Future Extinctions

 

Mixed media (Pantone markers, gouache, pastels), April 2004. Weldon Owen.
This particular piece was for the Weldon Owen encyclopaedia but looking at what might end up as fossils. As such, I was asked to imagine an evolutionary record for the future. For this, I enlisted the help of palaeontologist and friend Darren Naish, who gave me various ideas on those animals that might outlast humans. These include:
The combat chick or chicken runner if you will: with the destruction of most ground-based herbivores, the superbly generalist chicken steps up to fill the void. They have re-evolved wing claws and the spur cocks used to fight has developed into a raptor-like sickle claw. It still retains the comb of its domestic ancestor.
The pachybara: a pachydermal capybara. Not necessarily a direct descendent of the capybara - just a very large rodent. I did take the capybara as the role model. For instance, the big gland on its head has developed into a large horny boss. In my future, it has stepped up to fill in the niche of the elephant and rhino. I also gave it couple of extended tuck-like incisors for stripping bark. The pachybaras aren't the large sort of pachyderms we know and love; the low-energy ecosystem I had in mind wouldn't probably support animals that big unless they had very slow metabolisms.
The rats: This is the one I've given most thought to. Darren mentioned the miniaturisation and socialisation of the naked mole rat, so I decided to take that and run with it. Now the mole rats are far smaller but more social and have developed vast underground kingdoms like termites. As an exploitable resource, they have their hunters, in this case a highly derived rat that has evolved along the lines of the anteater, pangolin and porcupine. I took the spiny rats of South-East Asia as an example, but because it has had to leave the safety of the shadows to hunt mole rats, its spines have become full-on prickles. It has huge forearms and claws to dig down into the mole rats' burrows then uses an extended snout and a sticky tongue to capture the squirming pink mole rats. It's not very clear from the picture but I like the idea of extended chiselling incisors for digging - rodent teeth are after all continually growing and it wouldn't have to worry about wear.
The mole rats, meanwhile, are fighting back. They have developed a soldier caste like termites - I drew one out in the foreground, with big sharp pointy fangs. I see it as a miniaturised bulldog that swarm to the surface to attack anyone trying to break into the burrow.
Another organism that has developed alongside the spiny rat is the finch, again inspired by Darren's comments. In my future, they have evolved alongside the rats. Like some of Darwin's finches, they have also developed tool skills, but instead of using sticks to impale termites, they follow the big rat in and spear up any mole rats. The spear, sometimes twigs, sometimes discarded rat quills, also acts as stand-off weapon, keeping them away from the soldier mole rats. They are also used to drive off kane toads (asked for by the publishers), which have become another spiny rat acolyte; the toad uses its big sticky tongues to swipe up mole rats blithering around after the rat has dug them out from their nest. Tool-using finches have been selected against the more idiotic birds that ended up poisoning themselves on the toad's huge toxic glands. On this occasion, the toad is raised up on its legs and ballooning up to try and scare off the finches prodding it with their sharp implements.
Behind them, out on the drying flats, a panzer croc ('velocisuchian') is pulling down a chicken runner hen whilst the cock springs to her aid, spurs flashing. The panzer croc is based on the Eocene running crocodile, Pristocampus, and I again used the low-energy Australasian environments as a model with the top carnivore slots filled by reptiles. Again, this was something asked for by Weldon Owen as, personally, I don't see any crocodilians outlasting Homo sapiens.