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Habitat preferences for desmostylians
Topic Started: Feb 21 2017, 12:53 PM (992 Views)
heliosphoros
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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031018217301372

Desmostylus lived in shallow waters, while Paleoparadoxia favoured deeper, offshore environments
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babehunter1324
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So. Paleoparadoxia was an animal adapted to punting locomotion that reach depths of more than 100 meters?

What in...?
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heliosphoros
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I think desmostylians were better swimmers than often they're credited for, having spongy bones like whales and sirenians and not solid bones like hippos.

Palaeoparadoxia was probably moving about the sea bottom like modern walruses do.
Edited by heliosphoros, Feb 21 2017, 04:36 PM.
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Incinerox
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Āeksiot Zaldrīzoti

Or they were simply feeding on kelp. I can't imagine any other kind of plant that grew in waters as deep or as cold as they say Paleoparadoxia lived in.
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heliosphoros
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I wasn't hinting otherwise. They were pretty clearly herbivorous.

I was taking about locomotion
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magpiealamode
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No good hero is a one-trick phony.

Why would they need to forage for kelp so deep, though? My first thought is predators, although I don't know enough about Paleoparadoxia to know if it could have been threatened by anything in those waters.
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heliosphoros
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Competition with sirenians
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magpiealamode
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No good hero is a one-trick phony.

Oh, of course. I really need to do more research before running my keyboard...
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the dark phoenix
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King of wonderlandia

Considering the attack style of some sharks and possibly whales. It was probably in the favor of them to feed at the bottom instead of the middle or top where they are open to attack.
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Jannick
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Papua merdeka!

It's quite remarkable, to me, that Palaeoparadoxia would forage on the seafloor at such extreme depths, as I don't know of any other tetrapodal benthic herbivore that forages that deep.
If they did indeed feed on kelp, wouldn't it make more sense to forage nearer to the top of the water column where the majority of kelp biomass is located (like Steller's sea cow) rather than near the bottom, where the kelp consists mostly of thick stems with little nutritional value? Not to mention the inconvenience of gnawing through a kelp stem and suddenly finding yourself stuck with a detached kelp plant several dozens of meters long flowing freely with the current :P

I guess what I'm trying to say is, wouldn't it make more sense for it to be a free-swimming herbivore closer to the surface, rather than a bottom-feeding superhippo? Kelp forests tend to be relatively safe from large predators, too, so I doubt they'd be in that much more danger near the top.
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heliosphoros
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A pelagic herbivore lifestyle would make sense. Like I said, desmostylians were better swimmers than they are credited for.

But competition with sirenians is attested, as Paleoparadoxia is in fact one of the most specialised desmostylians. Maybe it did go to absurd lengths to survive when other mammals were doing a better job being swimming herbivores.
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Jannick
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Papua merdeka!

Given the habitat preferences and general physiology of Sirenians, I doubt Desmostylians would face much competition, especially in colder, offshore waters (Sirenians are notoriously bad at dealing with cold water) and even the highly derived Steller's sea cow was effectively limited to inshore waters.
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Incinerox
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Āeksiot Zaldrīzoti

Not only that, but the extintion of the desmostylians does seem to coincide with the arrival of sirenians, so maybe it simply wasn't able to go to those absurd lengths speculated on anyway?
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the dark phoenix
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King of wonderlandia

Maybe it wasn't purely herbivorous? Maybe they crushed shells of mollusks too at those depths. It makes sense then for the animal to go to such depths because most mollusks stick to the bottom. So along with kelp, it could have ate other things.
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heliosphoros
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Jannick
Feb 25 2017, 02:08 PM
Given the habitat preferences and general physiology of Sirenians, I doubt Desmostylians would face much competition, especially in colder, offshore waters (Sirenians are notoriously bad at dealing with cold water) and even the highly derived Steller's sea cow was effectively limited to inshore waters.


The North Pacific back then was sub-tropical. Several dugongids are known up to the Pliocene

Incinerox
Feb 25 2017, 02:13 PM
Not only that, but the extintion of the desmostylians does seem to coincide with the arrival of sirenians, so maybe it simply wasn't able to go to those absurd lengths speculated on anyway?


There is a study correlating desmostylian decline to dugongid diversity in the North Pacific.

Generally I'm skeptic about outcompetition claims, but it seems very conclusive.
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