At a whopping forty-six feet and a massive fifteen tons, you can see why the whale shark is called they whale shark. The whale shark is the biggest shark and the biggest fish in the ocean (The Whale Shark Bibliography – Tethys Marine). As you can see it is not a whale. It has a mouth, which is around 4 feet wide. Its mouth is at the front of the head and not underside like most sharks.
Tetrodotoxin may be present in the roe of species inhabiting the waters of Thailand. Because of their origin 450 million years ago, horseshoe crabs are considered living fossils. Classification Horseshoe crabs resemble crustaceans, but belong to a separate subphylum, Chelicerata, and are closely related to arachnids. The earliest horseshoe crab fossils are found in strata from the late Ordovician period, roughly 450 Mya. The Limulidae are the only recent family of the order Xiphosura, and contain all four living species of horseshoe crabs: Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda, the mangrove horseshoe crab, found in Southeast Asia Limulus polyphemus, the Atlantic horseshoe crab, found along the American Atlantic coast and in the Gulf of Mexico Tachypleus gigas, found in Southeast and East Asia Tachypleus tridentatus, found in Southeast and East Asia Anatomy and behavior The entire body of the horseshoe crab is protected by a hard carapace.
These fish evolved from each other over time, and by analyzing their genomes we can obtain insights on their ancestry. What can make this possible is the elephant shark (Callorhinchus milii). Exclusive from other chondrichthyes, elephant sharks genomes are relatively small and have evolved the slowest of any other vertebrate known today. With this information at our disposal we can gain a greater comprehension for the beginning of adaptive immunity, and what caused gnathostomes to separate millions of years ago. When comparing the immune systems of cartilaginous fish to mammals you see numerous similarities, but the traits that make them different are distinct.
rex. This dinosaur looked like a smaller, less muscular version of Tyrannosaurus. As an early member of the tyrannosaur family, Albertosaurus was the final design for the large meat-eating dinosaurs. It only had two fingers on its hands, which were at the end of short arms. It had long legs and it a wide skull with lots of power in its bite.
Joseph Davis III Animal Behavior Vampire Squid The Vampire Squid is a unique animal. It is the last known surviving member of the Order Vampytomorphida and it shares features of both squids and octopus, even to the point of being improperly identified as an octopus in 1903. It is in the seventh order of the class Cephalopoda and may represent ancestral lines between squids and octopi. Its true name is Vampyroteuthis infernalis which translates to “vampire squid from Hell”. Unlike mythical vampires, vampire squids are not named such because they suck blood or have anything to do at all with blood.
Research in 2011 revealed a third species, the Burrunan dolphin (Tursiops australis). Bottlenose dolphins inhabit warm and temperate seas worldwide. Bottlenose dolphins live in groups typically of 10–30 members, called pods, but group size varies from single individuals up to more than 1,000. Their diets consist mainly of forage fish. Dolphins often work as a team to harvest fish schools, but they also hunt individually.
Since there position on the trophic level the Diprotodon had many predators including the Marsupial Lion and a Megalania. Giant Short-faced Kangaroo - (Procoptodon goliah) Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Order: Diprotodontia Family: Macropodidae Genus: Procoptodon The Giant Short-faced Kangaroo was the world’s largest kangaroo. It stood 3m tall and weighed approximately 200kg. Fossils found at the Naracoorte caves establish that the genus died out approximately 50,000 years ago. The kangaroo is supposed to have unusual feet somewhat like a horse.
Sea cows are an Australian animal that are not very known, but need to be known about. Sea cows can grow up to three meters long and weigh at about 400 kilograms. They are often referred to as the “Dugong”, they live for more than 70 years! The sea cow lives entirely on sea grass and is known to be the only herbivorous sea mammal. The sea cow is more related to elephants than to dolphins or whales.
While a large population of sea otters can wipe out abalone and crabs that fishermen make their living off of, otters were once heavily hunted for their fur. From over a million, otters have been reduced to less than a hundred thousand worldwide. Considered a threatened species, approximately 2,750 southern sea otters live in coastal California waters. Females weighing about forty five pounds outlive the males by up to five years with males living to be ten or fifteen. Mating season lasts throughout the year with a gestation period of six to eight months.
Introduction The Cretaceous- Tertiary extinction event was one of the largest mass extinctions ever recorded on Earth. Occurring 65 million years ago, this cataclysmic event marked the extinction of thousands of animal species including dinosaurs, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and pterosaurs. Dramatic extinctions also occurred among microscopic floating organisms; both calcareous plankton and calcareous nanoplankton were nearly exterminated with only a few species surviving (Alvarez et al. 1980). Alternatively, some groups were little affected, including the terrestrial plants, crocodiles, snakes, mammals, and many kinds of invertebrates.