Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Speculative biology is simultaneously a science and form of art in which one speculates on the possibilities of life and evolution. What could the world look like if dinosaurs had never gone extinct? What could alien lifeforms look like? What kinds of plants and animals might exist in the far future? These questions and more are tackled by speculative biologists, and the Speculative Evolution welcomes all relevant ideas, inquiries, and world-building projects alike. With a member base comprising users from across the world, our community is the largest and longest-running place of gathering for speculative biologists on the web.

While unregistered users are able to browse the forum on a basic level, registering an account provides additional forum access not visible to guests as well as the ability to join in discussions and contribute yourself! Registration is free and instantaneous.

Join our community today!

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Lemure Island; or archipelago, to be exact.....
Topic Started: Mar 1 2011, 01:51 AM (1,047 Views)
Zorcuspine
Member Avatar
Enjoying our azure blue world

JohnFaa
Mar 3 2011, 03:58 AM
Saltwater crocodiles did once live in Seychelles, so they defenitely could reach Lemure Island
Awesome! Now we can have brand new types of Terrestrial Crocs :D
Posted Image

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Jasonguppy
Member Avatar
Cardinal
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
AND LEMURS
that ride crocs
I do art sometimes.

"if you want green eat a salad"

Projects:
Amammalia: A strange place where mammals didn't make it and the land is, once again, dominated by archosaurs.

Oceanus: An endless sea dotted with islands, reefs, and black holes. Literally endless, literal black holes.

❤️❤️~I'm not a boy~❤️❤️
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Cephylus
Member Avatar
Torando of Terror
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *
I suppose Saltwater Crocodiles can reach the island, but it's too short of a time for them to evolve new forms. I mean, Crocodylus crocs reached Australia rather recently (sadly killing off aquatic mekosuchines :( )..... But they'll dominate the semi-aquatic predator niches on the island, snapping up Lemures, big afrotheres and false meridiungulates.

Anyway, I like the primitive sirenian idea. Maybe they could fill hippo niches on the island.
Spoiler: click to toggle
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Ook
Member Avatar
not a Transhuman
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
they might be also terrestrial herbivores,like the hyppos of mediterran islands or madagascarian hyppos
Posted ImagePosted ImagePosted ImagePosted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Cephylus
Member Avatar
Torando of Terror
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *
With two pairs of vaguely proboscidean tusks and bad temper.
Spoiler: click to toggle
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Cephylus
Member Avatar
Torando of Terror
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *
And answer to Jasonguppy's comment about lemurs riding crocs, no, crocs are very, very unlikely to be properly domesticated. This island's native lemur sapients domesticated big pachyderm-like false meridiungulates, which resulted in the horsepower revolution of the island, and also domesticated the cattle/rhino-sized aadvarks for dairy farming and meat. Some big birds were also domesticated mainly for meat and riding.
Spoiler: click to toggle
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Carlos
Member Avatar
Adveho in me Lucifero
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Well, considering New Guinea and the Phillipines have their own endemic croc species (as did Madagascar and Aldabra until fairly recently), I'd say endemic crocodiles could evolve on the island.

Bonus points if they are osteolamines like the Madagascar/Aldabra forms, and not Crocodylus
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

Posted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Cephylus
Member Avatar
Torando of Terror
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Sooo... I decided that the crocs on the island are osteolaemines, some reaching saltwater crocodile size and some like Australian mekosuchines. They are big semi-aquatic and slow-moving terrestrial predators.
Spoiler: click to toggle
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Cephylus
Member Avatar
Torando of Terror
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *
1752, March 11th, Monday

(taken from Captin Jacobson's journal)

We have been stranded on this strange tropical island for about a week now.

Our ship, HMS Earnest, started out from England around January, traveled along the coastline of east Africa, sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Agulhas, then sailed up north, passing Madagascar and reaching the Indian Ocean. Our voyage went well for the past few months, and we were planning to head towards Sri Lanka, where we'd stay for a few months and then begin the long voyage back to England.

But about 8 days ago, the ship had a rough collision with a submerged rock, which damaged the ship rather severely, and we had to abandon ship. I was in the cabin when it happened. I was having a simple dinner of stale bread and very, very salty bacon when the ship rocked violently, the lamp on the table was kocked over and my plate also fell off the table and shattered. At the same time I heard an ear-splitting scraping sound and the crunch of wood being broken. I went out of the cabin, and it was chaos. The men were running about frantically, some going below deck with empty buckets. I went down as well.

The water was flooding in, the sea pouring inside a large hole, and salt water spouted out from smaller fractures, spraying us. The water inside was already up to our knees, the ship rocked violently. There was no choice. I ordered abandon ship.

We got in and lowered our lifeboats. It was raining now, the thunder booming across the violent sea, lightening crackling, splitting the sky and momentarily making everything bright. Rain pelted us, our hats were blown off our heads, the waves were monstrous, looming above us in a white arc and then crashing back into the surface, rocking our boats. Below deck was completely flooded with water, and even more water was rushing out onto deck. Fortunately, none of us got left behind, and we took whatever we could from the sinking ship. The last of our lifeboats had been lowered and had managed to row out a few hundred meters from the ship, when we heard a sharp crack from behind us. The ship broke in half, literally split in half in front of our eyes. The back half of the ship sank first, and the front half turned upwards towards the sky, the ship stood vertically, our octopus-shaped figurehead standing erect as if trying to get its very last glimpse of the world above water, and then the HMS Earnest slowly sunk, disappearing under the waves with a final tremendous beliching noise, sucked in a giant whirpool.

Our lifeboats safely reached a nearby unknown island. We had been rowing and drifiting for an hour, and we were exhausted. Then somebody called "Land ho!". We saw mountains appearing out of the horizon, getting larger and larger, and we could see a white sandy beach, and a green patch of forest beyond. The waves washed us up on the island. It is an island, I think, as it being an island can only explain what I and my crew witnessed, but it is quite a large island if it is in fact, an isolated piece of land. Speaking in the extent of my current knowledge, this is probably an island yet to be discovered, as it was not on any map of the Indian Ocean I had seen before. The only thing we are sure about is that this island is located somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean. We are shipwrecked on an uninhabited island.

We got out from our lifeboats, happy to see land after such a long time at sea and a near-death experience, some sailors began to kiss the sand dunes. We salvaged anything that could be used among the debris of the ship's wreckage washed up on the shore. I was able to salvage this journal, wet and almost falling apart, soggy with sea water and with some pages severely damaged and torn apart, the leather covering ripped off the binding. .

We ventured deep into the forests. We had to gather something to eat, get some edible meat and fruit, get drinkable water, and get an at least vague grasp of what the geography was like on this island, find out if the island was inhabited by hostile animals or natives. What we found was beyond our imagination.

We had marched for about 30 minutes through the jungle, hacking through the foliage with our machetes, swatting away vicious mosquitoes biting at us mercilessly. The ground was muddy, it was hot, it was humid, we were tired to the core of our bones, the air was heavy and stale, we were getting sweaty, the situation, to sum it all up, was very, very uncomfortable.

Then we heard a rustle behind, then several yells from the men behind. Then everything happened so fast. I saw a large, black and furry creature leaping out of the bushes, and pouncing on a sailor. I couldn't say exactly what creature, it was none like I ever saw, and it was so fast, and I couldn't see it properly, as it leaped out from the very behind of our line, and I couldn't see well past all the men and the large leaves hiding the animal from view. But I could make out that the creature was rather large, black and furry, with a long rat-like tail and powerful forequarters. The men panicked and started to run forward, and in the midst of the chaos I saw the giant tiger-sized creature knocking the machete out of the sailor's grasp, pinning him down on the ground with its massive paws. The sailor yelled and kicked, struggling. Then it attacked, going for the sailor's neck. The yells and shouts were broken off by a single, continuous scream of absolute terror.

We all ran, without clear thinking, mud spattering on our boots, all of us surprisingly silent, nobody uttering a word, we just ran, ran and ran and ran, a high-pitched scream of terror piercing the heavy air and echoing on and on through the deep jungle behind us on the trail.

We had been running for a few minutes, when we stopped. We reached a large clearing, where I came face-to-face with a sharp spear point, gleaming wickedly off the midday sunlight. We looked around. We were surrounded by spears, and out of the foliage stepped out one of the strangest creatures we'd ever seen.

They resembled monkeys, sort of like a cross between the African apes (I had seen baboons occasionally in marketplaces in Africa, traded as pets) and the strange monkey-like climbing creatures I saw in Madagascar. But they were tailess, and was strangely human in their general body shape. The were short, dwarves, only a bit taller than a meter tall. We could easily have fought them off with our bare hands, except they had us surrounded, and we had spears at our throats. They were hairy, but had hairless faces, colored in a orange-reddish shade, arms and feet. Their hands were vaguely human, with five digits, but looked more like that of monkeys, made for grasping tree branches. The monkey men had long arms and short legs, but were surprisingly agile. They were wearing armor fashioned out of wood, leaves and what looked like animal bone pieces. They all had knives strapped to their waists, some had long tubes, which I later rather unfortunately learned was for spitting poison darts, and their spears were decorated with small animal skulls and colorful bird feathers.

We dropped our weapons and held up our hands. They had us surrounded, and they outnumbered us, even if they were dwarfs.

They tied us by our hands with vine ropes. We let them tie us rather obediantely, as they had knifes at our throats. The monkey men marched us across another hundred meters on the trail, and we went without any complaints, being very, very tired and as we still had spearpoints at our throats. They kept talking among themselves in what appeared to be their language, screeching and hissing and making strange barking noises. I noticed that they also used a lot of hand language when they talked.

We were taken to a large village by a riverside. We were led across a wide dirt path, with houses built out of dried mud, stone and hay lining both sides of the road. As we were marched through the streets, a crowd of monkey men, women and children formed along the sides of the road, pointing, screeching, gasping, gawking, barking, hissing, screaming, pounding their hands and feet on the ground and making bizarre noises which can be only described best by being similar to the sound of a human coughing. To these local savages, these monkey men, if they were intelligent at all (which they appeared to be) we probably were alien and bizarre to them as they were strange to us. We passed by few monkey men on the road, carrying baskets of fruit, meat, wood, fish, rocks or pulling small two-wheeled carts, everybody we passed staring at us and gawking as we marched on. At one point we passed a wagon pulled by a very strange creature, nothing like any animal I have seen before. It looked vaguely like a giant cow-sized pig, with a long, thick tail which it dragged on the ground, with erect rabbit ears and an elongated snout, flat at the end like a pig's, and stubby, stout and rather hairy legs, with large claws on each feet. The beast made strange grunting and snorting noises as it passed by, slowly lugging along........
Edited by Cephylus, Mar 5 2011, 10:43 PM.
Spoiler: click to toggle
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Jasonguppy
Member Avatar
Cardinal
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Beutiful description, but you spelled debris wrong.

NITPICK NITPICK NITPICK
I do art sometimes.

"if you want green eat a salad"

Projects:
Amammalia: A strange place where mammals didn't make it and the land is, once again, dominated by archosaurs.

Oceanus: An endless sea dotted with islands, reefs, and black holes. Literally endless, literal black holes.

❤️❤️~I'm not a boy~❤️❤️
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Ook
Member Avatar
not a Transhuman
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
very original,i cnat wait for next update
Posted ImagePosted ImagePosted ImagePosted Image
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Create a free forum in seconds.
Learn More · Sign-up for Free
« Previous Topic · General Spec · Next Topic »
Add Reply