![]() ![]() They spoke intricate combinations of clicking, whistling and chirping with strange rhythms and, whenever we moved abruptly, they reacted. The team did not dare swim with them, for wild animals can always be unpredictable, but they did lower a hydrophone to listen to their chatter. The sabephs were not interested in fish however, but rather went for the bait crustaceans. Going against every rule a wildlife scientist should adhere to, they tried to feed them. Whether they were attracted to the team's fishing, or motivated by sheer curiosity, we cannot know, but the couple hung out with them for quite a while. The Common Sabeph ( Aommatopeton vulgaris) is at the small end of the spectrum at just over 2 metres long. The one time Schoedsack actually did take canoes out to the water, they were greeted by a friendly pair of sabephs which were of the same species as the original carcass. As the sound sensors of the ROV were overloaded with wave after wave of high pitched clicks, their theory was confirmed: this was a secondarily aquatic blind echolocating phyllolepid, or S.A.B.E.Ph for short. It looked similar to the corpse, but had a long beak tipped with pseudoteeth. Within barely 10 minutes, the ROV's sensors started picking up on rapid bursts of sound, and soon a shadow appeared from the deep blue. Reluctantly, the operators agreed, even though sonar is vital to an ROV. The team was almost about to give up when someone suggested just shutting the sonar off. Instead, ROVs were sent out into the water, but even they had no luck approaching them while the sonar was still on. It was assumed that the sound of the motor scares them away, but rowing to open sea is not a risk anyone wanted to take. Though they are often spotted in the distance, breaching and making fountains when they surface, whenever the team’s boats come close, they flee. Team Schoedsack needed to find a living specimen to better understand them a single corpse simply did not say enough. Through some intensive phylogenetic bracketing and analysis of the skull, the researchers determined this creature was probably of phyllolepid descent, although whatever ghost lineage brought it forth is yet to be found. Its head appeared to actually be a fusion of the cephalic and thoracic plates, and its large fins seemingly came from the pelvic girdle, while a pectoral girdle was nowhere to be found. This, combined with the fact that this creature did not even have orbits for eyes, led the researchers to the hypothesis that this creature used echolocation when it was alive. In front of this large brain was a large, heavily vascularised, fat-filled area, and next to the breathing tubes, airsacs and structures not too dissimilar from the monkey-lips found in odontocetes. Inside the massive head, there was a very large brain quite unlike any vertebrate brain we have seen so far, yet disturbingly similar to a dolphins, with split brain halves and a huge auditory cortex but with massive olfactory bulbs. It had large double nostrils, as are present in many fish, but also lacked true gills and instead had “blowholes” on the top of its head that lead to its lungs. The creature completely lacked eyes and had no light detecting organs whatsoever. Some very strange adaptations were present in this animal, ones that could only be explained if its ancestors originated on land, and even then there were some that were just so strange they seemed absurd. The first specimen of these Team Schoedsack could get close to was a washed up carcass and, while a lot was learned, it raised more questions than it answered. The munchers of Dome 4 came closest, yet the swimmers lacked the characteristic arm-jaws of the latter and had a skull structure completely different from antiarchs. N othing dwelling on land resembled these swimmers even remotely, not even terrestrial placoderms encountered in other domes. They breathed air, but not through nostrils, and while they were active hunters, had no eyes. Despite living in the water, they were not fish, and though obviously belonging to placodermi, their internal bones were mostly ossified. ![]() One of the first among these were a group of marine animals in Dome 5 that just did not seem to make sense at first. ![]() More often than not, surprises lurk beneath the waves. The seas of every dome are as isolated as from each other as can be, and because of this, few assumptions or predictions can be made about the life inhabiting the seas in individual Domes based on that of others. #Atrox terrestrials rar free#While the terrestrial fauna of the Rhynia are free migrate between the domes, it goes without saying that this generally does not apply for aquatic animals. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |