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| Batrakia; The world of the frogs. | |
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| Topic Started: Oct 29 2015, 04:11 PM (3,443 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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| Corecin | Apr 6 2016, 01:48 PM Post #61 |
Prime Specimen
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This is a neat project, you should get some people you trust and help them come up with ideas for your project, so it's still relevant. |
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| DINOCARID | Apr 7 2016, 11:15 AM Post #62 |
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Adolescent
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Err, i dunno... I'll think about it, maybe i could collaborate with beetleboy next winter, but i'm not sure. |
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Check out my deviantart here Projects The Fieldguide to Somnial Organisms The Tetrarch (coming soon) | |
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| Beetleboy | Apr 7 2016, 11:55 AM Post #63 |
neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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I'd be up for that, if I aren't too busy. Of course, it's your project and you've got a whole year to think about it. |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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