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| [ARCHIVED] Postozoic (old); Earth, 25, 100, & 200 MYF -- old thread | |
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| Topic Started: Feb 24 2010, 03:42 AM (5,045 Views) | |
| Pando | Feb 24 2010, 03:42 AM Post #1 |
Obey or I'll send you to the moon
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In this world, Earth is inhabited by humans for the next 5 million years, until they finally leave. Even though they have found out how not to harm nature, a mass extinction has occurred, and animals that are Extinct in the Wild have not been released back into the wild of Earth. Plus evolution has been slow as we have not allowed any mutants that have occurred to breed. Here we jump forward to year 25 million, where we will be looking at life. Also I would like to do 100 million years in the future and 200 million years. World in 25 million years: California has separated and drifted north west, and is covered in lush forests. North America has separated from South America (though not by much) and moved slightly North, causing huge taiga in the North, forests around the current U.S.-Canadian border and around the coasts, huge prairie in the center, in Central America is a rainforest, and the south-eastern corner of the U.S. (around Florida to Louisiana, north to Southern Missouri (due to Mississippi river) and north to South Carolina) is a huge swamp from the slightly higher ocean level (due to more ice melted in Antarctica than frozen in Greenland). South America has drifted slightly northward, causing the entire Northern 2/3 to be covered in rain forest, and the southern third to be covered in savannah. Antarctica has drifted north too, and the southern half is covered in ice sheets, while the northern half covered in tundra savannah (coniferous trees). This has caused unique fauna to evolve in Antarctica. Africa has crashed into Gilbratar, blocking off the Mediterranean and causing it to dry out, forming a huge salt desert. The northern half of Africa is dry savannah with Acaica plants littering the landscape, similar to todays African Savannah. Europe’s western and northern side is covered in forest, the southeastern side is covered in prairie. Asia is covered in rain forest to the south-east, the center of Asia in a huge strip is covered in forest, and now-Russia is covered in taiga. There is also a huge desert in the area of the Gobi desert today. Australia has moved northward to the equator and crashed into Papua New Guinea, it is now covered in rain forest everywhere except for the central savannah, not too different from Africa’s savannah. Africa east of the Nile has broken off and formed East Africa (AKA Lemuria) and is covered in rain-forests. Madagascar has drifted farther from Africa, and is still covered in rain forest. The primary herbivores are lemurs, the primary carnivores are tenrecs, which are very diverse, resembling hedgehogs, otters, weasels, rats, etc... Greenland has become bigger by way of the Canadian isles, and has moved northward to become an Australia-sized north pole Antarctica, effectively keeping the sea level at about the same level. There is also approximately 30% oxygen content in the air from the extra plants in Antarctica, allowing arthropods to become 150% bigger (15 inches big approx), and bigger chordate limit. You can call the habitats by these names. Antarctic savannah tundra. South American savannah/rain forest. North American grassland plains/forest/Central American rain forest/taiga/swamp. Californian forest. West African rain forest/savannah. East African rain forest. Madagascar rain forest. Australian rain forest/savannah. European forest/grassland plains/Mediterranean desert. Asian desert/forest/rain forest/taiga. To name an animal, putting in the begging (name)/(ancestor)/(scientific name, if any)/(habitat) would be nice. I'll put a survivor list, then creatures I created soon. I'll also attach an early draft of it I made, but you need Pages (Mac OS X only) or possibly OpenOffice to open it.
Edited by Pando, Mar 13 2010, 09:27 PM.
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Animals_2.pages (166.85 KB)| Replies: | |
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| Pando | Mar 7 2010, 02:43 AM Post #61 |
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Obey or I'll send you to the moon
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For Pangea II I'm wondering if a total extinction of birds can be avoided. The flying lizards have the upper hand with flying herbivores because of their hand, but I wonder if they would outcompete carnivorous birds. As for the flightless bipedal and/or quadrupedal birds I think that they might survive too as birds do better than mammals with heat. I can draw the creatures, but not now as I have a test coming soon (luckily it's on biology, for the SE forum), but like my kryptonian, it's prob not going to have color as I'm bad at coloring my drawings. |
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| OmegaBeaver | Mar 7 2010, 02:46 AM Post #62 |
Adolescent
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By 200 million years the creatures that should resemble current creatures the most should be sharks and fish, assuming you want them in 200 million years. So the quadrupedal birds are a good idea since they would be far enough from birds. Maybe make them become a new type of animal altogether? |
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| Pando | Mar 7 2010, 03:06 AM Post #63 |
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Obey or I'll send you to the moon
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But you can't imagine any new class of tetrapods. Unless they were to re-evolve scales or something. But if birds never existed we would not be able to imagine feathers (I think this is my 3rd or 4th time saying this in this thread). I don't think that we could imagine, but it could possibly be this: An egg-laying marsupial descendant class with 2 middle ear bones, exothermic, mammary glands, 3 chambered heart, sweat glands, bare skin, and a new brain region. It's possible, but you never know. |
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| OmegaBeaver | Mar 7 2010, 03:24 AM Post #64 |
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Adolescent
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I get what your saying. |
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| Pando | Mar 7 2010, 04:06 AM Post #65 |
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Obey or I'll send you to the moon
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I wonder if bipedal ground-sloth like primates can evolve from the South American monkeys in either 25 MYF or 100 MYF? |
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| Pando | Mar 7 2010, 06:12 PM Post #66 |
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Obey or I'll send you to the moon
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I just found out about 2 new factors going on for the ocean extinction, low oxygen and methane. So that leaves pollution, acidity, overfishing, heating, great garbage spots, low oxygen, and higher methane. For land it is pollution, civilization, heating, and greater storms because of heating. The world is about to become a very bad place for animals. --EDIT-- Can anyone help me with a good name for this? Edited by Pando, Mar 7 2010, 06:39 PM.
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| Pando | Mar 8 2010, 01:10 PM Post #67 |
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Obey or I'll send you to the moon
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For 25 MYF California will become a New Zealand like I think the large herbivores will be flightless birds, aerial predators falcowls, aerial herbivores birds, large ground predators flightless owls, small herbivores chipmunks, kangaroo rats, and rabbits, arboreal herbivores squirrels, and small predators snakes. Could there be a group of predator swines in Asia? And finally, could monotremes diversify? I can imagine the platypus re-evolving a stomach (they still have the genes for stomach acids) and there be a slightly more aquatic and longer piscivorous ones that take Southern Australia sharing a niche of smaller crocodiles, giraffe-like herbivorous ones in the savanna, and andrewsarchus-like carnivorous ones in the rain forest. For the short-beaked echidna there could be mole-like ones, ones that are near similar to the already existing echidnas (possibly the same species, a living fossil), and small to medium herbivores in the rain forest and/or savannah. Edited by Pando, Mar 8 2010, 01:11 PM.
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| Pando | Mar 8 2010, 07:44 PM Post #68 |
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Obey or I'll send you to the moon
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I've got 2 species for California Megaduck/Duck/California: A marsh dwelling flightless duck descendant. They are brown, 15 feet tall, and is built like a moa except for its thicker legs and neck. Terrowl/Owl/California: A 10 foot tall brown probably barn owl descendant. They are like a big Cuban giant owl with a longer neck and beak, and have lost the ability to turn the head 360, but can still turn it around 180-270 degrees. By Friday-Sunday I should have the whalosquid and megaduck pictures up, and possibly terrowl, pigdillo, sealguin, seaguana, tree octopus, trapjelly, mersnail, theriumonitor, ratanteater, buffalo rabbit, megafowl, shark ideas, and/or platypus ideas. Actually it might take a little bit longer. |
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| TheCoon | Mar 8 2010, 09:04 PM Post #69 |
Happy merry Jesusmas inhabitants of the Spec Forums!
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What does the flying lizards have that outcompeted most birds. I mean, birds had various different characteristics that allowed them to outcompete pterosaurs, like the feathers, the warm blood, etc. What things does the flying lizards evolved to outcompete birds? Are they lizards BTW? Or are they a totally new class of vertebrates? |
Greetings young life form! Procyon Lotor at your service.
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| Pando | Mar 8 2010, 10:21 PM Post #70 |
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Obey or I'll send you to the moon
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They're lizards with pterosaur-like wings. What made them outcompete the herbivorous birds is that they are more agile than the birds because they have fingers. Also, its a very hot world, and so that's why reptiles are ruling. The only reason mammals and birds rule right now is because they're warm blooded and its the coldest the Earth has been since before the at least carboniferous. With the warmer world cold blooded creatures rule dominant (at that time it's the reptiles, snails, and tree octopi, amphibians are extinct). But birds still have the upper hand as aerial carnivores, so they weren't outcompeted. |
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| TheCoon | Mar 9 2010, 05:41 PM Post #71 |
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Happy merry Jesusmas inhabitants of the Spec Forums!
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Mammals shouldn't downgrade because of the hotter world. Mammals have proven to beat reptiles even in hotter biomes. I don't say your project is wrong. It is fantastically good actually. But you should make the mammals a little less more diverse maybe. |
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Greetings young life form! Procyon Lotor at your service.
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| Carlos | Mar 9 2010, 05:48 PM Post #72 |
Adveho in me Lucifero
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BIRDS. DID. NOT. OUTCOMPETED. PTEROSAURS. AND TAXONOMY IS OUTDATED!!!!!!!!!!! But yes, following the "warm blooded are weak when its hot" its nonsensical; the Eocene saw the diversification of mammals, and was absurdly hot when comapred to nowadays. Thats why I prefer the term "endothermic" when reffering to "warm blooded" animals; they're not just good at producing warmth, they're good at controlling the boddy temperature, and the distinction between endothermy and ecothermy has been made less clear. For instance, monitors have a metabolism that features characteristics of both endothermy and ectothermy, and once so did crocs. Ence why warm blooded winged lizards could potentially replace birds |
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Lemuria: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/ Terra Alternativa: http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/ My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Carliro  | |
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| Pando | Mar 9 2010, 06:29 PM Post #73 |
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Obey or I'll send you to the moon
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Well then they're warm blooded. I know birds didn't outcompete pterosaurs. The reasons pterosaurs were going down was because they were getting too big for the atmosphere to support them. I finished the whalosquid, megafowl, the dolphin and pack hunting shark, rabbuffalo (new name for buffalo rabbit), and pigdillo drawings. I should have them up within 24 hours. |
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| Margaret Pye | Mar 9 2010, 07:42 PM Post #74 |
Adult
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What? "Getting too big for the atmosphere to support them?" The atmosphere didn't suddenly get less dense! To be fair, pterosaur diversity declined a lot once birds got going, and that probably was because of competition by birds. A few pterosaur groups managed perfectly well against birds, and were only killed off by the big meteor, but a lot of them were outcompeted. That's not because they were ectothermic, though. There's no way pterosaurs were ectothermic. I'm no physicist, but it looks as though large (bigger than a sparrow) flying animals HAVE to be endothermic to get enough energy for sustained flight. And I'm not sure how much of an advantage feathers are, over leathery wings. I suppose the feathers can be moulded into more varied shapes, whereas the pterosaurs are rather stuck with pointed triangles. On the other hand, if feathers break, they take months to grow back. Leathery wings just heal when they're torn - bat wings have seriously amazing regenerative powers, and it's probably safe to assume pterosaurs had the same. Also, yes, most large mammals still have an advantage over most large reptiles, even in hot climates. If the climate's extremely dry then mammals might be disadvantaged by less efficient urine concentration, and that might possibly lead to more flightless birds, or to squamate-dominated environments, and a squamate-dominated environment could well lead to squamate endothermy and upright posture. Emphasis on MIGHT. It hasn't happened in the Sahara yet. |
| My speculative dinosaur project. With lots of fluff, parental care and mammalian-level intelligence, and the odd sophont. | |
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| Pando | Mar 10 2010, 03:33 AM Post #75 |
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Obey or I'll send you to the moon
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I have the megafowl, whalosquid, dolphin shark, pack hunting shark, rabbufallo, and pigodillo. I did my best to draw them. Megafowl:  Here is a bigger picture of the Megafowl Whalosquid:  Here is a bigger picture of the whalosquid Dolphin Shark: Dolphin Shark/Shark/World Oceans 100 MYF: A shark that replaces dolphins in 100 MYF. It is 20 feet long and the front row of teeth has become extendable to grab critters off the sea floor.  Here is a bigger picture of the Dolphin Shark Pack Shark: Pack Shark/Shark/World Oceans 100 MYF: A 30 foot long shark that roams the oceans in 100 MYF. It still looks like a normal shark except for its electric gland, which is what it uses to communicate with its other pack members.  Here is a bigger picture of the Pack Shark Rabbufallo:  Here is a bigger picture of the Rabbufallo Pigodillo:  Here is a bigger picture of the Pigodillo I will probably have more creatures by the end of this week. Edited by Pando, Mar 10 2010, 03:40 AM.
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