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Your Project Ideas; A place to share your ideas for projects
Topic Started: Oct 14 2015, 09:27 AM (65,365 Views)
IIGSY
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How to realistically kill off vertebrates.

1. Asteroid at the Devonian (or carboniferous, though amniotes existed so it's a little riskier)

2. Causes dust to block sun, which kills phytoplankton, which causes anoxia

3. Bye bye vertebrates (tetrapods must still spawn in water)

Early insects and millipedes ate decaying plants, so they would have a blast.
Early centipedes and arachnids would eat other arthropods.
Some amphibious crustaceans would probably make it as well.


Tah dah! No more stinky endoskeletal chordates!

Wiping out vertebrates without killing off everything else would be impossible after the carboniferous.
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.

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Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups


In honor of the greatest clade of all time


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Hybrid
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Quote:
 
How to realistically kill off vertebrates.

1. Asteroid at the Devonian (or carboniferous, though amniotes existed so it's a little riskier)

Where did you get the idea that's going to work? Vertebrates were already really diverse at the time, including whole groups of jawed fish that don't exist anymore (placoderms). An asteroid requiring to do such an act would have to be enormous enough to wipe out the diversity of fish seen in other later times.

Even by that time diversity in the group would have been strong enough to survive an asteroid. Hell, as I previously mentioned, there was an extinction event later in the Devonian that was strong enough to get rid of an entire diverse group of fish as well as others. Yet vertebrates lived on, bouncing back in diversity.

Quote:
 
2. Causes dust to block sun, which kills phytoplankton, which causes anoxia

I mean wouldn't you think that would have applied to the P-T extinction, where there was a lot of anoxia zones in the sea and likely worse? Fish survived that, why wouldn't they here?

Also with asteroids freshwater communities tend to fair better. Unless this is an enormous asteroid, tetrapods and other vertebrates living in freshwater would have a reasonable chance at surviving.

Quote:
 
Wiping out vertebrates without killing off everything else would be impossible after the carboniferous.

It would have been very difficult to drive that group extinct after they attained a lot of diversity, which occurred way earlier than the Carboniferous.
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trex841
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Inceptis
Jun 12 2017, 05:08 PM
I kind of gave up on reading the papers and decided to wing it a bit. Tell me if this seems too unlikely.

Fonix's original name was TESS 1728c. Labeled as a super-earth 25% bigger than Earth with an orbit of roughly 11 days, it was considered too close to its parent M8 dwarf for life to develop. As such, it was catalogued for nearly a century before the system came close enough for the detection of atmospheric oxygen on the planet. Considered exceptionally unusual for the development of life given the nature of the system's hyperbolic orbit through the galaxy as well as the age of the star and its sibling placing it beyond the formation of metal-rich stars, preparations for probe missions were made, with the possibility of manned missions in the future if the biosphere proved hospitable enough.

Fonix itself has a constantly fluctuating orbit and eccentricity due to its siblings' gravitational influence, and although the variations are mild, this makes it impossible for the planet to tidally lock, meaning the usual issues involved with an eyeball planet developing life have been reduced significantly. However, as the probes began to explore the planet, they discovered something odd: Fonix appeared to be younger than its location suggested. Not only were the oldest rocks found almost 3 billion years younger than TESS 1728a, its parent, but it had a very different composition as well, containing significant amounts of iron and other heavy metals.

It soon became clear that the planet did not originate here, but had been rejected from its parent system and became a rogue planet, only to be adopted by a wandering red dwarf binary later in its life. No doubt this had immense effects on the life living here, and fossils discovered from early in Fonix's history show that the planet had already entered a sort of Cambrian Explosion right before orbital ejection. The most significant result meant the death of then-living photosynths, with current plant analogues having evolved no later than 1 billion years ago. However, the time spent in darkness not only meant the loss of some of its ocean to radiation, but it also produced a necessity for chemosynthesis, resulting in the birth of multicellular lithotrophs. But perhaps the strangest result from the eons of darkness was the creation of a clade of prokaryotes capable of utilizing the currents themselves for chemical energy: the sonotrophs were born, and with them perhaps the most interesting autotrophs the galaxy has seen.

Let's just say that the first probe to land down received almost more information from its microphone than its camera...
Funny, just watched a bunch of videos on unusual planet formation. :lol: Sounds like a fascinating premise.
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At the present time, concepts within are inconsistent and ever shifting.

(And this is just the spec related stuff)
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IIGSY
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Hybrid
Jun 12 2017, 07:29 PM
Quote:
 
How to realistically kill off vertebrates.

1. Asteroid at the Devonian (or carboniferous, though amniotes existed so it's a little riskier)

Where did you get the idea that's going to work? Vertebrates were already really diverse at the time, including whole groups of jawed fish that don't exist anymore (placoderms). An asteroid requiring to do such an act would have to be enormous enough to wipe out the diversity of fish seen in other later times.

Even by that time diversity in the group would have been strong enough to survive an asteroid. Hell, as I previously mentioned, there was an extinction event later in the Devonian that was strong enough to get rid of an entire diverse group of fish as well as others. Yet vertebrates lived on, bouncing back in diversity.

Quote:
 
2. Causes dust to block sun, which kills phytoplankton, which causes anoxia

I mean wouldn't you think that would have applied to the P-T extinction, where there was a lot of anoxia zones in the sea and likely worse? Fish survived that, why wouldn't they here?

Also with asteroids freshwater communities tend to fair better. Unless this is an enormous asteroid, tetrapods and other vertebrates living in freshwater would have a reasonable chance at surviving.

Quote:
 
Wiping out vertebrates without killing off everything else would be impossible after the carboniferous.

It would have been very difficult to drive that group extinct after they attained a lot of diversity, which occurred way earlier than the Carboniferous.
Oh. How about during the early ordovician?
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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Nembrotha
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Vertebrates have been around since the Cambrian, so yeah it's really hard to kill all of them off. Especially since they can be found literally everywhere. My suggestion is this: have the earliest vertebrates of the Cambrian go extinct in some sort of extinction event. Still, I'm not sure if they'll completely go extinct, but hey. It's your call.
Journey to the Makrinocene, a world in the twilight hours of the Cenozoic! (Slightly Inactive, will eventually pick up)
Come to Terra Fantasia, a bizarre world where nothing is as it seems! (Ongoing)

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IIGSY
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Leaellynasaura72
Jun 13 2017, 01:02 PM
Vertebrates have been around since the Cambrian, so yeah it's really hard to kill all of them off. Especially since they can be found literally everywhere. My suggestion is this: have the earliest vertebrates of the Cambrian go extinct in some sort of extinction event. Still, I'm not sure if they'll completely go extinct, but hey. It's your call.
If the Devonian extinction was cranked up to 30, could insects still make it?

And would vertebrates still be a succesful as they as they are now if the jaw never evolve?
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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Dragonthunders
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Quote:
 
Vertebrates have been around since the Cambrian, so yeah it's really hard to kill all of them off. Especially since they can be found literally everywhere. My suggestion is this: have the earliest vertebrates of the Cambrian go extinct in some sort of extinction event. Still, I'm not sure if they'll completely go extinct, but hey. It's your call.

Or make them never evolved, seems a more easy way, considering that during the Cambrian its ecological role was very small, just as one of the myriads of tiny species that swam in the water or crawled in the sand that would be replaced by any other small organism like worms or small arthropods.

Quote:
 
If the Devonian extinction was cranked up to 30, could insects still make it?

Maybe

Quote:
 
And would vertebrates still be a successful as they as they are now if the jaw never evolve?

It is a very open question to be honest, taking into account that if they did not develop jaws as we know, it would not be impossible for these vertebrates to stop developing alternatives to a jaw, on the other hand, if you want to force these vertebrates never to develop some kind of jaw, I could say that would be completely different.
To what degree? IDK, probably related to feeding options.
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Humanity fate and its possible finals.

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IIGSY
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Dragonthunders
Jun 13 2017, 08:25 PM
Quote:
 
If the Devonian extinction was cranked up to 30, could insects still make it?

Maybe
I was thinking of making the devonnian extinction REALLY bad, so bad that it wipes out vertebrates. The earliest insects and millipedes most likely ate decaying plants. Plants would die in masses, so they would have a field day. Carnivorous arthropods such as centipedes and arachnids would follow suit and eat them. Small eurypterids or crustaceans that lived in shallow inland lakes or rivers might also make it out. Though vertebrates also inhabit these areas, so that would pose some problems.

Is this premise sound?
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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Inceptis
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Hey, I was thinking of using a similar idea. Then again, I am kind of inflating extinctions across the board to make things far worse for the big phylums, so much that microorganisms would inherit the Earth. An example would be the 'rotifrogs.'
This was getting fairly big.
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IIGSY
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Inceptis
Jun 15 2017, 06:46 PM
Hey, I was thinking of using a similar idea. Then again, I am kind of inflating extinctions across the board to make things far worse for the big phylums, so much that microorganisms would inherit the Earth. An example would be the 'rotifrogs.'
Rotifers are bae.
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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gestaltist
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Inceptis
Jun 12 2017, 05:08 PM
I kind of gave up on reading the papers and decided to wing it a bit. Tell me if this seems too unlikely.

Fonix's original name was TESS 1728c. Labeled as a super-earth 25% bigger than Earth with an orbit of roughly 11 days, it was considered too close to its parent M8 dwarf for life to develop. As such, it was catalogued for nearly a century before the system came close enough for the detection of atmospheric oxygen on the planet. Considered exceptionally unusual for the development of life given the nature of the system's hyperbolic orbit through the galaxy as well as the age of the star and its sibling placing it beyond the formation of metal-rich stars, preparations for probe missions were made, with the possibility of manned missions in the future if the biosphere proved hospitable enough.

Fonix itself has a constantly fluctuating orbit and eccentricity due to its siblings' gravitational influence, and although the variations are mild, this makes it impossible for the planet to tidally lock, meaning the usual issues involved with an eyeball planet developing life have been reduced significantly. However, as the probes began to explore the planet, they discovered something odd: Fonix appeared to be younger than its location suggested. Not only were the oldest rocks found almost 3 billion years younger than TESS 1728a, its parent, but it had a very different composition as well, containing significant amounts of iron and other heavy metals.

It soon became clear that the planet did not originate here, but had been rejected from its parent system and became a rogue planet, only to be adopted by a wandering red dwarf binary later in its life. No doubt this had immense effects on the life living here, and fossils discovered from early in Fonix's history show that the planet had already entered a sort of Cambrian Explosion right before orbital ejection. The most significant result meant the death of then-living photosynths, with current plant analogues having evolved no later than 1 billion years ago. However, the time spent in darkness not only meant the loss of some of its ocean to radiation, but it also produced a necessity for chemosynthesis, resulting in the birth of multicellular lithotrophs. But perhaps the strangest result from the eons of darkness was the creation of a clade of prokaryotes capable of utilizing the currents themselves for chemical energy: the sonotrophs were born, and with them perhaps the most interesting autotrophs the galaxy has seen.

Let's just say that the first probe to land down received almost more information from its microphone than its camera...
Sounds reasonable. Not sure about how sonotrophs would work. I would very much like to see some kind of explanation how they harvest current energy.
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IIGSY
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One time, I had an ambition of making this but for arthropods. I tried enlisting the help of hanging thief, but it never really took off. I made this, and never really went further.
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Dammit, I want this to exist but I don't really have the patience to sit through hours of continuous research.

Who knows, maybe some who is like me but has more patience will make an up to date arthropod mega tree some time in the future.

*sighs in disappointment and slight sadness*
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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Nembrotha
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After giving up on Asedriam, I was looking at old, outdated world maps earlier. This got me thinking: what if they were real? And so were other fictional landmasses and locations (i.e. Atlantis, Lemuria, Terra Australis Incognita, etc)? But rather than having them on Earth, what about having these landmasses be in a parallel world?

Terra Fictionia would be this world. An alternate world parallel to Earth, these continents and more would be present here. They are filled with life that can be found on Earth, which got to Fictionia through rifts in space-time. (Cliche, I know. But hey, it has worked before.) Places like the aforementioned continents as well as mythical places such as Aztlan and Hyperborea exist in this world.

I would go into the continents and the animals and plants which inhabit them. Due to constant interchanging with Earth, some animals are recognizable and can be found in our world, but others are more mysterious and originate from times long gone...
Journey to the Makrinocene, a world in the twilight hours of the Cenozoic! (Slightly Inactive, will eventually pick up)
Come to Terra Fantasia, a bizarre world where nothing is as it seems! (Ongoing)

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Inceptis
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If you do, it would be interesting to see California as an island and have the Chesapeake sea in North America. I don't remember what it's actually called, but some explorer got lazy and exaggerated Chesapeake Bay to a sea that went back to the Great Lakes. Can't find the map, though.

gestaltist: I think I'm just about ready to post the project, actually. I'm probably pushing it out too soon, considering I pretty much had the idea the day I started talking about it, but Calida (my other exo project) has been on and off for more than a year. I don't want the same to happen to Fonix.

And don't worry, the sonotrophs will receive a special post on the specifics of how it works. Do you think harvesting static for ions is too far-fetched?
This was getting fairly big.
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IIGSY
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I might actually try working on the arthropod mega tree again. Would anybody like to help?
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
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
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