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The Species Factory; Empty your mind
Topic Started: Nov 6 2014, 06:54 PM (33,398 Views)
Beetleboy
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Fazaner
Nov 30 2016, 08:44 AM
Ok let's wake up this thred.
I had an idea of flightles crow species that inhabits a Eurasian tundra in future, that use hopping instead of runing, like bird kangaroo.
Hmm, I like it. I can see where you're coming from, having watched magpies and crows hop rather than run, but why would they evolve this method of locomotion?
~ The Age of Forests ~
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Fazaner
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Шашава птичурина
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Kangaroos use that method in order to save energy, so i was thinking that birds might use it to.
Or bird anatomy don't allows such moving method for large animal.
Projects (they are not dead, just updated realy slowly, feel free to comment):
-World after plague After a horrible plague unleashed by man nature slowly recovers. Now 36 million years later we take a look at this weird and wonderful world.
-Galaxy on fire. They have left their home to get out of war. They had no idea what awaits them.

My Deviant art profile, if you're curious.
Before you get offended or butthurt read this

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Fazaner
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Шашава птичурина
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BeetleBoo
Nov 30 2016, 11:34 AM
Fazaner
Nov 30 2016, 08:44 AM
Ok let's wake up this thred.
I had an idea of flightles crow species that inhabits a Eurasian tundra in future, that use hopping instead of runing, like bird kangaroo.
Hmm, I like it. I can see where you're coming from, having watched magpies and crows hop rather than run, but why would they evolve this method of locomotion?
Kangaroos use that method in order to save energy, so i was thinking that birds might use it to.
Or bird anatomy don't allows such moving method for large animal.
Projects (they are not dead, just updated realy slowly, feel free to comment):
-World after plague After a horrible plague unleashed by man nature slowly recovers. Now 36 million years later we take a look at this weird and wonderful world.
-Galaxy on fire. They have left their home to get out of war. They had no idea what awaits them.

My Deviant art profile, if you're curious.
Before you get offended or butthurt read this

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Sphenodon
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Calcareous

The idea of large-scale saltatorial birds of some type had also passed by my thoughts; is there any reason they couldn't exist (perhaps balance issues due to lack of a long tail)?
Edited by Sphenodon, Dec 1 2016, 06:14 PM.

We have a Discord server! If you would like to join, simply message myself, Flisch, or Icthyander.
Some of my ideas (nothing real yet, but soon):
Refugium: A last chance for collapsing ecosystems and their inhabitants.
Pansauria: A terraforming project featuring the evolution of exactly one animal - the marine iguana.
Mars Renewed: An insight into the life of Mars thirty million years after its terraforming by humankind.
Microcosm: An exceedingly small environment.
Alcyon: A planet colonized by species remodeled into new niches by genetic engineering.
Oddballs: Aberrant representatives of various biological groups compete and coexist.

..and probably some other stuff at some point (perhaps a no K-T project). Stay tuned!
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Rodlox
Superhuman
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Sphenodon
Dec 1 2016, 03:27 PM
The idea of large-scale saltatorial birds of some type had also passed by my thoughts; is there any reason they couldn't exist (perhaps balance issues due to lack of a long tail)?
it does make a certain amount of sense: they hop and bound about in OTL, so Occam's Razor would suggest that it'd be easier to stick with that mode of movement, rather than switch it out for something else.
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Parts of the Cluster Worlds:
"Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP)
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Rodlox
Superhuman
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http://www.astronomy.com/news/2016/08/io-has-a-unique-collapsing-atmosphere

While that degree of speed might not be viable in a habitable world, could a slower collapse-and-return (over the course of a month or three or eight?) be viable?
.---------------------------------------------.
Parts of the Cluster Worlds:
"Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP)
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Fazaner
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Шашава птичурина
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Rodlox
Dec 1 2016, 04:11 PM
Sphenodon
Dec 1 2016, 03:27 PM
The idea of large-scale saltatorial birds of some type had also passed by my thoughts; is there any reason they couldn't exist (perhaps balance issues due to lack of a long tail)?
it does make a certain amount of sense: they hop and bound about in OTL, so Occam's Razor would suggest that it'd be easier to stick with that mode of movement, rather than switch it out for something else.


So my idea is not included in the most logical idea here. I think it is better to stick to walking instead hopping.

And one more thing, what is OTL?
Edited by Fazaner, Dec 2 2016, 05:19 AM.
Projects (they are not dead, just updated realy slowly, feel free to comment):
-World after plague After a horrible plague unleashed by man nature slowly recovers. Now 36 million years later we take a look at this weird and wonderful world.
-Galaxy on fire. They have left their home to get out of war. They had no idea what awaits them.

My Deviant art profile, if you're curious.
Before you get offended or butthurt read this

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Rodlox
Superhuman
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Fazaner
Dec 2 2016, 05:18 AM
And one more thing, what is OTL?
OTL = our timeline, the sequence of historical and prehistorical events that led to you typing your reply.

ps: and I didn't address your idea because, as far as I could see, it fits neatly in with the rest of the hopping discussion.
.---------------------------------------------.
Parts of the Cluster Worlds:
"Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP)
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Fazaner
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Шашава птичурина
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Aha thx for info rodlox.

Projects (they are not dead, just updated realy slowly, feel free to comment):
-World after plague After a horrible plague unleashed by man nature slowly recovers. Now 36 million years later we take a look at this weird and wonderful world.
-Galaxy on fire. They have left their home to get out of war. They had no idea what awaits them.

My Deviant art profile, if you're curious.
Before you get offended or butthurt read this

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IIGSY
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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I once had this concept of fish-like leeches with beaks derived from their "teeth". I might post a picture later.
Projects
Punga: A terraformed world with no vertebrates
Last one crawling: The last arthropod

ARTH-6810: A world without vertebrates (It's ded, but you can still read I guess)

Potential ideas-
Swamp world: A world covered in lakes, with the largest being caspian sized.
Nematozoic: After a mass extinction of ultimate proportions, a single species of nematode is the only surviving animal.
Tri-devonian: A devonian like ecosystem with holocene species on three different continents.

Quotes


Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups


In honor of the greatest clade of all time


More pictures


Other cool things


All African countries can fit into Brazil
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Joschua Knüppe
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Newborn
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Hi guys, I guess many have already seen this stuff on DA (or maybe discussed it even on Skype)
But I thought I might repost it here anyway. Beside the little of context I give here these creatures and their world aren't in any way fleshed out*, and I know from some discussions that not everyone thinks these creatures are likely or even possible.

So here the description from DA and a few additional notes:

What you see here is a smaller member of a family of land living, megaherbivorous penguins.
This species stands up to 5,5 m tall.
Most species never drink in their adult form but get all the water they need from the plants they eat, the cloaca is forward facing and can spray potential predators with a stinky secretion, the tail acts like a third legs with a scaly pad under the pygostyle, the tongue is extremely spiny and used to strap leaves from branches, the feet are broad and the halux touches the ground as well to support the animal while standing/walking.

The animals evolved in Australia. Their ancestors swam through a shallow inland sea which will fill parts of the continent. During this time there were already species which explored new food sources along the shore line to escape the increasing competition. When the connection to the ocean was cut of the inland sea became a increasingly hostile realm, rainwater and rivers weren't able to compensate the evaporation and the sea slowly shrank. Many species died, also most of the penguins, but a few survived by searching for food now full time on land, on large islands they thrived from now on, living in dense forests with very few predators large enough to kill them. When the inland sea further decreased in size, land-bridges formed and allowed a exchange of fauna. Again many penguins died because of new predators arriving, but some made it, grew larger over time and began to colonize the rest of the continent as well. By this time they were fully herbivorous, mostly eating eucalyptus species, with some smaller in forested areas preferring fruits.

The Lesser Wulluweid lives near coastal forest edges in Queensland and eats the soft, young leaves from the lower branches.

While both species are called 'Wulluweid' they actually form not a monophylethic group but represent the largest members of two sub families.
Austroatlas lives in inland savannas and open woodlands, always aiming for the highest branches and finest leaves. Here you see a 1 year old juvenile and an egg right beside an adult. Females lay up to 30 off them in dense forests where the male guards them (keeping all of them on his feet would be tricky). The babies follow their father after hatching and together they return to the females in the open woodlands. The babies are much more mobile than the adult individuals, especially during their first 6 month. Until an age of 2 years their diet is pretty diverse, beside leaves they also eat fruits, nuts, invertebrates sometimes small vertebrates or even carrion. This provides them with enough proteins for their rapid growth.


P.s. the cloaca of these animals isn't only facing forward because they can defend themselves this way, but it has become very difficult for the males to mate with the females, so instead they are now face to face while copulating.

P.p.s while it seems unlikely it actually is possible for adult animals to stand up after falling over, but when being fully grown they never come down to earth on purpose again.

P.p.p.s. This group of birds evolved during a time in which the climate on earth will be similar to the Paleocene-Eocene temperature maximum. like in the past such a event had a huge impact on the flora and fauna which was one reason that the more flexible species evolved in the first place and prepared them for the shrinking of the inland sea.
Like in the past the high temperatures also shrank the size of many land animals, megaherbivores and many carnivores disappeared, making way for new, unexpected forms.

Additional notes:

Because they eat mostly eucalyptus leaves they have to cope with a lot of toxins from the plants, one way is to become larger and to grow loner guts, another is to
store the toxins within the skin and even partly the feathers. This way adult animals not only get rid of the poison but also become very untasty, even predators which
avoid the stinky cloacal secretion and are able to bring one of these giants down face the problem of not being able to digest many parts of their prey. In addition
these animals seek safety in numbers to protect each other and the offspring.

Posted Image

*And I probably will not flesh it out.

In case Image doesn't work: http://hyrotrioskjan.deviantart.com/art/Great-Wulluweid-652210561
Edited by Joschua Knüppe, Dec 29 2016, 06:23 PM.

My account on DeviantArt: http://hyrotrioskjan.deviantart.com/
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Art-by-Joschua-Kn%C3%BCppe-732426953481529/
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Yiqi15
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Prime Specimen
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I've gotten a few species concepts for my Guide to Pocket Dimensions. In particular, I've come up with secretary bird-like heron that feeds off the infinite flock of passenger pigeons of the dimension Flumen Columbae, 'shaving' individual birds out of the flock with its beak.
Current/Completed Projects
- After the Holocene: Your run-of-the-mill future evolution project.
- A History of the Odessa Rhinoceros: What happens when you ship 28 southern white rhinoceri to Texas and try and farm them? Quite a lot, actually.

Future Projects
- XenoSphere: The greatest zoo in the galaxy.
- The Curious Case of the Woolly Giraffe: A case study of an eocene relic.
- Untittled Asylum Studios-Based Project: The truth behind all the CGI schlock
- Riggslandia V.II: A World 150 million years in the making

Potential Projects
- Klowns: The biology and culture of a creepy-yet-fascinating being

My Zoochat and Fadom Accounts
- Zoochat
- Fandom
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Deinosuchus55
Newborn
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A terraformed world entirely populated by reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates. Humans started out with these animals, but then discovered that they could not survive there. The animals adapted.

I've already got two ideas for animals: two massive gecko species. One is 10 feet long, and a hypercarnivorous apex predator. The other is nocturnal, 5 feet long, and is vampiric.
Edited by Deinosuchus55, Jan 1 2017, 12:13 PM.
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Fazaner
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Шашава птичурина
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Deinosuchus55
Jan 1 2017, 12:12 PM
A terraformed world entirely populated by reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates. Humans started out with these animals, but then discovered that they could not survive there. The animals adapted.

I've already got two ideas for animals: two massive gecko species. One is 10 feet long, and a hypercarnivorous apex predator. The other is nocturnal, 5 feet long, and is vampiric.
That's a relly good idea if i may sugest 2 herbivores
Aqatiq hipo like tortise and more nimble giant igrana
Dont think i am ordering you or something.
Projects (they are not dead, just updated realy slowly, feel free to comment):
-World after plague After a horrible plague unleashed by man nature slowly recovers. Now 36 million years later we take a look at this weird and wonderful world.
-Galaxy on fire. They have left their home to get out of war. They had no idea what awaits them.

My Deviant art profile, if you're curious.
Before you get offended or butthurt read this

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
IIGSY
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A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
I have this idea of nematomorphs infecting gastropods. This is possible, right?
Projects
Punga: A terraformed world with no vertebrates
Last one crawling: The last arthropod

ARTH-6810: A world without vertebrates (It's ded, but you can still read I guess)

Potential ideas-
Swamp world: A world covered in lakes, with the largest being caspian sized.
Nematozoic: After a mass extinction of ultimate proportions, a single species of nematode is the only surviving animal.
Tri-devonian: A devonian like ecosystem with holocene species on three different continents.

Quotes


Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups


In honor of the greatest clade of all time


More pictures


Other cool things


All African countries can fit into Brazil
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