Posts tagged evolution
My world is a satellite of a gas giant. It has an atmosphere and is mostly covered by water (the percentage of water to its surface is somewhere in the high 80s-low 90s). Its rotation period is 28 ...
My non-magic fantasy world has a species of hominid that lives in a huge and wide sierra of mountains. If they had split off from the (now dominant) human species a couple million years ago, (say a...
along time ago a group Australopithecus somehow manged to get washed ashore on let's say the Antarctic peninsula or at least an island near Antarctica now inhabiting mainland Antarctica and evolvin...
I'm thinking about an alien race that evolved from large terrestrial crustaceans and has developed a somewhat large brain. Like crabs on earth, these creatures have pinchers wich they use for self ...
If we assume a terraformed Ganymede has a global ocean roughly 800km deep, that food is bountiful, and that it has been populated by a variety of life from Earth, how large could these creatures gr...
In my story, set in an earth-like world, a marine species that had evolved a melon organ, much like that found in our dolphins, made its way back into the "land" (a large system of underground cave...
in most science-fiction stories that include alien races, said aliens have a roughly humanoid appearance (being an erect bipeds). now while it's likely that the vast majority of sapient life (being...
"Serina" is a popular speculative evolution project in which, apart from a long list of fish, invertebrates and plants, the only terrestrial chordate to colonize this terraformed moon is the canary...
We may all have some familiarity with winged skulls - from Avenged Sevenfold's album covers to bikie shirts. However, for my science-fiction/horror story, I am curious about how these creatures wou...
So how large of an organism can a diet of strictly of blood support? In a modern Earth setting it might be a bit hard for a large hematophagic organism to find a suitable group of prey that it won'...
Giant dogs aren't uncommon in works of fantasy. Sif from Dark Souls comes to mind. What I want to know is: what's the largest a canine could realistically get, what differences would they need c...
Around 5 million years ago, a group of primates diverged from early Baboon ancestors migrated into Sicily becoming Triclopes (here's a rough mock up of what a Triclops skull might look like): som...
In some birds especially owls, we can observe a structure called facial disk, which is mainly composed of feathers and helps to direct sound to their ears. While being more common in owls, adding u...
The Diclonii are an evolutionary offshoot of modern homo sapiens from the Elfen Lied series. Most Diclonii can get distinguished from humans thanks to small bone and cartilage horns resembling cat ...
The TBD are a fantasy humanity offshoot that is fully adapted to life a few kilometers beneath the surface, settling in cracked earth near vents and hot spots. Air quality ranges from stale to tox...
I've seen several people independently come up with the idea of three or more sexes where one sex is responsible for brooding the young (pregnancy, pouch, feeding, something along those lines) but ...
On plain Pilar forest biome of planet X, you have mostly 3 types of vertebrates: those who burrow under the ground those who run through the widely separated trees those who live above ground le...
In the large pillar forests of planet x, a group of vertebrates, in order to hunt down the fast climbing creatures that inhabit their habitat, rather than developing speed as well, went on another ...
So let me explain the frame/world first, I actually think all of it is relevant as some details would probably have quite the impact on the outcome. I was hesitant to post the question as it's quit...
Marsupials in the majority of the world are overshadowed by their placental cousins, with the notable exception being Australia. There they have convergently evolved many similarities to their plac...
In a world I'm designing, a group of Homo Habilis or even Australopithecus Afarensis migrated into a northern Scotland environment becoming Trolls. These are not D&D trolls, but something else....
Now octopuses are quite smart already capable of camouflage and puzzle solving. given this I was wondering whether Octopuses could Convergently evolve sapience (human level intelligence) and wha...
My time traveller from the distant future is about to get stranded back in time, but realises that by travelling back a short time, maybe 100000 years, he is going to leave a trail of destruction b...
Somewhere on DeviantArt, there is an insightful tutorial by someone named "Uzlo" on how to create anatomically believable angels. Among the instructed details is the possibility of developing a se...
For a story, I need to find a way to justify the limited cognitive capacities of an entire race that thrives on biomass, capable of eating anything that is inherently biological. This race is dri...
My creature, called the Kurbish, inhabits a wasteland-world, in my universe. Recently, I have been wondering; "How plausible is this thing, really?" A description: Large, Elephant-like creatures ...
Pegasuses in most works of media are often depicted as hexapods with four legs and two wings: The only problem is (from what I understand) no vertebrates on earth are hexapods, so I've decided ...
In my question: Sustainability of Regular Global Wildfires Due to Oxygen Rich Atmosphere An answer was proposed for a kind of "Boom Bust Cycle". The atmosphere has little CO2 but a lot of O2. W...
Eusociality, is the most sophisticated level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care, overlapping generations within a colony of adults, a...
Shamelessly inspired by this question, where a race was capable of counting only 0, 1 and "˜many', I have designed a yet more extreme race!! The Continuuoids are a pretty complex race. They can so...
Lets say you have a planet called...Galileo. Galileo has a large amount of biodiversity, with bacteria, plants, fungi, and animals. The animals are what I'd like to focus on today. Unlike Earth wit...
Monotremes are the oddballs of the mammal family, the echidnas and especially the platypus are absolutely absurd creatures with their bizarre anatomical features and mishmash of reptilian and mamma...
Under what circumstances could an inherently individualist species become intelligent and advanced? Usually, animals require social interaction for intelligence to develope. Or at least that's wha...
Vocal mimicry for this question refers to the ability to imitate the sounds of other animals, exemplified in this video of a lyrebird mimicking several species of birds, a chainsaw and even a camer...
Imagine a dragon as tall as average adult horse with a wing span of 12m long measuring from tip to tip. I wonder what evolutionary traits or techniques could allow the dragon to lift itself off the...
In exploring likely candidates for an alternate Earth without rodents, someone suggested multituberculates to me. Here's a little summary as to who the multituberculates were for anyone not in the ...
This is a submission for the Anatomically Correct Series The orang pendek is a cryptid that reportedly inhabits remote, mountainous forests on the island of Sumatra (likely evolving from orangutan...
On my world there is a creature that has a 'split' in the plumage of its wings and tail. Instead of having a singular D-shaped surface (when viewed from above, the bird facing to the left), it is ...
Gargoyles are bipedal, slow-moving animals that lurk on rooftops and eat pigeons. The rumors of gargoyles being magical construct are false; in truth they're just animals that have adapted to urban...
This is a submission for the Anatomically Correct Series. to celebrate the upcoming Sonic movie I've decided to ask the question of what an anatomically correct Sonic would look like? Based o...
In my story Elves, Humans, and a bunch of other fantasy races live along side each other and i'm curious as to what evolutionary pressures would to a group of divergent hominids to evolve into Elve...
Elves in fantasy are commonly depicted as having long life spans and that applies to my story as well with Elves on average living between 250 and 270 years. The question is how would this work and...
This was an idea I had for an alien life form but i thought it made so little sense for a science-based story that I didn't further it. The idea is a tree-like life form that instead of bearing fr...
I was inspired by Phylliroe molluscs which are sea slugs that have evolved into translucent fish (see image bellow). In my story most aquatic life on earth had evolved from these translucent slug...
An idea I'm toying with for a sci-fi story is a species where the individual organisms are colonies of smaller eusocial organisms. The idea initially came from "hey if a bunch of single-celled orga...
This is a submission for the Anatomically Correct Series some characteristics of the Manticore include: having a lion like body having wings are tetrapods having a scorpion like tail being carn...
In my story Orcs, humans, and a bunch of other fantasy races live along side each other and i'm curious as to what evolutionary pressures would to a group of divergent hominids to evolve into Orcs?...
This is a submission for the Anatomically Correct Series Gargoyles are a staple of Gothic architecture and I've decided to give these creatures the time of day. Gargoyles are closely related to Ny...
If humans have evolved from apes, what if another species have already evolved from humans but left the planet millions of years ago? If this is true, in the future, if humans are advanced enough ...
Okay so i have this world that is inhabited by an alien race that outwardly is basically undistinguishable from an ordinary earth-human. Due to the specifics of this planet they live on they can br...