Rivaling the dinosaurs as the most famous prehistoric animals are the great marine reptiles that mastered the Mesozoic oceans. On Home-Earth, the sea turtles are a sole reminder of a lost age when sauropsids ruled the waves. Beneath the waters of Spec, however, the turtles are joined by another, far less benign lineage from the Cretaceous, the fearsome mosasaurs. Mosasaurs are aquatic anguimorph lizards related to monitors and snakes, falling phyletically somewhere in between them. They are foun

Brent's Sketchblog

Oviraptorosaurs are a strange group of maniraptorans that made their début in the fossil record of Early Cretaceous Asia, if not earlier, as small... probable omnivores such as †Caudipteryx and continued through the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic as generalists/predators. Oviraptors are some of the most bizarre groups of dinosaurs that have ever existed. Nestled among the diverse clade that is Maniraptora, they seemingly made their debut in the Lower Cretaceous, possibly earlier as turkey-sized gen

Sometimes I like to revisit sites to see whether there is anything new. In this post I will show a few interesting species that came up in this way. The site in question was visited in 2010, and shows the work of the Japanese author and illustrator Satoshi Kawasaki. He specialises in palaeontological illustrations but does not shy away from extending the time line of his work well into the future, up to 200 million years from now, in fact. In palaeontological papers and books you sometimes read 'mya' as an abbreviation for 'million years ago'. As the world of speculative biology is less hampered by ugly facts, perhaps it could profit from having a similar term for 'million years from now': myfn, or perhaps 'million years on': myo. Click to enlarge; Copyright Satoshi Kawasaki As I wrote before, Mr. Kawasaki has the sense of humour that allows him not to take his creatures equally seriously, something I like very much (I find mere monsters boring). Some of the animals on the pages showing life 100 and 200 myo are apparently drawn by other artists than himself, so het lets others play along, another nice trait. I would have like to exchange emails, but previous attempts to contact him failed. Let's have a look at some of the creatures. Click to enlarge; Copyright Satoshi Kawasaki In Google's translation this one is called 'Nereusu'. By omitting some of the Japanese characters I found out that Nereusu is simply a transliteration of the Japanese characters, so I could not translate it. I therefore suppose the name refers to Nereus, the mythical being from classical Greece Nereus, who was after all as sort of sea god. Somewhat ironically, there is of course another Nereus in speculative biology... Anyway, the animal is obviously a large marine predatory bird descendant (probably descended from penguin stock). Students of speculative biology will note that such creatures are very abundant in fictional future seas, as they apparently tend to evolve in the minds of many creators. I do not really mind if such a concept is not completely original; after all, all of science fiction is full of common ideas. While I applaud originality, there is also pleasure in seeing a job well done. Mr. Kawasaki is a very adroit illustrator, and this is an excellent 'future orca-like penguin-descendant marine predatory beast'. Click to enlarge; Copyright Satoshi Kawasaki Have a look at this drawing, and you will probably guess what it is about without having to read the text. It can only be a social crab modelled on the pattern of ants, bees and similar colony dwellers. There is one giant 'mother' laying lots of eggs, here very neatly held in a redeveloped abdomen. The ones in the front must be soldiers, and the little ones in the middle must be workers. I cannot see whether or not they have pincers, but assume they do; otherwise, what will workers work with? Click to enlarge; Copyright Satoshi Kawasaki Sometimes Mr Kawasaki works on a theme; in my previous post I showed terrestrial cephalopods (I know, I know...), and this time I will focus on a group of his animals that do not seem to enjoy the common attention of future evolutionists: starfish! There is only one on the 100 myo page, shown above. It is not drawn by Kawasaki but by someone else. It may also be the most original of all the future Asteroidea ('starfish'). You cannot beat Google Translate for creating a sense of wonder, particularly where one was not intended: "One of the arm portion becomes large, the remaining portion forms a head lump pseudo part." I guess we would have guessed that anyway: four of the five original arms have shrunken and are now appendages around what is now a proper head. As a result, the animal is now bilaterally symmetrical. I do not quite see how evolution would set off in this particular direction, but like the result. I do not think I have seen anyone else designing this before, either. Click to enlarge; Copyright Satoshi Kawasaki The world of 200 myo has more future Asteroidea.The one above is a pseudoplant, a Parasasuteru. It lives in Australian swamps and -I think!- envelops animals moving in its shade, only to digest them at leisure. Click to enlarge; Copyright Satoshi Kawasaki And finally, one I rather like: the 'Di pedal stell' ; could that be a 'bipedal star', I wonder? If you count the number of limbs, you will find six rather then five, but the texts suggests that one of the original arms has split to form two legs: "Part of the two-that looks like a foot is what arm once was transformed." Probably. Have a look at Mr Kawaski's site for other interesting creatures, or, if you like palaeontological illustrations -who doesn't?- visit his pages of the past world. And now something somewhat different I have been looking for other projects of speculative biology, but have not found any new ones. I searched in various languages, albeit my skills are limited to Germanic and Romance ones. If readers know of projects that deserve attention, let me know, particularly ones I am likely to miss, such as ones in Slavic or non-European languages. Finally, I have begun considering ending this blog. It is in its sixth year and I feel that some of the freshness has gone. The number of readers has not diminished, by the way: it is stable and in fact grows slowly. I find it a bit more difficult to come up with new subjects, and after more than five years the blog has perhaps become a fixture in the little world of speculative biology, not something that attracts much attention. Perhaps blogs are a bit like television series; at some point you stop caring about the characters, and that may be the time to consider a final episode.

"The fast, ostrich-like ornithomimid is a ubiquitous sight in the more open areas of the floodplain. While palaeontologists have referred to this animal as both a species of Ornithomimus and Struthiomimus, it's true relationship remains unclear. With a top-speed of over 50kph, Ornithomimids are the fastest animals in Hell Creek and among the fastest of all dinosaurs. Ornithomimids display a mostly herbivorous diet, however, ornithomimids will also take animal food, such as lizards, mammals and e

In the early days of Specworld exploration, legendary specbiologist Tiina Aumula led many expeditions into tropical Asia and northern Africa. Among the countless new specimens obtained from these forays were a number of graceful "raptor"-type theropods that were clearly very different animals from the more heavy-set draks of the family Boreonychidae. These tropical predators soon gained widespread attention when initial studies suggested that they were modern representatives of the Troodontidae.

Richard Thorns thinks he will finally find a bird long thought to be extinct.

The zwim, Naremys platycaudus, is a semiaquatic, shrew-like placental mammal from the deciduous and mixed woodlands of Eurasia in The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution. It is probably descended from Zalambdalestes. In outward appearance many of the mammals have changed little since they evolved from the non-mammalian synapsids in Late Triassic times. Throughout the Jurassic, Cretaceous, Paleogene and Neogene periods they have remained small, compact creatures, not adapting into any of the

Scientists have published a paper confirming the existence of troodontids in the Late Cretaceous of Europe. A new troodontid species has been erected.

Mosasaurus was a genus of mosasaur from the Late Cretaceous period. Mosasaurus were giant carnivorous, aquatic lizards with big elongated jaws. This genus existed during the Maastrichtian age of the Cretaceous period (Mesozoic era), around 70–66 million years ago in the area of modern Western Europe and North America in a western interior sea and was one of the last mosasaurs. Its name means "Meuse river lizard", as its fragmentary skull was found near the Meuse River in 1764 by lieutenant Jean

augurey, Irish phoenix, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, beast, creature, creatures (FB)

speculative biology, speculative evolution, future evolution, exobiology, astrobiology, world building, science fiction art

Otherworld finches, cityfinches, crackers, and outlaws are the dominant small-bodied seed-eating birds of Specworld. Together with the odd parrothawks and the Specworld parrots, they comprise an estimated 2,300 species worldwide in 19 major groups. Allospiziforme anatomy shares many convergent similarities with the finches, parrots, and cuckoos of our timeline, so it is no wonder that that the true affinities of this group were long overlooked. While they were once classified as neognaths somewh

Sometimes I like to revisit sites to see whether there is anything new. In this post I will show a few interesting species that came up in this way. The site in question was visited in 2010, and shows the work of the Japanese author and illustrator Satoshi Kawasaki. He specialises in palaeontological illustrations but does not shy away from extending the time line of his work well into the future, up to 200 million years from now, in fact. In palaeontological papers and books you sometimes read 'mya' as an abbreviation for 'million years ago'. As the world of speculative biology is less hampered by ugly facts, perhaps it could profit from having a similar term for 'million years from now': myfn, or perhaps 'million years on': myo. Click to enlarge; Copyright Satoshi Kawasaki As I wrote before, Mr. Kawasaki has the sense of humour that allows him not to take his creatures equally seriously, something I like very much (I find mere monsters boring). Some of the animals on the pages showing life 100 and 200 myo are apparently drawn by other artists than himself, so het lets others play along, another nice trait. I would have like to exchange emails, but previous attempts to contact him failed. Let's have a look at some of the creatures. Click to enlarge; Copyright Satoshi Kawasaki In Google's translation this one is called 'Nereusu'. By omitting some of the Japanese characters I found out that Nereusu is simply a transliteration of the Japanese characters, so I could not translate it. I therefore suppose the name refers to Nereus, the mythical being from classical Greece Nereus, who was after all as sort of sea god. Somewhat ironically, there is of course another Nereus in speculative biology... Anyway, the animal is obviously a large marine predatory bird descendant (probably descended from penguin stock). Students of speculative biology will note that such creatures are very abundant in fictional future seas, as they apparently tend to evolve in the minds of many creators. I do not really mind if such a concept is not completely original; after all, all of science fiction is full of common ideas. While I applaud originality, there is also pleasure in seeing a job well done. Mr. Kawasaki is a very adroit illustrator, and this is an excellent 'future orca-like penguin-descendant marine predatory beast'. Click to enlarge; Copyright Satoshi Kawasaki Have a look at this drawing, and you will probably guess what it is about without having to read the text. It can only be a social crab modelled on the pattern of ants, bees and similar colony dwellers. There is one giant 'mother' laying lots of eggs, here very neatly held in a redeveloped abdomen. The ones in the front must be soldiers, and the little ones in the middle must be workers. I cannot see whether or not they have pincers, but assume they do; otherwise, what will workers work with? Click to enlarge; Copyright Satoshi Kawasaki Sometimes Mr Kawasaki works on a theme; in my previous post I showed terrestrial cephalopods (I know, I know...), and this time I will focus on a group of his animals that do not seem to enjoy the common attention of future evolutionists: starfish! There is only one on the 100 myo page, shown above. It is not drawn by Kawasaki but by someone else. It may also be the most original of all the future Asteroidea ('starfish'). You cannot beat Google Translate for creating a sense of wonder, particularly where one was not intended: "One of the arm portion becomes large, the remaining portion forms a head lump pseudo part." I guess we would have guessed that anyway: four of the five original arms have shrunken and are now appendages around what is now a proper head. As a result, the animal is now bilaterally symmetrical. I do not quite see how evolution would set off in this particular direction, but like the result. I do not think I have seen anyone else designing this before, either. Click to enlarge; Copyright Satoshi Kawasaki The world of 200 myo has more future Asteroidea.The one above is a pseudoplant, a Parasasuteru. It lives in Australian swamps and -I think!- envelops animals moving in its shade, only to digest them at leisure. Click to enlarge; Copyright Satoshi Kawasaki And finally, one I rather like: the 'Di pedal stell' ; could that be a 'bipedal star', I wonder? If you count the number of limbs, you will find six rather then five, but the texts suggests that one of the original arms has split to form two legs: "Part of the two-that looks like a foot is what arm once was transformed." Probably. Have a look at Mr Kawaski's site for other interesting creatures, or, if you like palaeontological illustrations -who doesn't?- visit his pages of the past world. And now something somewhat different I have been looking for other projects of speculative biology, but have not found any new ones. I searched in various languages, albeit my skills are limited to Germanic and Romance ones. If readers know of projects that deserve attention, let me know, particularly ones I am likely to miss, such as ones in Slavic or non-European languages. Finally, I have begun considering ending this blog. It is in its sixth year and I feel that some of the freshness has gone. The number of readers has not diminished, by the way: it is stable and in fact grows slowly. I find it a bit more difficult to come up with new subjects, and after more than five years the blog has perhaps become a fixture in the little world of speculative biology, not something that attracts much attention. Perhaps blogs are a bit like television series; at some point you stop caring about the characters, and that may be the time to consider a final episode.

Explore Aeron Alfrey's 12430 photos on Flickr!

NOTE, i have to delete this bucuse a wider bug have me sotp to use here so go to here https://spec-evo.fandom.com/wiki/Strange_Animal_Encyclopedia_of_The_Future to see more or new tinghs bikkubãdo

A blog about dinosaur art, science, and pop culture.