@tribbetherium / tribbetherium.tumblr.com
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Hamster's Paradise has recieved such a great amount of reception so I'm officially remastering it!
Below are the chapters completed so far:
(More to come...)
(Here you go, sorry for the wait lol)
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Surrounding the Middle Temperocene continent of South Ecatoria, the small, pelagic islands off its coasts have become the hotspots of unusual and remarkable evolutionary forms. Here species arrived either from being cut off from the mainland, rafting on debris in storms, or travelling there upon their own accord: and in isolation they have been morphed by time and natural selection into unique species found nowhere else on the planet.
Reef Ridge Isle, to the continent's northeast, is as its name implies: a sandy landmass north of the North Bridge Reef with parts of old dead coral exoskeletons that extend above the surface to form a landmass that, in some areas, piled up with white sand--the eroded remains of old coral chewed, processed and excreted by a wide array of coral eaters over countless millions of years-- and other sediments, upon which plants have taken root, delivered by the droppings of ratbats and pterodents.
These plants are fed upon by one rather unlikely and unexpected grazer: the insular giant landshrab (Megalocarcinocaris giganteus). Largest of the terrestrial shrish, this slow-moving, primarily-herbivorous species lives entirely on land as an adult, with other members of its genus widespread well across the mainland and the surrounding islands thanks to the manner in which they reproduce. While land-dwellers as adults, they return to water to breed, releasing thousands of planktonic young that drift into the sea far and wide, eventually seeking out islands and shores as they mature and moving onto land once molted into miniature adults. The insular giant landshrab, however, has become a distinct species, as it prefers to spawn in tide pools, where its young are well-protected. They bear smaller clutches, but larger and more-developed young, which, with their secluded upbringing, have become reproductively isolated from the other seafaring species of landshrabs.
The beaches and shores of this island, in the meantime, have become the rookeries of another unique endemic species, the ridgeland gnawrus (Macrootariimys dimorphis), an omnivorous bayver that gathers here in great numbers to rest, breed, and birth their pups. Most distinctively, males can grow up to thrice as large as females, and sport powerful incisors and canine-like first molars: useful for both feeding on a wide array of food like shrish, shrabs, bivalves and even marine plants on occasion, and also for fighting rival males to score breeding rights to harems of receptive females. This aggressive dominance-based hierarchy is the reason behind their marked dimorphism, as the larger males held an advantage when it came to battling for mates and territory, pushing smaller, weaker males to the fringes of the colony where they are both more exposed to predation by phorcas and have lesser reproductive success: factors that heavily skew the sex ratio of the adult gnawrus population toward fewer males and more numerous females.
Smaller species live on the island as well. In the absence of typical "basic rodents" such as furbils and duskmice, a small, flight-inhibited ratbat, the ridge rockbat (Micropteronyctus coralinsulus), fills their niche instead, scurrying about on the ground to feed on seeds, roots, tender shoots and small invertebrates, being a poor and infrequent flier that spends most of its time on the ground seeking cover underneath dense vegetation. A small rattile lives here too: the reef ridge rafter (Insulosauromys coralis), which roams the coasts of the island during dusk and dawn, feeding on insects and other small arthropods. Able to float on water thanks to microscopic hairs on its underside that make it nearly completely waterproof, holdovers from its ancestors that lived in the rainy, flood-prone jungles of South Ecatoria, a lucky few survived being washed out to sea and made it to the island by floating there, either on their own accord or hitching a ride on driftwood or beachpeach fruit, a small percent arriving just in time before they succumbed to dehydration or predation.
But rafting is not the only way for a rattile to settle onto a secluded island where they can evolve in isolation. On the Strait Isle, east of South Ecatoria, some have done so in a perhaps unexpected manner: they flew there.
On the forest floors of the island, the thorny quilldrake (Echinopteromys stridulus) roams the leaf litter, searching for the abundant small invertebrates that it eats. It would otherwise be a typical rattile at first glance, save for four spiny appendages on its back that in males, are rubbed together to produce high-pitched noises: a feature that betrays its ancestry as a flightless wingle that had emerged independently from the nephtiles of Isla de Oof.
Unlike the nephtiles, however, the flightless wingles of Strait Isle have remained small and inconspicuous, and no longer produce a flighted juvenile stage. Their wings, modified hair attached to muscular knobs, have been reduced to small keratinous spikes, as is the case with the ground spurwing (Apterasauromys rotundus), a burrowing herbivore that uses its moveable spikes as defensive structures when the solitary creatures tussle against their own species over territory and food.
The forest floor, in the meantime, is teeming with more unusual creatures: golden miteshrabs (Aurocarcinocaris minimus), tiny land shrabs that time their breeding cycles to the high tides as they, like the giant landshrabs of Reef Ridge, are terrestrial crustaceans that still return to sea to breed. They swarm along the ground by the thousands, even millions, carpeting the forest floors and beaches in a bright yellow mass of moving bodies migrating oceanward. Such conspicuous gatherings draw the attention of many predators, such as quilldrakes as well as seagoing ratbats and shore-living skwoids, but, numbering in such quantities, the proportion consumed by predators scarcely even dents their teeming numbers.
The isle's most remarkable and intriguing inhabitant, however, is perhaps the muddy fudgeback (Amphibiocheloimys pterapus), a member of a group of marine shingles known as the sterapins. Uniquely among its clade, which are fully-aquatic as they give birth to live young, the fudgeback retains the ability to haul itself ashore and bask in the warm suns' rays, its dark coloration helping it raise its temperature quicker at such a cool southern latitude. Feeding on mockjellies and sea plants as adults, the young are conversely carnivorous to fuel their rapid growth, and their ability to clamber onto land enables the juveniles to pursue and feast upon the abundance of golden miteshrabs whenever they migrate to the seashore.
North of the mainland is the Peachland Isle: a small landmass once connected to the mainland that broke off at least a few million years ago. As such, most of its species, as recent divergences, still resemble the species of the northern beachpeach forests, yet are still recognizable as their own distinct species.
The entire landmass is basically covered in beachpeach forest, and thus its residents are ones specialized for a mix of the aquatic and arboreal. Present here are the sunkeys, specifically the yellow sunkey (Xanthaquapithecomys insularis), living in social groups that forage in the water for aquatic plants, beachpeach fruit and marine invertebrates, and retreat into the canopy of the overhanging branches to seek safety from occasional transient predators such as bayvers and cricetaceans that sometimes visit the flooded forests. Similarly adapted is the peachland tree rodder (Arbolutromys leptopus), which can climb up the trunks of the beachpeach to rest safely for the evening. They coexist quite amicably with the sunkeys due to them being specialized eaters of quillnobs and other marine gastropods and thus competing very little over food, though during the breeding season when the sunkeys become more territorial the tree rodders are often bullied away by their otherwise usually placid neighbors, and thus wisely learn to keep their distance during this time.
Meanwhile, inching along the branches of the canopy trees is the green beachpeach piedviper (Arbophiosauromys viridans), a burrowurm that much like the sunkeys and tree rodders lives a double life as both tree-climber and semi-aquatic swimmer, equipped with both hooked limbs and tail for clinging onto branches, and a long, flexible body that can undulate smoothly to propel it through the water. Most piedvipers are insectivores, and in this case it plays a similar niche in a very different ecosystem: its diet consists of peachroot mermites (Myrmecocaris spp.). These colonial shrish live among the root systems of the beachpeach trees, and even excavate tunnels in the wood with their claws to build shelters in the roots where their egg-laying queens can reside. The green beachpeach piedviper, while resting amidst the treetops most of the time, descends into the water to feed on the mermites, providing an important service in keeping the mermites under control lest they damage the roots too much and harm, weaken or even kill the host tree.
And furthest east to the mainland is the peculiar Isla Pterodens: an atoll composed of a circular volcanic landmass surrounding a shallow central lagoon. This lagoon is teeming with life where photosynthetic algae grow in abundance and small shrish and pescopods gather in large shoals to seek refuge from deeper-water predators: eventually bringing about one of the most remarkable phenomena of evolution illustrating both its resilience and also its limitations.
Titan prunejaws (Titanopteromys thanotherium), notable for their wrinkled, ridged and brightly-colored lower wattle found on the males as a sexual display, are one of the heaviest of the flying pterodents, and range around the southern coasts of the mainland, primarily feeding on small aquatic prey but also being drawn to beached carrion of dead marine animals, being opportunistic scavengers as well when such a calorie-rich meal presents itself. Due to their weight and laborious takeoff, flight is an energy-intensive effort that remained due to its payoff in allowing the prunejaw to find food and escape danger: which makes it perhaps rather unsurprising that, upon settling onto Isla Pterodens, the prunejaws very quickly abandoned flight in just a few generations when presented with a productive land, with no terrestrial enemies, where they could simply wade through the lagoon and easily forage in the abundance, becoming the insular subspecies known as the inevitable prunejaw (T. thanotherium invictus).
And inevitable indeed they seem, for, prior to their current colonization in the last few hundred thousand years, the atoll of Isla Pterodens had completely sunk beneath the waves during warmer periods of decreased glaciation and elevated sea levels. Their idyllic paradise now an inescapable death trap, the now-flightless prunejaws were unable to escape the demise of their home, and quickly became extinct...at least, for the time being.
In the fluctuating sea levels of the Temperocene, as the polar ice caps expand and recede, the atoll had since submerged, and subsequently, re-emerged, at least several times in relatively recent history, within the span of a couple million years. And each time, as its productive shallow lagoons became ever so suitable, nearly tempting, to the prunejaws, they repeatedly came to settle here, became flightless to conserve energy and resources, and invariably perished when the landmass disappeared into the sea. Evolution, devoid of a goal, had cyclically doomed a small population to repeated extinction in its haste to remove an ability no longer currently useful, without the foresight of it becoming advantageous in a later ecological change. And yet, in seeming display of what could almost be called stubborness, the same species landed upon the same atoll and became the same thing that had lived and died there not too long ago: perhaps again and again for as long that the island's empty niche, and the species built to fill it, continue to exist across the span of deep time. The inevitable prunejaw is but the latest iteration in a series of evolutionary experiments that serve as examples to highlight the absence of any direction to evolution's random progression-- save for whoever or whatever is just 'good enough' to survive in the moment.
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Searet Relationships: Marine Fearrets of the Middle Therocene
As the Great Lakes of Nodera opened up to the seas, the aquatic hamsters of the large landlocked water would find a new frontier accessible to them: the oceans. First would come the tailless pondrats, expanding into the seas and becoming even more specialized to water to become the bayvers, a diverse clade including herbivores, omnivores and carnivores in their ranks. But they would find an ocean already contested by a now-dominant clade that reigned unchallenged in the absence of vertebrate competition in marine ecological niches: the shrarks. Growing to immense sizes for an arthropod, with the biggest being the two-meter long megaprawns of open seas, and armed with powerful 'biting' pincers, they patrolled the shallow coasts, reefs and open seas as the apex predators of their time. Originally hunting only other shrish species, many of which grew quite big at sizes of a meter or more, the bayvers found themselves quickly added to the menu: and thus, in these early days, remained semiaquatic and pinniped-like to escape onto the shores out of reach of the marine hunters, most restricted to bouncing and wiggling on their bellies on land, and some, the more basal wavewaddlers, retaining the ability to clumsily walk using their fused rear flippers: ties to the land being a constraint that had restricted their diversity for the past few million years.
But another species from the lakes had spread out from the seas in this time, and would eventually turn the tide in the favor of the hamsters. The lake searet, an ambush predator related to the carnohams, that fed on aquatic and terrestrial prey alike, found the Centralic Ocean a very welcome place to expand, and soon spread throughout the inner coasts of Ecatoria, Nodera, Westerna and Easaterra. In the past ten million years these had diversified, diverging into a wide array of species occupying varied niches.
Propelled by enlarged, webbed hind feet and tails adapted for steering, the searets were well-suited for maneuvering and foraging in the water. Their powerful jaws, in particular, made them superbly built for tackling hard-shelled prey: a useful adaptation that prevented them from competing with the other main marine hamster lineage of the time, the bayvers, which fed on smaller shrish, bottom-dwelling crustaceans, and even marine plants.
Brown coastal rodders (Lutromyocricetus vulgaris) are among the most basal of the species, and the most widespread. They have a preference toward hard-shelled prey too tough for bayvers to crack, such as slow-moving armored shrish. The bayvers, faster in the water, were pursuit hunters of shrish that specialized on speed and shoaling to evade predators, while rodders, more suited for maneuveravility, dexterity and stealth than speed, preferred those that were more heavily defended but were slower and easier to catch.
Some species, such as the dappled rockasheller (Duroclastemys circulupunctus), would even rely on beyond just their physical limitations, and augment their diet with the help of primitive tools as well. Using stones or bits of coral as blunt hammers, they break open the shells of bivalves, large snails, and heavily-armored lobster-like shrish as well, in order to access the nutritious meat within. This is primarily an instinctive, rather than learned, behavior: young rockashellers will often carry around small stones and use them to hit hard objects as an act of play, completely oblivious of the reason of this behavior and gradually learn to use this behavior for feeding through experience and imitation of older members of their species.
Marine searets, as a whole, are far more independent of land than bayvers are, and can in fact spend their whole lives at sea: feeding, sleeping, mating, grooming and bearing their young all while floating at the surface of the water, gathering in family groups of a dozen or two for safety. Fiercely protective of their packmates, they, instead of timidly fleeing from danger like bayvers do, instead mob and attack any predatory shrarks that threaten them, and occasionally even successfully killing their assailants: setting the stage for a complete overhaul of the dynamics of the ocean biomes as a whole.
Over time, this defensive mobbing behavior turned into active predation in some of the larger species, with shrarks, and other large shrish, no longer being seen as enemies or competitors, but as prey. The largest searet species of this time, the goliath searet (Titanolutromys goliah) can reach lengths of over eight feet from snout to tail and weigh about two hundred kilograms: making them formidable predators of the open seas, and the first hamsters to fill the niche. Goliath searets are powerful swimmers, so much so that they basically never come to land willingly, and, while big enough to prey upon bayvers, rarely do so unless desperate, as bayvers are too fast and evasive for their liking while they are much slower ambush hunters. Instead, their preferred prey of choice are the giant armored meter-long shrish abundant in the shallows, including filter-feeding, grazing and predatory members of their clade. At their size, they are large enough to tackle shrarks on their own, and now live by themselves or in mated pairs, as well as their offspring which stay with their parents for about two years before becoming fully independent.
Rather than becoming yet an additional danger to pose a significant threat in the water, if anything, the presence of the searets actually was a net benefit to the bayvers, as their rampant hunting of predatory shrarks in the shallows gradually forced the deadly arthropods further out to sea: and reduced the predator densities of the tropical coastal reefs that did prey on the bayvers regularly, to make a relatively safer sea for the marine pondrats to press onward into, and finally diversify. At long last, the monopoly of the seas by the shrish has been challenged by the hamsters: and in the eons to come, the searets' impact on the ocean ecology will have lasting effects felt even millions of years later as they, and the bayvers, attain remarkable proportions only creatures with internal skeletons could ever hope to achieve.
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More art remasters, this time from SIHTT Hits The Fan: A Cancerous Pestilence Of A One-Celled Menace !
Original:
Remaster:
'The Late Rodentocene, 20 million years post-establishment. In the grasslands of Ecatoria, a lone hamyena takes a moment to take a drink from a flowing stream, while two rising suns, one crimson, one golden, cast its fur and the surrounding foliage in various fiery tones. Dawn has come, and the nocturnal hamyena, after a successful night of foraging, will soon retire to its den to sleep.'
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Notice anything new?
If it looks a little different, it's because I'm trying out a new drawing app and trying to recreate my art style with its new brushes!
There are some brushes that aren't available in this one, unfortunately, ones that have a more gradient fade that makes a nice watercolor effect, the custom brushes for flowers and leaves, the dotted brush for sand and plant textures and the zigzag brush for underwater lighting effects. Gonna have to find a way around those...
Probably won't be ditching the old app just yet, but as the apps on my old tab are no longer updating (it's from 2016) it's wise to have a backup.
Another art remaster, this time from Dusk of One and Dawn of Another: The End of the Rodentocene Era!
Original:
Remaster:
Cannon Events: The Cannonball Forests of Nodera
As life gradually becomes established in the Late Rodentocene, the local wildlife, still recognizeable as descendants of hamsters, gradually begin to move out of the convergent roles of other typical rodents which had defined the Early and Middle Rodentocene, and into progressively larger niches as the countless millennia pass by. New species unlike anything ever seen before on this planet begin to emerge, increasingly approaching megafaunal status, and in turn, their activities, behavior and interactions with other organisms play a role in shaping the world around them: as other living things, introduced alongside their hamster ancestors to produce and maintain a viable ecosystem from the ground up, respond to their presence and evolution with adaptations of their own.
On the northern continent of Nodera, one of the most widespread biomes on the temperate regions are the cannonball forests. These are primarily composed of cannonball trees: a group of stonefruit descendants that irregularly dot the otherwise empty plains in tight groves, like an archipelago of islands made out of thick forest rising up from an endless sea of grass. These trees are unique in that they produce fruit with huge, heavy seeds, covered in thick shells to protect them from damage against gnawing rodents: species that make up basically all animals in this point in time. The downside, however, is that these rodent-resistant seeds are much too heavy to travel far, and thus end up taking root only a few meters away from the parent tree: over time, creating dense groves of trees sprouting in close proximity. In the meantime, the vast gaps between groves of trees have been colonized by various grasses, descended from the original forage grasses seeded onto the planet in its foundation, their underground rhizomes and fast growth carpeting the wide open space between the clusters of trees.
The end result, therefore, is a unique biome that is defined by being a mosaic of two biomes in one: open temperate grassland, and dense deciduous forest, scattered into each other with poorly-defined boundaries, with clearings in the forest being overgrown by grasses while occasional trees sporadically spring up from the grasslands in small, isolated groves. As such, it is the perfect ecosystem to display the levels of diversity the hamsters have attained in 20 million years, as this is a land where different creatures, some adapted for wide plains and others built for thick woodland, all intermingle in an unconventional dual landscape.
One of the most notable examples of this would be the hamtelopes and the jerryboas: two competing clades of herbivores in the Rodentocene that ultimately would specialize in two different environments to relieve competitive pressure. They, however, would both find a place here, with the large leaping jerryboas like the tawny hamaroo (Saltocricetotherium aureum) specializing on the open plains where their bounding hops were a more energy-efficient means of covering great distances on flat ground, while hamtelopes like the checkered woodelope (Sylvocervimys resplendens) dominating in forests where they adapt as low-browsers feeding on short plants like clovers and tree saplings on the forest floor, their more surefooted gaits and increased maneuverability better suited for weaving their way through the mazes of tree trunks, roots and other obstacles found on the basement of the forest.
Not all hamtelopes are such restricted to the woods, however, as some smaller ones, like the brown heatherhare (Cricetolagus pampas) do live out in the open, with their smaller size and specialization on softer foliage keeping them from competing with the hamaroos. Others, conversely, grow quite tall, like the plains browsester (Antilomys altus) feeding on high-level vegetation out of reach of their hamaroo competitors. Indeed, herbivores of many sizes thrive in the grassland portions of the cannonball forests, with the largest ones being grassland beavalos (Archaeobuffalomys primigenus), giant cavybaras weighing up to half a ton in some larger males, which prefer tough roots, stems and leaves far too fibrous and impalatable for the hamaroos and heatherhares to chew.
The forested zones, in turn, are home to its own specialized wildlife. Spotted pachavys (Chevrotomimus punctus) basal gouties related to the common ancestors of cavybaras and hamtelopes, feed on the forest floor for fungi, fallen fruit, lichens and mosses. In the canopy, squizzels such as the tree spottles (Arbocricetus sciurus) forage for small seeds, bark, tree sap and insects, while their larger cousins such as the white-cheeked munkmonk (Sciuruprosimius albops) feed primarily on fruit and the large, heavy seeds, which they learn to break open with a little ingenuity by dropping them from above to the ground, or striking them against the hard tree trunks. And flying above them are the first true flying hamsters of the Rodentocene, descending from the gliding kiterats and the jazzhands: the ratbats, of which some, like the patchwood ratbat (Pterocheiromys vulgaris), would be insectivores, others, like the lesser black-backed cannonbat (Frucinyctomys melanus), specializing more on a diet of seeds and fruit, and even some, like the red-striped bathawk (Raptonyctus rubrus), becoming predators of small, grounded prey, like furbils and duskmice. These flyers, rather ungainly and vulnerable on the ground, roost in the trees instead: holing up in crevices in tree trunks, or hanging from branches as they roost.
With an abundance of herbivores, frugivores and insectivores, the various lineages of predators from the Early and Middle Rodentocene have found a place here as well. Most notable is the forest panthster (Protopantherocricetus sylvus), the largest terrestrial carnivore at the time: yet perhaps still rather underwhelming as it is but comparable in size to Earthly lynxes albeit with a mustelid-like build with a longer body and shorter limbs. This makes it less adept at sustained chases out in the open grassland, but conversely well-suited for ambush in the dense forests, preying primarily on larger hamtelopes but also beavalos, browsesters and hamaroos on occasion when they venture close enough to the forests' edges. Longer-legged, sprinting relatives like the long-tailed dashcat (Velociailurumys pardus) instead find greater success on the plains, being the primary predators of grassland-specialized prey like hamaroos, heatherhares and beavalo.
And while the open plains and dense forest alike become home to a new array of larger creatures, small basal ones still akin to their Early and Middle Rodentocene relatives still thrive in abundance. Basal jerryboas like the striped grassland jerryboa (Bipodocricetus linaeus) are common in the grasslands as small generalist omnivores, as do the spiky heckhogs like the red-spined quillbum (Echinopilosus rubrus): well-armed against the various miniature predators of the undergrowth, including tiny basal hammibals like the speckled gamster, (Cricetovenator minimus) which preys upon other miniscule game like furbils, duskmice, gouties and squizzels. Other small hunters are present here too, albeit of invertebrates rather than other hamsters: the tiger-striped bushrat (Tigriminimys longiceps) relishes insects, isopods, springtails and other small bugs on the surface, while the prairie scoutstoat (Mustelomys vigilis), a basal squeasel and of kin to the panthsters, instead prefers to forage for its food by digging for worms, grubs and larvae while excavating burrows for shelter, occasionally rearing up in attention to watch for danger.
The cannonball forests would persist all across the Rodentocene and well into the Therocene, serving as an unusual hotspot of both plains-adapted and forest-adapted life to coexist. However, over time, it would ultimately give way to other types of trees, such as pebblefruit which had smaller seeds and thus could spread more evenly, gradually replacing the cannonball trees, and eventually homogenizing the forest and grassland biomes as of the Late Therocene. Still, this mixed grassland-forest amalgam would persist in smaller pockets until the Glaciocene: when the widespread glaciation that reached almost the equator would eventually devastate the vast majority of deciduous forest, allowing cold-resistant conifers to dominate in the tundra and taiga of the ice ages. Beyond the Rodentocene, its species would continue to diversify, with the hamaroos giving rise to the boingos, the browsesters being ancestral to the girats, the cavybaras becoming the mison and the large squeasels being the forebearers of the carnohams, all clades that will continue to prosper in the coming of the next epoch: the Therocene.
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'Barely a centimeter long, a pair of dwarf rasping hampreys (Vermicthymys minimus) graze on chemosynthetic bacteria in the Sub-Arcuterran Cavern System, small enough to make a passing feathery tubesnout, feeding on clawfern in the background, look tremendous in comparison.
These unusual creatures, neotenic descendants of a daggoth known as the mossmulch, are a culmination of a trend of increasing simplicity as they became smaller and smaller. Born in a very early stage of development and only gradually developing more as they grew, some of the species merely grew larger and no longer increased in complexity, content with remaining a vaguely-embryonic organism until adulthood.
With its transluscent body, the dwarf rasping hamprey displays the extent of the physiological degeneration of its organ systems. It has no eyes, no skeleton, no backbone, no brain, lungs or heart. It respires entirely through its permeable skin, allowing it to remain its whole life in oxygen-poor water without the need to surface for air. It is so small that blood is pumped solely by a single central vessel with branches extending to the vascularized skin, its body is supported entirely by a flexible rod of cartilage, and its central nervous system is now but a spinal cord with a large nerve knot at the cephalic end: basically just a brain stem that controls its movements, responses and basic bodily functions, relying on vibrations and its sense of taste to navigate in the total darkness. It is, in essence, a miniscule swimming tube of guts and gonads: and the barest minimum of anything else.
In a way, the dwarf rasping hamprey has reverted its complexity to something akin to a proto-chordate, comparable to the lancelet or amphioxus, and representing the second-greatest reversal of structure on HP-02017 next only to the shroomors, which had through cancerous means returned to an undifferentiated unicellular way of life. So diminished are they in overall structure that their offspring, less than a millimeter at birth, literally number only a couple thousand cells each, and even in adulthood look little different from the earliest precursors of backboned animals in Earth's ancient history, save for four grinding plates present in their ossified mouthparts that are derived from constantly-growing incisors-- a last remaining vestige and reminder that these primitive-looking microfauna are, conversely, extremely derived species descended from the most unexpected ancestor: a rodent.'
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In the Early Glaciocene, 100 million years PE, the landmass that would become Mesoterra was still two separate sub-continents: East Nodera and North Ecatoria. While North Ecatoria would be the home to the earliest podotheres, buffants ancestral to the piggalo, and relic hamyenas still resembling their Late Rodentocene kin, East Nodera would be the domain of walkabies, bicorns, giraards, jackcats, leftover Borealian flightless ratbats and, most notably the neinschweins, members of a large, predatory group of bumbaas known as the beelzeboars.
By this time, however, as the climate began to cool in the Glaciocene, these original Therocene fauna had begun to decline. Once leftover tropical zones, the lowering temperatures had made the landmass begin to shift into a more temperate clime as the ice crept in from the north and south poles: to a point when even some regions of the equator experienced periods of ice and snow for the winter. The small, omnivorous walkabies were now the subcontinent's most common creatures, as were the mountain-dwelling ungulopes that made a living in the higher zones, having adapted well to cold.
The continent's main predators, the beelzeboars, would be greatly affected by the gradual shift in the local ecology: many would die out, their specialization for warm biomes and an abundance of both prey and smaller predators they could drive off their kills was now ill-suited for a colder world with less biodiversity in other fauna. As such, the last surviving species on the landmass would take upon some rather unusual adaptations in a last-ditch effort to survive. During a brief interval of hospitable weather, a new species would emerge from these final holdovers, one that, independently of the boardozers, would switch from being specialized carnivores to generalist omnivores: still scavenging and opportunistically consuming small animals unable to escape, but also reverting back to adding fruit, roots and some vegetation back into their diet as more-basal bumbaas do. As the climes cooled, their wrinkly, bare hides gave way back to shaggy coats: save for their faces, which bore thick, rubbery skin as well, partly to avoid the face from matting with innards from carrion, and partly as facial armor, with tough leathery covers for their eyelids, when they jousted with their own kind for territory and the little available food.
The result of these trials would thus conclude the lineage of the neinschwein with a creature that, in a visual sense, looked every bit like an incongruous hodgepodge of un-alike beasts, a lopsided patchwork of parts that, on their own, appeared as if taken from separate animals. Thus arose the frankenswine (Amalgasuimys shelleyi), whose males assumed a truly bizarre morphology unlike any other of their group, with a large heavy head bearing powerful jaw muscles ideal for cracking open bones as well as hard seeds and tough plants. The frankenswine males sported a distinctive hunched profile, with pronounced shoulder and neck muscles attached to neural extensions of their thoracic vertebrae. More of their weight was supported by sturdy forelimbs while their hindquarters seemed disproportionately small, and, to add to their peculiar appearance, males sported a lean, front-heavy figure and asymmetrical tusks: a greatly-enlarged upper tooth derived from their first molar, typically on the right but sometimes on the left, perhaps as having two be equally large would hamper their feeding too much. The enlarged tusk serves as an imposing weapon against rival males, often scoring each other with gnarled lacerations that often become grisly-looking scars, in the aftermath of clashing over mates and territory.
Save for the distinctive pale band adorning her flank however, the female frankenswine is a far less distinctive-looking and less malproportioned creature, being a stouter, rounder, relatively smaller-headed and less conspicuously-patterned creature with smaller tusks. She, too, is a solitary animal, but unlike the males is more tolerant of other females and their territories may overlap. Males roam larger territories encompassing those of several females, using their impressive weaponry, striking coloration, and pronounced cranial protrusions to show off to the opposite sex and proclaim themselves as a worthy mate.
However, at the tail-end of the Early Glaciocene, the continents of East Nodera and North Ecatoria would collide: causing their respective ecosystems to suddenly enounter new niches and other species they had never seen before. With new competition to aggravate the struggles of a changing clime, particularly the coming of fierce new predators like the ripperroos and their relatives, few of their native species would persist into the Middle Glaciocene, and by the Temperocene only a few odd relics of East Nodera's original wildlife, like the pinguiphants and the threepeaked tricorn, would remain. With the disappearance of the frankenswine by the beginning of the Middle Glaciocene, the beelzeboars would be survived only by the boardozers, of which only one group, the omniboars, would continue to persist into the Temperocene, enduring thanks to their adaptability, tenacity and indiscriminate diets that allowed them to find a liveable niche in the dynamics of the warm new world.
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@tribbetherium what the hell why is this on wikipedia lol
what. why am I only seeing this now. who did this
Found some Hamster's Paradise fanart on DeviantArt! (I don't have a DA, anyone who does could maybe tell these guys I gave them a shout-out.) ^_^
Art of the Wooly Marmoth by SpecJects:
Art of the Seaver and the Varat by Boverisuchus:
'Sporting a color once nigh-unheard of in mammals, a rancid ratbit (Viridolagus foetidus) stealthily conceals itself among the multicolored flora of Gestaltia's rainbow savannah, where thornbriars, flameweed and saberleaf compete for resources, creating an ever-changing kaleidoscope of color especially when they bloom. Each of these flora have unique defenses and weapons to deal with herbivores, but the rancid ratbit has developed a tolerance, though not an outright immunity, to all of them, allowing it to feed moderately on all three while larger herbivores specialize on one of each.
The rancid ratbit likely developed its unusual coloration due to the prevalence of color vision among prey and predator animals alike, possibly caused by the presence of a second red sun that favored the success of trichromat vision. While once yellows and browns would have sufficed to hide from a dichromat predator, now it would leave them a visible target. The rancid ratbit attains this greenish shade due to two layers in its hair: a translucent outer layer that refracts blue light with microscopic structures and an inner layer with yellow pigments that mix the two into green, an adaptation shared by other species like walkabies and rattiles who also display such colors. Should its camouflage fail, however, the rancid ratbit is a swift and evasive runner, and if cornered or captured has one final last-resort defense: a set of scent glands in its rear that let off a malodorous and unappetizing secretion.'
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'At a mere 25 millimeters in length, the male gossamer crystalwing (Perlucidipteryx minimus) is among the smallest of the wingles: and indeed, of all rattiles as a whole. The female, a pale emerald hue in contrast to the male's bark-like brown, is larger, but too ranks among the miniscule, small enough to perch on the end of a twig no thicker than a pencil. Being small has many advantages: they can take shelter in tiny crevices, are more agile in flight, and need far less food and water to survive: in their case, a diet comprised primarily on flymites, millimeter-long wing-less dipterans that feed on the juices of plants, and occasionally flower nectar as well. But it is not without its challenges. At such a size they have many predators, such as pterodents, ratbats, larger wingles and even insects their own scale. Their colorless, transparent wings help them in blending amongst the foliage, small males among dry twigs and tree bark and females among fresh foliage. And another constraint is reproduction: after a gestation of only 14-20 days, a single offspring is produced at a time: left entirely to the care of the male as the female is too taxed from the effort to expend any further energy.'
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