Favorite Prehistoric Creatures?

[Dinonykos]

Concerning the colour of the Megalodon, you can be quite sure that it was similar to the recent white shark.
If other shark species would have a great range of colours, I would be careful about reconstructing anything. But if you look at the recent species, apart from the ground-living sharks and the giant plankton eaters, most of them have light bellys and darkgrey/-blue backs, as almost all big marine predators have. Or black backs, in a case of orcas and penguins. (Ah yes, giant penguin would be nice! )

Interestingly, I have added a red shark to my design though, which would be okay if it lived in the deep sea, but not where I put it.

[Uatu]

Oh, good! I guess I don't have to recolor the megalodon, then (I thought that maybe it was a bit darker perhaps - assuming it lived deeper in the ocean?).

Hmm - a red shark, that sounds interesting

Unfortunately, I have never seen AD&D statistics for penguins (giant or otherwise) Were there ever giant penguins on earth?

[Dinonykos]

Oh! You got me!

On Wikipedia, a very big species form the Miocene is mentioned. That fits, since a lot of vertebrates reached large sizes back then... I will check if that's correct, I am always cautious with Wikipedia articles...

[SilentThief]

I remember a talk about this recently and there was a yahoo news article about an 8 ft creature resembling a swimming scorpoin (front claws) but no tail sting. I dunno what it was called, tho; but that'd be sweet and alien looking.

Also, I watched a recent discovery channel show on giant snakes and how florida has the potential for a problem with snakes big enough to eat crocodiles (and I live here ), but they had a glimpse of the largest living rodents which resemble guinea pigs the size of dogs. And the rodents were larger back then, too (IIRC).

ST

[Dinonykos]

The swimming scorpion was from the Hunsrück Shale in Germany. I made something similar especially for Uatu a few months ago.

There are several cool arthropods in those sediments, however not as strange as in the Burgess shale or the Maotianshan shale.

There have also been freshwater scorpions during the Devonian, with gills at the abdomen...

[Uatu]

Yes, I still have the icon that Dinonykos made for me as well, if someone else wants to see it

I wonder if the giant crayfish in AD&D would be a good placeholder for that real-life creature?

Anyway, there were really carnivorous kangaroos back then?

[Dinonykos]

Originally Posted by Uatu I wonder if the giant crayfish in AD&D would be a good placeholder for that real-life creature?

I think that's quite difficult to say... The eurypteride is more closely related to trilobites and spiders then to the crayfish, but nevertheless, may have been similar to the crayfish in behavior. (And armor/attack statistics may also fit quite well...)

Originally Posted by Uatu Anyway, there were really carnivorous kangaroos back then?

Definitely. Which shows again that even the weirdest horror fantasies may have already been anticipated by nature...
There have also been marsupial "Saber-Tooth-Cats" in Australia.

[Dinonykos]

Originally Posted by SilentThief I remember a talk about this recently and there was a yahoo news article about an 8 ft creature resembling a swimming scorpoin (front claws) but no tail sting. I dunno what it was called, tho; but that'd be sweet and alien looking.

I have just downloaded the article in Science (had only read the popular articles until now) and was surprised firstly because I knew one of the authors quite well and secondly, because obviously the fossil is more closely related to Anomalocaris then to Eurypterids (I should not have read the non-scientific articles first, because they indicated that the fossil was "just another aquatic scorpion"... ). It is really exciting, because everyone thought that those anomalocariids had become extinct after the Cambrian, and now it occurs that they lived 100 million years longer! That is, in some way, more exciting then meeting a living dinosaur!

This motivates me to finally make the Anomalocaris-icon I postponed several times.

[Uatu]

Ha ha... Where do you get the scientific articles? I am sometimes a bit bummed by the lack of more detailed information in the popular articles (although I do like them)...

[Dinonykos]

I am working at an university and we have access to most of the important journals here. However, I guess at least Science and Nature should be present at most city libraries... Well, in Japan, it might be different.