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| Batrakia; The world of the frogs. | |
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| Topic Started: Oct 29 2015, 04:11 PM (3,445 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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Check out my deviantart here Projects The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms The Tetrarch (coming soon) | |
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| DINOCARID | Nov 27 2015, 11:11 AM Post #46 |
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Adolescent
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I know how, and i've posted pictures for the library, so go see those too. |
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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 27 2015, 11:13 AM Post #47 |
neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Oh yeah, sorry, forgot about those. |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| Nyarlathotep | Dec 3 2015, 07:43 PM Post #48 |
The Creeping Chaos
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Can't wait to see what the next era has in store 
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| DINOCARID | Dec 3 2015, 08:35 PM Post #49 |
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Adolescent
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I'm about halfway through writing it, but that doesn't mean it will come soon, though i hope it does. |
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Check out my deviantart here Projects The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms The Tetrarch (coming soon) | |
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| Beetleboy | Dec 4 2015, 08:43 AM Post #50 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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There's no rush, but I can't wait to see the next update, whenever it comes! Remember, do it in your own time. |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| DINOCARID | Dec 19 2015, 10:32 AM Post #51 |
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Adolescent
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Fifty million years post-terraforming-eighty million years post-terraforming At eighty million years post-terraforming, obcasia and manum continue to move apart, and a substantial chunk of obcasia is separating, moving eastward. Particularly salt-tolerant plantains became mangrove-analogues, their aerial roots elevating their stumpy trunks twenty feet off the ground. The hanging trees are now all over batrakia, little islands of botanical death radiating from their root system. The giant caterpillars have lived past their glory days, as had all giant insects, now reduced to specialist niches as herbivorous frogs continued to radiate. At fifty six million years post-terraforming, a few small arm-tongues in manum had developed small, circular ''scales'', that toughened their skin. These scales gave them a competitive edge, and they soon expanded, filling many niches in the newly frog-ruled ecosystem, making it to obcasia via rafting. Their scales made them very successful, and wave after wave of megafaunal frogs were descended from them, more and more derived, continually becoming better and better at passing on their genes. One of these lineages developed extended parental care around sixty eight million years post terraforming in south manum, their tiny young requiring close attention. While this increased infant survival, with the young's parents sticking around to protect them, there was a major flaw in the system: the parents had to leave their young to find food. While some solved the problem by alternating parents, the father and mother switching roles as food-finder and baby-protector, one developed a gland in it's cloaca that exuded a protein-rich secretion to feed the developing young. To avoid fecal contamination, the gland migrated outside the cloaca, extending into a ''nipple'' that the young could feed from. By expanding their throat, the babies could crudely suck the teat, but the suction didn't work well without a sealed mouth, leading to a major innovation: lips. The primitive toothplate-covering tissue was muscularized, so the young could seal it's mouth against the mothers teat. The lips were sensitive, versatile, and even had taste buds on their external surface, and adults soon began to retain them, using them to test food items before consumption, food manipulation, and communication in the form of bared toothplates. They spread across the two continents, taking the feet out from under any competitors who might stand in their way. In north manum, a few nippled frogs extended their scales into overlapping diamonds, similar to snake scales. These scales had a side effect: in some species in which the scales were well-curved, the scales trapped pockets of warm air against the skin, insulating them against the cold of the far northern nights. The scales developed hairy fringes to seal warm air in better, and became thinner and more flexible, indistinguishable from feathers at a distance. They were warm-blooded frogs. But they did not take over the world. Instead, they were small, nocturnal insectivores wherever they occurred in obcasia and the south half of manum, only becoming larger than a raccoon at the northern extreme of manum, where there was no competition from the cold-blooded frogs. It was a tropical world, and endothermy simply wasn't that great an advantage. The giant marine frogs were still going strong, and their evolutionary path had led them to become gigantic super-predators. Aside from these forty-foot giants, there were also bottom-dredgers that ate hard-shelled animals, and swift hunters of toles (neotenic tadpoles). On cimexia, ecological turmoil was erupting. As the island drew nearer to obcasia, the first foreign seeds drifted on the waves from the far-eastward mainland. The cuttlebugs (derived caterpillars) weathered the botanical onslaught rather well, but the native plant life did not. Hundreds of species went extinct, not able to adapt quick enough to the new plants. These new trees were adapted to the higher energy ecosystem of obcasia, standing out like a sore thumb against the native, low-speed energy cycle. The cuttlebugs had survived, but this was only a taste of what was to come. The icthyocarids had survived the tole invasion in several ways, and plenty of the more conservative forms survived, but the others had adapted, becoming masters of specialized niches in order to survive. One such group was the clabs, a clade hardly recognizable as a copepod or even a crustacean. Their carapace enclosed their legs in the manner of clam shrimp, except un-hinged. Their feathery legs pulled a current of water througn the gap in the front, filtered food from it, and pumped it out the back. They had lost their eyes and mobility, most species only being able to swim as larvae, settling down like arthropod clams as they mature. The crayfish stayed as they were, and it served them well: eighty million years and they had barely changed, all staying mostly the same, except for the now completely terrestrial tree crabs. Edited by DINOCARID, Dec 19 2015, 12:24 PM.
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Check out my deviantart here Projects The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms The Tetrarch (coming soon) | |
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| Beetleboy | Dec 19 2015, 10:47 AM Post #52 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Great! |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| DINOCARID | Dec 19 2015, 12:06 PM Post #53 |
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Adolescent
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Thanks! |
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Check out my deviantart here Projects The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms The Tetrarch (coming soon) | |
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| Cephylus | Dec 19 2015, 12:12 PM Post #54 |
Torando of Terror
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First of all, great job. And secondly, a question; do the marine frogs also retain ectothermy? |
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| DINOCARID | Dec 19 2015, 12:21 PM Post #55 |
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Adolescent
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The larger ones rely on gigantothermy, and the smaller ones all live in tropical waters anyway. But they probably have some small capability to regulate internal temp.
Edited by DINOCARID, Dec 19 2015, 12:23 PM.
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Check out my deviantart here Projects The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms The Tetrarch (coming soon) | |
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| Beetleboy | Jan 10 2016, 11:22 AM Post #56 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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I'm really enjoying what you have so far. |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| DINOCARID | Apr 4 2016, 07:18 AM Post #57 |
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Adolescent
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I need to announce that batrakia might be over. It was fun in the winter, but now that it's summer, i need to be outside and alive, help my parents with the homestead, and actively educate myself. I'll still be here, but don't expect much more from me until it's winter again. Then batrakia might get revived. |
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Check out my deviantart here Projects The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms The Tetrarch (coming soon) | |
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| Finncredibad | Apr 4 2016, 08:01 AM Post #58 |
Edgy and Cool
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It's spring. Summer isn't here for two whole months. |
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Favorite quotes Spoiler: click to toggle Projects and stuff Spoiler: click to toggle
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| Beetleboy | Apr 4 2016, 10:46 AM Post #59 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Does it really matter, and was it really neccassary to nitpick his post? Besides, I think the point he was making was that during the nicer weather, he will not be updating the project. I don't blame him, always nice to stop staring at a screen and to get out. Have fun dinocarid, and I look forward to when this project returns. |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| DINOCARID | Apr 6 2016, 10:11 AM Post #60 |
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Adolescent
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Thanks. I'll be posting here and there so i'm not removed. You haven't got rid of me yet.
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Check out my deviantart here Projects The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms The Tetrarch (coming soon) | |
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