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.
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There hasn't been an entry about ray-finned fish in a while, so I'll just show you this clade still has a few more tricks up its sleeves (or, fins).
Enter the Waterfall climbing cave fish, or cave angelfish. Its name is super-straight forward: it climbs cave waterfalls using hooks on the undersides of its fins, sifting the water for bacteria and organic matter. They are only found in eight caves in Thailand, and the protection the government provides barely counts, as what really matters for keeping them alive is maintaining water quality and hydrographics, as well as minimizing disturbances. However, the Thai government has little restriction on agricultural methods and tourism of caves, which pollutes the water and causes major disturbances.
The thing that is perhaps the most interesting is that because of the high water flow, the fish can't move by hopping, which is what many other walking ray-finned fish do. Instead, it waddles in a fashion similar to an amphibian. As a result, scientists are interested in how it evolved this mechanism, as it could reveal more about the original migrating of fish onto land.
I just can't help but think about what this fish could do if it lived into the Erebozoic.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein
Also known as:
As long as I'm not offended, call me whatever you want
Maybe not as obscure as other animals here, but still needs more attention.
This magnificent horns once belonged to Eucladoceros , bush antlered deer, a genus of several species ranging from Europe to China. The animal in picture is a Eucladoceros dicranios from Europe.
The deer was up to 1,8 m tall in shoulders, while antlers had incredible 1,7 meter in width. While smaller than more famous Megaloceros it's antlers make it stand out. Looking like a well branched bush (like it's name) it's antlers must have been on hell of a sight. I know few hunters that would love to have a opportunity to hunt those, but that would be a waste of one magnificent life.
Projects (they are not dead, just updated realy slowly, feel free to comment): -World after plague After a horrible plague unleashed by man nature slowly recovers. Now 36 million years later we take a look at this weird and wonderful world. -Galaxy on fire. They have left their home to get out of war. They had no idea what awaits them.
-If something i say sounds racists or sexists, I AM NEITHER OF THOSE, it is language or cultural barrier, if you get offended please note me of that so i may correct myself. -English is not my native language, so gramar mistakes are expected, I will only accept your corrections if mistake makes comment unreadable, or if is something important like project post or com. Don't be a grammar-nazi, people dont like that. -I often use a common terms when writing, so yes I know birds are dinosaurs and that whales are cetaceans, no need to correct me i know that. -Sarcasm is something I commonly use in jokes, and before you get butthurt please check is it my sarcastic joke. -My goal is not to offend anyone, unless somebody is seriously getting on my nerves, and in that case all this is off!
Just a quick one. When we think about the Pleistocene we generally think of those in Europe and North Asia, the Americas and Australia.
Africa we generally think of as being as being a continent spared these extinctions. And while, thankfully we did not loose as much as we did elsewhere, Africa was not untouched.
Two very large species of bovids died out during this time.
The first is Megalotragus, it was a antelope related to wildebeest, bonteboks but most closely to hartebeest. Megalotragus was by far the largest member of Alcelaphinae, at 1.4 meres at the shoulder it was similar in size to kudu and eland. In addition to its large size, it had some very large, curved horns. Must have been quite the sight.
Pelorovis was a large cow, probably closely related to African buffalo. It too was a giant among its kind, one of the largest ruminants ever, with average animals weighing more than a tonne, and some bulls weighing as much as two tonnes. To give you an idea of how large these animals are, that's the same weight of black rhinoceros.
And like Megalotragus, it had some incredibly impressive horns to go along with it.
There is even rock art that may depict it.
So why did these animals die out when most of the rest of Africa's megafauna survived? Hard to say, though their large size and huge horns probably didn't help, along with a drying Africa and expanding human population.
A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
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Did the Pleistocene oceans also have large numbers of megafauna comparable to land?
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
"Arthropod respiratory systems aren't really "inefficient", they're just better suited to their body size. It would be quite inefficient for a tiny creature that can easily get all the oxygen it needs through passive diffusion to have a respiratory system that wastes energy on muscles that pump air into sacs. (Hence why lungless salamanders, uniquely miniscule and hyperabundant tetrapods, have ditched their lungs in favor of breathing with their skin and buccal mucous membranes.) But large, active insects already use muscles to pump air in and out of their spiracles, and I don't see why their tracheae couldn't develop pseudo- lungs if other conditions pressured them to grow larger."-HangingTheif
"Considering the lifespans of modern non- insect arthropods (decade-old old millipedes, 50 year old tarantulas, 100+ year old lobsters) I wouldn't be surprised if Arthropleura had a lifespan exceeding that of a large testudine"-HangingTheif
"Humans have a tribal mindset and it's not alien for tribes to war on each other. I mean, look at the atrocities chimpanzee tribes do to each other. Most of people's groupings and big conflicts in history are directly or obliquely manifestations of this tribal mindset."-Sceynyos-yis
"He's the leader of the bunch You know his Coconut Gun is finally back to fire in spurts. His Coconut Gun Can make you smile If he shoots ya it's firing in spurts. His Coconut Gun Is bigger, faster, stronger too! He's the gun member of the Coconut Crew! HUH!
C.G.! Coconut Gun! C.G.! Co-Coconut Gun! Shoot yourself with a Coconut Gun! HUH!"-Kamineigh
"RIP, rest in Peytoia."-Little
"In Summary: Piss on Lovecraft's racist grave by making lewds of Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep.
Then eat arby's and embrace the void."-Kamineigh
"Dougal Dixon rule 34."-Sayornis
Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups
Just a quick one. When we think about the Pleistocene we generally think of those in Europe and North Asia, the Americas and Australia.
Africa we generally think of as being as being a continent spared these extinctions. And while, thankfully we did not loose as much as we did elsewhere, Africa was not untouched.
Two very large species of bovids died out during this time.
The first is Megalotragus, it was a antelope related to wildebeest, bonteboks but most closely to hartebeest. Megalotragus was by far the largest member of Alcelaphinae, at 1.4 meres at the shoulder it was similar in size to kudu and eland. In addition to its large size, it had some very large, curved horns. Must have been quite the sight.
Pelorovis was a large cow, probably closely related to African buffalo. It too was a giant among its kind, one of the largest ruminants ever, with average animals weighing more than a tonne, and some bulls weighing as much as two tonnes. To give you an idea of how large these animals are, that's the same weight of black rhinoceros.
And like Megalotragus, it had some incredibly impressive horns to go along with it.
There is even rock art that may depict it.
So why did these animals die out when most of the rest of Africa's megafauna survived? Hard to say, though their large size and huge horns probably didn't help, along with a drying Africa and expanding human population.
There are cave paintings in the Sahara which may indicate that Pelorvis and Sivatherium survived till at least 6000BC if not later. Pelorvis seems second only to Bison latifrons among the largest known bovids, and the latter outweighs a modern giraffe.
Don't forget the Carthaginian elephant and Atlas bear, both of which also died quite recently.
Forum user Uncanny Gemstar drew what is supposed to be a me. Thanks!
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As they walk in, they're greeted by a small, poorly kept pathway leading to a poorly constructed Japanese-style gate. Behind this, a small field made up of corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, among other plants is contrasted by large piles of books, as well as a few rather out of place looking laptops. Off in the corner, a small woman, with long, striped, and strikingly colorful socks, no shoes, unremarkable denim shorts, a large, fancy black coat, arm warmers, glasses, a tuque, and somewhat unkempt, mid-length blue-and-pink-streaked red hair, is rummaging through a trash bin, located behind a sign saying "employees only". She continues this for a while (walking behind a wall to change her outfit now and then), until one of her visitors coughs. Startled, she looks up, apologizes, and grabs a handful of textbooks and novels before daintily running off to join them.
What, you want me to tell you what these mean?
Predenterra The (Lost) Lost World The Standing World
Read First
Clarifications on my sex and gender Sorry if I come off as rude, I don't put much thought into word choice sometimes. I'm also super prone to editing my posts, sometimes multiple times, in the minutes following posting. For the love of god, take my posts from my earlier days on the forum with a grain of salt. I was not particularly knowledgeable or mature back then. Some of them are so cringe-worthy I can't even bring myself to look at them.
Words Maybe
Great Words
Words To Spec By
It would have to be something extremely alien, pushing the limits of our imagination. But those are always my favorite kinds of life. ~~The Words of The Xenologist
Words To Live By
Ignorance is never insulting if you're willing to learn, we're all ignorant about most things. ~~The Words of Lamna
Words I Live By
Yeah, and even if you don't agree with creationists on that concept, that doesn't mean they can't be decent people. I have friends who are creationist (possibly even young earth) that I get along with fine in general life. I don't think they're right of course, but that doesn't make them intellectual degenerates. ~~The Words of forbidden3
Member Quotes
jman123
Ass-breathing fish-lizards? Sounds like a punk rock band
Sheather
"Holy fucking shit a toilet paper roll! Our favorite thing!"
Urufumarukai
Tyrannosaurus aquastronka
Kamineigh
Myo, if you don't stop reading the YouTube comments...
Lamna
Are you saying what I think you're saying?
Sheather bathes in cum?
Cephylus
And last night I dreamed I was blowing up a Kindergarten with a grenade launcher for no particular reason...
revin
Oh, and of course more people get killed by selfies than by sharks. Of course.
The smell of rotting flesh really kills my appetite, surprising, but the visual appearance of corpses makes me hungry. Is that weird?
Ebervalius
I mean, let us say I'm a genderfluid blurflux demi-romantic woman who is sexually attracted to men, but only if they are Melanesian and have a voice like that of Nicholas Cage. Okay, so what?
trex841
When I first saw that picture, I thought you were dissecting a condom.
Mr Mysterio
All hail Robo-Stalin.
Peashyjah
Seems like everything in this project is now dead.
Stealth Rock
Seagulls are pretty much trees, right?
Watcher
We all must finish chapters of our lives to go on to the next. Sometime this means leaving behind versions of ourselves that don't want to die.
Yiqi15
For April fool's, we had to make an orgasm that resembled a human foot.
Flisch
im the black market
CaledonianWarrior96
He was a skater birb, she said tweet you later birb
Most People at Some Point
Quotes
Some dude called plucas1 from Youtube comments
Funny, isn't it, that our world needs Clark Kent a lot more than Superman.
Xenoblade Chronicles
Even though he is our creator, that does not afford him the right to take our lives on a whim. But that is the thinking of a homs. He is a god. Such morals cannot apply to gods. So you think we should just shut up and die?! If that is the fate decided by a god. You are mistaken if you think we will simply accept such a fate and wait to die. We'll never stop fighting. Not till the end. To Zanza, the outcome is the same. Thus your logic is flawed.
Hades - Kid Icarus Uprising
When freaky aliens give you lemons, make freaky alien lemonade.
Kid Icarus Uprising
But Souls are delicious. They're like bacon - they taste good on anything. But if you eat them, you completely remove them from existence! They can't move on or... or be reincarnated! Huh. I never really gave it much thought. Besides, what do you mean by reincarnation anyway? You know, being reborn as someone or something else. Which means different body, different memories, different experiences, yes? So isn't being reborn as "something else" the same as being "removed from existence"? I... I... eating souls isn't right! That depends on your definition of "right". All living things survive by eating other living things. So what? You're a god. You should be above all that! Gods are above living things, which doesn't necessarily mean we care about them.
Blame is the playing of children and is given to many like a gift that cannot be returned. Acceptance is the tool of the mature that is rarely loaned out.
African megafaunal extinctions have been linked to better hunting tool technology.
The Canary Island Big Bird. The Canary Islands are perhaps not as famous for their native wildlife as they should be, eclipsed by other island chains like Hawaii and the Galapagos.
But one animal that lived there is fantastically mysterious, as the only remains we have are large egg shells from the Miocene.
What laid them is a real mystery, some have suggested they could be Pelagornithid eggs, but generally they are regarded as belonging to a Ratite.
Originally they were described as being elephant bird eggs, because of the large pore size, though that is probably just because they are big eggs, not because a Madagascan bird also lived on the Canary Islands.
"god knows you will finally see,scars will heal but were meant to bleed
Also known as:
Archeo or that guy who misspells
canarias also had one of the fewfligtgless paserines
Astarte an alt eocene world,now on long hiatus but you never know Fanauraa; The rebirth of Aotearoa future evo set in new zealand after a mass extinction coming soon......a world that was seeded with earth´s weridest and who knows what is coming next...........
" I have to know what the world will be looking throw a future beyond us I have to know what could have been if fate acted in another way I have to know what lies on the unknown universe I have to know that the laws of thee universe can be broken throw The Spec I gain strength to the inner peace the is not good of evil only nature and change,the evolution of all livings beings" "
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coming soon......a world seeded by outcast clades and some important easily forgotten ones.the world of the caecilians and company and who knows what is coming next...........[comming soon/spoiler]
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Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Lyvatan The Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the newbies would tell you. It’s a forum legend. Lyvatan was an admin of the forum, so powerful and so wise he could use science to influence the human imagination to create life… He had such a knowledge of the forum that he could even keep the ones he cared about from leaving.Speculative Evolution is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. He became so powerful… the only thing he was afraid of was losing his admin power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice banned him while he was offline. Ironic. He could save others from leaving the community, but not himself.
Speccer´s Quotes "The moral of the story: never trust a catfish"-Bettleboy
Did the Pleistocene oceans also have large numbers of megafauna comparable to land?
No it didn't. The loss of coastal habitat during the Pliocene caused an earlier marine extinction including most sirenians, megalodon, Thalassocnus, pelagornids and desmostylians. Apart from the extinctions of island nesting tubenoses there were no anthropogenic extinctions of marine tetrapods till the early modern period. Save possibly two marine otters on Sardinia and now there is a flightless eider that are left to explain, but the Channel Island auk and Chendytes are thought to have died out because of climate change owing to their long coexistence with the native people and the actual timing of their disappearence date.
lamna: eggshell morphology can discriminate neognaths from palaeognaths.
Nyarlathotep: This paper summarises the Pleistocene/Holocene extinctions and their dates. Pelorovis probably got to the mid Holocene before facing competition from pastoralists and their domestic herds. Oddly there are no dates given for Holocene sivathere material despite its presence in the rock art making a cryptid. In the Cameroonian savannahs a large folkloric animal with "six horns" (ossicones?) is referred to as the ngoubou and it might plausibly refer to the Saharan Sivatherium. Then there is the curious Songhai word for camel (*yo) which is not loaned from other languages and suggests the Pleistocene wild camel of Africa may have survived into the Holocene near the Sahara. Iwo Eluru is a fossil hominin of very late date perhaps early Holocene, that has been interpreted as a female counterpart of Kabwe: historically Kabwe was interpreted as a so-called African Australoid but Kabwe and Iwo Eluru are clearly too archaic for crown H. sapiens. Unlike the end Pleistocene extinction event other continents where hindgut fermenters and browsers were worst hit, African extinctions were mostly ruminant.
There hasn't been an entry about ray-finned fish in a while, so I'll just show you this clade still has a few more tricks up its sleeves (or, fins).
Enter the Waterfall climbing cave fish, or cave angelfish. Its name is super-straight forward: it climbs cave waterfalls using hooks on the undersides of its fins, sifting the water for bacteria and organic matter. They are only found in eight caves in Thailand, and the protection the government provides barely counts, as what really matters for keeping them alive is maintaining water quality and hydrographics, as well as minimizing disturbances. However, the Thai government has little restriction on agricultural methods and tourism of caves, which pollutes the water and causes major disturbances.
The thing that is perhaps the most interesting is that because of the high water flow, the fish can't move by hopping, which is what many other walking ray-finned fish do. Instead, it waddles in a fashion similar to an amphibian. As a result, scientists are interested in how it evolved this mechanism, as it could reveal more about the original migrating of fish onto land.
I just can't help but think about what this fish could do if it lived into the Erebozoic.
Owing to the fact actinopterygians on land including bichirs out of water tend to crawl primarily via their pectoral fins, the use of pelvic fins by this species is interesting. Lungfishes and elasmobranchs will walk on the bottom with their pelvic fins alone in a similar way to underwater tetrapods. The only pelvic-walking benthic teleosts are specialised so pelvic-driven locomotion seems primitively lost in actinopterygians and had to reappear in certain teleosts.
A huntsman spider that wastes time on the internet because it has nothing better to do
Posts:
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kusanagi
Jul 22 2017, 09:10 AM
Insect Illuminati Get Shrekt
Jul 19 2017, 10:32 AM
Did the Pleistocene oceans also have large numbers of megafauna comparable to land?
No it didn't. The loss of coastal habitat during the Pliocene caused an earlier marine extinction including most sirenians, megalodon, Thalassocnus, pelagornids and desmostylians. Apart from the extinctions of island nesting tubenoses there were no anthropogenic extinctions of marine tetrapods till the early modern period. Save possibly two marine otters on Sardinia and now there is a flightless eider that are left to explain, but the Channel Island auk and Chendytes are thought to have died out because of climate change owing to their long coexistence with the native people and the actual timing of their disappearence date.
Any notable large Pleistocene fish?
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
"Arthropod respiratory systems aren't really "inefficient", they're just better suited to their body size. It would be quite inefficient for a tiny creature that can easily get all the oxygen it needs through passive diffusion to have a respiratory system that wastes energy on muscles that pump air into sacs. (Hence why lungless salamanders, uniquely miniscule and hyperabundant tetrapods, have ditched their lungs in favor of breathing with their skin and buccal mucous membranes.) But large, active insects already use muscles to pump air in and out of their spiracles, and I don't see why their tracheae couldn't develop pseudo- lungs if other conditions pressured them to grow larger."-HangingTheif
"Considering the lifespans of modern non- insect arthropods (decade-old old millipedes, 50 year old tarantulas, 100+ year old lobsters) I wouldn't be surprised if Arthropleura had a lifespan exceeding that of a large testudine"-HangingTheif
"Humans have a tribal mindset and it's not alien for tribes to war on each other. I mean, look at the atrocities chimpanzee tribes do to each other. Most of people's groupings and big conflicts in history are directly or obliquely manifestations of this tribal mindset."-Sceynyos-yis
"He's the leader of the bunch You know his Coconut Gun is finally back to fire in spurts. His Coconut Gun Can make you smile If he shoots ya it's firing in spurts. His Coconut Gun Is bigger, faster, stronger too! He's the gun member of the Coconut Crew! HUH!
C.G.! Coconut Gun! C.G.! Co-Coconut Gun! Shoot yourself with a Coconut Gun! HUH!"-Kamineigh
"RIP, rest in Peytoia."-Little
"In Summary: Piss on Lovecraft's racist grave by making lewds of Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep.
Then eat arby's and embrace the void."-Kamineigh
"Dougal Dixon rule 34."-Sayornis
Phylogeny of the arthropods and some related groups
.---------------------------------------------. Parts of the Cluster Worlds: "Marsupialless Australia" (what-if) & "Out on a Branch" (future evolution) & "The Earth under a still sun" (WIP)