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Argoland's Fauna
🕑 Added 2024-01-23 15:29:36 +0000 UTC
Myanmar amber enantiornithean. Artist uncredited.
Recently a “new” continent was described, Argoland. More accurately described as a series of landmasses that seperated from Gondwanna and attached to Asia in the mid-Cretaceous, such a landmass probably warrants some unique biota.
Well, we do know a significant amount of the microbiota. Most of this is represented in the infamous Myanmar amber, which includes various species of arthropods, an ammonite, various enantiornitheans (of which Fortipesavis and Elektorornis are the only one named), the basal lizard Oculudentavis and the allocaudate Yaksha. The fauna is appropriately recognised as primarily Gondwannan aside from Yaksha, fitting for Argoland’s nature.
Argoland more broadly can presumably answer some Cretaceous oddities, like the presence of both megaraptorans and alvarezsaurids in China and Gondwanna as well as the presence of derived eutherians like zhelestids in the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar and India. The presence of mekosuchines in Australia could also be explained by this landmass, though crocodilian cladistics are constantly shifting.
Overall, this landmasses is could also explain the presence of other gondwannan animals in Eurasia perhaps prior to India like caecilians, though for now more studies are required.
