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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.

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Your Project Ideas; A place to share your ideas for projects
Topic Started: Oct 14 2015, 09:27 AM (65,352 Views)
Talenkauen
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Perpetually paranoid iguanodont
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Rebirth
Sep 11 2017, 04:23 PM
ForceofHabit
Sep 11 2017, 05:31 AM
From what I understand the project in question, Tortuga, is still in the early stages of development. The idea is that Sheather wants to do another Serina style project in the same universe, but using a different planet with lower gravity and an even sparser group of founding species than Serina.
Can't wait for that, especially to find out what becomes of the tortoises and what the sparse other species introduced to the planet are.

Will he eventually actually do Tuaterra as well?



Here's the most recent species list:

Quote:
 
Sheatherius - 07/17/2017
only a small tortoise species, some prickly pear cactu, some moss, seaweed, fairy shrimp or triops or something for the water, a few land invertebrates.
PLEASE NOTE: If I come off as harsh or demanding whilst talking to you, please tell me. I apologize in advance.....


UPCOMING PROJECTS:

Projects here
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Rebirth
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Adolescent
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A terraformed planet where the only vertebrate species introduced are a few subarctic amphibians and New Zealand lizards.
My Projects
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peashyjah
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Bydo
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A terraformed planet called Aether that serves as a future colony for mankind and their newly created posthuman descendants.
Discontinued projects:
The New Ostracoderms (i might continue with this project again someday)
The Americas (where in 58 million years from now in the future North and South America has both become isolated island continents)



All Expansions (my attempt at expanding the universe of All Tomorrows by Nemo Ramjet aka C.M. Kosemen, started June 6, 2018)
Anthropozoic (my attempt at expanding the universe of Man After Man and also a re-imagining of it, coming 2019 or 2020)
New Cenozoica (my attempt at expanding the universe of The New Dinosaurs and also a re-imagining of it, also coming 2019 or 2020)
All Alternatives or All Changes (a re-telling of All Tomorrows but with some minor and major "changes", coming June 10, 2018)
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Rebirth
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Adolescent
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More Cafe Cosmique, but inspired by the latest Kong movie and LOST maybe a moving island which "collects" flora and fauna, especially from underdog or otherwise extinct lineages.
My Projects
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Kerguelen
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High Evolutionary
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Insect Illuminati Get Shrekt
Sep 2 2017, 08:32 PM
Yiqi15
Sep 2 2017, 08:29 PM
I'm an underage muslim, so count me out.
There's...another one?
And another one.
In the shadows and crevices they lurk. Hiding from human eyes they are
Creatures From Beyond

Upcoming Projects

A merciless world where the rains never come. With rolling dunes and gigantic mountains. Welcome to the land of
Aridia

Far far away in a distant land. Emperors reign and beasts prowl. Monsters and demons fill the deadly forests. Let us take a
Journey to the East

A lab experiment gone wrong. A flash of thunder and lightning. Mankind finds itself cast into a new world.
Predators of the Plioence

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Beetleboy
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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A future world set some 100 million years from now, arranged in a field guide style.
~ The Age of Forests ~
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Dapper Man
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* I am fed up with dis wuurld *
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Interesting, Beetle. I had a similar idea once :P
Speculative Evolution:

Manitou; The Needle in the Haystack.
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DINOCARID
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Adolescent
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A small project an about ark world seeded with fairy shrimp as the only animals, various algae, and microbes. It would focus on only 5 MY hence, examining a simple, cobbled-together ecosystem, the largest animal on the planet slightly less than a foot long.
Check out my deviantart here
Projects
The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms
The Tetrarch (coming soon)


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Mr Mysterio
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Waiting...
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Greetings, valued customer! Welcome to Infinityscape Corporations: where your dreams never end!
World-shaping is often agreed by many an interdimensional traveler to be the way of the future, and we agree whole-heartedly. One shouldn't have to risk blindly stepping through the Finite Central Curve to see a few wonders. Using state-of-the-art technology, world-shaping allows us to take the waste-matter that exists between dimensions, shape it however we please, and populate it with any number of things from anywhere in the known multiverse.
But too often, the worlds offered by most world-shaping companies are too limited for the more discerning customer. They end just when things are getting interesting, or their small size leads to increased entropy, resulting in worlds that become boring and dead much too quickly.
But here at Infinityscape Corp., we have the solution: infinityscapes!
Using technology unseen and unheard of by any other world-shaper on the market, we are capable of making bizarre and beautiful worlds that quite literally have no end! Worlds where you could walk off towards the horizon and keep walking for the rest of your life, and not ever set foot back on where you started out on![1]
Our commissions range from designer worlds to tourist worlds to worlds for the discerning (and paying) scientist, eager to see how a 'verse with no end ticks, so to speak.

Examples of some of our more well-known tourist worlds are:

Golf World: Eager to play some of the King's Game? Then, look no further than Golf World, the infinite golf course for all your golfing needs! Whack a ball around on scenic rolling green fields, or grab a drink and stay at one of the many fine hotels at GW Central Hub! Or maybe take a look at the exotic wildlife of the Golf Swamps beyond the Hub, and go on one of our beloved safari tours, where you'll catch sight of crocodilian monstrosities and much more!

Playground: Formerly a designer world commisioned by a very wealthy artist with a flair for the surreal, Playground was officially opened up to the public some 250 years ago, as an "infinite art exhibit". Resembling an infinite playground, only many of the slides and such are gigantic, Playground was initially populated only by several species of small pterosaur, a few mid-Cretaceous mammals, assorted insects such as ants and primitive wasps, and some grasses, left to go wild amid the surreal structures for millions of years. Visitors tell us that Playground is "a psychedelic wonderland that must be witnessed to be believed!" So, why don't you check it out?

Gardenscape: Looking for something a little more peaceful? Visit the beautiful Gardenscape, a tropical paradise of flowers. Originally populated by several hundred different flowering plant species and their assorted pollinators, Gardenscape has since bloomed and grown into something so wonderful it can barely even be described. Take a walk through Gardenscape today, and let peace wash over you. [2]

Corporate Homeworld: The home offices of Infinityscape Corporation, itself! it's easy to get lost in these quite literally endless halls. This world wasn't always endless, but alas, one of the interns left the multiplication programs running about fifteen million years ago, and we still haven't been able to shut the darned thing down. As long as one remains in the general area of the Corporate Hub, you should be just fine. Please, pay no mind to the stories of apemen roaming the halls, and if you absolutely must go into the Filing Sectors, please, remember to take a guide with you.

And these are only a few of the pre-made worlds that we offer. Purchase our catalog for more, or talk to our Commissions Department about getting a custom-made infinityscape, built just for you!

Infinityscape Corporation: Where Your Dreams Never End.
[1] Do not actually attempt. When visiting an Infinityscape-brand world, for your own safety, please remain within sight of the designated Central Hub.
[2] Due to several incidents, one involving a hallucinogenic plant species, and two others involving an indigenous insect species, all worldports to Gardenscape have been closed until further notice.
Dumb Quotes


Coming Soon/To be Rebooted:

How To Hunt Gods - Everything you need to know about Gods and the art of God-killing.

Intrazoology - The world of semi-corporeal lifeforms. A world you walk through every day, without even knowing it.

The Dungeonverse - Magical creatures forced to adapt in huge, underground caverns, while surface-dwelling humans go dungeoneering for treasure.

Crossover - A mish-mash of worlds, with Earth smack in the middle of the chaos. What could go wrong?

no worries


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lamna
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Those who've read my recent projects will know I'm currently interested in looking at parts of Earth's history where the fossil record is either sparse, understudies, or absent. I want to finish up Land of our Forefathers, but I'm thinking about what might be next.

I recently have been reading about earth's ice ages, of which there have been five. Most of these are not super fertile ground for speculation.

During the the Huronian glaciation (2.4 billion years ago) the only life on earth was microscopic, even photosynthesis was pretty new.

During the Cryogenian 720 to 635 million years ago animals and plant existed, but they were mostly microscopic, with only a few sponges. Though the fact that most or all of the planet was covered in ice does make this potentially interesting.

The Andean-Saharan glaciation (450 to 420 million years ago) covered the end of the Ordovician and pretty much the entirety of the Silurian. Macroscopic life was large and complex then, but still mostly marine.

And of course, we know pretty much all there is to know about the Quaternary ice age, what with it still happening.

But one area seems pretty fertile for exploring but I can't recall seeing anyone doing it, the Karoo Ice Age. For a hundred million years, spanning the entire Carboniferous (360 to 260 million years ago) and most of the Permian, the southern hemisphere was covered in a huge ice cap.

This is fascinating to me. For my whole childhood, the Carboniferous was a steaming swamp full of giant amphibians and invertebrates, while the Permian was a desert filled with mammal-like reptiles. Learning this makes those eras seem to come alive, they were just as complex as our worlds today.

It also raises the question, what was living down in those polar conditions? Cold-blooded animals don't exactly thrive in those climates, but some would surely live there. Today there is only species of reptile and five species of amphibians living north of the Arctic circle. But our ice age has only lasted 3 million years, not 100 million years, and there are many other reptiles and amphibians that live in cold environments.

And that ignoring this was the era in which synapsids evolved, animals that currently dominate the cold regions of the world. Could be very interesting, but I'll need to learn more about the paleogeography and what animals where actually around back then.

Posted Image

*Viviparous lizard Zootoca vivipara

Siberian newt Salamandrella keyserlingii
Common frog Rana temporaria
Moor frog Rana arvalis
Siberian wood frog Rana amurensis
Wood frog Rana sylvatica
Edited by lamna, Sep 15 2017, 08:26 AM.
Living Fossils

Fósseis Vibos: Reserva Natural


34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur.
T.Neo
 
Are nipples or genitals necessary, lamna?
[flash=500,450] Video Magic! [/flash]
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Mr Mysterio
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Waiting...
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A project about the evolution and domestication of various clown species, the history of clown husbandry, and a sampling of several modern breeds of domesticated clown, and how they differ from their wild counterparts.
Dumb Quotes


Coming Soon/To be Rebooted:

How To Hunt Gods - Everything you need to know about Gods and the art of God-killing.

Intrazoology - The world of semi-corporeal lifeforms. A world you walk through every day, without even knowing it.

The Dungeonverse - Magical creatures forced to adapt in huge, underground caverns, while surface-dwelling humans go dungeoneering for treasure.

Crossover - A mish-mash of worlds, with Earth smack in the middle of the chaos. What could go wrong?

no worries


Posted Image
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Nembrotha
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Adolescent
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An Exobiology project about life that exists on a planet orbiting a white dwarf. This may actually be impossible, so this is just an idea. The life would be silicon, nitrogen or ammonia-based, living on a tidally-locked planet bathed in the light of the corpse sun.

Not sure if this is possible, so all you space buffs can holler at me.
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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Subnarial Gap
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Newborn
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I've got a few projects I've been working on sporadically for the last year or so. If there's any interest in them I'll post them and really flesh out the settings.

A world where the Triassic/Jurassic extinction event doesn't occur and the geology and climate of Earth from that point forward differs. The most significant climatic change is that later stages of the Jurassic are marked by widespread cooling and increased aridity which creates massive deserts, reduces forested environments in favor of more prairie-like ones, and forms permanent ice caps. In the mid-Cretaceous the climate begins to become warmer and significantly wetter, and coupled with the differing position of continents, the layout of the planet is unrecognizable. Clades which had long adapted to a cool world with wide open spaces are forced to adapt to an increasing number of rainforests, wetlands, and other tropical biomes. This leads to a fairly small but significant mass extinction that kills off most specialized organisms as well as most megafauna and species that inhabit the frozen poles. There is no mass extinction at the end of the Mesozoic but there is a significant period of volcanism between 50.5 and 50 million years ago, resulting in a major extinction which kills off nearly 75% of species. Since then there has been a lot of climatic fluctuation and modern times are right between a period of cooling and a new period of warming, making temperate environments widespread and allowing for permanent icecaps. At this time there are five major continents, three "microcontinents", and a healthy spread of island between each major landmass. I'll keep the flora and fauna a secret until I decide to post the project itself; suffice to say, the biota of this world is very different than what you might be expecting. I think a lot of alternate evolution projects stick too closely to the original bodyplans of the time of divergence. Not to downplay any projects like that, but in my case there's been over 200 million years of evolution. It won't just be a rehash of the Triassic period but in the Holocene.

Next is an alternate Cenozoic where mammals have to compete with crocodylomorphs, small ornithischians, non-avian theropods, and birds in the form of both members of Aves and several other clades for dominance. I haven't placed anywhere near as much time into working on this project but I think it would make for a fun one!

Finally, a project somewhere between a serious effort at speculative evolution and a more grounded take on Lovecraftian cosmic horror. A Permian sophont with a culture roughly as advanced as Copper Age humanity incidentally stumble upon evidence of an impossibly sophisticated race of aliens. This discovery sends their culture into a mass hysteria (both in fear and defiance of the discovery of physical "gods" and the formation of numerous extremist religious sects) that results in self-destruction, killing them off almost entirely.


Edited by Subnarial Gap, Sep 17 2017, 06:34 PM.
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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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Today, I was doing yard work with my dad. I was picking up leaves, branches, sticks and other miscellaneous plant debris and putting them in bags. This reminds me of an idea I once had. I already stated this idea, but I feel the need to do it again, but in a little more detail.

It's called Terra Composta.

It's where earth becomes too industrialized and polluted, so there is little space for agriculture. NASA discovers a planet in the Goldilocks zone with similar atmospheric conditions to earth. So, to save space on earth, all the world governments use this planet as a compost farm. There are collectors in every single country collecting dirt, dead leaves, and other organic refuse. They all deposit all their materials into a single giant ship that transports them to the planet. After converting this waste into proper compost, they bring it back to earth for practical use. But, an asteroid is headed for earth, so the world governments devote all their time, energy, and resources into stopping this asteroid. However, it fails, and the asteroid hits. Humanity is thrown into chaos and slowly dissolves. Yet all the while this compost planet remain untouched, covered in many mountains of soil and organic refuse. Humanity new that tons of organisms would come along and take advantage, yet no one gave it much thought. Yet, little did we know, we created one of the greatest ecosystems in the galaxy. The living things that came along emerge from the dirt, and start a great series of events.


I know, it's pretty unrealistic, but then again, it's what comes after that matters.


So, I want to know, what organisms would come along. I know stuff like mites, nematodes, ants, etc live in soil. However, I would like more specificity regarding the biota. With regards to fish vertebrates, Indotyphlops blind snakes are confirmed. So, if you could help me out a little, that would be nice. Keep in mind, that compost material is coming from all around the world.
Edited by IIGSY, Sep 16 2017, 08:05 PM.
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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Tartarus
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Prime Specimen
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Just found this video on life in compost. Not sure how helpful it will be to you, but hopefully it might give you some ideas.
NOTE: As a little nitpick, the narrator inaccurately refers to springtails as insects, but this shouldn't be too much of an issue as the main point is how the video shows compost life diversity rather than how well it classifies said life.
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