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Day six of the Twelve Days of Fishmas! Day five can be found here. The tag for the whole set will be here. On the sixth day of Fishmas cladistics gave to me... Six crown groups of the OtomorphaFIVE! BOH-NY TONGUES!Four elopomorphs Three HolosteansTwo ChondrosteiAnd a bichir at the base of Actinopterygii And we start getting complicated! For day 6 we visit one of the two crown clades of the 'Clupeocephala', in this case the 'Otomorpha' side. At the basal…
Day five of the Twelve Days of Fishmas! Day four can be found here. The tag for the whole set will be here. On the fifth day of Fishmas cladistics gave to me... FIVE! BOH-NY TONGUES! Four elopomorphs Three Holosteans Two Chondrostei And a bichir at the base of Actinopterygii Five is so allowed! Day five is the Osteoglossomorpha, the bonytongues. As a group they are generally pretty familiar, with a broad range of morphologies, habitats and sizes (including one…
Day four of the Twelve Days of Fishmas! Day three can be found here. The tag for the whole set will be here. On the fourth day of Fishmas cladistics gave to me... Four elopomorphs born from leptocephaliThree HolosteansTwo ChondrosteiAnd a bichir at the base of Actinopterygii Four is by no means too many... On day four, we reach the Elopomorpha, as a group of fish related by having a leptocephalus stage. It's a fairly diverse group of fish, including…
Day three of the Twelve Days of Fishmas! Day two can be found here. The tag for the whole set will be here. On the third day of Fishmas cladistics gave to me... Three genera of HolosteanTwo ChondrosteiAnd a bichir at the base of Actinopterygii Three's...not quite a crowd Next up the family tree, the Holostei, represented by the three modern genera. Two are gars, Lepisosteus and Atractosteus (the latter of which are notable for their heavier snouts and generally…
Day two of the Twelve Days of Fishmas! Day one can be found here. The tag for the whole set will be here. On the first day of Fishmas cladistics gave to me... Two orders of ChondrosteiAnd a bichir at the base of Actinopterygii Two's company! Next up the family tree, the Chondrostei, represented by the modern Sturgeon (Acipenseriformes) and Paddlefish (Polyodontiformes). This clade is the basal (living) representative of the broader 'Actinopteri' clade of actinopterygians. The two figures chosen…
So...I have been mulling on this for a few years now--specifically, upon reading through the article Phylogenetic Classification of Bony Fishes (Betancur-R et al. BMC Evolutionary Biology (2017) 17:162) with a few modifications, especially from Comprehensive phylogeny of ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii) based on transcriptomic and genomic data ((PNAS June 12, 2018 115 (24) 6249-6254)). I love cladograms. I love organizing things. I love animal figures, and I love fish. And so, I decided to work through the Actinopterygii family tree…
Quick look at some figures of modern animals, in the usual wide range of types and quality...a few of them are great. A few of them...are definitely figures. Of tetrapods. You'll see. Play Visions Binturong (?) A great figure of...some kind of viverrid. It is roughly 1;11 scale, so close to scale with Finn. Depends on the animal it might actually be. So, first off, a figure that I am so glad to have! A mystery figure of sorts...this is…
Well, thanks to the ol' Random Number Generator, I ended up with figures that will all be presented in some kind of pair (one because, well, I am making it one...you'll see). So we will see a couple of mediocre Mattel figures, and then some far more interesting ones. All prehistoric today though! Hasbro Jurassic World mini Pachycephalosaurus (pair) A couple of small Pachycephalosaurus in different colours. They are fine. Just fine. About 1:55 scale, more or less in scale…
All prehistoric! All aquatic! All kinds of different taxonomic groups. And wildly diffefrent companies. Just a small glimpse of the range of figures I have I guess. Dinotales Series 2 Ichthyosaurus More Dinotales figures! This time a classic prehistoric animal, Ichthyosaurus! And a really great representation of the animal. It's about 1:38 scale so the diver is way too small. We'll start with a figure from a series that, of course, I've looked at many times before, from Kaiyodo Dinotales…
Time to look at a random group of mammal figures. Most are prehistoric, and one is just really old! Old as in, the figure is relatively old (early half of 19th century) as opposed to representing really old animals...that were made more recently (in every case, really recently--like last 10 years recent). Anyway, let's get to them! CollectA Prehistoric Mammals MiniBox Smilodon A very small Smilodon, similar to the larger model but simpler. It's around 1:35 in scale, so close…
Time to look at another set of Japanese dinosaur figures, or at least the ones I have of the set. The name Furuta might sound familiar, as I have referred to them a few times before. In those instances, it was usually as a partner company with Kaiyodo, continuing the Chocoegg series. However, in the early 2000s (and until today) produced figures for their own series, in this case a line of 8 dinosaur figures in their Dinomodels line (optimistically…
I have spoken about the Playmates Dinosaur King series of figures, but this is the first time I'm looking at a whole (mostly) series of them. In this instance, it is all of the figures that I have from the second release, which in my case is 16 of the 24...and it looks like that will be as far as I can get. A few of the bigger figures (relatively speaking). Pentaceratops, Stegosaurus and Acrocanthosaurus (the SUPER ALPHA VERSION!!! Yes,…
