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Man After Man: the reboot.; This is gonna sound CRAZY (but not as crazy as teh original, hopefully)
Topic Started: May 23 2010, 01:42 PM (1,728 Views)
Forbiddenparadise64
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Ok, We all knew (and many of us hated) man after man, right? Well, although this is (a lot) less plausible than my WWTF project, I've decided to start a remake of it, with more plausiblilty, greater time periods, an absence of pcychics, more detailed ethical and genetic engineering backdrops, and more emphisis on the other survivors. There will be 8 periods explained here:

2250: The "metahumans" are first introduced to a devastated Earth, as biodiversity has plummeted. They soon colonise the Earth's surface and aid the recovery.

note: human extinction at 2400 as mankind is wiped out by a combination of supervolcano, magnetic reversal and famines. Colonies on places such as mars survive.

40,000: A new ice age returns, metahumans start to adapt to new climates and evolve to further tighten their new grip on Earth.

100,000: New species start to appear in various habitats, many small. The ice age ends

500,000: The ice returns, and the climate dries. Homo sapiens flourishes elsewhere in solar system and beyond, but never visits home.

2 million: Ice ages end, the climate warms to miocene levels, cold loving species decline or adapt to new world.

10 million: The oceans teem with life, and as continents move and islands form, metahumans are isolated and reunited, unable to recognise each otehr anymore.

20 million: Biodiversity has now fully recovered. Whole new groups of animals evolve alongside metahumans.

60 million: Strange new fauna exists all over world. But soon catastrophe strikes, wiping out over 95% of all organisms.

250 million: It has been a stagerring 190 million years since life was nearly wiped out. Life is now much unrecognisable, but it thrives and is recovered from the extinctions of past. Metahumans are more dominant than evert, but not in the ways you'd expect.

this project is, as i said, less plausible than my other, but hopefully better than the original man after man, as this world is more for fictional side than my other one. i hope someone can help design some fauna, metahuman and others some time :)
Edited by Forbiddenparadise64, Aug 29 2010, 10:20 AM.
Prepare for the Future Walking with the future: Allozoic (pts 4-6)http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/3252142/14/#new

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Pando
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ForbiddenParadise64
Jun 1 2010, 08:17 AM
In Australia, another group was engineered to resemble the former fauna. Named paramarsupialis, this genus has been engineered to resemble a kangaroo, possessing a tail, and even the leg structure. Unlike kangaroos or any other mammal, one species has been engineered a bird like hip (which would never happen naturally), so it runs like a bird. This archetypes range from 1-2m in length. They are soon hunted by a surviving population of tasmanian devils.
There are reasons that only marsupials and reptiles can take a form like a kangaroo. It's because in live birth animals the young cannot pass the hips. Marsupials give birth to tiny young above their hips, and reptiles lay eggs with soft shells.

Any don't worry about promises. We all have real life. That's why I took a 20-day break from the Postozoic.
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Forbiddenparadise64
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Oh ok... maybe I should alter the "mangaroo"s reproductive system (most marsupials have died out in this world) so scientists even decide to alter its reproductive stance to be like a marsupial's.

Ok, now for the inhabitant of temperate woodlands

The beast is similar to the man after man beast in a number of ways, but has become even more generalised through engineering. It is highly mutatable, meaning it can evolve quite quickly. It is about the size of a chimpanzee, and has specialised enzymes in its stomach, allowing it to digest almost anything- in fact, it is even more generalised than that of a pig! The animal has special fibres engineered into its bones, giving them significantly greater strength than normal vertabrates, perfect for the hardy lifestyle it has to endure. It even reproduces and grows quite fast, giving birth to small triplets which reach adulthood in just 10 years.

The piscanthropid linaege is an interesting one:

These humans have been engineered for a full aquatic lifestyle. The gills have been reengineered in, the tail has been reformed, and it has a long, deep face, with uniform teeth and large eyes. Their back limbs have been reduced to small steers, in some species, the males have spectacular sails steming from them. The arms have been converted into large flippers, with a single claw on each to help catch fish. There are 3 genuses altogether consisting of 17 species. these are:

Piscanthropus: A large dolphin sized genus. One species is like a dolphin or medium sized shark in lifestyle, as well. It uses advanced echolocation like a dolphin to communicate. The second species feeds on shellfish and food hiding under the sand. The third species has its teeth altered into fine fibres, like baleen plates. All species are 3m long and weigh about 300 kg.

pottomanthropus: A river dwelling piscanthropid. They range greatly from 50cm to 2.5m in size. The largest species are like river dolphins or large catfish from amazonia. Smaller ones help replace some of the extinct larger fish, such as pike, large catfish, and in some areas, salmon (although salmon survive in other areas).

minipiscanthropus: With coral communities devastated, many fish died out. But to help the surviving fish repopulate, some small piscanthropids were introduced to regain the reefs diversity. There are 8 species, some are brightly coloured as well. These are smaller and faster breeding than their cousins, ranging from 45cm to as little as 8cm in length, making effective niche holders for the new reefs. The genus possesses coloured sails on their small hind limbs used for sexual display. In one species, they are up to half the animals body length.

A mountain human too

banshee: A medium sized metahuman, engineered for life in the high peaks was also developed. It is quadrapedal, and has a powerful back able to climb at angles that would be impossible to traverse for an unassisted human. It is about 90 cm long, 60 cm tall and weighs 18 kg. It has few competitors, but is territorial towards its own species, and shows off with a loud howling noise, like a howler monkey, hence the name.

Micranthropus: A tiny human, engineered to help replace various species of small insectivore. It is bipedal, looking like a miniature human, but furry, has wiskers, carnivorous and possessing large claws, and a tail. It is only 7cm tall and weighs 5-6 grams depending on gender.

For an explanation for 40,000: An ice age returns, slightly more severe than the last one, bringing huge climatic and faunal changes. Polar animals start to thrive once more, and spread further south. As habitats change, species migrate, or adapt in the new conditions, creating whole new subspecies and even a new species of minipiscanthropus. New humans start to colonise the islands as well.

I have decided to leave out 100,000 now and will go straight on to 500,000 instead next post. :)
Prepare for the Future Walking with the future: Allozoic (pts 4-6)http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/3252142/14/#new

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500,000? I was just thinking on how this was so well thought out. Well, if you are introducing new humans, but if they evolved from previous ones then it's impossible.
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Forbiddenparadise64
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1 million: 4 glacial periods have come and gone, and life has become much hardier now. Diversification has significantly increased in the last million years since the disaster. Life is recovering as new species evolve, both from metahumans and the other animals, to fill in past niches and create new ones. I only have time to do 1 or 2 species in this post, so i will need to do more next.

cryanthropus: A huge descendant of the yeti that has become even better adapted to the ice. It is larger and more robust than its ancestor, being more than 30% taller and 150% heavier than its ancestor- to be precise, is 4m tall and weighs 1700kg. It is an analogue to the mammoths of old, using its huge hands to scoop up smaller the plants that it feeds on. It also has a larger hump of fat, but apart from these, looks similar to its ancestor. They are often followed by large herds of a new species of ceranthropus-which is also bigger and more cold adapted than its ancestors.

Desert strider: A new species of cyclopodus to evolve, it has adapted to life in more arid conditions like scrub and desert, filling in the niche and is begginning to fill in the niche of the camel. Weighing about 250 kg, it is large and in this hostile environment has little to fear other than dying of thirst.

As plankton populations boom once more, a larger species of that "baleen mouthed" piscanthropid has evolved:

protobaleananthropus primitivus: A larger version of the baleen mouthed beast. Its lower jaw has started to resemble that of a flamingo or a baleen whale. The creature is about 4m long on average, although larger individuals exceeding 5m are not uncommon, especially in this time of plenty. The claws have been lost out of uselessness and the fluke has become more pronounced to increase swimming efficiency.

Ok thats three species. But anyway, I promise more for next post.
Edited by Forbiddenparadise64, Jun 24 2010, 11:05 AM.
Prepare for the Future Walking with the future: Allozoic (pts 4-6)http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/3252142/14/#new

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Pando
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Oh, you mean 500,000 years, rather than 500 million years. My brain apparently stopped working there.

Then, isn't it too soon?
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Forbiddenparadise64
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Jun 2 2010, 01:25 PM
500,000? I was just thinking on how this was so well thought out. Well, if you are introducing new humans, but if they evolved from previous ones then it's impossible.
What are you talking about? I just finished off the species that were engineered by scientists, and i was saying that i would start on the species starting to evolve from those engineered forms as the ice age climate persisted. Can you explain? Anyway, I would like some people to do suggestions for species.
Prepare for the Future Walking with the future: Allozoic (pts 4-6)http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/3252142/14/#new

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Pandorasaurus
Jun 2 2010, 01:40 PM
Oh, you mean 500,000 years, rather than 500 million years. My brain apparently stopped working there.

Then, isn't it too soon?
I posted again.


I'd say it's too soon. Also, 4 ice ages in just 500,000 years?
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Forbiddenparadise64
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500,000 years was meanto be a throwback to the original. Should I change it to 1 million years or something? The new species are'nt that different from their ancestors at the moment anyway. There is also a symbiotic relationship founded between a carnosapien and squirrels to guard their nuts from the little rodent like men. The carnosapien species is much smaller than its ancestor, about cat sized, and has found that it can hunt the rodent men while leaving the squirrels unharmed. The squirrels benefit by having less competitors and not having their nuts stolen (there are a lot of innuendo jokes that could be about that XD). The new species of carnosapien (called a sphynx), benefits from having a reliable food source as the rodent men are very common (actually more so than the squirrels), and the squirrels allow it to live with them, giving it a home alongside them and when hungry, it can even be fed by the squirrels, as it still has reevolved a degree of omnivory through a chance mutation. I don't know whter this relationship would be plausible within my current 1 million year time frame, but I would like to see people's opinions on the subject.
Prepare for the Future Walking with the future: Allozoic (pts 4-6)http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/3252142/14/#new

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Forbiddenparadise64
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by 4 ice ages, i meant 4 periods of glacation, with interglacials, like the last ice age. As you see, i've edited the date to 1 million years to make it more plausible. Anyway, now for some added species of various descendants:

Prongnose: A new species of cyclopodus adapted to the northern tundras. It has a larger nose and wider feet than its ancestor. It is not as common as ceranthropus vulgaris, but is still a regular sight on the northern tundras. Is 1m tall and weighs 70 kg.

Icestalker: A new species of carnosapien adapting to the tundra. It has started to adopt pack hunting behaviour like a wolf in the females which are about as big as their ancestors, but the males are solitary and larger weighing up to 100 kg and evolving like a miniature polar bear, though not as advanced.

Sphynx: mentioned in previous post.

Sphynx squirrel: also mentioned in previous post. descendant of grey squirrel, is in same genus also but has whiter fur.

Root tooth. A ground squirrel like rodent man. Is about as large as a domestic cat and uses its large incisors to dig through ice to get at plants underneath. Has adapted relatively quickly to the change in climate due to a fast breeding cycle and metabolism.

Meanwhile, a group of forestmen becomes rafted onto the island of madagascar island hopping off the coast of Africa. The descendants of the castaways evolve into the madagascans: These new woodland creatures have become better adapted to island life, having become smaller, stronger, having keener vision and more carnivorous, to adapt to an abundance of fish, crabs and minipiscanthropids available. Some start to adapt towards forest life, starting to prey upon surviving descendants of lemurs and tenracs.

Again, the next period will be skipped and i will move onto 10 million years. I know its a big gap, but i wanted to get it over quicker. By now, global temperatures have risen 6 degrees, similar to the miocene or oligocene. New animals have evolved to adapt to the conditions and i will describe the first new non human species in the post.

Prepare for the Future Walking with the future: Allozoic (pts 4-6)http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/3252142/14/#new

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Sliver Slave
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I'm going back to basics.

Interesting. Do you intend to include a non-psychic version of the symbiosis of the tundra men?
Something is upsetting the ostriches.

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Forbiddenparadise64
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Oh yeah, I do. In fact, I'll post it below:

Symbiont: This creature is radically different from the man after man original beast. The yeti descendant is quadrapedal, and is about the size of an ox. It has a large, robust body originally adapted to live in the cold, but as the world warmed up, it lost most of its body hair, and has longer limbs. The forestman descendant is smaller, and much more gracile, about the size of a grey wolf, but much lighter. The lighter one, who rides on the larger beast's back, hunts and brings back food items, animal or plant over long distances, while the giant gives its smaller partener protection from predators and is able to reach higher than its partner can. The yeti descendant has light brown skin with black fur, while the smaller creature has dark brown fur and pink skin underneath.

Manabara: Strangely, on the continent of South America, the buck toothed, rodent like humanoids have diversified extremely. In the aftermath of an extinction inbetween the K-T and P-Tr in scale, while the humanoids were unscathed as they were raised into this landscape, they were much quicker to recover. The rodent tooth men have rapidly diversified into various forms, including mouse like forms, squirrel like forms, insectivorous forms and even porcupine like forms. The biggest of these herbivores, and one of the largest animals on South America currently, is the manabara. Weighing up to 350kg, it evolved very quickly in the aftermath of the extinction, even for an animal that breeds like rabbits. They are very numerous on the continent and travel in herds of up to 80 individuals.

Arbropythicans: These tree dwellers have expanded into all the former niches of monkeys and lemurs in most of the world (although lemurs have survived in Madagascar) and have many different species. Many are insectivores or fruit eaters, but there are also omnivores, fish eaters and active predators in the mix. Most live in the trees, except for the largest genus baboonmimus, which at 30kg, has adapted to a terrestrial lifestyle on the great plains of north America. Some species are no bigger than squirrels compared to this. They have even greater evolutionary potential elswhere.

Pteranthropus: A descendant of the gliding species of arbropythicus, this creature has done something incredible and taken to the skies. The original glider had a flap of skin over its long arms (which were nearly twice the lenght of the legs) like a flying lemur, as well as that 3 of the 5 digits on each hand had been lengthened by the engineers with webbings to further increase gliding ability, while the thumb and pointing finger remained normal to grab. Pteranthropus has taken this to a greater extreme and develped full powered flight. There are several species throughout the tropics, filling in the niches of the extinct bats and some small birds. The smallest species has a wingspan of less than 20cm, while the largest has a wingspan of more than 80cm. Unlike any other mammals, the engineers gave its gliding ancestors special air sacs in the lungs and even the arms and legs to reduce its weight and increase the amount of oxygen they gain from the air, like a bird's. This gives pteranthropus a big advantage over bats, and allows it to compete better with birds.

Giganthropus: This huge genus of metahuman has become the largest land animal on Earth now. There are several species of this large quadraped, descended from the yeti. Even the smallest is larger than a bison, and is found in herds of thousands on the plains of America. The largest, G. gigas weighs just over 3 tonnes in comparison and is the biggest land animal, with big tusks formed from its canines to attack rivals and predators.

Felisapiens: A large, predatory human that has evolved a lifestyle similar to a big cat. It is found throughout Eurasia and north America, and has species ranging from leopard size to tiger size, although one species grows even bigger, to grizzly bear size. They are powerful apex predators in their habitats and are solitary. The will take down prey from as small as rabbits to as big as giganthropus.

Lycanthropus: A deadly, pack hunting metahuman that has adapted to be like the wolf. It hunts in large packs, that can frighten off even the largest of felianthropus. They are intelligent and adaptable and can cope with large changes in habitat quickly. THey have an enhanced sense of smell and hearing, like their namesake, as they were named because they resembled minature werewolves.

Savageferret: A large south American mustelid, about the size of a leopard that hunts the manabaras on the plains. It is the only large, non metahuman carnivore around, and is a solitary hunter of various food items, and possesses great strength like all mustelids to take down its prey.

Tragulagus: A goat like descendant of the rabbit living in Australia. It has quickly adapted to a large herbivore niche, where it doesn't compete with the mangaroo's as they feed on different areas of grass. They live in large herds of more than 200 animals and are a numerous sight in Australia.

In the oceans, the piscanthropids are going from strenght to strength and filling niches of cetaceans, pinnipeds, turtles and also a number of fish species, as the smaller minpiscanthropids start to compete dramatically with fish for niches. Some of these smaller species are even starting to go into deeper waters, not needing to come up to air due to their gills and set up permenant residence in deep water and even around hydrothermal vents.

Ok, so this is the first update in a long time, I know, but I give you it now for an update. I will do this project more in the near future alongside Walking with the future too. Anyone want to suggest some more critters for this time period?
Prepare for the Future Walking with the future: Allozoic (pts 4-6)http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/3252142/14/#new

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Ook
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a big bunch of very interesting species and ideas
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