I watched M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village last night and the entire thing is a Banana Fish au, I’m not joking bitch, I’m gonna make art
Watery glass cage fish swim about aimlessly safe from the house cat This story was written in response to KL Caley’s weekly #writephoto prompt. The challenge is to use the given photo prompt as an inspiration to create a post on your own blog… poetry, prose, humour… light or dark, whatever you choose, as long as it is fairly family-friendly. Thank you, KL for hosting this challenge. Click on the…
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i almost have ten followers
anyone want to send me fic requests?
i’m bad at keeping up with them so i’m gonna limit it to two (that is, if anyone reaches out)
Some TS!Luca AU designs based on @selfdestructivecats au story they sent me
Brunswick River – Brunswick Heads – 28 May/ 1 June 2021
The 28th of May was a beautiful morning with a cool north-westerly wind blowing. The water in the Brunswick River was crystal clear. But the big bait schools that had been in the lower reaches of the river had moved on. I cast around with lots of different soft plastics on my light spinning rig, loaded with 10lb breaking strain fluorocarbon leader, but I did not get a bite. Good conditions –…
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Didnt find Celeste other night but at least there’s Beaver
Made a gift for Ruru . It's their MadCom OC Doctor/Sciencist Cocoa. I love you friend
And more Products with this design are available on SHOP 💦 Personalize everything this Summer 💦 🌈 Buy 10 small Stickers and save 50% ! 🌈 Check out my Shop
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Velociraptor, a stem-bird and a derived fish, Emily Willoughby
Phylogeny is a term used to describe the study of evolutionary history of various living things. You may have seen as a younger student that evolution could be described as a straight line leading to what we have today, but the truth is the tree of life twists and divides, and human beings are only just the latest thing on our specific branch.
When discussing how things are related to one another, there are various terms you can use to bracket related groups together, and because a lot of these terms are vague, you can get really creative with how wide you make the brackets.
The two terms I wanna discuss today are "stem" and "derived". If something is a stem-group, that means it branched off the tree of life earlier, and shares older ancestors with the focus group. If something is derived, that means that it is closer to the end of its specific branch on the evolutionary tree of life.
Let's use some examples.
Confusciornis is what scientists describe as a stem-bird. It is part of a group called the Avialans, which are all dinosaurs closer related to sparrows than to dromeosaurs. Confusciornis was not a true bird, it still had teeth in its beak, and clawed wings.
Confusciornis, Kevin Yan
It is a stem-bird, because in tree terms, it is closer to the trunk than to the actual branch birds were on. But we don't need to be that exclusive with our definitions.
If stem-birds refers to something thats almost a bird, let's broaden that to include the raptors. Velociraptor is a stem-bird, they shared a common ancestor. Tyrannosaurus was a stem-bird, and although it is further up the tree, they branched off fairly recently in evolutionary terms.
A group of loosely related Stem-birds, Douglas Henderson
And if we get silly with it enough, Diplodocus was a stem-bird, since Sauropods are closer related to birds than they were to most plant eating dinosaurs. You could keep going and say Pterodactylus was a stem-bird, but if you wanna be serious, most scientists stop the definition at dromeosaurs. But that's what happens when phylogeny is vague enough.
Archosaur Phylogenetic Tree; the red line representing the line leading to birds. If the definition is vague enough, anything branching from the line could technically be a stem-bird.
Theres this issue with Phylogenetic Bracketing, (giving a name to a group of related organisms) where a lot of names for animal groups do not include all descendants. Clades (a group of living things) can be monophyletic, paraphyletic, or polyphyletic.
I'll give simple examples here. Birds are a monophyletic group. Everything we call a bird shares a common ancestor. Fish are a paraphyletic group. There are some things derived from Fish, e.g. amphibians, that we don't call fish. Worms are a polyphyletic group, because the worm body plan came from many different groups and many aren't even remotely closely related.
Back to "derived" now. We don't have to adhere strictly to every clade rule, because we can use the word "derived" to describe groups outside a paraphyletic bracket.
Cladogram of all land vertebrates, Reptiles highlighted by the green circle.
The term reptile is often used to group snakes, lizards, crocodiles, turtles, and sometimes dinosaurs. But often, birds are left out of that group. We can say that birds are derived (advanced) dinosaurs, and therefore derived reptiles.
Tiktaliik, Liam Elward
As mentioned above, fish is a potentially ridiculously huge clade because every animal with a back bone is descended from fish. Tiktaliik was a very derived lobe-finned fish, related to coelacanths and lung-fish, and scientists think that animals related to Tiktaliik led to land animals with four legs, the tetrapods. So let's see how far we can stretch this definition of derived fish...
Acanthostega, Raúl Martín; Dimetrodon, Highdarktemplar (deviantart); Purgatorius, Patrick Lynch
Acanthostega was an early amphibeon descended from Tiktaliik or its relatives. So let's say that amphibians are derived fish. Amphibians gave rise to early mammal relatives such as Dimetrodon. So stem-mammals are derived fish. Mammals evolved during the time of the dinosaurs, and had split into the beginnings of modern groups at the time; Purgatorius was a stem-primate that lived at the same time as Tyrannosaurs. So primates are derived-fish. And why not make the final leap. Primates gave rise to the current dominant species on Earth, Homo sapiens.
Fish Phylogenetic Tree
Humans are derived fish.
Phylogeny is vague and can get very silly.
Hi weird but I love reading ur tags and I'm too dumb of ass to navigate this hell app I've used for literal years to see if I can send asks off my main and on THIS account but I love reading tags and I remembered names and makes me feel 🐭💕
