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Order Osteobalaena

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Description

My first attempt at colour. I meant for this to have an Ernst Haeckel-esque "nature guide page" feel to it.

So, this is a random selection of species representing the (yes, made-up) order of carboniferous Archognath descendants from Mudland I've termed Osteobalaena. The human hand was added for scale.

1. Anglothrix rhodolabia is a saltwater ambush predator. It hunts using a combination of the suction feeding and fucking-huge-mouth techniques, lurking between the corals before rapidly engulfing its prey within its terrifyingly well-armed maw. The colouration (based on the green moray) is probably sexually selected, because I can't possibly think of an evolutionarily advantageous reason to be bright yellow with red gums in the ocean. In lieu of camouflage, A. rhodolabia is protected by its spines and teeth.

2. Ophypsodon calygemna, another oceanic predator (everything on this page is, really) that hunts in deeper waters (the awesomely-named "twilight zone"), where it relies on vibration detection and absurdly large jaws (up to a third of its body length) to find and kill literally anything unfortunate enough to be small and lost in the abyss.

3. Rhodops pelecanoides is another abyssal carnivore, whose specific name and colour scheme were stolen from the gulper eel. R. pelecanoides is capable of swallowing almost anything less than twice its size, and does so with disturbing enthusiasm.

4. Parastrophidon gigas is a benthic hunter about is as long as your leg with over 300 teeth dispersed throughout its enormous mouth (over 1000 if you count the ones on its skin). Preferring to hunt near the shoreline, often in stagnant mangrove swamps, P. gigas has developed blood-red fins capable of gas exchange to supplement its gills in the oxygen-poor swamps.

5. Carclupea scombrus is an open-ocean predator, like a miniature tuna or sailfish that hunts in large schools. Its paradoxically red fins appear to ruin its pelagic camouflage (white from below, blue from above), but they are actually used to confuse prey when C. scombrus swarms, a little like a zebra's stripes.

6. Escalocaedis longiceps, the smallest animal on this page, makes up for it with a really fucked-up face. It attacks prey exclusively from below, spotting it silhouetted against the sunlit world above, and uses its upward-facing mouth to pick off prey without rotating its body.

7. Echidire conspersus is an adaptable hunter, operating both on and off-shore with equal efficiency. It doesn't have anything special going on otherwise.

8. Chrysomella pachyceps is a fish of a rather different style than the other animals on this page, being slow, armoured and bottom-dwelling. Hiding between the rocks in the benthic mud, C. pachyceps casually drifts towards its prey and simply engulfs it in under a second. This feeding technique, know as gape-and-suck, is massively successful and employed by stonefish, lionfish, groupers and many others.

9. Sebistrum molochi is essentially an uglier version of the previous fish, with a more misshapen face resulting from thick cranial armour, used in competitive ramming.

10. Acanthocynus australisicus, a forty-pound monstrosity of tropical flamboyance and squaline carnivory, is the largest animal on this page. It preys on schooling fish by lunging into a fray and blindly throwing its multijawed face around like a deadly aquatic lawnmower. It also has a pretty cool head crest like an evil Dr. Zoidberg.
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Timoshauru5-VII's avatar
I love these designs! 3-4-5-7-10 are my favorite ones so far.
Good job.