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Osmatar β Anomaloteuthis improbabilis
Published: 2011-10-25 13:55:26 +0000 UTC; Views: 22503; Favourites: 512; Downloads: 0
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Description
One of the weirdest - or perhaps the weirdest - part of Specworld were the baleen squids thought up by Brian Choo. Whale-sized filter-feeding cephalopods with baleen tentacles and a pseudomouth, swimming with multiple pliosaur fin like paddles.Of course this all got me scratching my head over how such a creature managed to evolve from a cretaceous belemnite. Trying to come up with answers I created a bunch of new baleen squids and relatives, including this cryptic little deep-sea predator. I remember getting the idea after reading about the ontogeny of a real world cephalopod with fins it uses for swimming.
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Comments: 22
Its a very cool redesign of a squid you made it look like it could actually exist
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I was wondering why this looked so familiar, then I saw the comment below about Courage! I also like the Nautilus coloration too! VERY cool!Β
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Β Amazing! Although it doesn't levitate in space, that creature reminds me of the starmaker squids from an episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog, called: "The Last of the StarMakers". Β Β Β Even invertebrate animals like the squid have to evolve and adapt the changes in the earth they share with the back-boned animals.
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Gorgeous creature! I like how it has the markings of a nautilus.
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The derived baleen-squid were rather worryingly cetecean. This thing's awesome, though.
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I thought they were taking convergent evolution too far, right into dinosauroid territory. I'm happy that Brian at least gave them extra flippers though.
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Yeah, definitely the weirdest. I love the light and shadow in this picture.
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As far as I remember, the biggest problem were the eyes, which floated on "magic stalks" that extended along the body....
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Yeah, that was weird, but not knowing enough about cephalopod anatomy, I'm not sure if there is any reason why they couldn't evolve eye stalks. Making them look so blatantly like whales bothered me, though.
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Exactly, I'm fine with cephalopod filter-feeders (I added a filter-feeding deep-sea ammonite to Spec, myself), but the baleen squids I never liked. They look ridiculously like vertebrates, something like that would just never evolve. This drawing along with the ktulu are far moreΒ likely.
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Eye stalks? Those seem fine to me... Just muscular appendages with eyes on the end of them, right?
Beautiful artwork, Osmatar, btw. I love your gallery.
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Absolutely beautiful! The fossil record of soft tissue creatures is rather incomplete, so almost anything is possible 
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True but this project is the same as our world until the end of the cretaceous
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