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1 Million years AD; The strange unfamiliar world of the not so distant future
Topic Started: Dec 23 2015, 04:28 AM (6,505 Views)
El Dorito
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Most future evolution projects take place in the more distant future, over 5 million years away. But life can evolve and change over much shorter timescales. This especially applies after extinction events. Only a few hundred thousand years after the K-Pg extinction, Palaeocene mammals had already become larger than any known Mesozoic mammal.

Today, a similar, though as yet less severe extinction event is taking place. Already most of the megafauna that existed for the past several million years have gone extinct, leaving niches open. The only things keeping them open are human activities and time. But history and common sense tell us that at some point in the next thousand years our planetary civilisation will probably collapse, largely eliminating the main factor stopping life carrying on.

Fast forward 1 million years, and the 'wild' is again the normal state of the earth. The oceans have risen some 80 metres due to human induced climate change, for the same reason most of the worlds ice is gone too. Several super volcanoes have erupted, and the last remnants of the modern 'concrete jungle' have crumbled. Humans are rare, and are considerably different to 21st century people. They are no longer a significant force effecting the earth.

Some groups of animals are identical to those we are familiar with, some are similar but obviously different, and a few are unlike anything found in the modern era. This is the world in 1 million years AD.
Edited by El Dorito, Jan 5 2016, 08:55 PM.
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Zorcuspine
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I would strongly suggest the time frame in this project to 5 or 10 million years in the future. It gives you enough leeway to actually do stuff in this project, without completely destroying the "near-future" premise.
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El Dorito
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Agriculture and the invention/discovery of effective medicine were definitely a major step in our evolution.



Water monitors don't have webbed feet because they don't use their feet to swim, unlike otters.

In the picture the thing actually has visible hands and claws, they didn't show up because I smudged it accidently, and didn't outline the drawing in marker pen like I did with the Tremendosaurus. Also merten's water monitors already have a flattened tail, with a fin-like upper surface. This is basically that but with a bit more fin in the middle. It doesn't take 10 million years to do that. Anyway the whole point of this project was to explore a time period that is often ignored.

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If you look at mammals from 50 million years ago, almost none of them were even closely related, let alone similar, to things found now.


What I meant with this is that many of the early Eocene mammals weren't closely related to mammals alive now. I didn't say they weren't related to each other.
Edited by El Dorito, Dec 26 2015, 02:36 AM.
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Bruno01
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El Dorito
Dec 26 2015, 02:35 AM
Water monitors don't have webbed feet because they don't use their feet to swim, unlike otters.
If they don't use them to swim, then doesn't make sense that the feet evolve into flippers.
Edited by Bruno01, Dec 26 2015, 08:54 AM.
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Agriculture and the invention/discovery of effective medicine were definitely a major step in our evolution.

Possibly, but it wasn't natural selection itself that led to us being taller than we were a few centuries ago.

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Water monitors don't have webbed feet because they don't use their feet to swim, unlike otters.

Then why do you expect them to evolve flippers in only 1 million years? Even crocodilians have webbed feet, but it's not like they swim with only their limbs.

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In the picture the thing actually has visible hands and claws, they didn't show up because I smudged it accidently

How do you smudge that amount of detail from what seems to be pencil? There is nothing on the picture that suggests there was supposed to be claws and fingers on the limbs. They look like you drew them as flippers rather than webbed feet or something.

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Also merten's water monitors already have a flattened tail, with a fin-like upper surface.

Not anymore than other water monitor lizard tails. None of them seem to have a fin-like structure on their tail, they're just flattened to form a paddle. If you were talking about members of the Hydrosaurus genus I would believe you, but you're not.
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this is basically that but with a bit more fin in the middle.

No, it's straight up a mosasaurian tail fluke rather than what an aquatic monitor lizard would have in only 1 million years.

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It doesn't take 10 million years to do that.

It would take more than 1 million years for that level of adaptation to an aquatic lifestyle.
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El Dorito
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The thing I had in my head was less mosasaurian than what might be shown on the picture. I was going for something like this, but i'm not as good an artist (and I don't have photoshop for finer details and texture) so it turned out more like a fully marine mosasaur than a semiaquatic lizard. Also in my drawing the claws are small, and the pencil was kind of blunt when I got to drawing them, so it wasn't as hard to smudge as you might think.

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El Dorito
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Moving on once again (seriously)

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The Dongo, Canis maximus

Dogs are 'mans best friend' (unless you are a cat person or something), and they have gone pretty much everywhere that we have. Originally dogs were domesticated from grey wolves about 40,000 years ago, and since then they have become feral on every continent except Antarctica (for obvious reasons). Often feral dogs will hybridize with native canids, often resulting in the native species becoming endangered. One of the places this has had a major effect is in Australia, where purebred dingoes are almost nonexistant now. While dingoes are technically domestic dogs themselves, they are completely wild and only rarely do they interact significantly with people. It seems that eventually every dingo will be at least part feral dog, and when animals hybridize they can take on characteristics that neither of the originals had, for example size.

In 1- 2 million years time, the descendants of dingo-dog hybrids have evolved into a new species of canid, the dongo ('dog+dingo'), or Canis maximus. While it is not the largest canid to have ever existed, nor is it the only large canid to exist at the time, it is still the largest mammalian carnivore to exist in Australia, being about 1 metre tall at the shoulder, and about 1.5 metres long, and in large individuals, a weight of 50 kg or more.

Strangely, even though both dingoes and domestic dogs are highly social, dongos are largely solitary as large adults. However, when hunting something that is particularily dangerous like a 'giant' kangaroo or water buffalo, they will work together. They will also stand their ground as a group when confronted by larger monitor lizards like tremendosaurus.
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Bruno01
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Dec 27 2015, 12:03 AM
However, when hunting something that is particularily dangerous like a 'giant' kangaroo or water buffalo, they will work together.
There isn't any buffalo or water buffalo in Australia. How could the dongos hunt them?
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ForceofHabit
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They're probably descended from the invasive feral water buffaloes already present in Australia.
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This probably sounds very lazy, but, if you went with the idea of changing this to be around 5 to 10 million years in the future, why not use sea snakes as your aquatic reptile? As cliche as they would sound, they are adapted entirely for aquatic life. It would work better than your water monitor. Just make sure there isn't anything that could take potential niches the sea snakes could take. If cetaceans died off entirely for instance, I imagine some fish could take some of the niches easier, and maybe if it is not too bad, maybe pinnipeds and otters could take some niches as well. Manatees would likely die off in an event that would wipe out cetaceans.
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Dragonthunders
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The thing I had in my head was less mosasaurian than what might be shown on the picture. I was going for something like this, but i'm not as good an artist (and I don't have photoshop for finer details and texture) so it turned out more like a fully marine mosasaur than a semiaquatic lizard. Also in my drawing the claws are small, and the pencil was kind of blunt when I got to drawing them, so it wasn't as hard to smudge as you might think.

Even so, it seems an adaptation that probably takes more a million years to evolve.
On the other hand it had not been difficult to make small triangles or semicircles for claws, would be notable, the drawing in the picture is quite clear, you can even understand the text.

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This probably sounds very lazy, but, if you went with the idea of changing this to be around 5 to 10 million years in the future, why not use sea snakes as your aquatic reptile? As cliche as they would sound, they are adapted entirely for aquatic life.

Actually it is not quite cliche, it probably proves to be an interesting concept to explore, imagine marine snake populations increase thanks to the disappearance of most of the competition, but, there would also chances that sharks would be out there too.
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Dec 27 2015, 01:24 PM
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The thing I had in my head was less mosasaurian than what might be shown on the picture. I was going for something like this, but i'm not as good an artist (and I don't have photoshop for finer details and texture) so it turned out more like a fully marine mosasaur than a semiaquatic lizard. Also in my drawing the claws are small, and the pencil was kind of blunt when I got to drawing them, so it wasn't as hard to smudge as you might think.

Even so, it seems an adaptation that probably takes more a million years to evolve.
On the other hand it had not been difficult to make small triangles or semicircles for claws, would be notable, the drawing in the picture is quite clear, you can even understand the text.

Quote:
 
This probably sounds very lazy, but, if you went with the idea of changing this to be around 5 to 10 million years in the future, why not use sea snakes as your aquatic reptile? As cliche as they would sound, they are adapted entirely for aquatic life.

Actually it is not quite cliche, it probably proves to be an interesting concept to explore, imagine marine snake populations increase thanks to the disappearance of most of the competition, but, there would also chances that sharks would be out there too.
Marine snakes would probably thrive and diversify if the planet warmed up and the oceans became more suitable for the cold blooded serpents. I mean they probably could florish in warm waters in one million years time like Australia, India, the Carribean sea and so on but they would thrive better in warmer climates. Even with the threats of larger predators like sharks they could still do well. The ancestors of mosasaurs were small and prey to sharks but they thrived and even became the apex predators of the Cretaceous seas. I'm not saying sea snakes would be as big as 20 - 60 feet like some mosasaurs or as foracious but there's always a tiny possibilities.

What I'm talking about though would take millions of years, like maybe 10 - 15 million or around about that time range
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El Dorito
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Evolution happens very quickly if there is a good reason. For an adaptable animal like a monitor lizard, having your original habitat become flooded over the course of 1000 years or something is probably a pretty good reason to change. Maybe it would take more than 1 million years for such a lizard to become completely aquatic, but I didn't specifically say the paddlesnake is fully aquatic, did I...

I get that sea snakes already live completely in the ocean, but snakes don't have the kind of bite that monitors have, and are very set on venom as their main weapon (the weird one that doesn't have venom is really specialized and would probably go extinct in the sort of changes happening here). Flippers/fins are also useful in keeping a large animal stabilized when swimming. its not a problem when you are small, but above a certain size it can become a important.

I dont really get how evolving flippers can get such an argument going. I was expecting to start a riot by creating the Tremendosaurus... as yet not even a single mention of it.
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For an adaptable animal like a monitor lizard, having your original habitat become flooded over the course of 1000 years or something is probably a pretty good reason to change.

But the monitor lizard you're deriving from are already semi-aquatic, they wouldn't need to change that much if it's only flooded. If it's flooded that badly they would move to more comfortable areas where there's enough land.

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Flippers/fins are also useful in keeping a large animal stabilized when swimming. its not a problem when you are small, but above a certain size it can become a important.

Who says the snakes couldn't evolve some substitute or do something to solve that problem?

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I was expecting to start a riot by creating the Tremendosaurus... as yet not even a single mention of it.

That's a bit too derived, but not much compared to an already flippered monitor lizard.
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LittleLazyLass
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OK, El Dorito, I know this certainly isn't the first time you've done aquatic monitor lizards, and looking back at those I must point out that the Seal Goana lived as far as five million years in the future, did it not? This is something more derived than that evolving in fifth the amount of time.

Actually, looking at the seal goana page again, a slightly more aquatic version of something like that seems more or less reasonable for the timeframe here. Whereas the described creature here seems like something that would evolve a tad closer to the timeframe the original seal goana lived in.

Most people here probably won't have two clues what I'm talking about, but KaptainWombat should.

edit: Oops, nameslip there. KaptainWombat refers to El Dorito.
Edited by LittleLazyLass, Dec 27 2015, 11:00 PM.
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El Dorito
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Yes, well I did say in the description of the paddlesnake that it wasn't the first time I had thought about aquatic monitors. Except these ones aren't going to take over the seas (probably anyway).

I'm guessing that no-one here objects to what is basically a re-evolved megalania then. Slightly surprised at that.
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