Do note that two other whalefish families (Rondeletiidae and Barbourisiidae) have unspecialized larvae which apparently metamorphose without much fanfare.
See this paper, which doesn’t call them mirapinnids but also fails to realize mirapinnids aren’t cetomimids.
[I could not find any references mentioning rondelet/barb adult males but I suspect they aren’t particularly weird either.]
https://www.parrots.org/photo-gallery/mascarene-parrot
There is a photo of the one of the 2 taxidermy specimens with plumage, this one is from Paris I believe.
like all field specimens of birds, it looks like crap, but it does give us some glimpse as to how the species may have appeared.
Those transparent fish and other see-thru marine species.
How? How did they evolve transparent skin and muscles? To me, It does not seem like there is much evolutionary advantage in the interim stages.
Barreleye Fish
https://youtu.be/Zoygy-8PTtU
https://www.mbari.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/barreleye2-350-216x169.jpg
I have thought the same thing about flounders.
Sad to see a beautiful bird reduced to just this, but at the same time I am glad the specimen exists!
The one I was talking about is an older parrot (Broad-billed Parrot?) with a giant head. There are only bones known from caves but artists reconstruct it as green because the visitors in 1500’s saw huge green parrots with big heads.
Too bad we don’t have more accounts from the early age of exploration about natural history. Would be cool to see an account and be able to match it up with some random bones, and give the animal some life and color.
I think a lot of the Halibut have the eye almost on the edge of the head, and are more pelagic swimming than a regular flounder. I can see this eye arrangement being useful, but I would love to know the mutation that causes the eye migration. I do think they have a fossil of an intermediate fish with in between eye placement, so it did happen.
I never saw it depicted as green, old illustrations show it as fully blue, Wiki says blue head and likely red body.
Yeah I was thinking of this illustration but it’s more gray-blue than anything. It’s been a while since I saw the picture
Update: looks like I finally got a clear-ish pic of one! Maybe next time I’ll actually manage to get one IDable 2 species.
A thing that constantly intrigues and perplexes me is the natural distribution of organisms. Particularly plants. The natural range of some plants is very limited, yet these same plants will thrive in a wide range of habitats and ecotones if they are planted there. For many years I worked as forester in Australia. One tree I recall is Corymbia torelliana, a handsome tree whose natural distribution is confined to rainforest margins in a small area tropical Queensland. It has since been widely planted in many parts of the country and seems to vigorously thrive anywhere it is introduced. They seem to grow happily with minimum attention in outback towns where they are subject to long droughts, extreme summer heat and harsh winter frosts. It is so successful at adapting to local conditions that it has become an invasive pest in many places it has been introduced.
Another example is the Monterey pine Pinus radiata, as the name suggests this species was originally confined to a small area of mountain range just inland from Monterey California. Because it is a fast growing tree with good form and wood quality it has been widely planted around the world. Especially in the Southern Hemisphere. There are millions of hectares of P. radiata plantations in Chile, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.
That sort of thing makes me wonder about how seeds get moved around. I particularly wonder about ant-dispersed seeds, as there are species here in mainland New England that are ant-dispersed, yet the plants are very patchy in their distribution.
(But have I gotten around to looking up more information on ant dispersion of seeds? Nope!)
And, a new transparent frog and how it hides it’s red blood cells:
This link is “gifted” and I believe should work for all readers. Let me know if otherwise.
I’m super interested in what lives at the bottom of rivers such as the Amazon and Congo. The current in some parts of those rivers is so fast moving that it essentially cuts off the fish that live there from the surface, and they then convergently evolve the same features as cave fish. For example from the Congo, blind cichlids and blind spiny eels. The only reason we even know about these fish is because when they die they float up to the surface where we can find them. It also isn’t impossible to access the depths because somehow these fish pop in the aquarium trade ocassionally, but who knows the full extent of what is down there.
The Amazon River is even more formidable to explore, here’s a good article about it. The description of pitch black muddy water moving at great speeds while logs shoot through the water like torpedos is pretty scary lol. The most intriguing part in my opinion is the “huge, gaping hole near the mouth of the Rio Negro – where the river bottom drops more than 300 feet.”
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