea cucumber has a light pink stripe running along the back and another one along the side. The front is light pink and has ten tentacles.
Rejecting the radiating neuromeric organization of Mollisonia, Bolton et al. do not recognize that Gaussian blurring can reveal cryptic arrangements: digital defocusing of neural traces in the fossil’s tilted part reveals seriate tiling.
The Soom Shale, a late Ordovician lagerstätte
A large, winglike graptolite Pterograptus scanicus, floats in dark water. The right side is closer to the camera and illuminated by light, while the left side fades into the darkness. There are a regular series of glowing cyan lights along the branch-like 'feathers' of the graptolite. Close to the camera, a gray, transparent larval Caryocaris (a genus of phyllocarid) is ensnared in the graptolite's tentacles.
A WIP diagram of Megistaspis limbatus, an asaphid trilobite that is the type species of Megistaspis. Made with Inkscape.
MePhone4, a black iPhone-reminiscent phone from the object show Inanimate Insanity, is doing push-ups outside on the grass. The Floor, a fellow character from Inanimate Insanity, is underneath MePhone and looking up at his screen, saying "Ooh~...❤️"
Bryomedusa graptolithoides Habitat: Coral Reefs Clade: Bryozoa (relative of Cyclocladus) Size: 20-30 cm long Ecology: Pelagic Filter Feeder Additional Info: Bryomedusa is a genus of filter-feeding bryozoan related to Cyclocladus that has evolved to become pelagic. Its mesh-like structure reduces the weight of the bryozoan’s skeleton. Its zooids act like cilia, both sifting through water to find food and keeping the bryozoan afloat, while the vibraculan zooids at the base allow it to swim forwards. Tabulospongus auraeum Habitat: Snail Reefs Clade: Porifera (Demospongiae, Acarnidae) Size: Up to 10 meters across, 1 meter tall Ecology: Sessile Filter Feeder Additional Info: Tabulospongus is a crucial part of Lemuria’s snail reef ecosystems: it provides additional substrate for vermetid snails as well as providing hiding places for small fish. The vermetid snails encrusting on the sponge provide it with protection from organisms that would like to eat it through the simple expedient of providing a physical barrier. However, if the encrusting snails grow over the small pores through which Tabulospongus intakes water, they could eventually starve the sponge. To prevent this, Tabulospongus turns spicules surrounding the pores into upwards-pointing spines that can grow up to a centimeter long.
Two limpet-like aliens emerge from the ocean onto brown mudflats. They have a flat, tan body and a grey shell. The left one is fully in frame, and can be seen laying eggs. The right one is not fully in frame. The sky is cloudy and greyish-blue, and two clouds can be seen.
A baby Platypeltoides trilobite resting on pale sand in a shallow ocean. The trilobite is light brown and only has two segments: a cephalon (head) and pygidium (tail). Protruding from the rear end of the cephalon are two genal spines.
Keurbos susanae, an enigmatic arthropod here reconstructed after Acheronauta, pursues a conodont in the polar waters of the South African Soom Shale. The water is dark green and becomes lighter close to the top, and there is a large iceberg on the top-left corner. Underneath the iceberg, there are the faint shapes of moon jelly-like jellyfish. The arthropod itself is white and worm-like, with a dark underbelly adorned with scleritis. It is curving up, trying to pursue the Notiodella.
Image of a conference abstract. The abstract is titled First record of philipsiid trilobites (Proetida: Phillipsiidae) from the Upper Triassic of Telangana and reads: Trilobites (Order Trilobita) were one of the most successful clades of the Paleozoic, with an estimated 20,541 valid species as of 2008 (Adrain, 2008) and undoubtedly many more that have been described in the years that followed. However, it is widely accepted that trilobites went extinct as part of the end-Permian mass extinction following a long period of decline from the middle Devonian (Lerosey-Aubril & Feist, 2012). Recent finds in the upper Triassic fluvio-lacustrine Lower Dharmaram Formation (Dasgupta, Bannerjee, and Ghosh, 2022) challenge this belief. Fragments of trilobite exoskeletons recovered from the Lower Dharmaram formation have been assigned to cf. Pseudophillipsia, suggesting both that phillipsiid trilobites survived the end-Permian mass extinction and that they moved into freshwater ecosystems. References: Adrain, Jonathan M. "A GLOBAL SPECIES DATABASE OF TRILOBITA: PROGRESS, RESULTS, AND." Advances in trilobite research 9 (2008): 27. Lerosey-Aubril, R., & Feist, R. (2012). Quantitative approach to diversity and decline in late Palaeozoic trilobites. Earth and life: global biodiversity, extinction intervals and biogeographic perturbations through time, 535-555. Dasgupta, S., Banerjee, S., & Ghosh, P. (2022). Petrographical and Geochemical Study of Syn-Rift Sediments, Pranhita-Godavari Intracratonic Gondwana Basin, India: Genesis and Paleo-Environmental Implications. Geosciences, 12(6), 230. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences12060230
The head and neck of Argentinadraco, an azhdarchoid pterosaur with a ridge on its lower jaw, on a light gray background. The head is primarily black and bare, with some red pycnofibers around the edge and "scaling" reminiscent of a black vulture, while the neck is black as well.
A Bothriolepis being stalked by an Aztecia
A Joschua Knuppe-style illustration of the Soom Shale, a late Ordovician lagerstatte with many cool creatures
Two brown Han solo, Ordovician agnostids, copulate on a white background
An Isotelus, a large tan trilobite with brown markings, is walking across the seabed. Above it, a bright red “star” shines. This “star” is actually the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst that happened just a few days ago and will cause the end-Ordovician extinction event.
An Isotelus, a large brown trilobite, is walking across the seabed. Above it, a bright red “star” shines. This “star” is actually the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst that happened just a few days ago and will cause the end-Ordovician extinction event.
Pencil sketch of Omnidens, a 1.5-meter gilled lobopodian from the Cambrian of China