Post 10,000: Let's Meet Kotk's Antithesis

I had planned on doing a post on the Robopocalypse and how the economy will need to change to deal with that onrushing event.  However, I'm swamped.  That past will come on Feb 6th.  Instead, I am going to post about something I wrote.  Its part of a background for a larger writing project I have been using as my self medication for dealing with stress.

After looking at Kotk and her sister quattids, it’s time to take a turn to another species. Yes, its another case of DOOMDOOMDOOM. I’m using their experience as vignettes within the larger story. There are going to be a few more these past Kotk’s people and this one. However, I’m looking for that creative outlet and seeing if I can do something a bit niftier than most of the books I’ve been picking up at the bookstore as of late.

First though, let's talk about their world.

Let’s discuss another doomed world. This one is going through the opposite of what Kotk’s world is. This is fire to Kotk's ice: rather than freezing over, this one is getting ready to boil itself to death. Like Kotk’s world, there is an intelligent species to witness it. Unfortunately, its also not going to survive. They are the Shia, but this email is not about them. Its about their world. We need a name for the world. While I’ve settled on Agassiz for Kotk’s world, the Sia homeworld needs a moniker that’s appropriate. For the moment, I’ll call it Boiler, but that’s not what I will call it when it goes to page.

Boiler is a bigger world than the earth. Her diameter is 35% larger. She actually is somewhat lighter though, having a smaller iron core and lighter mix for her magma. Her gravity is .96 g. Her atmosphere is roughly analogous to earth’s but thicker. The biggest difference is that things have gotten to the point where the atmosphere is supersaturated with water. Everything is slick with moisture. Fungal analogues are rampant.

There are no supercontinents on Boiler. There are a number of smaller ones that are more or less the same proportionately as ours, if the layout is different. In the south, the continents are laid out such that there is an Antarctic Ocean that’s roughly what ours is if you exclude the Bering Sea and south of Greenland. It acts as this world’s Mediterranean. There are a few connecting straits into the other oceans, but north of 60 degrees S, it’s a dead sea, or at least increasingly hypoxic and nearing anoxic at the equator. The land area below 60 degrees that rings the Antarctic Ocean is roughly the same as North America.

There is also an Arctic continent that is roughly the size of Australia and completely habitable, but its surrounding ocean is completely connected to the other oceans and has an impoverished marine ecosystem because of it. An upwelling is a deadly thing along the coast. Life there is concentrated inland and there its focused around the fresh water bodies. If not for the polar hadley cells, both environs would have serious problems with contaminants from the dying world seas.

A little over 1.2 million years ago, Boiler hit the inverse of the Pleistocene, something even stronger than the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. The Milankovitch cycles for Boiler twittled into hot zone. Instead of producing glaciers advancing from the poles, these cycles made a hot zone, a dead zone around the equator where macroscopic autotrophes (plants) could not photosynthesize. Each cycle is approximately ten thousand years long.

The first time out, the cycle produced a dead zone of 5 degrees +/- from the equator. Within that zone, no plant life could live. When that turn of the cycle ended though, a permanent dead zone of 0.5 degees +/- equator remained. The next steamer cycle pushed the temporary dead zone to 5.5 degrees and ended with a permanent dead zone of 1 degree. The growth of the equatorial dead zone has been

additive and progressing to the point where 1.2 million years later, the permanent dead zone now reaches to 60 degrees +/- from the equator. This could go on for another half million years, if not for

the fact that the tipping point is about to be reached and the equatorial seas will start boiling at the start of the next cycle…which is 3k years in the future. Once that begins, things go down hill fast into a hot wet greenhouse, which most life and our witness species, the Sia, cannot survive.

Equatorward from 60 degrees, even though its called a deadzone, there is still life. First the lichen zone down to 50 degrees then think yellow stone on land (remember, the air is saturated with water and things are slick) and death valley’s pupfish (although there's nothing like a vertebrate, think more like sea slugs that have developed into fast swimmers or filter feeds or...) in the oceans.

That’s said, let’s meet Zah. 

 Zah is a Sia. This is another species that is going to be witnessing the end of its world. This one has a world that is warming beyond the levels that macroscopic autotrophic life (plants) can handle. Its species is rather different than Kotk’s quattids. For one, they are definitely not vertebrates. Sia are a species that comes from a family of animal-ish life that would be, if terrestrial analogues were any guide at all, a mollusk trying very, very hard to be an arthropod. The genes that would have gone into producing shells for a mollusk have been coopted into producing a exoskeleton. Let’s call them the armollusks.

Sia ancestors prior to leaving the water would have been a passable ammonite. The spiral shell remains. The beak remains. There are also four warty, horny tentacles that have ‘moved’ to the sides of the beak: they are long enough to be useful as manipulators, but are not super dexterous (they were coopted . However, there the similarities end. They are now quadpeds with very arthopodish legs. The legs have a calcified shell as the exoskeleton. They have two articulated arms that are like their legs – basal armollusks had 10 tentacles – giving them a bit of a centaur appearance. Well, if that centaur was based on an ammonite, had the face of a beaked cthulhu, and the legs of a calcified insectoid or perhaps coconut crab. It almost sounds like a joke, a Cthulhu, coconut crab and an ammonite go into a bar and…  The legs and the articulated arms have a nifty feature: extensible digits. Looking like calcified, exoskeletal claws when retracted, these digits (three per foot or hand, with two ‘fingers’ and a ‘thumb’) can unhook and extend outwards for a good distance, about three inches. They are really tentacles that can be stowed underneath the armored surface, helping to reduce water loss.

The Sia’s nose, olfactory organ I suppose, is located in the shell where the ‘lung’ is. Likewise, vocal communication is done by a larynx in the shell as well. There are no lips moving for these guys. I should not, but probably will include chromatophoric communication. Its just cool! And also gives a way to silently hunt, too!

The Sia are not large, really. They stand at around 4 ft high. There are limits, even on their less dense world, to how big something with a calcified exoskeleton can get.

They are also really bright. More so than humans even. However, unfortunately, so is a lot of the armollusk fauna. Imagine a world where the average animal is a primate, even the herbivores. A lot of energy has been and is expended on securing life from...pests, Imagine if rats had the brains of monkeys...and then it gets worse from there. There is also a second megafaunal lineage that causes no

end of headaches for the armollusks, petroskelines.

Armollusks, too, have an odd life reproductive cycle. The eggs armollusks lay develop into a 'larva' that looks like a bivalve. It filter feeds from the air or water depending on the branch of the clade of armollusk. These larvae close their shells and undergo a metamorphosis that produces a small Sia. The protection of the breeding grounds was one of the main drivers of intelligence in armollusks and their...predators. The first permanent settlements were built around ideal hatching grounds. All Sia are herms...

There are domesticated animals, even chariots, but no mounts that are ridden like horses on earth. Some of slithomollusks (very active metambolism and quick land slugs) have been domesticated for equivalents of canines. One breed is even used in war. Other armollusks have been domesticated as arachinid-like 'cats' and whatnot. There are no active fliers on Boiler.

The great rivals to the armollusks and slithomollusks are the petroskelines.  These are really fast and hungry equivalents of arthropods.  They are rarely large, but often swarm.  They actually look more like horseshoe crabs, but have rather harder armor and typically are rather small.  Their great menace is that they swarm.  When they do, they strip the plants and the often even animals bare.  Individually, they are not bright, but they have the wisdom of the swarm.  A hellbug is about the size of your fist, scuttles around on eight legs, has a shell harder to crack than a walnut and has the voracious appetite of a piranha on meth.  They swarm up from the south, their breeding grounds at the start of summer chewing, consuming and gnashing their way across the polar lands like a arthropod Mongol Horde, until they recede again to breed when fall comes down at the edge of the habitable zone.

The Sia employ a great deal of outcasts and adventurers to go south to destroy hellbug nests.  These bug hunters tell the tales of cities lost to the encroaching heat.  Ruins with treasure down in the lost lands.  The greatest of these tales though is the belief the Arctic of Boiler holds another civilization of Sia, an Atlantis or Eden where there are no hellbugs and life is grand.  Occasionally, some damned fool adventurer embarks to try to cross to the other side of the world.  They never succeed. 

The Sia have reached the iron age. There are multiple empires competing to dominate the known world around the Antarctic.

When the Sia clash, it looks like a square of halberbers.  If they used hammers instead of  axes in the halberds and the halberds were wielded by Cthulhu rendered into an insectile legged ammonite.  Thrusts are made for the facial region by the front ranks of the Sia Phalanx and the third and later ranks are raising their hammer-berds up and swinging them down in an attempt to crack the shell of opposing Sia phalanx.  To protect the face, the facial tentacles often have either shields or a closable facial mask.  Metal armor is pretty close to too heavy for a Sia to wear.  Some attempts at padding and hardened 'leather' is used to soften the hammer blows.  Normally, at least one tentacle holds a dagger...its for dealing with the warslugs. 

Charioteers race round the edges of the formations, throwing darts aimed at faces or caltrops to break up the enemy formation.  Defending charioteers attempt to prevent the disruption and do unto the other side...

Finally, the warslugs shuffle through the formations, both to fight each other, but most importantly, to attempt to bite the faces of the Sia phalanx soldiers.

5 major states ring the Antarctic Sea plus a host of smaller ones.  There are two ascendant empires which are marching on the others.  An unstable coalition faces off against them when they are not preoccupied with each other.  The three lesser empires jostle for position and try to pull down the two rising and when faced with being conquered unite to hold off the two. They also often hire the small city states to make raids on the large empires ... and each other.

This arrangement might have eventually produced the necessary cultural innovations to save the Sia.  But...it will not.  The last Sia passed away in a hovel in the ruins of the northernmost city about the time the Maya form a 'civilization' in MesoAmerica.  Humanity won't find the scorched, boiled and fried remains of the Sia for another 2,000 years and then only archaeologically and when in environmental suits or teleremotely. 

Let's Meet Kotk

This is something I wrote up for the background of a story I am writing. The story may or may not ever see the light of day. I am doing this for stress relief. Rockets and skynet and life have been...rough.

Let’s meet Kotk.

Kotk is one member of the species that I have been imagining as the witness to the end of their world via the snowball earth scenario. After all, a novel hangs together better there is someone that you can identify with. Kotk will do.

She is a she! She is also a member of the quattid species. Quattids are sorta vertebrate bipeds derived from an ancestral hexapod. They have two legs, two arms and two limb derived antennae. Sorta.

The basal hexapod (is there a better name? While tetrapod works, hexapod makes me think insect, which is entirely ill-fitting) that pulled itself out onto land is something roughly analogous to a vertebrate. Vertebrates of the quattid world have bones are rather different than our own. They are more lattice like than ours. Theirs are tubular with fluting to allow for attachment inside and on the surface. Think of it as a partial way to an exoskeleton, but not too far. As a result, they are stronger than the equivalent mass and muscular terran critter. They also tend to be faster as well. Not

blindly faster, but faster and stronger all the same.

The basal hexapod also had taste, touch, smell and even moderately good vibration and something not all that different from a lateral line system on all its feet. When the basal hexapod’s umpty grandkids became fully terrestrial, the organs for most senses atrophied in the our of the six ‘feet.’ The remaining two became more like antennae derived from arms. They had would become ‘furry’ to taste and smell with. The ability to hear would come from something not all that different. If you can imagine to arm like antennae sprouting from the back of, say a horse, that could fold up on its back, you are not too far off. Yes, they would be used in displays. Yes, they’d get a bit elaborate because of that. Yes, they are waved slowly while animals are grazing and whatnot to listen and smell for predators. Often they are also used for touching in meeting ceremonies amongst animals. On quattids, these have migrated upwards from the central back up to between what you’d call the shoulder blades.

Part of the reason that taste is not in the mouth is because the quattid world (have a suggested name?) vertebrates do not have a jaw.  They have a masticular apparatus that is more reminiscent of Anomalocaris. Rather than one set of sheering discs, like the anomalous shrimp, it has rows of them for sheering and then different ones for mashing. All closing in radially. All down the throat towards the gullet. In purely carnivorous species, they have  developed something like shark teeth for the first set, followed by sheerers and then mashers. Chewing for quattid worlders is more like a sped up peristalsis. Their mouth is more like a sphincter than a jaw then.

The breathing apparatus is separated from the digestive tract unlike on terran animals. There are actually two sets of lungs. The larger ones further within the thorax or torso region, but also a pair of secondary lungs that were placed within inflatable airsacks on the sides of the head. These are, too, used in displays in most animals. They also make the world sound like a combination of frog chorals and howler monkeys or gibbons gone wild and baritone. The normal and even active breathing is more like the monitor lizards’ throat breathing than a mammalian tidal or archosaurian airsack system. Speaking is through manipulating the airsacks out through their ‘nose’ for a quattid.

The eyes are placed atop the head and are forward facing. The head itself seems somewhat serpentine. With the ‘throat/mouth’ dominating. The eyes do face forward and the ‘nose’ atop the head and behind the eyes. The brain is at the back of the head and situated that from the front, you would need to break a lot of very hard teeth to get to it

or through the skull and ‘nose.’

All vertebrates have an eerie reproductive cycle. This even extends to the quattids themselves. Its closer to the anglerfish than anything, but not even exactly like that. In the anglerfish, all large adults are female. The males are born very small and swim up to

and bite into a female. They then dissolve the skin and then become parasites on the female, except that the brain and most everything other than the gonads become atrophied. Using a unified circulatory system, the composite anglerfish lays eggs and has a male that is readily available. Its speculated that this arose terrestrially because of the difficulty of finding mates. On the quattid world, that’s true, but it was because of a nasty period 450 million years prior when the hexapods had evolved but not taken to the land whereby a number of volcanoes made an ongoing, rolling mass extinction like what the Permian was originally supposed to have been. Twenty million years of misery, but the hexapods exploded into new niches when it was over and that included pulling themselves onto land.

It is NOT as extreme as the anglerfish, but one or more males, depending on the species, will permanently mate with a female. They bite into the female and burrow into her in multiple ways. Its less destructive than it sounds. The mouth and phallus are the normal points of permanent penetration. The arms and legs atrophy and fall off. The armtenna are kept though almost universally. The nervous systems connect, but the circulatory systems become more or less unified. There are distinct “minds” still present and the new males minds cannot control the female body. However, they do interact and can pay attention to different things than does the main controlling mind.

This is taken even further with the quattids. The males do ‘parasite’ like the other animals, and at a younger age than the females, but they are fully aware and remain so after the absorption into the female. Only two males are able to unify with a given female. The legs of the males’ limbs atrophy as per the other animals, but on the quattids, the arms remain active as are the armtenna. The female bares live young. The female germ line cell is only fertilized by one male, BUT the second male’s germ line cells are encased and kept encysted not unlike bacteria if the next generation is female. The reason is that if there are no males left, the female can self fertilize with her nongermline “father.” Once she mates, her body absorbs the nonbiological father germline cells that were saved since conception. The baseline sex ratio at birth is approximately 2:1 in favour of males.

Males are generally smaller, yes. Males do NOT have to mate to survive. However, their lives are not as long as those that do join into the matings. In fact, they live half their mated life spans. Unmated males are second class citizens. They do have their niches though and often band together to found societies to support themselves and for goals.

The mated female/male triads have quite interesting conversations. They are thought based, emotional and hormonal in nature.

Almost all terrestrial animals of size are quadrapeds with their armtennae. Quattids are not. They are bipedal and they are derived from climbers. They did not come down out of the trees though. They were vertical climbers on cliffs and edges of glaciers. They would raid the nests of the nonvertebrate fliers (there are NO flying vertebrates on this world) and eat what grew near or on the cliffs themselves. The ancestors of the quattids were not creatures of the forest whatsoever.

When they did come down off the cliffs, they were already vertically oriented with differentiated arms and legs. They in turn took to the ever-desiccating, ever-chilling world on the plains and tundras. Here they would become what the running community loves to think human beings are: cursorial hunters, but not hypercarnivores.

From here they developed animal husbandry and became herders. The original settlements were at favourable spots for wintering or growing food. The majority of the population moved but needed to return to the refuges ever year come winter and with the ever-worsening winters, this is how the cities came to be.

Unfortunately, the cities have largely collapsed. There are two great cities left. One is on the cusp of collapsing itself and has lashed out in an effort to conquer the other to get the resources it needs to survive. If they did not, they would end up like the wild ones to the

north and south past the last forests, the ones that live on the last plains and the cold tundras. The one that has not collapsed and not in immediate danger has access to the sea year round. Its very dangerous access, but there is a lot more protein pulled which is making all the difference. There are villages that are tributary to the sea city as well which is in turn even more helpful. The near collapse one was inland and lacked the resource network to survive the worsening conditions for any time period.

I am NOT giving anyone permission to use the quattids or Kotk.  

Xenosuchus prognathus is NOT an Archosaur

Writer's Note: This is another post in the alternate timeline we have been calling the Xenopermian. Zach Miller of When Pigs Fly Returns and I have been hashing this out for some time. Our previous posts are located here, here and here. The Xenopermian is an alternate timeline where the Permian Extinction, more specifically the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction, does not happen. What would have life been like through an extended Permian with a changing and evolving Paleozoic ecology.

That said, Zach and I are now exploring a a faux scientific controversy. This creature does not exist. It is not real. it is purely a product of our imaginations. Please do not start citing us as scientific literature for something doesn't exist. ok?

That said, we've been refering to the 'pseudocroc' for some time. The working name inspired how we'd introduce it to the TL and the public. Zach's post is here.

The scientific establishment has taken the view that the amniotes are a singular evolutionary event: all amniotes are evolved from a single common ancestor that developed the amniotic sack for protection against drying out the embryos prior to hatching. Our view is an alternate to this misguided belief. Our collective point of view is best summarized by its title: Paraphylitic Amniote Origination Theory or PAOT[1]. Our theory holds that the amniotic groups are all independently derived clades from basal reptilomorphs. Synapsida, Diapsida, Euryapsida, and Anapsida all independently evolved from reptilomorphs and that Amniota is a paraphyletic and not a natural group.

Finally, a fossil has arisen that supports our theory: Xenosuchus prognathus.

(figure a, Miller et al 2009)

Xenosuchus prognathus is from the Late Xenopermian of the Ural Sea/East European Sea deposits of Russia, Xenosuchus is a moderate to large sized semi-aquatic post-reptilomorph para-amniote. It's preferred environment seems to have been in the brackish to salt water swamps where competition with the reigning freshwater clades of large labrynthodonts, other temnospondyls, and reptilomorphs were less common, if not absent.

Like most fossil vertebrates, its postcranial material is extremely sparse and undiagnostic. However, occurrence through various strata of very similar remains of postcranial Xenosuchus like remains helps identify their transition from freshwater to moderate to highly saline and their differentiation from other reptilomorphs to paraamniotic characteristics.

The cranial materials are very good for their unique and easily-identifiable characters. They demonstrate that the "amniotes" are very much paraphyletic in their origin. There is one primary characteristic of the Xenosuchus skull: there are traces ridges that adorn the skull. Very worn and residual while the organism was alive, these ridges are only viewable under close scrutiny and only on portions of the skull. They are most evident on the premaxiilla, but can also be seen on the fragment of the lower dentary.

Observed Xenosuchus ridging.
(Figure a, Baird et al 2010)

These ridges are a derived trait of the temnospondyl clade, which are not considered by the mainstream to be ancestral to Amniota. Because this is a unique trait for the temnospondyls, this leads us to believe that the Xenosuchus lineage is derived directly from temnospondyls and only shares characteristics with Archosauria through parallel evolution. This lends overwhelming credibility to the idea that Xenosuchus fits our scenario of the “amniotes.” Xenosuchus is not a traditional archosaur nor a temnospondyl, but a derived postreptilomorph para-amniote.

Since our argument for Xenosuchus rests largely on the temnospondyl derived skull ridging, we must address why the ridging is only present on small parts of the cranial remains. Here we argue that this is due to two separate processes that are completely unrelated.

The first process is an evolutionary one. The xenosuchine lineage obviously loses the ridges completely by the beginning of the Paleozoic/Allozoic boundary, 200 mya. Our hypothesis is that the transition onto land reduced the necessity of the ridging which may have been used for nerves sensitive to water pressure differences to help with the capture of aquatic prey. Without the selection bias being for this sensory adaptation, eventually as the xenosuchids moved more and more terrestrial, this was lost. It should be noted that the Xenosuchus ridging differs from the standard temnospondyl pattern in that it is very fine grained and small such that if it was not being looked for, it would be overlooked. Xenosuchus is a rare find, a transitional fossil that it exhibits the more basal characteristics of its ancestry while generally being very derived.

The second process that reduced the ridging on the Xenosuchus cranial remains is preservational. Xenosuchus was discovered in sandstone and weathering and tumbling prior to the deposition would explain why the cranial ridging is present only in select, barely detectable locales in the fossil. Obviously, the skull tumbled in sand, possibly even the surf, prior to being laid to rest. However, we argue that the ridging is actually not a depositional artifact and that the deposition removed living organism’s skull ridging.

To test this hypothesis, we acquired multiple alligator skulls. We acknowledge that the alligators are a poor substitute, but there are few large paraamniote skulls that are of the appropriate shape. The gavial is a better approximation based on general morphology. However, our attempts to acquire sufficient crania were unsuccessful. Furthermore, the single skull we did acquire was simply too delicate for the experiment to proceed.

Meticulously, we used a laser engraver to etch in a pattern not unlike what we have detected in Xenosuchus. This took several attempts and ruined multiple skulls. Our success rate was 30%. Laser engravers are not generally meant to etch bone. The pattern covered the whole skull and was no more than 1mm deep and ¼ mm wide for the ridges and valleys.

Once we did get six successfully engraved skulls, we placed them in a tumbler with sufficient quantities of sand. The tumbler was made from a standard 55 gallon (214 liter) oil barrel. The tumbler was hooked up to an electric motor that provided 60 rpm for the tumbler chamber. One skull was placed with twenty-two pounds (ten kilograms) of sand and filled with water to capacity of water. The skull was left running in tumbler for 96 hours.

While not producing the exact same wear patterns as seen on Xenosuchus, our experiment produced not completely dissimilar results. The ridging was largely removed from the skull. We also found that the ridging that did remain was fairly similar to the cranial remains. We repeated the experiment five times with five alligator craniums and found that the results were very similar within an order of magnitude: sometimes the results were more thorough in removing the ridging. This removal was as much or more than the fossil. Other times it was less. We suspect that the differences are largely due to the variations in ridge depth and skull composition. No two skulls are exactly the same. Variations in size, shape, bone density and composition would all account for differing results.

One skull was placed in the tumbler until the ridging was completely and undetectably removed. The experiment did not run continuously. We interrupted the process every 24 hours to measure the removal of the ridging. The ridging was completely removed after 168 hours (7 days). This means that sometime between six and seven days the ridging was removed. In multiple instances, the skulls themselves were ruined. Often the jaws were smashed or the cranial remains were in a disarticulated state. This matched Miller et al’s observed state for the fossil cranial deposition. This constrains the time frame that the Xenosuchus remains were tumbled prior to deposition.

This experiment raises some interesting implications that support our hypothesis. The loss of ridging through depositional processes would indicate that more fossils may be of the para-amniote line than previous thought. More remains that have been cladisticly identified as archosaurs may in fact be of the Xenosuchine lineage. We feel that this deserves further, careful investigation. It could be that archosaurs as a whole are a paraphylitic, unnatural group and that this is not just constrained to the amniotes as a whole.

In any case, the discovery of the skull ridging on the Xenosuchus cranial fossil has uncovered a diagnostic feature that is constrained to the temnospondyls alone. This demonstrates that Xenosuchus was not an archosaur. This in turn demonstrates that “amniote” characteristics were acquired by multiple lineages independently and that amniotes are an unnatural group as such.

1. This is unfortunately pronounced as 'pout' by our detractors and adherents as 'Pouters'. We do not approve of this derogatory comment.

Note: this is a faux post as a work of science fiction.

Future Biotic Timeline: Antarctica 25myfn

Note: we have a warmer, wetter earth scenario: booster rocketed out of the glacial cycle by humanity, but it has maintained itself since.

NOTE! After googling, it looks like this was borrowed from another website and edited. I am unsure whether or not permission was sought for inclusion in the Future Biotic Timeline or not. I may take this down because of it.

Future Biotic Timeline Map Iteration 3

Still more things to fix, but we're moving along. To answer the question, no, this isn't done with a computer program. I wish I had the program to do so, I'd have some fun with it given the resources at hand, but, alas...

Future Biotic Timeline Eurasia Map Iteration 2

The first one is the official iteration 2. I made some modifications - badly - and submitted it back as part of the prep for iteration 3. Somewhere around iteration 4 the Americas will be tacked on. Keep in mind that this is a warmer, wetter earth. Call it an Eocene-ish world.

Future Biotic Timeline: 25 myfn Eurasia Map Iteration 1

We're taking the objective of going through one snapshot at a time. The first is the first step. We're well within the Cenozoic here with a stop at 25 million years from now. This is the first iteration of the world map or more properly that of eurasia+. There are a nontrivial amount of changes to be done based on discussions, but it is interesting to see how this is progressing. The group is only about 5 - 6 strong at the moment.

Hawaii of 25 Million Years From Now?

This is part of the world building project I mentioned before. I didn't come up with it, but it was well worth sharing.

A critter that didn't make the cut

There's a lot of discussion going on. At times, it's fantastic, but at other times, it's depressing because people seem to want to repeat tropes that others have already done. For example there's a desire to make nonintelligent posthumans a la Baxter. it got voted down. Another is something that you could almost take from rasfs from years ago: the desire to take a water critter and make it terrestrial again. On rasfs it was the dolphin and turning it into a snake. This time it's the seal. it's less of a stretch, but it's still a bit perplexing to me. In the vein of participating and trying to think of something a little more original, since there were already two proposals for a seal-turned-snake and a triped, I suggested something a little different.

I stuck with a seal that turned biped...but not on its legs. Think walking on your hands. Or flippers. Body changed and the flippers elongated. It looked vaguely theropod like, but...not really. That's the closest I can put into words. The seal walked on the legs dervied from the fore flippers, but kept its rear feet, but not for walking. Rather, it was for signaling and displays. The rear flippers became very, well, batlike and became fans to be flared and displayed in mating dances and dominance games. It could become fanciful for that purpose. It was supposed to arise in an island situation. The contenders were a Nova Iceland, Great Carribea, or Greenland.

Anyways, it didn't make it. It seems the group wasn't very interested. I'm not that attached, but it was an interesting attempt at playing along. I don't see a seal coming ashore to be a dominant land critter. However, stretching the imagination is fun.

That Future Biotic World Building Exercise

Basic TL:
Hadean Æon              -4500 to -3800 Million Years

Archæn Æon              -3800 to -2500 Million Years

Proterozoic Æon
 Vendian Period      -600  to -542 Million Years

Phanerozoic Æon
 Paleozoic Era       -542  to -251 Million Years
 Mesozoic Era        -251  to -65 Million Years
 Cenozoic Era        -65   to +130 Million Years
 Nothezoic Era       +130  to +630 Million Years
 Postnothozoic Era   +630  to +1080 Million Years

Postmarian Æon
 Macrozoic Era       +1080 to + 1530 Million Years
 Microzoic Era       +1530 to +1890 Million Years

Paravenerian Æon        +1890 to +5500 Million Years

Fornaxian Æon           +5500 to +5567 Million Years

Cinisian Æon            5567 Million Years +

Any comments? Questions? This is a group work, but Seth Deitch set out the basics first.