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| 10 Million Years of Rain; An Age of Mud and Venom | |
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| Topic Started: Oct 27 2016, 06:46 PM (3,028 Views) | |
| Monster | Oct 27 2016, 06:46 PM Post #1 |
Space Oddity
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10 Million Years of Rain The Holocene is long over. The Earth has seen the dawn of a dozen new ages, and with each period came a plethora of fantastic creatures and landscapes. Empires rose and fell, beset by hardship and disaster. Humans, acidic oceans, ice ages,asteroids, a brutal volcanic winter, and desertification all took their toll over the millennia. Still, life flourishes, and for each lineage coldly snuffed out and reduced to dust and bones another emerges to take its place. Incredible, fragile and breathtakingly beautiful, life on Earth soldiers on through everything thrown at it. Diversifying, innovating and surviving. Our tour begins 200 million years from now. The supercontinent Ameurasia has largely broken up, and biodiversity has started to recover after the latest mass extinction event. A deadly combination of desertification, glaciation, colossal flood basalt eruptions and anoxic oceans made for a punishing 20 million years. Many once great clades did not survive. Tetrapods in particular were badly affected. Some of the most successful lineages of all time dwindled and were destroyed over the ages, finished off by the bleak and hostile deserts that engulfed the land. There was no refuge in the seas, and they grew stagnant and quiet. But it wasn't to last. As the new continents moved further and further apart, the rains came, and the swamps and forests reclaimed the ancient deserts. The Earth was once again a welcoming place for vertebrates. They filled every new habitat, taking advantage of this new abundance of fruits, flowers and insects. This is a now a hothouse world. Global temperatures average 30C, there are no ice caps and much of the planet enjoys high precipitation. Large areas of the former continents are now submerged beneath warm, shallow seas. The Ameurasian deserts are almost gone. Forests and wetlands spread (almost) pole to pole, accounting for most of the planet's terrestrial ecosystems. Megafauna is rare; the old mammalian megafauna has been absent for a long time. Instead, the forests teem with thousands of smaller species of mammal, bird, lizard and amphibian, most weighing less than 10kg. They slink and scurry in the shadow of the lizards, snakes and amphibians are taking their places as the new giants of this world . Giant fish patrol the waterways and wetlands. A host of strange winged creatures fill the skies and forest canopies. Some of these creatures would be familiar to us; others have no current equivalent. Even the trees in the vast forests would look odd to us. It is humid, swampy, lush and green. It has been like this for the last 10 million years. But things are slowly changing. The continents are becoming more isolated from each other. The climate is cooling, ever so slightly, and in places the forests are receding. Grasslands and tundra are encroaching, little by little. The beginnings of a new age of megafauna can be seen. Herds of grazing animals hint at the former glories of the Cenozoic Era. This is a world in transition. This project explores the wildlife, biogeography and ecology of this lush, changing, watery world. Contents Currently in order of posting; better organisation to come with increased volume of published material! Spoiler: click to toggle |
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Flashlights, nightmares, sudden explosions. 'active' {tumblr} {Veles} {10 Million Years of Rain] Commissions: Open. | |
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| Zorcuspine | Oct 31 2016, 05:28 PM Post #16 |
Enjoying our azure blue world
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I love the sheer variety of continents you've got going here. It'll be interesting to see how fauna on each one differs, sounds like a recipe for enormous biodiversity. |
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| Beetleboy | Nov 1 2016, 02:21 AM Post #17 |
neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Good work! |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| Monster | Nov 10 2016, 02:37 PM Post #18 |
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Space Oddity
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The Central Lowlands Middle Palustria  River delta, Eastern Winipek Basin lowlands, dry season. The day has started badly for one unfortunate Scaletoad. Sunning herself in the bamboo beds, she did not notice the silent approach of a large Bamboo Vampire Snail until it was too late. A lightening fast strike with its sharp, stiletto-like radula to the scaletoad's leg held her fast while the snail enveloped her with its powerful foot. Another stab from the radula, this time to scale toad's abdomen, and it was over for her. She struggled, but the snail's radula had pierced many of her internal organs and injected the snail's venom - death was quick from shock and blood loss. The venom, a mix of paralysing and anticoagulant agents, assists the snail in consuming the scaletoad's soft innards. In a few hours it will release the empty corpse and find a dry, dark place to digest the large meal. A young male Maned Deerhog enjoys a mid-morning wallow outside one of the entrances to a burrow, briefly disturbed by the rustling in the bamboo. For most of the year, this burrow is almost entirely flooded, and used only as temporary refuge to rest up on foraging trips and border patrols that take him far from his main den. Now, however, the water level is low enough to leave this, and most of his other dens, exposed and surrounded by a morass of thick, smelly mud. He is around the size of a badger, powerfully built and adapted for swimming and digging for roots, tubers and tender stems of wetland plants in the claggy soil and silty waters of these rich wetlands. The start of the dry season (or perhaps more accurately, low water season, for it never truly dries out here) is a good time for him - the receding waters may have exposed many of his dens, but they have also revealed many previously submerged sources of food and made it much easier to expand and repair burrows. He will enjoy this glut of easy food now and extra resting time now, but in a few short weeks it will be the rut. The newly regrown keratin sheaths on his ossicones and eyebrow ridges will have fully thickened up and will be put to good use ramming other males who come to challenge him for his territory. Behind him,a pair of Lesser Marsh Dergons look on, unsure of what to do. They had moved into the deerhog's apparently unused burrow to build a nest a few days previously, only to return from a foraging trip one morning to find it occupied by the sleeping male. He is far too powerful and aggressive for them to drive off, so they must choose between moving on and finding another empty burrow, or waiting for him to leave again. Time is of the essence for them, as they must raise their chicks before the water levels rise and flood their nesting burrows once again. Bursting out of the cover of the bamboo, a male Flider sees off a rival male. His territory may be many times smaller than the deerhog's, but he will defend it to the death if need be. One he is sure this invader has gone, he will resume patrolling the bamboo stands, looking for flightless females to sing to. |
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Flashlights, nightmares, sudden explosions. 'active' {tumblr} {Veles} {10 Million Years of Rain] Commissions: Open. | |
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| Beetleboy | Nov 10 2016, 02:46 PM Post #19 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Wonderful work Monster. Still my favourite project on the forum, and always will be, there's just a particular feel to 10 Million Years of Rain which is really appealing.  Also, are those flying spiders I see? Look kind of like jumping spiders, which would make sense as an ancestor for a flying species.
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| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| Dr Nitwhite | Nov 10 2016, 05:04 PM Post #20 |
Luddite
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Those fliders in particular look interesting. Great work! |
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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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| Sphenodon | Nov 10 2016, 05:14 PM Post #21 |
Calcareous
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Excellent picture, excellent post! I'm presuming the dergons are crocodilians or varanids? |
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We have a Discord server! If you would like to join, simply message myself, Flisch, or Icthyander. Some of my ideas (nothing real yet, but soon): Refugium: A last chance for collapsing ecosystems and their inhabitants. Pansauria: A terraforming project featuring the evolution of exactly one animal - the marine iguana. Mars Renewed: An insight into the life of Mars thirty million years after its terraforming by humankind. Microcosm: An exceedingly small environment. Alcyon: A planet colonized by species remodeled into new niches by genetic engineering. Oddballs: Aberrant representatives of various biological groups compete and coexist. ..and probably some other stuff at some point (perhaps a no K-T project). Stay tuned! | |
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| HangingThief | Nov 10 2016, 05:18 PM Post #22 |
ghoulish
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Those fliders do indeed look interesting. They also look identical to a concept I was too lazy to write up for my project. Except they didn't soar around defending territories like dragonflies, they just fluttered short distances to capture prey. |
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Hey. | |
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| lamna | Nov 10 2016, 06:08 PM Post #23 |
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Fantastic, looking forward to more of this. |
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Living Fossils Fósseis Vibos: Reserva Natural 34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur. [flash=500,450] Video Magic! [/flash] | |
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| CaledonianWarrior96 | Nov 10 2016, 07:56 PM Post #24 |
An Awesome Reptile
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Really great work there. You have however created an arachniphobe's greatest fear; flying spiders |
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Come check out and subscribe to my projects on the following subforums; Future Planet (V.2): the Future Evolution of Life on Earth (Evolutionary Continuum) The Meuse Legacy: An Alternative Outcome of the Mosasaur (Alternative Evolution) Terra Cascus: The Last Refuge of the Dinosaurs (Alternative Evolution) - Official Project - Foundation The Beryoni Galaxy: The Biologically Rich and Politically Complex State of our Galaxy (Habitational Zone) - Beryoni Critique Thread (formerly: Aliens of Beryoni) The Ecology of Skull Island: An Open Project for the Home of King Kong (Alternative Universe) The Ecology of Wakanda: An Open Project for the Home of Marvel's Black Panther (Alternative Universe) (Click bold titles to go to page. To subscribe click on a project, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "track topic" on the bottom right corner) And now, for something completely different
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| Monster | Nov 11 2016, 06:20 AM Post #25 |
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Space Oddity
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Wow, thanks for the nice comments everyone! First, yes, dergons are varanids! Second, yeah, the fliders are flying salticid spiders. I felt that of current spiders, they are the best candidates for developing powered flight rather than gliding or ballooning behaviours. It seemed to me that their morphological diversity and many of their behaviours lent themselves to developing flight - generally high-energy highly vision based lifestyles,well developed jumping abilities and frequent occurrence of complex leg-waving behaviours. Jumping spiders do a lot of interesting things with their legs aside from jumping.
I didn't imagine dragonfly type behaviour would be common for the fliders . I was thinking more of short flights to escape danger, chase after conspecifics or capture prey slightly out of jumping range with a good handful of more skilled aerial hunting specialists, frugivores and pollinators in there too.
I did ask for ideas for a better name on a non-SE related board and social media and received some very negative reactions to the idea! Not idea how I ended up being friends with so many arachnophobes..! |
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Flashlights, nightmares, sudden explosions. 'active' {tumblr} {Veles} {10 Million Years of Rain] Commissions: Open. | |
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| CaledonianWarrior96 | Nov 11 2016, 06:50 AM Post #26 |
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An Awesome Reptile
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Well personally I love spiders, and your flying spiders are fantastic. If only people could learn how good spiders actually are, especially house spiders |
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Come check out and subscribe to my projects on the following subforums; Future Planet (V.2): the Future Evolution of Life on Earth (Evolutionary Continuum) The Meuse Legacy: An Alternative Outcome of the Mosasaur (Alternative Evolution) Terra Cascus: The Last Refuge of the Dinosaurs (Alternative Evolution) - Official Project - Foundation The Beryoni Galaxy: The Biologically Rich and Politically Complex State of our Galaxy (Habitational Zone) - Beryoni Critique Thread (formerly: Aliens of Beryoni) The Ecology of Skull Island: An Open Project for the Home of King Kong (Alternative Universe) The Ecology of Wakanda: An Open Project for the Home of Marvel's Black Panther (Alternative Universe) (Click bold titles to go to page. To subscribe click on a project, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "track topic" on the bottom right corner) And now, for something completely different
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| Beetleboy | Nov 11 2016, 12:22 PM Post #27 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Gotta agree with CaledonianWarrior. Those little spiders have immediately become one of my favourite spec creatures. |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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| Vorsa | Nov 11 2016, 12:23 PM Post #28 |
Mysterious tundra-dwelling humanoid
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Spider-flies? Awesome! I though that they were just gliders but this is definitely much better and much more interesting. |
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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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| Monster | Nov 11 2016, 12:25 PM Post #29 |
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Space Oddity
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Well I guess I will be posting more thoughts on the Fliders next then 
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Flashlights, nightmares, sudden explosions. 'active' {tumblr} {Veles} {10 Million Years of Rain] Commissions: Open. | |
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| Beetleboy | Nov 11 2016, 12:28 PM Post #30 |
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neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Don't feel forced to do the fliders. Do whatever you want to do. |
| ~ The Age of Forests ~ | |
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