It has been 40 million years since the time of man, and over 30 million since the establishment of Kerguelen as a subcontinent, and the changes have been vast. The climate has drastically altered and the plateau has moved to a similar line of latitude to modern New Zealand or even southern Madagascar, though this significantly warmer world means that much of it is quite like the latter in climate. The south on the other hand is much more similar to the former in habitat, being quite wet but cool and having chilly winters below freezing temperatures. The animals here are a strange mix of the old ancient creatures, and here the climate has a wide variety of avian creatures taking their position supreme in this land. While limited by the presence of large mammals, they are free to occupy positions taken by other creatures absent, such as reptiles or amphibians, and so this ecosystem is very polarised in nature.

Between a canopy of trees occupied by descendants of beech trees, araucaria, Australian eucalyptus and araliaceae, there lies a lower layer dominated by descendants of shrubs, mosses, ferns, grasses, dandelions descendants of carrots and other domestic and even cannaboid plants. These are home to a wide variety of different animals. Scurrying through the leaf litter, trying to chase after some of the regions smaller insects is the littler prickler (microlestes communis).

It is small and insectivorous like a shrew, and has prickles on it like a hedgehog, but it is actually a descendent of the little mice bought to the island by humans. In fact, most of the original fauna here were brought by humans, and they have weathered the arrival of new groups relatively well. The mice are a particularly notable testament to this. Pricklers are primarily insectivorous unlike their ancestor, who has fathered many smaller granivores throughout the island. But some species has had to have taken an insectivorous position in the ecosystem.

The absence of reptiles and amphibians here means that insects can stretch their legs more, and thus have larger populations, and in some cases are also larger overall. Despite this, the prickler hunts the smaller ones, and is reminded of it with its tiny size. Males are only about 16cm in length including the tail and weigh about 50g, while the females are even smaller at about 40g and 14cm in length. Both genders are a dark grey, with a blue tint to their fur and have relatively large whiskers to help them detect their prey. They are significantly more intelligent than shrews due to having a more advanced brain and lacking the relative strength of these small mammals. Corvids and cats regularly find these tiny creatures very appetising items, and so their prickles will help defend them from such ruthless killers. They have large litters in order to keep up with their high death rate as well.

Due to the initial conditions on Kerguelen, flightlessness became quite common among different bird species due to lack of competition and as it allowed them to get bigger. However, in this case the animals have had to compete with existing mammalian carnivores, despite these being quite limited in niches. Nevertheless, a quite prominent predator has managed to get past this in these forests. It is surprisingly not a crow descendent, as those creatures dominate the skies as hawk like predators. This is the blade-rail (ornivenator austrialis) a particularly ruthless rail which has gone the opposite route of normal flightless birds in being a gentle herbivore or insectivore and taken the role of a cursorial predator.

They are quite plastic in their form and fill different positions throughout their lives. The younger ones fill a similar role to foxes, whereas the adults are more like coyotes or even wolves in their position, ruthlessly hunting down small and medium sized animals, sometimes even working in groups. They get their name from their blade like beak which they use to stab their prey with and inflict deep wounds. The beak is also serrated with tooth like structures, allowing more cutting ability. Blade-rails appear an unusual creature to evolve from insectivorous rails, but with their ancestors, the transition was relatively straight forward to go from larger insects (due to lack of competition from reptiles and amphibians) to small mammals and as they grew larger to other large animals.

They are quite large birds in design, with the adults growing similar in size to a cassowary, at up to 70kg, though they are shorter and horizontally built like a theropod. They also have equally intimidating claws, capable of eviscerating prey. Unlike those birds, they have short necks and large heads, with a 60cm beak that can easily slice through flesh and inflict deadly bleeding damage. Their eggs are also quite large, with a volume of almost 300ml overall, which although less than a third of that of an ostrich is still big enough to make them noticeable, so they will hide them under layers of sticks and stones to keep them safe while they go out hunting.

In the absence of certain groups that would be present elsewhere, the inhabitants of the trees of Kerguelen have managed to develop across their own path. In many regions around the world, such niches would be filled by animals like monkey, lemur, sloths, possums and various other animals with prehensile tails and competent movement between branches. In this land though, they are occupied by unusual rats. One such thriving example is the southern ratpossum (arbrorattus magnicheirus).

This curious little animal is named so because it is the most southern ranging of its kind, and also because it has quite large claws that make it an effective climber. They almost resemble those of an anteater in design, though whereas the claws of that animal are used to tear apart ant nests, these are used to tear open honeycomb. They will regularly go towards bee hives in the treetops, climb towards them and tear them apart to get at the honey within. Their skin is thick and bumpy, and their blood means they have a strong resistance to bee stings, though the bees are also evolving more powerful venom to try and combat this. They store this acid in glands around their anus and when a predator tries to attack them, they will spray it in their face. Their fur is a wasp like colour of yellow with black stripes. An adult of either gender measures about 80cm long including the prehensile tail and weighs in the region of 5kg or so. The head is not that different from the ancestor’s, with large incisors and molars. The gap between the teeth has reduced though in order to have more molars, a common trait of the ratpossums which allows them to crunch through hard substances such as nuts, fruit and honeycomb. The ears are larger due to the warmer climate, and the limbs are also much larger in comparison to the body, giving it a vaguely primate like appearance. They are highly arboreal like primates and so their young are kept in between the branches of trees to keep them safe from predators. Females will sometimes let them hang off the end of their tails as well when moving around.

Other creatures dwelling in this land come from a whole other set of ancestors. Surprisingly enough, a very familiar creature wanders out from between the bushes. This is the spotted back- graindeer (austrocervis magnificens).

It is an incredibly elegant creature, with long legs for running good distances, a light gait to mean it can lightly tip-toe through the forests and tail used to signal against the regions avian or feline predators. Remarkably, this is no descendent of foreign red deer or anything of the sort, but is a distant descendent of the reindeer that once lived here. While many deer evolved into new and unusual paths from this creature, some have evolved into the more standard form, with this being the most common.

Unlike deer of old, the antlers are present on both genders and do not moult, a symbol of this ancestry. The antlers themselves are also more curved than would see on any red or fallow deer, particularly towards one another, and there are also downward pointing extensions are sometimes used in disputes or fights with predators. Adult graindeer males stand about 1.2m at the shoulder, 1.6m overall and weigh about 300kg, while females are somewhat smaller, at a metre tall at the shoulder and weighing 240kg. They are quite herd orientated animals, like many typical deer and thus have not evolved into the extremely derived niches their relatives have done further north.

While many different herbivores occupy this space, there are also a decent number of predators here that can kill them. Over millions of years of evolution, the cats of the islands have evolved across various different paths. After their introduction, they already began diverging across different paths. Some stayed conservative and hunted rodents and the increasingly terrestrial ducks, while others grew larger and started hunting the sheep and young reindeer of the original Kerguelen Islands, while others still specialised in hunting the seabirds around the coasts. Over the next 35 million years, including the resurfacing of the plateau, these differences have panned out far more, and resulted in whole new groups of cats. The one that lives in this region is relatively conservative, known as the giant false-lynx (kergueleo tigriforms) for its superficial resemblance to the European lynx of the Holocene. Like it, it has large fur collections around its cheeks, though it is a far larger beast, with a body not too different to that of a tiger, being much more robust than its relatives to the north due to the cooler climate.

The fur is a somewhat silver colour, and it is a specialised ambush predator, able to take a variety of prey. They are somewhat sexually dimorphic in their proportions, with males being 30% larger than females, which are themselves similar in size to a jaguar, though with a relatively shorter tail. They will actively hunt the graindeer and ratybaras (more on them later) that roam the forests and will occasionally also go after larger prey if they are in a conflident enough position. It is one of the more morphologically conservative Kerguelen felines and one that would definitely be recognisable to us today, though some of its other relatives might not be.

Among the herds of common ratybaras (bicheirus communis), there are only a few other animals which dare tread among them due to the intensity of aggression they have for members of other species, justified by the ruthlessness of the rails and cats living here. Another of the many forms to evolve from modern rats imported to the islands, they have become fairly large herbivores, not too different to peccaries in lifestyle, though their name comes from a significant similarity to the capybaras of old. Despite this though, they have much longer tails like their ancestors, though now covered in fur to keep them warm, and a spur on the back legs used to kick at predators.

Ratybaras are one of the most common animals here, surpassing even the graindeer in their numbers, and even in these forests can travel in herds of up to 50 individuals, including young. The head is quite different to the rat ancestor and is quite like the capybaras, though with thicker fur and a more pronounced brow ridge. It is also not a semi-aquatic creature but feeds primarily on low reaching plants such as grasses, while the birds will feed on the ferns. Their fur is a dark red used to camouflage with the bark, though with white markings on the back like young tapirs, which helps them camouflage. The males have enlarged incisors that are used for sexual display as well. Members of both genders reach about 95cm at the shoulder, measure 1.6m long including the tail and weigh in the region of 100kg or so, though 150kg individuals are not uncommon. Their organised social structure is one of the biggest reasons for their success. Their hostility to other species is not always complete, as they do rely on a big neighbour for help.

One much more powerful herbivore living in this habitat is the enormous grumper (plesiotoxodon maximus). This giant herbivore is a distant descendent of the Bizet sheep that has been given a large amount of time to evolve and adapt to new habitats. While they have gone down many paths, this particular one has become a very large herbivore, though not the largest of its kind by a long shot. They are extremely robust creatures, measuring 1.5m at the shoulder, 2.4m long and weighing up to 1400kg, surpassing even diprotodon in its bulk.

Its horns are relatively large as well, measuring about 1.5m from tip to tip and are used to intimidate other members of their kind in combat. Surprisingly, males and females appear very similar although the male has a lighter coat and larger horns overall, and are also more aggressive during the mating season. They live alongside herds of ratybaras, and thus help keep the latter safe from false lynxes and blade-rails, but will stick out for themselves when in dangerous situations. They are quite migratory animals in nature and help move the herds of smaller herbivores. Despite their mostly herbivorous track records, they are also known to occasionally raid the nests of birds for eggs and hatchlings, especially the younger grumpers, who are born only hare sized and are far less robust than adults, and thus able to get away with it. This is not taken nearly as far as with some of its distant relatives, who shall be explored in their own time.

As well as a variety of large mammalian herbivores, some more archaic avian creatures have also made their home in these forests. Most of the mammals don’t touch the ferns, horse-tails, and young araucaria, and almost none deliberately touch the cannaboid plants. The descendants of the old mallard ducks went down many paths just like the mammals, but one of the first paths they went down was the terrestrial one, adapting to a new frontier once again. The mallards outcompeted the native ducks unfortunately due to faster breeding, more aggression and being more generalised, and so could diversify into many forms. This is one of the most southern ranging of the Earth-ducks, known as the spotted chopping-bird (giganatus dontofastos), for the spots in its feathers and the tooth like structures on its beak used to strip the leaves off the plants it prefers to eat.

Chopping birds have been flightless for a long time and so their wings a very small, though not totally diminished like the ancient moas, still being used for signalling and sexual display. The orange beak they have is not too different in underlying structure to that of the old Hawaiian ducks, though it has a longer neck like a goose allowing it more manoeuvrability when selecting its food. Its stomach processing and nervous system make it effectively immune to the effects of cannabis unlike the mammals here which can hallucinate and be deluded by the plants. The ducks are more than a metre tall and weigh in the region of 25kg, and are much rarer than the mammalian creatures here, though they prevent this from being their downfall by laying their eggs inside hollowed trees, keeping them safe from the majority of predators here.

As well as avian predators, one must not forget the skies are also full of dangers, particularly in the corvids, which elsewhere are ruthless scavengers and symbols of death, are even more so here, in the lack of competition from birds of prey. The most prominent of these is the hooded claw (deinocorvis kerguelis) named from having a jet black ‘hood’ over the animals head while the rest of the body is grey with white strips along the sides of the body and wings. It lacks the large piercing claws a bird that Haast’s eagle may have, but it makes up for it by having a much larger head and beak that it can use to tear at its prey. The chopping bird and other earth-ducks are ideal items of prey, though it will also go after young ratybaras and even fawn of the graindeer.

Female hooded claws are significantly larger than the males, with wingspans of 2m and weighing 10kg, while males are 1.5m and weigh 7kg-they are not the superpredators that the Haast’s eagle once was. Nevertheless, they are very capable of attacking large herbivores as well as scavenging in a more typical corvid manner. Without eagles, hawks, falcons or owls to compete with, these creatures and their relatives have definite hegemony over aerial predator niches. They live in mating pairs and will scour over areas to search for prey from a distance, using their powerful vision to guide them to where they need to go. They are also not entirely carnivorous, and will regularly eat berries and fruit when they need to, even if a delicacy, though this does not stop them from being very intimidating creatures to behold.

Over the increasing development and resurfacing of the Kerguelen plateau, a number of different habitats soon began to become established as the climate warmed up and the plateau moved north. The volcanic activity led to a global increase in the climate and thus allowed a lush ecosystem to develop. Further inland from the more standard forests, there is a significant amount of open area, with some little pockets of open woodland in-between, though the temperate grasslands are more like those of old France, to which this plateau is some kind of successor to, as the Kerguelen islands were once a French possession. The temperate grasslands in this island are split into two separate areas which have been isolated for a few million years now, and contain different fauna, thus requiring the need to cover them separately. The great amount of derivity that separates these remarkable creatures from their ancestors is important to note, with an interesting mix of Holocene fauna and post-anthropocene creatures arriving from elsewhere.

Along the large areas of open grassland that dominate in this region, an interesting variety of fauna has developed. It is nowhere near as thriving as the tropical grasslands further north in terms of fauna or flora, but there are nevertheless an interesting range of creatures. Here, a greater range of flightless birds have made their homes here, competing fairly well with mammals. One of these is the enormous thundergoose (megabrontornis elephas) a huge type of bird adapted to life on these grasslands, using a large stomach to crop its food of grass while smaller animals are frightened by its bulk. Ironically, despite its name it is actually a descendent of the mallard, but is named so fir ots superficial resemblance to giant geese. It is one of the largest birds on the planet and contains a large amount of strength and power to it. It is also one of the most robust birds around, measuring almost 3m in height with its head reared up fully and weighing 700-750kg, with the largest individuals exceeding 900kg at certain times. They rarely actually rear their head as they are more specialised towards grazing and cropping large quantities of grasses. Thundergeese are also much more solitary creatures as adults, though the young are quite migratory in lifestyle and will travel almost anywhere they can. Such enormous birds bear a superficial resemblance to early prehistoric dinosaurs like therizinosaurus or deinocherius, possessing what vaguely resembles a hump on their back and head that can barely go above the shoulders due to its primarily grazing lifestyle. Their feathers are a mixture of brown and white, with the relatively small wings being the former and the back and head the latter. These incredible birds are make up a very interesting part of the ecosystem.

Alongside such birds lie a variety of smaller animals living here, including creatures that were once ironically much larger than any duck or anatid here. A herd of elegant creatures move across the plain like some kind of strange antelope, though these are a very different type of creature. These fork horns (tragicervus diminitivus) are some of the smallest of all the reindeer descendants, and ones that are almost unrecognisable from their ancestors. Unlike bovids, they still possess incisors and canines in their upper jaws, and their horns are actually antlers, giving away their ancestry. In fact, their canines protrude somewhat from their mouths. Nevertheless, their bodies are somewhat similar to those of antelopes, as they barely slope any more compared to that of their ancestors. These little creatures are an interesting development in the future of deer, as they have taken a niche otherwise taken by sheep further north and elsewhere, but have managed to stay relatively stable in this habitat, at least until a drying occurs and the sheep manage to spread their way here of course. Their fur has a brown colour to it, and is fairly thick allowing them to keep warm when winter comes. Forkhorn males stand about 90cm tall at the shoulder, 1.1m tall overall, 1.4m in length and weigh about 70kg, while females are 80cm tall in shoulder height, 1.2m long and weigh about 50kg.

On the eastern grassland, as well as giant ducks and antelope like deer, there also lies a wide range of smaller herbivores, many descended from a number of creatures. A number of guinea-pig like herbivores move between the larger beasts, coming out of dens. They look a lot like rodents from a distance, or perhaps more accurately pikas. The reason for this is that they are actually distant descendants of rabbits. Millions of years of evolution, and with rats and mice taking other types of niches have allowed a group of pika like lagomorphs to appear and thrive in this ecosystem. These are smudgeons (pseudochotona kerguela), a very cosmopolitan group of rabbits. They are found in nearly every habitat in Kerguelen, but are particularly common in these grasslands where they do not face competition from rat or mouse descendents. They are much less specialised than some of the other rabbit descendants that roam kerguelen and so their frequency rivals that of their distant ancestors. They make an excellent food source for smaller or hungry predators like cats and birds and their high breeding rate permits this. They form complex underground burrows that help them escape from all but the most determined of predators and they have a developed social system in which they will work together to face common opponents, including other dens. Despite their relatively weak physique, they are ruthless fighters, using their second pair of upper incisors somewhat like canines when fighting one another. Smudgeons have the same disadvantage their ancestors had in terms of having quite weak and defenceless young, in which they have a lot of difficulty looking after, resulting in a significantly high mortality rate. Just like rats in the time of man, these creatures are almost everywhere you go. An adult smudgeon is only about 25cm long from nose to tail, and about 9cm tall at the shoulder, resembling some kind of guinea pig, except for its tusk like secondary incisors.

While these herbivores thrive off these relatively cool grasslands, this place is also home to a number of predators that ruthlessly set out to hunt them. An example of such a creature is the ripping-cat (theriofelis cultonyx ) so name due to the fact it has an enlarged claw on its right paw, similar to the ancient marsupial thylacoleo. It is quite a powerful creature even without its increased claw, measuring similar in height to a puma, but somewhat longer, with an almost cheetah like tail and a black mane on top of its nape. Like the puma, it is primarily an ambush predator and regularly attacks its prey via hiding in the grass. They are very solitary creatures, despite being what appears to be the feline equivalent of dromeosaurs. They are quite fast creatures when going after their food, but can only go in short bursts, and hence they go after fairly fast prey like the fork-horns or younger thundergeese, while the juveniles hunt smudgeons and other creatures here. their normal sized claws are about 3cm long, yet their extended one is over 10cm long, similar to deinonychus. This creature is not too different from its relatives further north, though it is larger with thicker fur, and is not as fast as its tropical kin, being a more conservative animal in design, especially where other animals compete with them for such niches. These shall be explained in given time.

Under the ground, many insects and worms make their living. These include earthworms, crickets, beetles, cockroaches, earwigs and various other creatures. They feed off various minerals in the ground as well as the roots of plants. As well as being frequent creatures in and of themselves, they are prey to another type of creature; a mammalian organism adapted to feasting on them. However, this is no mole, or any marsupial or afrothere either. This is the soiler (terrattus ssp.) a rat descendent that has adapted to the subterreanean lifestyle. It has a paddle like tail that helps it effectively ‘swim’ through the soil as well as having large shovel like teeth that help it move through the tunnels that it has created in the soil. They are very solitary and isolated creatures, with their main senses of smell and touch being used, having exceptionally large whiskers that it uses to sense its prey, and smell to detect mates from greater distances. Soilers are relatively conservative in size, measuring only about 20cm long overall, allowing them to feed off various small insects in the region.

Perhaps the most unusual predator to appear in this region other than the cats is actually an omnivore, albeit one that has adapted to a lifestyle in which it can chase after prey on its own initiative. It is a member of the newly originated clade of deinoprobatona, something which has quickly managed to outcompete the various plesiohyena cats except for those living in the highland mountains. This particular species is the snapping crack-skull (borarctos megacephalus), a terrifying creature that has taken the apex predator role in the temperate regions. While it feeds on a mixture of different items, whether plant, fungus or animal, it is a particularly ruthless predator that has taken the position from the various cats. What is even more remarkable about this creature is that it is no caniform or rat, but a descendent of the sheep that have diversified into a wide range of ecological niches. While many species have adapted to various herbivorous lifestyles, particularly mega fauna. Crack-skulls are very top heavy beasts with large shoulders and huge heads resembling ancient mesochynids. Unlike the old mesochynids, they have very short tails like bears, though they nevertheless share their great stamina and their hooves, while poor at assault, do allow to ruthlessly chase down their prey. This species is quite moderately sized, measuring about 1.2m at the shoulder and weighing 250-300kg, making it a quite impressive beast, though not as large as its relatives up north. The skull is also relatively smaller, making this creature resemble some kind of entelodont in many ways, except it is woolly and the teeth are of a much more standard mammalian design, almost resembling a mammalian gorgonopsian.