Random Palaeo-Work idea of the Day #10

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind.

Man, its been forever snce I did a Random Palaeo-Work idea of the Day instalment. Figured I'd be at least in the double digits long ago. Anyways, better late then never.

Prehistoric Paradise

Inspired by a vacation to Grand Cayman I took in late June, this documentary would document the geological and evolutionary course of the Carribbean, particularly Cuba to its wide variety of fossils preserved and strata there. It would make heavy use of timelapse shots from space showing the landmasses forming and moving overtime, but there would still be plenty of reconstruction .

Episode One

Art by tuomaskoivurinne


Episode one establishes the origins of the Carribbean in the Mesozoic due to the breakup of Pangaea and. A large portion of it is spent in a Mid to Late Jurassic formation known as the Jagua, which has a wide variety of marine reptiles on par with Britain's. Featured taxa would be:
  • The pliosaur Gallardosaurus
  • The plesiosaurid Vinalesaurus
  • An ophthalmosaurian ichthyosaur.
  • The pterosaur Nesodactylus
  • An unidentigied sauropod dinosaur.

Also featured is the late cretaceous Monos Formation, which a recent scientific paper by Viñola-Lopez et al. (2022) focused on to reveal how a biotic interchange occured between the Americas, the first known to us. A pterosaur and some flowering plant, one found in the study, are featured to represent it.

Naturally it ends with the K-Pg extinction.

Episode Two


Episode two is about the Cenozoic era and how species travelled to each island, either by land bridges or rafting as the Carribbean plate's movements created the islands, and has snapshots of endemic species.

Naturally, Cuba would get a ton of focus, with a big segment for its endemic sloths and the giant owl Ornimegalonyx.

However, other locations and fauna would be featured. Among them would be:
  • Hispanola: 
    • The giant raptor Titanohierax gloveralleni
  • Jamacia: the Club-Winged Ibis
  • Bahamas: the fellow giant owl Tyto pollens
  • Otodus megalodon, found on
  • Even a few extant but endangered life
    • Hutias, a kind of rodent native to the archaeperlago. 
    • Soledons, one of the few venomous mammals.

Episode Three

The Cuban Macaw

The final episode focuses on the arrival of humans to the islands and their very negative impact on thr environment, from the first Indeginous arrivimg to especially Europeans, thanks to habitat loss, invasive species, and anthropogenic climate change, which we need reminders of more then ever for action against them.

If you wanted more, sorry, this is just on on the fly spur of the moment idea, so I disn't want to flesh things out too much.

Sources

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mesozoic Mind's Walking with Dinosaurs fan remake: 2nd Anniversary Special

Image
Two years. Two years at Mesozoic Mind , through ups and downs and bringing you the best I could give you, and expanded my horizons in life, to go where I could only dream of. To celebrate, here's what I made for all of you readers as a gift: remaking Walking with Dinosaurs for the 21st century as I'd do it. Yeah, I know, people stopped doing this kind of thing years ago, but what the heck, I wanted to do it myself, and I only really do the big ones for special occasions like these. The episodes would be quite different from the origials in setting, but would stil have enough rocognisable creature archtypes and plot beats to show which corresponds to which. Although I still see fit to tell you which is which. Also, please forgive any anachronisms in the lineups I have created. I tried my best to avoid them. Also also, the pictures used here serve to get an idea of what things would feel or look like, not be direct representations. Episode One - Archosauria Art by Olmagon Set in
Read more

Dino Lab review - Part one

Image
(Note: video provided may have stuff missing from original cut) In 2005 and 2009, two specials aired on the Discovery Channel, back when it was actually about science and documentaries. These were both called called Dino Lab , and they had a rather novel premise: instead of simply being a doc of talking heads with occasional vignettes of prehistoric life or a nature documentary-style presentation with the occasional talking head, the show has a laboratory in which dinosaurs are brought into and put through experiments for scientists to study. Such a premise is pretty interesting, if an unusual one that invites more questions (where did the dinosaurs come from? Why is the T. rex first not at the lab?). The first special, from 2005,had a special place to me, as the first one was one of the first docs I saw as a kid on TV, when I was very young. I remember seeing both a T. rex on a treadmill and a plesiosaur splashing a guy with water. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll start off with it's
Read more

T. rex: The Ultimate Predator at the ROM - a review

Image
Ah, T. rex. It needs no introduction, and even the youngest nor laypeople not familiar with all but the basics of palaeontology know what it is. It has easily solidified itself as THE dinosaur by default, and has studied countlessly more then arguably any other fossil lifeform on Earth. Ironically, being so well known has meant it's been taken for granted, even called overrated versus other dinosaurs, and many, many misconceptions about it, from like merely a scavenger that couldn't even hunt live prey. This is a shame, as Tyrannosaurus is a pretty cool dino on its own, able to crush bone like no other theropods couldn't and had one of the more fascinating growth stages of any of them. T. rex: The Ultimate Predator , organised by NYC's renowned American Museum of Natural History, which came to the Royal Ontario Museum this month and intends to educate visitors on what is known about the dinosaur, from how it evolved from other dinosaurs to how it lived, and bust those m
Read more