Posts tagged evolution
I'm working on a first contact story set in the near future where an advanced alien species arrives at Earth and reveals itself to humanity, but is utterly baffled by the diversity of life that it ...
The Old Ones build continent-sized bunker complexes to protect themselves from the enemy, which followed through the cosmic ocean. The Hunter succeeded easily despite their efforts and their corpse...
This famous tapestry shows all the "modernized" traits of a unicorn--basically just a pale-colored horse with a single horn on its head. Of course, single-horned animals do and did exist: ...
Assumptions: Jupiter's moon Europa has a salty subsurface ocean in contact with a rocky mantle. The ocean is populated by hydrothermal vents produced by tidal heating. Global heat flow is similar...
Take a torus planet: It has the structure of a normal planet (ours): The diagram is not to scale. Assume similar proportions of Crust:Mantle:Cores as the Earth. Is has a similar volume (close...
I'm designing a tidally locked world around a red dwarf star. The habitable ring is an Earth analogue. The atmosphere and gravity are similar to Earth's, and we're going to pretend the wind is negl...
I've got an intelligent, stone-age species that looks a bit like an Azhdarchid pterosaur. It is around the size of a large eagle. They have a proboscis and a finger on each wing used for manipulati...
Thousands of years ago (approximately 12 000 years), a group of humans (let's call them First Group) reached out and settled in forests with huge trees (Tall trees : atmospheric pressure) which mad...
I am creating a fictional universe where humanity's evolution followed a different path that it did in ours (evolution might not be the best word, but bear with me). Long ago, in said universe's e...
Animals on Earth have 2 or 4 legs they use for walking. On another world, however, animals have 3. I want to know how these animals will walk. How will their legs be placed and how will they move t...
I have a world where prehistoric humans were kidnapped and transported to another world. This other world is Earth-like, with mammals (also transported from Earth then later diversifying into othe...
On a planet the same as Earth, with no other sapient creatures, how could a Pteropus evolve sapience?
In my universe, humans were seeded on Earth by an advanced race. They were also seeded on other planets, notably Jupiter, Neptune, Venus, and some others in other star systems. They were given a la...
I'm thinking about designing an alien race. The race is carbon-based and evolved on a world with an average surface temperature between 40 and 60 degrees Celsius. Now, on Earth, almost all lifeform...
The animal I'm particularly focusing on is a cat, for which I'm curious how long it would take for said cat to evolve into a bipedal, intelligent, humanoid being capable of complex language and all...
So, in my story, there is a species called the Telenoids. They have the ability to induce auditory nerve impulses so powerful they cause intense headaches and severe pain to nearby targeted non-tel...
The usual characterization of humanoids from high gravity planet is that they are stockier with thicker bones and larger muscles and this assumption isn't far fetched. Heavy animals on earth have ...
What possible evolutionary reasons would there be for insects to increase their physical size over a long period? What benefits would be gained by an insect being larger? For example, say ants in...
Summary at bottom. I have a character from a homemade alien species. The species has silver/white hair and blue/violet eyes. I know these are traits of a melanin deficiency, but I imagined her hav...
The main source of free energy that allowed life on Earth to develop was our sun. It bombards the planet's surface with photons of high energy, which provide activation energy for reactions necessa...
I was thinking of a situation, in which there is a mass extinction that wipes out all large land animals, and after this mass extinction some of the descendants of modern geckos evolve to fill the ...
Real-life octopi can travel outside of water for awhile, but not permanently. My race is amphibious, living underwater primarily, but also coming up onto the surface if their environment becomes to...
By "bryophitic", I mean "non-vascular land plants", being the liverworts and the mosses. (Hornworts are comparative latecomers, so we won't be talking about them.) Without vascular tissues, these...
On Earth, while birds and reptiles can be quite brightly colored, it's rare for mammals to have any bright colors, and the rare times they do, it's either just slightly different (like with orangut...
Why might a species advanced enough to develop genetic engineering start a process by which their own genes, over hundreds of years, would get edited back to resemble their more primitive ancestors...
In this new fantasy setting I'm building, then after getting the tectonic plates and their movements covered, I've found that the land would be very mountainous, plus numerous valleys, and the isla...
Part of the Anatomically Correct series of questions. Due to the nature of Superman having so many different powers, I wanted to focus specifically on one aspect of his character: the ability to...
When one thinks of a shelled cephalopod, odds are high that the first thing to come to mind are the ammonites. They were one of evolution's success stories, thriving from 400 to 66 million years a...
Let's say we have a species of plant, that, for whatever reason, only wants to be pollenated by female pollinators. Maybe this gives some advantage to the plant and/or pollinator. Why would a plan...
Set in a parallel universe, in a galaxy far far away, an Earth-like planet orbiting a yellow dwarf star with the mass of 1 solar mass. And yes, indeed that planet comes with a natural satellite tha...
I was reading this question, and it made me wonder if something like this is possible or not. So, the question is, Is it possible to have an alien species in whom, the newborns are bigger than adu...
Setup: Earth developed in an alternate universe with small oceans and little water. A little before animals first left the oceans and began to walk on land, when all of Earth's land was barren sand...
I'm fairly certain such a creature is impossible, but I was curious to see if anyone could come up with an explanation for such a creature. How would a two-headed giant evolve/function if it was a ...
I am writing a sci fi novel in which one of the primary factions is a lost space colony sent to Proxima Centauri (Alpha Centauri C) roughly 350 years prior on a generation ship. The trip took rough...
I know there are examples of land vertebrates moving back into the oceans, such as in the case of whales, and marine reptiles, but in every case that I know of when a land vertebrate moves back int...
So I have noticed that most herbs come from the Mediterranean as confirmed by this site and those that do not often come from either actual Mediterranean climates or somewhat arid ones. So my ques...
In my fantasy world, there are several species - both sapient and non-sapient. They all originally evolved from a group of insects that, after millions of years of isolation and no competition, hav...
As part II of anatomically correct myths here we have the Angel. Angels appear in many cultures and are most commonly seen as simply winged humans. Is there a realistic way that angels could evolve...
Related previous question. How would sleep cycles work on planets with day-night cycles greater than 48 hours or less than 6 hours? This part is primarily for wildlife that evolved there. Native ...
I'm providing an interesting twist on the Anatomically Correct series by focusing on a single body part instead of an entire organism. The following image depicts the average range of the cones ...
Would an organism that evolved on a world with a short day length have a faster metabolism in comparison to one that evolved on a slower rotating world?
Let's say that around 4-5 million years ago, members of the earliest proto-humans, maybe Australopithecus, get whisked away to another habitable planet/parallel dimension - doesn't matter how at th...
Consider the following GIF: The brooms from this Fantasia scene are always busy. They dance around energetically in a military-like march, never stopping to rest. When their wizard overlord is o...
I have two "new" planet earths -- we'll call them Light Earth (LE) and Heavy Earth (HE). These planets are generally the same as our Earth in terms of land masses, oceans, the moon and sun and othe...
The Hippocampus is a mythological creature and has typically been depicted as having the upper body of a horse with the lower body of a fish. Considerations Gills or lungs? Would this creatu...
I am creating a fantasy world where on one continent there are humans, dwarves and gnomes. All 'species' can interbreed (much like Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens), thus they need to have close simil...
A myrmecoleon is a creature with the upper torso of a lion and the rest of the body is like an ant. While it's not probable for a true insect-mammal hybrid to happen naturally, are there any evolu...
In the Land of Metal, there exists a tribe that has upheld the gospel of Manowar with such zeal that it modified their bodies. Metalheads descend from humans, and may look human at a glance. A mor...
Slimes are a common monster we often see in games such as Minecraft, Terraria and Slime Rancher, but it is never explained how such an animal can exist. How could the body of such an animal even ex...
On Earth, it's virtually impossible to enumerate all the different cultures and ethnicities that exist, but if you hypothetically categorized every people as occurring with a language, that's rough...
