Description
An entry for the Spec Evo community challenge/contest of Hyrotrioskjan/Joschua Knüppe 's #AtlantisBestiary3 project !
My 17th one !
For this entry, I choose to made another native species that descend from the surviving species from Phase 2.
This time, a species of gonorynchid who descend from the Miocene Saxumsquali giganteus (see « Atlantis Phase 2 » Post, 1st April 2023, twelve box picture from the top of the chart. Link : www.deviantart.com/hyrotrioskj… ).
The results are the following species :
* The Holocene Hogshark (Iuvenisacipenser minor) ;
This species of gonorhynchiade, descending from Saxumsqualis, have puhsed futher it convergent evolution with true sturgeons (Acipensiformes).
Like most sturgeons, it's a benthic species, living most of the time in the bottom of the water. It ancestor lived a non-benthic lifestyle, living more in the superior levels, where the sunlight just enter the water above the surface.
However, overtime, especially with the Younger Dryas event, the level water of the freshwaters areas went down as the level of the sea.
Forcing it lineage to lived, with the reduction, decrease of the available waters distribution and space, at the bottom of the ponds and streams in which they now lived.
It remain always at the very bottom of the water, where the luminosity is at it lowest, venturing rarely into the more lighter water levels. Living in a very dark level, his coloration is dark as an effect.
To respond to the more restricted and compressed avalaible space, it size have decrease, in order to decrease it food need to subtain itself.
Due to living in a areas where aquatic predators are more condensed and concentrated, it evolved to have larger, longer and sharper spikes on it's back for defense, no more having it large size to defend itself.
This species have a diet of shellfish, crustaceans, and small fish, but isn't no more a true real predatory animal like its ancestor once was.
Like sturgeons, it a species who live long, with a average lifespan is 50 to 60 years, and their first spawn does not occur until they are around 9 to 11 years old.
Unlike sturgeons, they ony give small sprawns, up from 5-6 pups at time.