#conulariida

Here’s my attempt at Conulariida, along with some of the reference images I used! The in-color one is from Vladislav Egorov (3D model) and Jaagup Metsalu (render) - I sadly couldn’t find clear references for the publications the others came from at time of posting, but I’ll try and track them down and I’ll update this post if it find them.

I found out while researching these guys that, unusually for a Cnidarian, they could produce mollusk-like Pearls, which are often found inside their fossils! So this little gal’s(?) “eyes” are actually Pearls that she’s holding in two of her tentacles, so that other creatures that use their eyes/faces for emoting find her more intuitive to talk to (I assume she uses some form of telepathy to communicate, and probably has some other psionic mechanism that she uses alongside chemoreception and mechanoreception to sense her environment) :3

Took a little bit of inspiration from the Jerrys (and Terry) from Pixar’s Soul, since I always really like the idea of potentially sapient creatures with a very different anatomy from us or any other vertebrate (and even many other invertebrates!) doing their best to communicate with other species by adapting their anatomy in unique ways to Accommodate their natural social behavior better, and the idea of an ancient Anemone Relative making a cute “lineart” puppet out of their feeding tentacles that can be as amorphous as they need it to be just matched really well with the friendly but otherworldly vibe/behavior of something like the Jerrys.

This is the most complicated work of Topology/Knotwork/Braiding I think I’ve ever drawn too, it took me SO long and I’m actually really proud of how it turned out! :D

A preface and first week

This isn't the first time I've done so, but it is the one I have done to such a consistent degree.

When I saw the prompts for a full month of PREHISTORIC mermaid designs, I immediately jumped into the challenge. The prompt choices were varied, and also filled with plenty of obscure genera. Many of which I probably would not have drawn otherwise, I mean, have you heard of Cycleryon? Eretmorhipis? Yawunik??? Die hard paleonerds probably have, but even I was unfamiliar with some of these prompts..

With so many different and varied creatures with different forms, body types, and biological families, it proved quite the interesting challenge to portray them as unique and coherent mermaid designs. But this is part of what made it fun to do, I've had to think outside the box for some of them, and even for the more straightforward ones, I've done my best injecting my own creative juices in making interesting Prehistoric Mermaids.

Credits to the prompt by Subjectively on YouTube, or @magik_jack_art on Instagram. I have been following him along for some time for both his fakemon and creature designs, and they are just genuinely creative and fascinating.

With that out of the way, let's get on to the first round of Mesozoic Merms:

Week 1: Triassic

Day 1: Conulariida

The Conulariida are a group of shelled cnidarians that lived from the Edicaran period; some 545 million years ago, all the way through the late Triassic period. They were sessile animals that likely possessed tentacles to capture prey.

My first thought when I saw this prompt was "what the hell is this?" And then afterwards "It's a marine flowerpot." Flowerpot or not, this was what I had to work with. I went with a gorgon-inspired look, and she turned out pretty cute for a day 1 piece. Looking back, she did end up looking a lot simpler than many of the later works in both concept and execution, but I still like her regardless.

Day 2: Cycleryon

Cycleryon was a crablike decapod that lived in the Jurassic period (not Triassic! I didn't make the prompt!). Anachronism aside, My design for it was fairly straightforward. At first I didn't quite know what to make of this creature, but after looking through many species of crustaceans and the like for color reference, something suddenly clicked:

Tokusatsu crab.

It's probably the least human-like of my Mesozoic Merms, but they're an interesting one to me.

Day 3: Eretmorhipis

Eretmorhipis is a marine reptile from the Triassic of China known for its broad, fan-like fins (its name literally means "oar fan").

You can clearly see where the influences lie, now :]

Her color scheme is personally one of my favorites. A little bit of Chinese water dragon, and a touch of lotus flowers, all wrapped up in an elegant assemblage of flowing fabrics, fans and bows.

Day 4: Cyamodus

While it looked like a turtle, Cyamodus was actually a Placodont, and a member of Sauropterygia (for non paleonerds, Sauropterygians included animals like Plesiosaurus). It was a durophagous, feeding on hard-shelled organisms like shellfish.

This one partly inspired by ancient Chinese armor, which some of them did use turtle shells! (I know it isn't a turtle, but close enough.) I still went in with the details though, including the hair tied in reference to the segmented shell, and all that damn armor detailing..

Day 5: Chinlea

Chinlea; named after the Chinle Formation, was a freshwater coelacanth, not unlike the modern day genus Latimeria, though it did go extinct by the end of the Triassic.

I was suggested by @temoti to give her a lil meat on her bones, and thus, we have ourselves a chubby Coelacanth for this week!

I'll be honest she might be one of my favorites I've done for this week. The colors, the personality, even the little freckles sprinkled on her.

Better watch out for that Saurichthys though..!

Day 6: Trematosaurus

Trematosaurs were large temnospondyl amphibians. Uniquely for amphibians, they were tolerant of saltwater, and as a result, one of the few fully-marine amphibians.

My design was.. certainly an interesting take on the animal. I was looking for a way to somehow integrate the creature's long snout as part of her design, and I eventually landed on a long cap. It took several redos of the sketching and color scheme before eventually deciding on a fire-bellied newt, and leading into a spunky streetwear-inspired girl by the end of it.

This month's designs were all originally planned to be 'one shots', but I like to think that she and the Chinlea gal would make a cute duo. A spunky, hotheaded gal and her more laid-back companion. Might make art of the two in the future, we'll see!

Day 7: Prosaurosphargis

Capping off the Triassic week, Prosaurosphargis was a fairly recent discovery (2023 at the time of writing).

It is a member of the Saurosphargidae (another family in the Sauropterygia) from the early Triassic period 250 MYA, only 1-2 million years after the Great Dying that wiped out

On to the Mermaid — or I suppose Man in this case, I don't have much to say, but I did reference leatherback turtles, and free divers. Oh, and I can't forget the cute little ammonite.

Cambrian Explosion Month #07: Phylum Cnidaria – The Weird Ones

Odd shell-like structures that resemble angular ribbed cones with four-way symmetry appear in the fossil record starting around the mid-to-late Cambrian (with a possible Ediacaran record).

Known as conulariids, these fossils are so distinctive and different from anything else that for a long time their evolutionary affinities were unknown, and they were considered to be a "problematic" group. But in recent years they've been identified as being cnidarians, generally thought to be close relatives of modern stalked jellyfish.

Conularia cambria was one of the earliest definite conulariids, known from the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota, USA, and dating to the Late Cambrian (~490 million years ago). Up to about 5cm long (2"), its shell lacked the ribbed texture of most other conulariids but it would have otherwise looked very similar to later species – living attached to the sea floor by the pointed end of the cone, with tentacles protruding from the wider end at the top.

Conulariids were also unique among cnidarians for producing pearls inside their shells similar to those found in molluscs.

And despite being relatively rare and low-diversity, conulariids were a surprisingly long-lived group. Not only did they last throughout the rest of the Paleozoic Era, but they then survived the Great Dying mass extinction at the end of the Permian and only went completely extinct at the end of the Triassic, about 201 million years ago.

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Another unusual fossil from the mid-Cambrian Chengjiang biota in southwest China (~518 million years ago) might have been a cnidarian. Xianguangia sinica was a tiny 2cm tall (0.8") sea anemone-like animal with a cylindrical body, an attachment disc at the bottom, and an upper whorl of around 16 tentacles with feather-like extensions that suggest it was a filter-feeder.

It's generally considered to be a "stem-cnidarian", part of an extinct early lineage that has no close modern relatives. It might represent a weird offshoot that experimented with a different body plan and feeding strategy than the rest of the group, or it might be a late-surviving example of what ancestral cnidarians originally looked like.

But other studies have instead linked it with potential ancestors of comb jellies, so its classification is still rather uncertain.

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Mermaysozoic, day 1: Conulariida