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Greater moistboys hunt in loose packs to corner prey.
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Greater MoistboyPuerhumidus palus
Era: Early Cretaceous
Time: 170,000,000 BCE Habitat: marshy plains Diet: smaller vertebrates Location: What is now Northern Africa Size: 4’ |
The moistboys have a comical appearance, to say the least, but the advance they represent is tremendous: as great swampy plains with fields of high reeds appear in the environment, the most successful predator is the one that can look up and over the vegetation. Having brought its limbs underneath its body, the moistboy is taller and faster than its competition.
What would be one of amphibians greatest challenges would be dealing with the lack of a ribcage to protect its internal organs and support its weight, something that came early on to the reptiles and diapsids. The moistboy would spearhead a trend in its descendance of compensating for this absence by overdeveloping the strong muscular ring that frogs use instead of a ribcage, as well as a hypertrophied clavicular ring. While a functional enough arrangement, the world of Amphiterra is severely lacking in terms of speed and agility due to this anatomical workaround.
moistboys live in small family units, with a male and female watching over a nest of tadpoles within a hollow dug into the reeds. When threatened, powerful jaws and a butting crest are used to defend their territory. The greatest threat to the family are scavenging reptiles and synapsids, already taking the role of scavengers and opportunists.
The moistboys’ gaudy coloring may seem out of place to us, but the foliage of the Amphiterra timeline is very different to ours. Just as there was a competition for dominance between amphibians, reptiles and proto-mammals before the P-Tr event, fungal life and plant life waged war. In the Amphiterra timeline, the swampy environments to new and spectacular funguses, who don’t rely on chlorophyll for nutrition. Therefore, much more varied hues are present in the environment, in contrast to the dominance of greenery in ours.
The moistboy’s characteristic moustache is used for sexual display purposes, but will one day serve a greater purpose, similar to the development of avian feathers in our timeline.
What would be one of amphibians greatest challenges would be dealing with the lack of a ribcage to protect its internal organs and support its weight, something that came early on to the reptiles and diapsids. The moistboy would spearhead a trend in its descendance of compensating for this absence by overdeveloping the strong muscular ring that frogs use instead of a ribcage, as well as a hypertrophied clavicular ring. While a functional enough arrangement, the world of Amphiterra is severely lacking in terms of speed and agility due to this anatomical workaround.
moistboys live in small family units, with a male and female watching over a nest of tadpoles within a hollow dug into the reeds. When threatened, powerful jaws and a butting crest are used to defend their territory. The greatest threat to the family are scavenging reptiles and synapsids, already taking the role of scavengers and opportunists.
The moistboys’ gaudy coloring may seem out of place to us, but the foliage of the Amphiterra timeline is very different to ours. Just as there was a competition for dominance between amphibians, reptiles and proto-mammals before the P-Tr event, fungal life and plant life waged war. In the Amphiterra timeline, the swampy environments to new and spectacular funguses, who don’t rely on chlorophyll for nutrition. Therefore, much more varied hues are present in the environment, in contrast to the dominance of greenery in ours.
The moistboy’s characteristic moustache is used for sexual display purposes, but will one day serve a greater purpose, similar to the development of avian feathers in our timeline.
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