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| Gyrosprinter / Thar; my new musings on aliens | |
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| Topic Started: Feb 24 2010, 03:55 PM (2,653 Views) | |
| Canis Lupis | Feb 24 2010, 03:55 PM Post #1 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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We all know that Earth and Snaiadi animals are quadropeds. Nereid animals are tripeds whereas Pandoran and Furahan animals are hexopods. Creatures from "Alien Planet" are, for the most part, bipeds. With one variation. It's still a biped, yes. But not the familiar bipeds. ![]() This is a gyrosprinter, presumably descended from a quadroped. Each pair of limbs has merged into one limb so that it has only two limbs: on the front and one on the back. First, I'd like to know how plausible the gyrosprinter actually is. But now for the meat of the topic. After watching "Alien Planet" again, I started thinking about a world with a gyrosprinter-like sapient. From there, I started thinking about a world ruled by various gyrosprinter-like creatures. Antelope, lion, whale, mole, and monkey-like animals seem the most plausible creatures for this limb structure. Obviously, flying niches would be out of the question unless they evolve what the flying lizards of Borneo have evolved. So, how plausible does a world dominated by vertical bipeds (bipeds with a limb structure like a gyrosprinter) sound? BTW, I'll be adding random creature descriptions here and there on this topic. I'll see if I can add a picture of each. |
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| colddigger | Mar 6 2010, 05:07 PM Post #31 |
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Joke's over! Love, Parasky
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go with class descriptions, then you have guidelines for as many species as you want. |
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Oh Fine. Oh hi you! Why don't you go check out the finery that is SGP?? v Don't click v Spoiler: click to toggle | |
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| Canis Lupis | Mar 6 2010, 07:34 PM Post #32 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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Alrighty. Class descriptions it is then. |
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| Canis Lupis | Apr 12 2010, 07:17 PM Post #33 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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Long time, no update. I do apologize for that. But I’ve got the evolutionary history of Tharian life planned out, with a little class descriptions thrown into the mix. You’ll have to pick them out of the history though. ![]() I’ve decided to include a phylum/class reference here, just in case you need to see what’s what:
So here goes. It’s all divided into periods (like Precambrian, Cambrian, etc). Though of course, different names:
Okay. I know that’s kind of long. Brownie points if you can make it all the way through. ![]() Tell me what you think. Creature descriptions for this (and “Project Nostalgia”) start soon. |
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| colddigger | Apr 12 2010, 07:41 PM Post #34 |
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Joke's over! Love, Parasky
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I liked the history, mandibles evolved unexpectedly late though... |
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Oh Fine. Oh hi you! Why don't you go check out the finery that is SGP?? v Don't click v Spoiler: click to toggle | |
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| Canis Lupis | Apr 12 2010, 08:52 PM Post #35 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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Well, the thing is, jaws never really evolved on Thar, so Tharian animals had to wait before something like a jaw was formed. In the polykephs, the tetralomoan evolve a sort of mauling chamber (basically a muscular tube lined with rows of teeth to crush their food). The auripods and the pterakokalians possess something similar (through convergent evolution). But in order for true jaws (in this case mandibles) to evolve, some kind of external head gear had to evolve (sort of like "After Man"'s hornheads). That's where the kranostomans came in. Now, I know what you may be thinking: why didn't the jaws evolve from the gills of the undopleurans, from which all terrestrial dikephs are descendents of? The thing is, undopleurans never possessed any gills that could possibly evolve into jaws (what the undopleuran possessed, rather, was a filtering organ that would seperate the water from the gasses. The water would immediately flow back out of the body (though some species utilize this for jet propulsion and hunting styles similar to the archer fish) and the gasses would flow into a lung (which also doubles as a swim bladder)). They have a long tongue (which, in some cases (malanokinets ("soft nonmovers", the dikeph answer to tunicates), nonakokalans ("no bones", because they possess only cartilegenous support), undopleurans, and puelicrurans) injects stomach juices while in others (pterakokalians, auripods, and kranostomans) it drags food into either them maw chamber (first two) or the stomach (latter)), which couldn't possibly evolve into a jaw. |
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| colddigger | Apr 12 2010, 09:39 PM Post #36 |
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Joke's over! Love, Parasky
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Such a style of collecting oxygen would result in fairly easy colonization of the land I would imagine... Oh no complaints about the lack of jaws, completely understandable given the body design you described. There's also always the excuse "it simply never evolved" as well... How about a partially open mauling chamber? it could set this over or on top of its food and grind it up without the worry of it being too large to fit into the mauling chamber... |
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Oh Fine. Oh hi you! Why don't you go check out the finery that is SGP?? v Don't click v Spoiler: click to toggle | |
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| Canis Lupis | Apr 12 2010, 09:48 PM Post #37 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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Oh. Well, that's more info on Tharian animals than you ever wanted to know. ![]() I just kidding. Yeah, that would result in a fairly easy land colonization. If oxygen wasn't a problem. See, plants got a later start on land than they did on Earth, meaning it took a bit longer to oxygenize the atmosphere. So while Tharian "fish" could have conquered land before Earth fish, the Tharian atmosphere just wasn't ready yet. That mauling thing could work. Sort of like a strange version of snake jaws. |
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| colddigger | Apr 12 2010, 10:05 PM Post #38 |
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Joke's over! Love, Parasky
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Is there less phytoplankton in the Tharian oceans? That mauling thing could even be turned into a sort of radula I suppose... |
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Oh Fine. Oh hi you! Why don't you go check out the finery that is SGP?? v Don't click v Spoiler: click to toggle | |
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| Canis Lupis | Apr 12 2010, 10:41 PM Post #39 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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Yeah, a little less. I mean, early in Thar's history, there was less phytoplankton. But once the oxygen started really being pumped, a mass effusion of phytoplankton ensued. Admittedly, the radula is where I got the idea for the maul chamber. Plus the spinostomes from Snaiad. |
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| Holben | Apr 13 2010, 04:17 AM Post #40 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Some animals have grinding teeth in the back of the palate and oesophagus, prehaps that could be done? But mashing could just as well be done by symbiotic arthie-analogues. |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| Canis Lupis | Apr 13 2010, 05:59 PM Post #41 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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Yeah, plates could be done especially in polykeph or tulimusk eaters, but the mashing thing will probably be more common. So I'm debating on how to do creature descriptions. Option 1: I could do like what Empyreon is doing for Nereus. I could do individual biomes and describe creatures from there. Option 2: I could just do individual species for whereever place I feel like. Which option would you guys care for? I could do it either way and it wouldn't make much of a difference. |
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| Empyreon | Apr 13 2010, 06:09 PM Post #42 |
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Are you plausible?
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First: let it be noted I fully intend to sit down and read all of this topic... once my classes are wrapped up. Please don't let my lack of commentary suggest lack of interest. Second: One of the things I enjoy about Option 1 is that-- as far as my own work is concerned-- it's forced me to think of how everything fits together ecologically. Unfortunately it also means that I tend to spend a lot of time on specific regions when others may be eager to move on to new places. |
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Take a look at my exobiology subforum of the planet Nereus! COM Contributions food for thought
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| colddigger | Apr 13 2010, 06:24 PM Post #43 |
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Joke's over! Love, Parasky
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Go for biomes, keeps it organized and gives a clearer image of how the specific places you talk about work/look like/what lives there etc. |
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Oh Fine. Oh hi you! Why don't you go check out the finery that is SGP?? v Don't click v Spoiler: click to toggle | |
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| Canis Lupis | Apr 13 2010, 06:32 PM Post #44 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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Alright. Biome it is then. Any specific requests, because, again, they're all going to be covered anyway, so it doesn't matter what order I go in. And lack of time to read, Empy, does not imply lack of interest. I completely understand that. |
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| colddigger | Apr 13 2010, 06:36 PM Post #45 |
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Joke's over! Love, Parasky
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A grasslandy biome perhaps? Those are always nice places to start... Open space for running around...Considering this all started with the Gyrosprinter eheh. |
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Oh Fine. Oh hi you! Why don't you go check out the finery that is SGP?? v Don't click v Spoiler: click to toggle | |
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