#cladogram

The new Polypterygia tree!

Not a whole lot changed outside of species being added. But piscine wyverns finally got a scientific name and Somnacanth has its own family of leviathans. Because this is just building off the last iteration, there is still fanon and recontextualizing and reworking many outlandish traits some of these monsters have and basically giving some of canon/what some of the hunters guild tells us the middle finger for the sake of more interesting theories.

Once again thanks to @mayfly0678 for the name “Polypterygia” and Lizardwizard for the spore theory.

And of course, here’s the almost 20,000 word google doc to go with it.

Monster Hunter Wilds got me wanting to make Monster taxonomy diagrams again, so I decided to start off with the newest (natural) monster class, Cephalopods! This tree was relatively simple, as unlike with other groups, most of the members had very clear real life analogs. I decided to place Escunites as Nautiloids rather than Ammonoids due to the hood over their head and their eyes being more akin to those of nautilus. Nu Udra is an octopodiform, that one's easy, and the Rise/Sunbreak squids are decapodiforms. Interestingly enough, some cephalopods in MH seem adapted to freshwater (with no irl cephalopod displaying this trait for multiple reasons). In the case of the two cuttlefish, the Goliath Squid and Nakarkos, I like the idea of them sharing an euryhaline (that is, an animal capable of surviving in both salt and freshwater) ancestor within sepiida, with Nakarkos retaining this adaptation while the Goliath Squid fully adapted to freshwater in the waterways of the Eastlands.

Did this for fun (except when Godzilla, Baragon and Maguma came, they were HARD to classify). Keep in mind this is strictly real and terrestrial Kaiju, so no Ghidorah or Gabara.

I was looking into tyrannosaur family trees, as one does, and was all like, hey, Tyrannosaurus and Tarbosaurus are considered sister taxons despite being on opposite sides of the world, what gives? How have we all missed this crucial fact!

I was thinking about it the past few days, and decided to make a passion project where I remade the tyrannosaur family tree with more intake from geography and what biology we had. Today I started it and was looking into papers, and then I remembered something. Beringia. The landmass that was once in place of the Bering Strait. It wasn't just open for migrations during the human migrations, but also in the Cretaceous period.

I want to do more aline stuff but I have other stuff to do so have the cladogram of all the clades so far.

oh hey i forgot abt this again but heres the finale of the cladogram series (for now teehee). The rest can be found HERE