I do art (badly) and make jokes (also badly) . . .No pronoun pref
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Latest Posts by thingsand-stuffs - Page 2
happy pride month from your queer knight <3
[image description: a pencil sketch of a knight with long hair on a rearing horse. the knight holds aloft a rainbow pride flag. end image description.]
Unsolved Paleo Mysteries Month #08 – Everything Dies Except Lystrosaurus
The extinction event that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs is probably the most “famous” mass extinction, but it wasn’t the worst one in Earth’s history. That morbid honor goes to the Permian-Triassic extinction 252 million years ago – also aptly known as the Great Dying.
A truly massive amount of biodiversity was lost in this event, with 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial species disappearing. Some marine ecosystems seemed to rebound fairly quickly, but overall it may have taken at least 5-10 million years for anything close to full recovery. Terrestrial vertebrates may even have taken up to 30 million years to regain previous levels of diversity.
And… we’re not sure why it happened.
One of the main potential culprits is the massive eruption of the Siberian Traps – one of the largest known volcanic events on Earth – but other explanations include an asteroid impact, methane-producing microbes, ocean anoxia, the formation of Pangaea, a nearby supernova destroying the ozone layer, and even dark matter.
Or it might have been a result of multiple causes at once, events that wouldn’t have been so severe individually but became disastrous in combination. This is known as the “Murder on the Orient Express Model”: maybe they all did it.
But there’s also a secondary element to today’s mystery. In the aftermath of the Great Dying, a small dicynodont synapsid briefly took over the world. For the first few million years of the Triassic, around 95% of the Earth’s population of terrestrial vertebrates were all Lystrosaurus – no other genus or species of animal has ever dominated to such a degree.
Why did these squat little dog-sized animals survive and thrive when everything else was struggling? They might have been opportunistic generalists able to deal with changing conditions better than other groups, the extinction of most large predators may have allowed their population to explode, or it might simply have been a matter of luck.
We just don’t know.
Tried drawing pokemon for the first time. Took a few artistic liberties
Playing around with styles/variants of the Isles hypsilidon, then tried drawing one in the more standard style (I made its eyes too small by accident)
My OC Demon, a shapeshifter that possesses one human at a time and slowly kills them. (Edgy I know)
Dragon....goat thing...
Drew me (back) and a badass troll galli (front) I met during my adventures
Tried my hand at pteranadons. First pic is based on The Isles Petra, my personal fave, second is Bests if Bermudas, and Arks ugly bird.
Bonus of some (very inaccurate) pteras I drew a few years ago.
The lightning kinda ruins this but I'm gonna post it anyways
Whoever said diplo is a useless dino CLEarlY didnt take into consideration they make lovely beds
A wiggly one. Look at it, flexing all those leggggs over us peasants .
