Cryptids State-by-State

I wrote another book! This is a collaboration with fellow artist Stanton Fink. I’ve always enjoyed his drawings of creatures inspired by mythology and paleontology and thought it would be fun to create backgrounds for some of them. So I wrote this little field guide to the Garden of Lost Ages, a botanical garden adjacent to the renowned Nautilus Hill Library. Inspired by my own love for field guides both real and fantastic.

Text by John Meszaros

Art by Stanton Fink (except for the map of the garden, which I did)

Hey look, another post from Saturn!

“Jess, you’re going to love the new creature we found.

So, we’ve been noticing these dark fissures or scars between the zooids of some cymatic colonies. At first we thought they were wounds from disease or predation, but Dr. Aiona studied them more closely and found out that they’re actually open burrows excavated by a tiny shrimp-like organism. She says their burrows look a lot like the fissures dug by Earthly petroglyph shrimp that she used to see all over the reefs around Maui when she was a kid, so she’s insisting on calling these critters Titanian petroglyph shrimp.

The “shrimp” are, of course, not crustaceans. They’re close relatives of deer-crabs. A single male and female excavate the fissures together and live at opposite ends except when mating. They spend most of their time at the edge of the fissure, feeding on the abundant aerial plankton attracted to the lights and vibrations of the cymatics.

The rims of the fissures are lined with two species of anemone-like euryales. ‘Oma’oma’o (Green) euryales are more aggressive in their feeding and seem to specialize in consuming swifter, stronger plankton. Hopohopo (Anxious) euryales, which are blue, are more “shy” and will quickly retract at the slightest touch. They feed on smaller and slower plankton.

Speaking of aerial plankton- it’s almost overwhelming seeing so many weird and diverse forms. The ones I’ve drawn here are only a tiny fraction of what we’ve found. We’ve only barely begun to catalog them, and most don’t have names yet, though Doctor Aiona suspects that the majority of Titan’s biodiversity may be in plankton form.

That’s all for now.

In late April paleontologists announced the discovery of a massive octopus from the Cretaceous period, Nanaimoteuthis. Although only fossilized beaks were found, the discoverers extrapolated its size based on the proportions of extant relatives and suggested it may have been about the size of a mosasaur.

Other researchers have questioned this size estimate, but regardless it would still have ben a huge creature probably larger than any living cephalopod. Hence it’s been nicknamed the “Cretaceous Kraken”.

A lot of (admittedly really cool) paleoart has depicted Nanaimoteuthis attacking large marine predators like Mosasaurus and Ichthyosaurus, but even with its huge size these vertebrates could have easily torn it apart. I think it’s more likely that Nanaimoteuthis fed on giant bivalves like rudists and inoceramids, using its arms to pry their shells open or even crush them with its beak.

Nanaimoteuthis is believed to have been a cirrate octopus- the group that included dumbo octopods. This group is characterized by flap-like fins on their heads and fleshy, finger-like cirri along their arms on either side of each sucker. Citrates also usually have a web connecting their arms, but I left it off my version for aesthetic reasons.

I created this design for my t-shirt shop over at Teepublic ‘cause I wanted to expand my cephalopod offerings.

Source:

Last set of drawings of creatures from the early solar system. Here are some rat-slugs of Theia, the protoplanet that crashed into Earth to form our moon.

Hairy Trumpet Rat-Slug

Though this creature is covered in bristly hair, it is nothing like an Earth mammal. It “swims” through the fine, silty regolith of Theia’s surface, pulling itself along by its armored, muscular tail. The end opposite the tail, which is said to vaguely resemble the profile of a long-nosed rat, has a row of simple eyes that can detect a wide range of electromagnetic wavelengths. Though this row of eyes looks and functions similar to the eyes in monk shells (see previous post), both groups are unrelated and have evolved these features independently.

Trumpet Rat-Slugs are deposit feeders that consume small particles of organic matter mixed in with Theia’s dust.

Kandinsky Rat-Slug

Two more paper bag creature I drew while sick. These creatures once inhabited Theia, the protoplanet responsible for the creation of our moon

The main theory for how Earth’s moon formed is that about 4.5 billion years ago a Mars-sized protoplanet dubbed Theia collided with the newly-formed Earth. The impact shattered Theia and broke off a considerable chunk of our planet. The pieces fell into orbit around Earth and over millions of years slowly clumped together to form the moon.

Moon Maize. 

The adults of these organisms always carry a cluster of eggs held in a silk cocoon. Adults and their egg-bound larvae have very different metabolism and work together in mutualistic symbiosis. Though the eggs protect the young from dehydration and temperature extremes, their shells are soft and semi-permeable, allowing them to absorb minerals from the abundant space dust in Theia’s atmosphere which the larvae can metabolize for energy. While the adult is unable to feed on dust itself, it absorbs the digested products from its eggs. The adult, in turn, absorbs radiation from the solar wind- which would kill the eggs if they weren’t shielded- and converts it into chemical energy that is shared with its young.

Every few days a larva will hatch from an eg and quickly burrow into the thick dust covering Theia’s surface where it pupates for several months. As it develop into an adult, the larvae uses stored fat and nutrients to develop a small egg clutch of its own. Upon emerging from its underground chrysalis, the adult struggles to the surface to begin absorbing solar wind while its growing egg clutch metabolizes the surrounding dust.

The name “Moon Maize” comes from the alleged resemblance of the egg cluster to a “ floppy ear of corn” as one researcher put it.

Monk Shell.

This organism gets its name due to the alleged resemblance of its front appendage and bulbous compound eye to a praying monk. These creatures inhabit the extensive network of cooled lava tubes that wind through Theia’s crust. The single large compound eye on its dorsal surface can form complex images, while the simple eyes along its bottom can see in different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum from radio to ultraviolet. The thick antennae extending from its body are covered with a variety of sensory structures that can detect movement, chemical signals, sound, and other environmental stimuli. The Monk Shell is an active predator and one of the keystone species in Theian lava tube ecosystems.