Ocean Reptiles ?

[rust]

Thank you very much.

According to Wikipedia, the Ice Age changed the sea level by up to 130 m,
so the somewhat more than 200 m of my setting do at least not seem to
be entirely implausible, and therefore I will use the "Super Ice Age" idea.

The dry land during the earlier history of the planet also enables me to ha-
ve the remnants of an ancient Precursor Hive on Anuira.
The land dwelling insectoid Precursors are the "Ancients" of my universe,
and it is already something like a tradition to have some Precursor ruins
on most of the planets of this universe, to give the characters something
really strange to discover and explore.

Precursor ruins hidden in the sediment about 200 m under the sea are a
nice twist, I think. :wink:

 

[Guardnacho]

I am watching this right now on Natgeo

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/morphed/all/interactive

 

[rust]

Thank you very much for the tip.

 

[Silvereye]

Interesting ideas, however you could approach the reptile body form from a slightly different tangent - which may still giver you the same body forms.

On earth the reptiles reptiles branched out from amphibians and were better suited to a terrestrial life. The marine reptiles then wandered back into the sea, much like the cetaceans did later.

So instead of going reptile, how about a full aqautic (probably marine) anologues based off the Placoderms (armoured fish e.g the Dunkelosteus) that lived in the Silurian/Devonian.

Process a few through into an over-armoured form where flippers provide locomotion instead of the caudal (tail) fin to get a water breathing Turtle anologue.

A crocodillian anologue might have begun the process of leaving the water and moving onto the land. The tail has again begun to dissappear and the fins are more limb like enabling land locomotion. The Arapaima and amazonian freshwater fish is able to breathe air using it's swim bladder.

Armoured eels simply become the sea snakes.

Armour usually eveolves as part of an 'arms race', so there will be creatures out there evolved to be able to crack it open. There is probably not much difference between thick bone plates and a submarine's hull to something huge.

Some fish (e.g. Tuna, White Sharks) are able to retain heat within their bodies by using a natural heat exchange mechanism before the blood passes into the gills to oxygenate. Large turtles can do this simply because of their surface area/volume ratio (Gigantothermy?).

You can probably also have fun with electric shock/electric sensing as well as smell and some truly horrible poisons.

 

[rust]

Interesting ideas, however you could approach the reptile body form from a slightly different tangent - which may still give you the same body forms.

Thank you very much for some very useful ideas.

I think I will use both concepts, because this would give the world addi-
tional "colour" and diversity with two different types of "reptilians", the
(bigger) "false reptilians" developed from fish and the (smaller) "true
reptilians" that returned to the sea after a "short" visit to the equatorial
dry land during the planet's Ice Age period.