AU where Sydney lives and goes on a hike with TJ. That's pretty much it.
"So, do you want to take a hike?" TJ asked, "W-with me, I mean?"
Sydney feigned to consider it.
"Do you even have to ask? Of course I'll go!" Sydney said, booping TJ's nose, in turn prompting a giggle out of his boyfriend.
"I mean, it is really hot out there" TJ said.
"So is here, but I'm not complaining" Sydney replied.
TJ looked at hi...
2020-08-13 11:00:22 +0000 UTC View PostAn AU where Sydney lives. Yes, this is basically Route 65 with Sydney in it.
***
"Sydney, I-I need to tell you something" Chase whispered.
Sydney looked, intrigued. He was texting Flynn, apparently there was a Day of the Dead party going on and he decided to crash it. He was hoping Chase and Carl would join him, and for a moment he decided this was as good an opportunity to bring that up as he'd get. Seeing Chase's nervous face, however, instantly told...
2020-07-19 13:16:05 +0000 UTC View Post<figure>
</figure>A common controversy you'll see brought up in discussions on biology is whereas opossums are what most people would consider stupid or whereas they're some misunderstood genius. Some people say that they are as smart as dogs, others that they are as dumb as chickens. One might want to rethink the later analogy since chickens 2020-07-18 10:44:17 +0000 UTC View Post
Echo AU where Sydney lives and marries TJ and Chase, Leo and Kudzu all love each other and everyone is raising kids.
***
“Flight 236-34 is now boarding. Thank you for flying with Ryan-Air.”
“Welp, he wasn’t lying” Sydney said, snapping out of an almost-sleep, prompting Jin to giggle, “Not even long enough for me to snore.”
“Yeah, I think they gave Chase a company coupon?” TJ said, helping Sydney up and pecking him on the cheek, “Its nic...
2020-07-03 18:06:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Another Echo fanfic. AU where Chase, Leo and Kudzu are together and raise a kid.
***
"Hello and welcome to the Cheeto in Speedos cast. I'm your host Shams Hunter and this week we have three very special guests. Care to introduce yourselves?"
"Hi, I'm Chase Hunter, and I'm your host's dad."
"I'm Leo Alvarez, and I'm your host's other dad."
"And I'm Kudzu, also your dad."
"Wow, so many dads! Anyone else?"
"'fraid not bicho. Its been j...
2020-06-30 21:17:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Based on the new study and its conclusions.
***
She stands at midday, the heat of the sun bothering her. Still, compared to many other animals she’s well off, her jaw flanges, long tail and horn dissipating heat and her black tear-like facial markings allowing her to see without being blinded. She lies against the ground, camouflages against the Pampas grass, her head scouting for appropriate p...
2020-06-30 14:01:10 +0000 UTC View Post<figure>
</figure>Echo and its prequel The Smoke Room are two visual novels dear to my heart. I started playing the former way back in 2016 and it got me through some tough times. The latter meanwhile was only released recently and while its mostly its own thing it helps establish the setting and what ...
2020-06-25 01:23:51 +0000 UTC View Post
Sydney woke up in darkness.
For a moment he panicked, but he quickly realised he was in his bedroom. Next to him was the love of his life, still deep asleep, his beautiful face facing him. Love rushed in his chest like warm water, and he barely contained a sob of joy. He gently kissed TJ on the lips, before getting out of bed. He didn't feel like sleeping after the horrid visions he'd seen, so he put on black boxers and his hat and carefully made his way out of the room. 2020-06-13 12:56:39 +0000 UTC View Post
"And we're here" TJ proclaimed as he pulled over.
It was an asphalt-less parking lot amidst the scrubland, some ten meters away from the beach. The days of Echo long behind them, Sydney and the kids liked the sea and TJ himself didn't feel comfortable around freshwater beaches, so they decided on a secluded spot with few people. Sydney managed to become a minor celebrity as he got contracted for the Elite World Wrestling, so TJ was concerned about crazy people harassing them,...
2020-06-12 10:06:03 +0000 UTC View Post Non-placental mammals are faced with an unique predicament. Possessing epipubic bones, they cannot expand their torsos, and thus cannot give birth to complex, well developed young you take for granted. Marsupials eject joeys, monotremes eject eggs that hatch into puggles - joeys by another name. This is likely the same for all mammals prior to the Cenozoic, from the rapacious Repenomamus to the peaceful Schowalteria.
This means that an aquatic lifestyle is li...
2020-04-19 11:59:45 +0000 UTC View Post In another world, there wasn't a first tetrapod dragging itself on the mud. Or, if there was, it faded into obscurity.
Rather, another group of animals took to the land. And they did it by the air.
Somewhere in the mid-Devonian, a placoderm similar to Stensioella acquired a pelagic lifestyle. A relatively weak swimmer, it nonetheless could easily escape predators thanks to its proportionally massive pectoral fins, allowing it to flutter in a manner similar t...
2020-04-09 02:55:57 +0000 UTC View Post
Remember the outgroups I mentioned?
A) is the typical topology for Paraves, give or take. This particular result is derived from the Hartman 2019 version with characters for Enantiornithes and Jinguofortithidae added.
B) is what happens when you disregard the supposed homologies of Ornithothoraces. Its now proven that the enantiornithean sternum and the ornithuromorph sternu...
2020-04-03 17:28:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Using the dataset in Hartman 2019 albeit with the missing enantiornithean characters and additional taxa (same outgroups; the results are... interesting, and for another day). Only genera are listed.
As predicted by Mickey Mortimer, "Martinavis" is polyphyletic. North American and European remains rank with Halimornis while Lecho remains are almost identical to Elbretornis.
2020-04-03 02:31:49 +0000 UTC View Post Mammals
Tyrannotherium rex: A twelve meter long, 15 ton heavy gobiconodontid.
Napioa piadaph: A grizzly sized gobiconodontid.
Napioa leonina A polar bear sized gobiconodontid.
Circavelocipterus major: A 2 meter wingspanned volaticothere.
Dreschepteryx blackfooti: A 1.2 wingspanned volaticothere.
"Unamed Volaticothere A": A 1.5 wingspanned volaticothere.
"Un...
2020-03-27 14:49:53 +0000 UTC View Post
From the Hesperornithoides paper's supplementary we get this:
Enantiornithes cladogram. Credit goes to Mickey Mortimer.
Ornithuromorpha cladogram. Credit goes to Mickey Mortimer.
Per the s...
2020-03-26 22:24:17 +0000 UTC View PostI already had the idea for a movie detailing Portugal's atrocities against Timor long as far back as 2018, but the sacred disease has me meditating on this. I think I will begin writing the script Thursday.
2020-03-25 01:18:19 +0000 UTC View PostCandy Forests are an unique type of subtropical environment found over most of Mediterranean and Iberian Europe, Central and Western Australia, Western Madagascar and most of northern Mesoamerica, with "False Candy Forests" in South America, South Africa, New Zealand's South Island, Indonesia and Eastern Australia. They are dominated by Bennettitales, those strange plants that took the hard scales and fronds of cycads and mixed them with the flowers of ...
2020-03-08 14:31:24 +0000 UTC View Post Fox Glove (Vulpagere chlorothanatos)
A specialised takakiopsid moss, the Fox Glove infects canines and occasionally other carnivorans like skunks, racoons, cats and bears, though its life cycle is best suited for the cursorial hand anatomy of the former. It has a dual lifecycle:
- The first stage occurs in damp forest or wetland environments, where the spores usually end up. It produces a small stalk, usually isolated from others by at least...
2020-02-28 18:27:21 +0000 UTC View Post The sea conifers (Nepotsceae) are a clade of conifers that secondarily returned to the sea. Some species can be found in freshwater biomes, but the most impressive are those founds in marine ecosystems, some of which forming surreal undersea forests mirroring the land taiga.
The ancestors of the sea conifers began growing on coastoal swamps during the Cenomanian. The rise of sea levels and expansion of angiosperms on terrestrial biomes provide...
2020-01-18 16:05:55 +0000 UTC View Post
Klothys was livid.
Her hairs, the strands that connected all things from the heights of Nyx to the depths of the Underworld, were caught ablaze with a fiery light. For the briefest moment all beings, be them god or mortal, felt her wrath, her displeasure at their purposes being overturned, their duties to the world shaken, their well-deserved rest bothered by false hope. All who felt ambition, irreverence or even the mildest temptation towards ignoring their true selves lea...
2020-01-11 20:27:59 +0000 UTC View PostIn a world where the KT event didn't happen, all bets truly are off. Even in the placid climate of the Paleocene - just before the Eocene Thermal Maximum and its ensuing turnover, long before the drastic changes of the Cenozoic - entire biotas were collapsing. Laramidia's fauna entered Appalachia and South America, Europe's fauna found itself flanked by Appalachia and North Africa and Asia. This was a period of extensive interchange, and few examples were as dramatic as the Late Paleoce...
2019-12-02 02:32:02 +0000 UTC View Post
Up-dated both the archon and meridiolestida articles. Go check them out now.
2019-11-06 13:44:20 +0000 UTC View Post Wacky ideas for a world without the KT mass extinction:
- Extinction of dromaeosaurs either at the Eocene Thermal Maximum or Miocene turnovers. Instead, Avisaurids take the reigns as powerful aerial predators.
- Hadrosaurs, sauropods and ceratopsians grdually replaced by ornithomimosaurs, therizinosaurs, notosuchians and herbivorous mammals as they should be.
- Tyrannosaurs go boom in the Eocene Thermal Maximum, its the world of sebecians and gigant lizards...
2019-10-28 03:14:56 +0000 UTC View Post
Deinonychus by Darren Naish, showcasing both flying juveniles and clueless adult.
A brief one. Everyone got acquainted with my hyper-controversial flying dromaeosaur post, right? Well, a more recent study on dromaeosaur flight has been post...
2019-10-28 01:25:12 +0000 UTC View Post 
O̳̘̰͎͠l̦̖̰͈̜̺̰͞d̫̗̹͘ ̺͍̬͖̥̝b͎̗̠͈̼͙͔͢o̶̙̙n̨e̲̝̖̰ͅs̱̳ ̘͈͙̲̜̲̀c̛̲̹̯̘͔o̩͠m̥̲͎̼̣̼͍ę̫͖ b͓̠̤̪̭̘ͅạ̝̥̘̻c͎͜k̨̜
https://peerj.com/articles/7688/
Learning about Nurhachius' tooth replacement gave me chills. This tooth repl...
2019-09-25 22:32:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Inaechelys pernambucensis by Julio Lacerda. Once upon a time, the sea was full of side-necked turtles, sticking to the sea floor while the ancestors of modern sea turtles swam above them.
Sea turtles are best known as the sea reptiles that got away, the only survivors of the Mesozoic assemblages of ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and all that. ...
2019-09-11 13:49:34 +0000 UTC View PostCalculating volaticothere limb measurements with 460 species of bats now.
2019-09-06 13:50:10 +0000 UTC View Post
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