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| Batrakia; The world of the frogs. | |
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| Topic Started: Oct 29 2015, 04:11 PM (3,447 Views) | |
| DINOCARID | Oct 29 2015, 04:11 PM Post #1 |
Adolescent
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One hundred and fifty million years ago, an unknown force terraformed a rocky earth-sized planet with a large moon, orbiting a yellow dwarf at the same distance as we orbit our own star. It's iron-rich core was set to rotating, generating a geomagnetic field that protected the planet from solar wind, and plate tectonics were kick-started. The thin dusty atmosphere was pumped full of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, and the uniformly flat and dusty surface was flooded with blue oceans. Then came the life. Bacteria, archea, and other non-eukaryotic organisms were first to be introduced. Then fungus and algae were released, turning the coasts into a psychedelic patchwork of colorful microbial mats. Springtails, rotifers, nematodes, copepods, and arrow worms came next, grazing on masses of unicellular plants. Then vascular plants were unleashed, ending the age of microbe mats, churning the soil and piercing the layers of decaying fungus and algae. Any animal bigger than a pinhead came next, from cockroaches, to snails, to centipedes, to dragonflies, to bees. But one stood out, the rio grande leopard frog, the only vertebrate. The leopard frogs, being the only animal with a backbone for several light-years, found themselves in the position to diversify. And diversify they did, making batrakia the world of the frogs Batrakia is dominated by two large continents, manum and obcasia, and three oceans, the austral, eirdaltic, and arpatic oceans, with many islands and lakes scattered across them. When batrakia was first terraformed, it possessed only one continent and a small subcontinent, called cimexia, nearly on the opposite side of the planet. This single "parapangea" eventually split into obcasia and manum, the eirdaltic ocean forming between them. Obcasia fragmented to form persolia, which has started to sink since, and north and south wimox, as well as a relatively large chunk that slammed into manum, the tectonic crust buckling to form the arptiaw mountains, and the chunk becoming south manum. Cimexia drifted eastward until it hit obcasia, delivering it's strange cargo to the rest of the planet. Most recently, manum's northmost region has started to drift away, forming a rift valley between them. Spoiler: click to toggle Batrakia is largely tropical, only experiencing snow at the poles. It's axial tilt is less than earth's, resulting in mild seasons, and a less pronounced dry-wet cycle at the equator than earth. Being hot and wet, both obcasia and manum are dominated by tropical rainforest, dry tropical forest replacing that further north and south, giving way to vast tropical plains, temperate plains, and temperate forest, until finally, plant life gives way to ice and rock. In the southeast of obcasia there is a gigantic basin called the makavv swamp basin, comparable in size to the entirety of alaska, collecting rainwater from all over obcasia's forests, and forms the largest swamp on the planet. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the arptiaw mountains rival the himalayas in height and size, forcing water to condense over them, leaving little for the area northwest of them, giving rise to the infernal desert, a desolate expanse of gravel and boulders, with little in the way of actual sand and dunes that most people consider nearly synonymous with the word desert. Spoiler: click to toggle And so, batrakia became it's own world, with strange lifeforms all it's own. Welcome to a world where gigantic, beaked tadpoles zip through the open oceans, feathery grazing frogs dot the the plains of plantain, and clover-tree forests conceal ever stranger plants, and animals. Welcome to batrakia Introduced species (Excluding unicellular species) Spoiler: click to toggle Table of contents Spoiler: click to toggle Edited by DINOCARID, Dec 19 2015, 10:34 AM.
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| LittleLazyLass | Oct 31 2015, 08:45 PM Post #16 |
Proud quilt in a bag
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What's the status on that anyway? I assume it's dead, but I still feel the need to ask. |
totally not British, b-baka! You like me (Unlike)I don't even really like this song that much but the title is pretty relatable sometimes, I guess. Me What, you want me to tell you what these mean? Read First Words Maybe | |
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| DINOCARID | Nov 1 2015, 10:44 AM Post #17 |
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Adolescent
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Five million years post-terraforming-ten million years post-terraforming Ten million years post-terraforming, parapangea was starting to show signs of tectonic activity, and cimexia was drifting eastward, destined to join the larger continent. Although ailanthus forests still dominated, many other plants had already grown large enough to be considered trees, raspberry forests favoring drier soil, and bamboo forests expanding, year after year. But they couldn't impinge on ailanthus territory, because ailanthus trees produce germination-inhibiting compounds, ailanthones, ensuring that other plants do not compete with them. Ailianthus trees grow quickly, but don't tolerate shade well, forming young open forests, that thanks to their chemical weaponry are nearly continuous wherever they can grow. Raspberries, with no fruit-eaters to spread their seeds, had quit producing metabolically expensive fruit, the drupelets losing their sweet flesh, and replacing it with a bitter skin. The terrestrial algal colonies of early batrakia had nearly disappeared, only occurring at wet, cold, high-altitude places where competition is more relaxed. The invertebrates were very diverse, especially dragonflies, growing huge on the oxygen-rich atmosphere, filling the niches of the absent flying vertebrates, with powerful raptorial limbs letting them pluck prey as large as themselves from mid-air. Caterpillars grew huge in the absence of herbivorous vertebrates, two feet long, being the primary consumers in most ecosystems. Frogs were very recently introduced, and their population seemed unsure at first, but by a couple thousand years, they had found their place in the ecosystem: the top. Sexual selection was stronger for the first few million years after their introduction then today, with almost no predators, and seemingly limitless quantities of prey, resulting in gigantic frogs with louder and therefore more attractive calls. These giants sustained themselves on the giant arthropods that once constituted their few predators, as well as other frogs. These giant frogs adapted to their new diet with larger, powerful jaws, massive rotund bodies, and a sit and wait predation style. Others found their weight more manageable in the water, becoming primarily aquatic, with broad, heavily webbed paddles, and a longer snout, reaching five feet from snout to vent. After the wave of giant frogs, adaptive radiation took over, producing burrowers, shoveling through the mud, crayfish specialists de-clawing their prey, and tree-climbers scaling trees. These arboreal frogs had an intriguing adaptation to climbing: keratinized toe-tips that functioned like claws, gripping the bark while clambering through the canopy. But they had a problem. It is very inconvenient to descend from the trees when frogs the size of pumpkins threaten to eat you, but frog eggs need to be deposited in water, in other words, on the ground. They solved this problem by bypassing the tadpole stage altogether, miniature adults emerging from eggs adhered to moist bark. These clawed frogs were very successful, speciating and diversifying, with one group developing an anatomical peculiarity that allowed it to advance even farther: the two lobes at the end of the tongue developed cartilaginous supports, becoming stiff, opposing claspers that could hold down larger prey, and restrict it's movement, lowering the risk of harm to the frog. Another adaptation to a diet of relatively large prey, like centipedes and smaller frogs was a more extensively ossified skeleton, and the windows in the skull from the eye sockets to the roof of the mouth were restricted, shielding their eyes from the struggling of prey in their jaws. The ancestral leopard frogs used their eyes to swallow, pulling them through the cranial windows to push food down the throat, but with these windows restricted, they needed a new way to swallow. Their solution was to develop muscles that pulled a pad of tissue backwards, toward the throat, that could push food into the esophagus in place of their newly-protected peepers. In freshwater, tadpoles filled many niches, small algae-eaters, larger omnivores, even specialist predators of other tadpoles, but the extremely large, aquatic frogs mentioned earlier have the biggest tadpoles of all, four foot eel-like predators with razor sharp beaks* that fed mostly on adult frogs of other species. While most tadpoles possess cartilage skeletons, which is easier to break down during metamorphosis, to support their predatory habits, these giant tadpoles had an ossified skeleton, stretching the metamorphic period to several weeks more than otherwise. They couldn't survive this long in a half-formed, non-feeding state without a period of lowered metabolic needs, so they gorged themselves as pre-metamorphic tadpoles, and then went into a state of torpor, using the energy stored as a tadpole to get them through, until they were anatomically adult. But there is one place free of leopard frogs, where they were never introduced to start with, cimexia. With all the ecological niches filled by frogs freed up, centipedes took advantage of the giant caterpillars that roamed in herds through the forests, hunting them and growing to seven feet long. But the caterpillars aren't defenseless, with barbed quills, caustic spines, and poisonous flesh. Other arthropods tried their luck to, roaches and histerid beetles being particularly successful, the latter becoming the main scavengers. The oceans originally didn't even have any eukaryotes introduced to them, much less fish, and now, the most common animals there are the marine descendants of freshwater copepods, now growing to four feet long in extreme cases, taking all niches except the ones taken by crayfish. Marine crayfish rule the seafloor, some burrowing in the rich, soft mud, others waving powerful pincers above their head, hoping to snag a passing copepod. But the saltwater ecosystem is still in flux, newcomers still pouring in from freshwater, and the ones already there shuffling their positions in the ecosystem, and even though the crayfish seemed to be the most influential ecological force in the oceans, copepods were soon to make a comeback... *Yes, tadpole have beaks. Edited by DINOCARID, Nov 11 2015, 03:10 PM.
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Check out my deviantart here Projects The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms The Tetrarch (coming soon) | |
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| Hybrid | Nov 1 2015, 05:20 PM Post #18 |
May Specula Grant you Bountiful Spec!
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Neither Heaven, Hell, Chaos, or Purgatory: but in Dreamtime. It's being reconstructed from the ground up, and since Adman has seemingly lost major interest in it, I'm doing it myself. However with other projects in the works, the progress isn't going very fast. Sorry for derailing the thread, by the way. |
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If I sound rude while critiquing, I apologize in hindsight! "To those like the misguided; look at the story of Man, and come to your senses! It is not the destination, but the trip that matters. What you do today influences tomorrow, not the other way around. Love Today, and seize All Tomorrows!" - Nemo Ramjet ﾉ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)ヽ 
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| Beetleboy | Nov 2 2015, 11:59 AM Post #19 |
neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Looks good! |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| DINOCARID | Nov 7 2015, 12:35 PM Post #20 |
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Adolescent
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Ten million years post-terraforming-thirty million years post-terraforming At thirty million years post-terraforming, parapangea had split into two large landmasses, manum and obcasia, with the eirdaltic ocean in between. An india-sized chunk had also split from the west of obcasia, persolia, and another, larger chunk from south-west obcasia, wimox. Cimexia had also drifted further eastward, ever nearer to the mainland. Ailanthus trees weren't the omnipotent rulers of the forests they used to be, a certain clover species having evolved that could resist ailanthones, quickly growing large enough to qualify as a tree, representing the first threat to the ailanthus trees since their mutual introduction to batrakia. Raspberry fruit were no longer recognizable as such, hard kernels arranged in a pinecone like fashion on the end of stalks, and tiny seeds carried on the wind by wispy filaments. Plantains were common in dry areas, filling the same ecological niche as grass. The giant dragonflies had expanded in number and diversity, their raptorial hind-limbs proving to be a very versatile tool, different species specializing on different prey, with corresponding limb morphology. Monarch bumblebees had evolved, flightless bumblebees that constructed five foot tall, cone-shaped nests out of wax reinforced with plant fibers, and featured many distinct castes, like soldiers, architects, nursemaids and others. The giant caterpillars had diversified, burrowers, tree-climbers and specialist plains-dwellers, expanding to fill the niches of herbivorous vertebrates. At roughly fifteen million years post-terraforming, a certain family of the clawed, arboreal frogs developed a pocket of fluid inside the tongue, with specialized musculature soon appearing around it. When these muscles were contracted, they pressurized the fluid, resulting a rapid extension of the tongue, allowing them to strike prey a full body-length from them. This family of ''tongue-shooters'' rapidly diversified, and started to deal with larger and more dangerous prey, placing them squarely at the top of batrakia's forest ecosystems, and necessitating a stronger skeleton and muscles. Their boneless belly in particular was vulnerable, so their sternum grew larger, and developed ''ribs'' that spread out and protected and held their internal organs. Being anchored only at the front, the pectoral girdle, their sternal ribs weren't well supported, so they developed cartilaginous links to the spinal chord, giving their whole body cavity a protective rigidity well-suited to their lifestyle, the cartilage links later becoming ossified into bone. This new family was unstoppable, many specialists expanding outward into niches their squishier cousins weren't as well suited for, as well as generalist arboreal niches. One type developed ovovivipary and internal fertilization, the young hatched inside the mother, their gelatinous egg casing dissolving before their birth, and soon, true vivipary evolved. The embryo was no longer coated in jelly, which by then had become an unnecessary waste of nutrients on the mother's part. All along their history from the original tongue-shooters to the live-bearers, they had speciated and branched into new groups, the other branches of the tree representing a significant portion of the diversity of modern batrakia. But there was yet another innovation to come, in the dry, south obcasia raspberry forests, for the keratinized foot skin of the new, viviparous frogs did not lose moisture to the substrate, and eventually more of their feet and legs were covered in a thin layer of keratin, preventing desiccation. But keratin prevents cutaneous respiration, and with less skin open to breath through, their other respiratory process needed to be more efficient. Before this point, all frogs breathed by opening their nostrils, closing off their lungs, inflating their throat sack with air from the nostrils, closing their nostrils, opening their lungs, deflating their throat sack, the air from it going into their lungs, inflating the throat sack again, closing off the lungs, opening the nostrils, deflating the throat sac, the air from it being exhaled out the nostrils*. This is a relatively laborious way to breath, and now that they had to rely almost entirely on it, improvement was needed. To solve this problem, the last segment of their sternum, the xiphisternum, lacking false ribs, became articulated, hinging up and down via specialized muscles. When it moved up, the xiphisternum squeezed the internal organs forward, compressing the lungs and expelling air. When the muscles relaxed, the sternum moved downwards, allowing the organs to slide back in place, the lungs expanding and taking in air. With this new, more efficient way of breathing, there was nothing stopping them from completely covering their skin in keratin, opening even more niches to them. Some of these came down from the trees, their legs becoming adapted to life on the ground. Their leg musculature changed, more suited for low-force, rapid-fire contraction then for the high-force muscles of their leaping ancestors. They were the first running frogs. They diversified quickly, some developed a sensitive, upturned snout to assist in leaf-litter foraging, and others became proficient swimmers, even ranging into saltwater. They became even more adapted to life on the ground, their claws straightening and the first digit on their forelimbs becoming atrophied. Their young were born with keratinized skin, a trait they previously lacked, and in the resulting adaptive radiation*, a single innovative species began to supplement it's insectivorous diet with fungi. There were no specific conditions to cause this, it was simply a chance mutation, but it was quickly taken advantage of, the extra nutrients from the plentiful mushrooms giving them a slight edge, and soon, there were forms that even consumed tender plant matter, composing as much as fifty percent of the diet of some species. The many descendants of the clawed frogs aside, They weren't the only inhabitants of batrakia, and the giant aquatic frogs of earlier times had developed considerably. A rift valley was formed as wimox split away from obcasia, rapidly filling with a large, warm lake, and as soon as the giant aquatic frogs reached it, they had access to space and resources they never had before. They grew even larger, their snouts distended until their head was crocodilian in shape, and their forelimbs degenerating to useless nubs. They were the apex predators of the lakes, hunting the diverse shoals of tadpoles, ten feet long being conservative for the largest species. But as wimox split away completely, the giant lake was flooded with saltwater, and the giant aquatic frogs disappeared. Their ancient, more terrestrial ancestors had survived though, becoming small, cryptic insectivores that hunted in the leaf-litter. The giant tadpoles of those aquatic frogs live in the deep parts of the rift valley lakes, taking several years to be ready to metamorphose, and growing to ten feet long. Other tadpoles didn't get quite as large as those, but filled many niches. A few were amphibious, squirming about on mud flats like worms, and others became burrowers, excavating tunnels in lakebeds, while some became huge algae-grazers the size of a dog. On cimexia, around fourteen million years post-terraforming, a species of giant caterpillar started to develop more carnivorous* tendencies. The conventional caterpillar body plan is not well adapted to quick movement, and their new hunting behaviour demanded short bursts of speed that were not possible for them. So they became slimmer, and shifted their weight onto their six true legs, their abdomens lifting off the ground, and their prolegs degenerating. The thin film of chitin covering their bodies thickened to support their weight, and their setae shortened into shark-like denticles. They still metamorphosed, but their subterranean pupal stage lasted up to a year, and the wingless adults only lived a few weeks, frantically scrambling to reproduce in that time. The new caterpillars were incredibly succesful, displacing almost all the giant arthropods on the island, including the giant centipedes that once preyed on them. Some reverted back to an herbivorous lifestyle, others became burrowers, climbers, trappers, or scavengers. They took cimexia by storm, and would go on to become some of the most derived arthropods of all time. Oceans and seas worldwide experienced a dramatic role-change in their ecology at around twelve million years post-terraforming. The copepods that were previously second in prevalence to crayfish had now taken over, thanks to one species with fish-like morphology that became extremely successful in open water. Their maxilla and maxillopods folded neatly against their ventral surface when not in use, but could be unfolded and used to capture and manipulate food items. Their first three pairs of legs were flattened into broad fins, the last two pairs reduced, and their urosome was thickened and well muscled, providing thrust. Their single eye widened into an ''ocular band'' that wraps around the front of the head, allowing them to see in front of themselves and to the side at the same time. The crayfish had been pushed out of many niches by these icthyocarids, but still maintained reasonable diversity, a few groups being able to retain water in their gills on land, becoming more terrestrial. *I hope that wasn't to confusing! *Yup. ANOTHER adaptive radiation. *Eupithecia are a genus of real carnivorous inchworms, and there are several other carnivorous lepidopteran larva. Edited by DINOCARID, Nov 25 2015, 09:55 AM.
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Check out my deviantart here Projects The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms The Tetrarch (coming soon) | |
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| Beetleboy | Nov 7 2015, 12:44 PM Post #21 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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This is brilliant! |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| DINOCARID | Nov 7 2015, 02:57 PM Post #22 |
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Adolescent
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Thanks, but i missed a lot, i forgot a lot... i'm gonna edit it majorly. |
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Check out my deviantart here Projects The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms The Tetrarch (coming soon) | |
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| DINOCARID | Nov 7 2015, 03:12 PM Post #23 |
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Adolescent
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All done! Just added more to the section about the aquatic frogs and the terrestrial frogs. Sorry about the double post by the way. |
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Check out my deviantart here Projects The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms The Tetrarch (coming soon) | |
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| revin | Nov 7 2015, 10:10 PM Post #24 |
Leonardo da Vinci at his finest
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Suggestion: Instead of repeating this at least three times over different projects, you could click the like button. It helps reduce clutter in the already hard to follow threads. |
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I tend to get dis– Hey, look, an elephant! Potentially an elephant Fire into Ice, a project about life on a rogue planet ejected from our own Solar System. Check it out! My spec evo YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/speculativeevolution With personal experience as a raven, I am a major proponent of conserving all corvid species at all costs. Save the endangered Mariana crow here. Please don't click.
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| Beetleboy | Nov 8 2015, 10:45 AM Post #25 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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I always do 'like' a post if I find it interesting, but I also like to express myself verbally. Personally I find it lazy to not just add a reply, since it is really heartening to see an actual reply instead of just a like if it is your project. I personally find it a great moral booster when someone tells me in a reply if they like it or not, rather than just click the like button. It shows that they can be bothered to do more than just click a button. That's just my personal feelings. But yeah, I suppose you're right, I really do need to stop just telling everybody that it is brilliant so much . . . and I guess if the topic was cluttered it would add to the mess. Anyway, now we're both cluttering the topic!  Do go on, Dinocarid. |
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| DINOCARID | Nov 13 2015, 06:43 PM Post #26 |
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Adolescent
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Thirty million years post-terraforming-fifty million years post-terraforming At fifty million years post-terraforming, obcasia and manum had moved farther away from each other, the eirdaltic ocean expanding between them. Wimox and persolia were completely separate from the mainland, carrying away animals from obcasia to evolve in isolation. Cimexia came nearer, and as it passed over a long since inactive volcanic hotspot on the sea bed, it took some volcanic rock with it, forming an isolated peninsula on the north side of the island. Ailanthus trees were stepping down from their throne, with a near-universal immunity to their germination inhibitors, ailanthones, developing in batrakia's plant community. Most found it no longer profitable to produce an herbicide that didn't even work, and lost their ability to make it, but some added to the mix of chemicals, a potent potion assured cause any seed within twenty feet of it to die before germinating, becoming the first hanging trees. The arthropods glory days were over too, the omnivorous frogs systematically stealing the niches the arthropods had so long ruled, but the giant roaches and caterpillars held their ground, and the monarch bees were doing better than ever before. At thirty four million years post-terraforming, the omnivorous frog's eardrums retreated into protective ear canals, and they lost their teeth, which only existed in the upper jaw, and replaced them with blades of heavily calcified bone. The blades could come together like scissors, chopping up food items, allowing the frogs which possessed them to process their omnivorous diet more efficiently. These ''chewing frogs'' were could process plant matter better than their ancestors, and they quickly became large browsers and plantain-eating grazers, but they and other chewing frogs had a problem: their necks. All frogs, and especially any frogs derived from ribbed frogs, have rather inflexible necks, so to forage from the ground, they were forced to crouch down, a posture that made them vulnerable to predators. One species solved this problem with their tongue, developing muscle clusters that allowed them to bend and curl the tongue, allowing them to simply extend their tongue and pick food items off the ground, with the assistance of keratin ''teeth'' on the opposing claspers. This newly dexterous tongue was very adaptable structure indeed, and was retained in their ancestors to this day. These ''arm-tongues'' spread all across obcasia, and island-hopped to manum just before it was too far away, making it to wimox and persolia as well. They radiated into many megafaunal niches, the derived herbivores displacing many giant caterpillars, and the carnivores, which shot their tongue at high speed into their prey's flank, and anchored themselves to it with the teeth on the end of their tongue, ensuring the prey cannot run off. The herbivores were hunted by newly-evolved carnivores, forming the first remotely complete, vertebrate-ruled ecosystem in batrakia's history. Other lineages of frogs evolved too, the saltwater ground frogs evolving a body adapted to marine life. Their webbed feet became four flippers, which alternated strokes for maneuverability, and the nostrils moved farther up the skull. Their young were born with a keratinized skin, like the adults, allowing them to control their chemical balance more easily in the briny oceans, a feature which arose independently of the other lineage which developed it. They became huge, twenty feet long at most, filling the niche of large toothed whales on earth. Tadpoles continued to diversify, but didn't show any major changes until thirty nine million years post-terraforming, when one species developed a genetic quirk: the ability to reproduce as a larva, or neoteny. No longer constrained by the need to metamorphose, the tadpoles could specialize, developing in ways that a normal tadpole never could. In average tadpoles, the skeleton is made up of cartilage and other soft tissues, allowing them to break it down faster, and absorb their tails and change skull morphology as quickly as possible, but these neotenic tadpoles, no longer forced to quickly restructure their bodies, could ossify their skeletons, allowing them to become larger and more powerful. As faster forms spread all across manum, their gill spiracle moved to under their body, improving streamlining. Their beaks became larger, and their lips degenerated, their heads now resembling a bird's. They could soon be found all over manum, filling all manner of niches inaccessible to their ancestors, with saltwater forms arising at forty eight million years post-terraforming. They presented an huge threat to the icthyocarids, and quickly overtook them, relegating their last members to specialist niches, never again to rule the oceans. On cimexia, the derived caterpillars had undergone several modifications to their larger size. Their tracheal system had developed two chambers running along their flanks, acting as junctions to which the rest of the tracheal system joined. These chambers could expand and contract, acting as pumps to move air through the tracheal system more efficiently. With the extra oxygen, they could become larger, and have a higher metabolism. They also developed a flexible internal support system similar to cartilage, so when they molted, they were not completely helpless, their rubbery internal skeleton allowing them to move around more than any other arthropod of their size, even immediately after shedding their exoskeleton. They still metamorphosed, but the adult form resembled a caterpillar more than a moth, heavy and wingless, dragging their distended abdomens around on tiny legs. The females were less mobile than the males, who mated only once before dying, as opposed to the females, who gathered semen from hundreds of males across her six-month adult life. The adults fed mainly on decaying organic matter, drinking the liquids that result from decomposition, but did occasionally drink nectar from specialized plantains. The icthyocarids were in the middle of a hayday when the vertebrate onslaught came, the giant filter-feeders and incredibly powerful carnivores all disappearing. Most of the few left were specialists, living on whatever the tadpoles didn't take. But the crayfish did better, holding their ground, and the more terrestrial species eventually became fully adapted to life on land, now known as the tree crabs, called so for their arboreal habits and crab-like appearance. Batrakia didn't have any coral introduced to it, but a species of algae became the next best thing. They constructed a calcium carbonate skeleton below them, and as more was added, the taller the structure became, with the algae perched on top, absorbing more sunlight than their relatives. They developed specialized cells, which built the calcium carbonate skeleton, and specialized photosynthesizers, that supplied the rest of the colony with food, and reproductive cells that spread the colony's genes. They diversified massively, an array of shapes, tubes, spheres, cylinders, antlers, needles, all appearing, covering the seafloor in the first algae reefs. Edited by DINOCARID, Nov 14 2015, 09:13 AM.
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| Beetleboy | Nov 14 2015, 10:39 AM Post #27 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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I like how we're seeing multiple time periods, that is a nice aspect. It allows us to see how over time the frogs adapt and evolve. |
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| DINOCARID | Nov 14 2015, 12:32 PM Post #28 |
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Adolescent
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Yeah, thanks... But i was kinda disappointed in this one... But yeah, i'm gonna do entries like these until we get to the time period i wanna focus on, and then i'll go region by region, giving each ecosystem a thorough description across several posts, then moving on to the next region. |
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Check out my deviantart here Projects The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms The Tetrarch (coming soon) | |
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| Beetleboy | Nov 16 2015, 11:24 AM Post #29 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Sounds good. I might have missed it, but are there are there any frogs capable of flight, or do you have plans for some? |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| DINOCARID | Nov 17 2015, 10:38 AM Post #30 |
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Adolescent
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I do have plans for them, but they'll come much later. |
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12:05 PM Jul 13