| 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. While unregistered users are able to browse the forum on a basic level, registering an account provides additional forum access not visible to guests as well as the ability to join in discussions and contribute yourself! Registration is free and instantaneous. Join our community today! |
| Terra Metropolis; The Future of Urban Sprawl | |
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| Topic Started: Jan 1 2016, 10:22 PM (12,950 Views) | |
| Sheather | Jan 1 2016, 10:22 PM Post #1 |
 
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 ~~~ The year is 2600. At present, after several centuries' of rise and then gradual fall, there are almost 8 billion people on our Earth, as society has spread to cover the Earth from pole to pole on every continent over the last few tens of thousands of years out from their ancestral Africa through Europe and Asia, to the Americas, and across the sea to Australia and countless islands. Antarctica came last, its true settlement only made possible in the last two centuries, when the formerly ice-bound southernmost continent was finally left habitable by a warming climate thanks to the enormous carbon emissions of the industrial age. This world, once temperate, is today predominately as warm and tropical as it's yet been since the Eocene, yet there are are no virgin rainforests left to show for it - at least of of any significance. Over the last six centuries, we have gone through the sixth major mass extinction in our planet's long history. We saw the seas emptied of life to fill our dinner plates and the jungle cleared for lumber, the casual destruction of thousands of species indirectly and hundreds more extinguished with calculated slaughter. We'd bring some back, at least in some variation, and realizing our grave errors too late, engineer superficial copies of the rest - even, once we had the technology, organisms that vanished before we set foot upon this Earth - but for most life would never be as it was before the dawn of man. It would still be centuries again before the world as a whole was ready to make the efforts needed to try and rebuild some semblance of the wilderness of the planet we'd scraped dry for our selfish needs, to give the majority anything more than an artificial captivity to call home, and change would only come after the darkest of days. War, famine, and societal collapse took many lives, but from the ashes we rebuilt again. In the end, we could never restore it to its former identity; too much was lost, unable to survive in the new world we built around theirs - or the opposite may have been true, ecosystems so altered by introduced organisms for so long that they adapted and become dependent upon the lifeforms that once threatened their existence. Our world is now a new one, far from perfect, but no longer one set upon a seemingly unstoppable path towards its utter obliteration. We are a species that, for all our faults, is here to stay - but that no longer means we can't share our world in a sustainable way. Through a combination of nature's timeless resilience to adversity and our newfound power to modify the very foundations of life as we know it to help it along, Terra Metropolis is the future of us all. The experimental colonies aside, we as a species are all bound to this little blue marble - Earth, our home - but one which we've only recently learned as a species requires as much attention going in as resources being pulled out to ever hope to be sustainable in the long run. As man and nature both learn to live side by side and with mutual give and take, not with a parasitic relationship neatly divided and single-sided, a new and promising chapter in the book of life begins today. Table of Contents
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 The Gaiaverse | Eden | Terra Metropolis | Life of the Sylvan Islands | Other Spec Evo | Sheatheria | Serina | The Last Dinosaur A Wholesome and Good Thing | Sam | | |
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| Dr Nitwhite | Dec 12 2016, 03:35 PM Post #121 |
Luddite
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No. It is imperative. We must all bark and scream as trained seals when an obscure reference is presented to us. It is our duty as citizens. Jokes (if you can call them that) aside, this is wonderful, it's great to see it back! Edited by Dr Nitwhite, Dec 12 2016, 04:22 PM.
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Speculative Evolution Projects- Other Relevant Work- Final SE Lifelist standings BREAKING NEWS We interrupt your regular programming to bring you this cutting edge report. ATTENDANCE DROPS DRASTICALLY ON SE SERVER This past Monday on Discord, famous server Speculative Evolution took a hit in the attendance office when it's offline member list suddenly reappeared. Mods scrambled to rectify the situation, but unfortunately there was little anyone could do. Server member Ivan was asked what he thought of the situation. "So long as Flisch, lord of machines and scion of Urborg lives, all will be well". SE, (in)famous for it's eccentric userbase, has recently been spiraling downward, and now we have hard conformation of the decline. Moderator "High Lord" Icthyander states "There is nothing to be concerned about, Discord is merely changing its UI again", but members are beginning to suspect the honesty of their staff. Stay tuned, we'll be back with more at 11. | |
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| Tartarus | Dec 13 2016, 01:24 AM Post #122 |
Prime Specimen
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Great to see Terra Metropolis getting updated again. There sure are some strange pets in this future world. |
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| Dakka! | Dec 13 2016, 03:20 AM Post #123 |
Prime Specimen
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You've done many amazing things with this world Sheather. But I have one teensy little query, where in Darwin's name are the finches!? Also, are there any "cool" animals like guard dogs or something? |
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"I was a Psychiatrist in Florida! For 3 weeks! Have you ever been to Florida?" Some project ideas The Future is Right Ediacaran Explosion Great Old Ones Skinkworld Unrelated:The Final Spec:What Could Have Been, And Still Can | |
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| Beetleboy | Dec 13 2016, 12:00 PM Post #124 |
neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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A few questions for you, Sheather, if you don't mind. Has there been any genetic modification in fish and insects designed as pets? If so, could you give us a/some examples? Are there any notable Australian pets, like say some strange kind of GM'd wallaby or something? What kind of wildlife is in the rivers and canals in the city? Anything new? |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| GlarnBoudin | Dec 13 2016, 02:48 PM Post #125 |
Disgusting Skin Fetishist
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Has anything been done with dinosaurs being released into the wild? I can only assume so, given the curiously ornithomimid-like goose creature in the project head. |
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Quotes Spoiler: click to toggle Co-creator/corporate minion for the Pop Culture Monster Apocalypse! My Projects Spoiler: click to toggle Coming Soon Spoiler: click to toggle My dA page. My Fanfiction.net page. | |
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| IIGSY | Dec 26 2016, 08:15 PM Post #126 |
A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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Well, he did mention genetically modified beetles and termites that were made to clean up plastic litter. |
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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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| Beetleboy | Dec 27 2016, 02:46 AM Post #127 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Yeah, but those don't really sound like pets. |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| Finncredibad | Dec 27 2016, 02:58 AM Post #128 |
Edgy and Cool
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I have gotten that reference (thanks YMS) |
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Favorite quotes Spoiler: click to toggle Projects and stuff Spoiler: click to toggle
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| Vorsa | Dec 27 2016, 08:13 AM Post #129 |
Mysterious tundra-dwelling humanoid
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I think that's just an ornithomimosaur from Eden. |
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My Deviantart: http://desorages.deviantart.com/ Birbs "you are about to try that on a species that clawed its way to the top of a 4 billion year deep corpse pile of evolution. one that has committed the genocide you are contemplating several times already. they are the pinnacle of intelligence-based survival techniques and outnumber you 7 billion to 1" - humans vs machine | |
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