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#hadrosaur #dinosaur #doodle #extinctanimals #mesozoic #migration #ocean #sauropod #surprised #swimming #mesozoicanimal
Published: 2023-09-01 18:04:09 +0000 UTC; Views: 1093; Favourites: 24; Downloads: 0
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I tried to give this one a more cartoonish appearance, so it was fairly fast to make. Basically, a group of migrant hadrosars that has ventured into the ocean stumples upon a herd of titanosaurs which have had the same idea. The duckbills have never seen an animal so inmense, so their reaction is justified. As for the titans, they're just slightly weirded out.Both hadrosaurs and titanosaurian sauropods were some of the most successful groups of dinosaurs at the end of the Creataceous, 66 MYA. Unlike, lets say, tyrannosaurs or ceratopsians, which were restricted to North America and Asia, titanosaurs inhabited basically every continent: from North America to Antarctica, to South America, to Asia, and even the isolated landmasses of India and Madagascar. Hadrosaurs fall close behind, with only Madagascar, India and Australia being out of their reach. Moreover, most of these places weren’t even connected by land at the time, so how were this groups so widely distributed?
First and foremost, some of these continents were indeed connected in the past. Titanosaurs probably evolved in Gondwana, and when it began to break apart in the continents of Africa, South America, etc… they simply drifted with them. But then, how did hadrosaurs, a group from the north, reach Africa or South America, which had become isolated by deep stretches of water long after they even evolved? And how did Alamosaurus, a titanosau whose closest relatives were South American, live in North America when there hadn’t been sauropods, of any kind, inhabiting the continent for around 30 million years?
Well, the most accepted answer is that they simply swam there, perhaps island-hopping along the way. Both groups may have been quite nomadic, always seeking new food sources. Perhaps in those trips, herds of these animals were forced to cross the sea, eventually colonizing new land. These dinosaurs weren’t bad swimmers, after all, but would’ve journeys as long as these been possible? Not much. In most cases, the dinosaurs would’ve got lost at sea, and eventually drowned. The chances of surviving were very slim, basically close to zero. But after millions and millions of years, impossible events like these end up happening, because deep time is basically a cheat-code for probability. Even despite innumerable failures, it only takes a few lucky cases to stablish a population.
The dinosaurs shown here are kritosaurine hadrosaurs (the group that gave rise to the South American hadrosaurs), and titanosaurs, as these two groups, funnily enough, basically made inverse journeys at around the same time: the former from North to South America, and the latter from South to North America. It sort of mirrors the Great American Interchange of the Cenozoic, but at a smaller scale. Now, if the possibility of a herd of hadrosaurs swimming to South America is small, it's even smaller that they'll run into a handful of sauropods going the opposite way, but it’s still a fun idea to think about. And who knows… everything is possible when you give it enough millions of years.
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Comments: 2
Gondwanaman [2023-09-01 18:38:45 +0000 UTC]
👍: 1 ⏩: 1
sadbaryonyx In reply to Gondwanaman [2023-09-01 18:57:41 +0000 UTC]
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