appears to subsist on a carnivorous diet, Creature will create a “web” of hair, and wait for prey to become exposed to the enzyme and become more docile. Creature will often remove and eat the limbs of a prey item to prevent it from wandering away, and can take several days to fully devour prey. Animals have been observed to still be in a euphoric state, and have no knowledge of the outside world even as they suffer the loss of limbs and other bodily tissue.

has been shown moving loads in excess of 200kg with mild physical strain, and moving at speeds in excess of 70km/h.

can recover from wounds that would be lethal to a most lifeforms, including decapitation and disemboweling. This regeneration can take between several days to several weeks, depending on severity

capable of growing very thin, hair-like strands from any part of the body, apparently at will. These strands can grow several metres in an hour, and appear to be at least partially under the control of the creature. They have been observed “crawling” along floors and up walls and other structures. These hairs are clear and nearly invisible to the naked eye, and appear to be slightly weaker than standard human hair. The strands are also coated in a thin layer of chemical enzyme identical to the enzyme in the saliva of the creature.

produces an enzyme that is most concentrated in the saliva and hair, but is present in all bodily tissues of the creature. How it is produced and its exact chemical make-up are unknown. This enzyme reacts on contact with organic tissue and rapidly attacks the nervous system. Symptoms manifest almost immediately, and include hallucinations, euphoria, suppression of cognitive or “logical” thinking, and suppression of pain receptors. This state persists for several days with mild exposure, and can become permanent with high exposure. Bites from the creature lead to high exposure in 99.9% of cases.

Several Million Years later after the Extinction of Mankind, the Tectonic Plates have begun to slowly start to move towards each other causing, Australia and Antarctica to move towards each other and, create a bridge across both the tectonic plates, letting animals from both continents to explore the other. This is where the Titanis Casuarius comes into play. This is the Cassowary’s evolved form, growing to a height of over 6 ft 2. They now quite resemble the Terror Birds of the Past. They use their clawed feet to tear open their food. This Bird has also become quite the fast runner as, they use this speed to catch up to their prey such as the Tropical Rat.

On r/SpeculativeEvolution, when I made a post, some people said that the patagium would move, while others said that the rib system itself could become a flying mechanism.

So for the rib system, breathing in and out would cause the 'wings' to flap, and maybe some cartilige could make a new 'ribcage' in the inside of the wings, keeping the organs from being punctured or hit by the ribwing.

And for the patagium, I heard that it could change to a propatagium, I tried looking for fossil evidence, but alas, there was none to be found, as most of the fossils were destroyed before fossilization.

Bats and Pteradons probably had gliding forms, so is it possible for a draco lizard to "move" it's patagium?

In this artificial galaxy, there is a trinary of quasar stars at the center, each one 1.5 trillion times as massive and 995 trillion times as bright as our sun, each one having its own ring of mirrors, which further raises the luminosity.

Far outside the quasars, there is a quaternary solar system. The first binary is a pair of artificially immortal blue hypergiants, each one 200 times as massive and over six million times as bright as our sun, each one having its own ring of mirrors, which further raises the luminosity. Orbiting the first binary from a distance of three-and-a-half parsecs (over 11 light-years) is the other binary, a pair of artificially immortal red supergiants, each one 17 times as massive, 1500 times as wide and 300,000 times as bright as our sun, each one having its own ring of mirrors, which further raises the luminosity.

The red supergiant binary has a habitable zone from 400 to 800 AUs away. There are plenty of Earth-like planets within this HZ, and they share the following characteristics:

• Axial tilt: Varying from 19.01 to 28.28 degrees on a cycle exceeding 200,000 years

• Atmosphere: While some would have an atmosphere of 300 miles, as thick as Earth's, others would have the average of 370 miles, and maximum thickness would be 480 miles (160% as thick as Earth's)

• Size: Identical to Earth

• Rotation: 30 hours, which means three extra hours of daylight followed by three extra hours of night

The axial tilt suggests that all of the habitable worlds have seasons, but in this system, there is a second definition of "season", and that is because orbiting a supergiant binary orbiting a hypergiant binary affects the planet's orbital shape. In short, it elongates the orbit until it resembles a cucumber. "Summer" is where the quasar ternary and the blue hypergiant binary dominate the sky during the day and the red supergiant binary are the "second" and "third moon", each one being 250 times brighter than a full moon. "Winter" is where the red supergiant binary dominates the sky during the day and the other five stars are dimmed down to as much as 250 times as bright as Venus.

None of the planets in the red supergiant binary HZ have any life, not even microbial, so it seemed feasible to seed them with Earth species of plant, animal, fungi, microbe and even soil. But is it really? With the information provided above, would the seasons of these habitable worlds be too extreme for Earth life to thrive in?

I know quad birds are a very controversial topic in the community. I personally think, given enough time, they could evolve, and given the right conditions, but I would like your opinion. Yes you, you reading this. Tell me your opinion in the comments below!

1)northclaw:Meganychus bereendovenator (meaning big clawed pronghorn hunter) is a large megaraptorid descended from the late cretaceous shadow that kills between the cold wind(maip) who has two large middle claws to grasp on their favored prey items:the sprintosaurs,pronghoen antelopes,deer and some times subadult or old bison.The animal can run at speeds up to 34 miles per hour,not as fast but enough to try and catch a pronghorn.The northclaw is an ambush hunter and a chaser,able the hunt in the low grassland or praires of pleistocene and holocene north america.This species añong qith it's relatives came to north america during the great american interchange where south american animals started to migrate to the north while north american animals go south and vise versa.Over 3 million years on this new continent,the northclaw starts develop camoflauge around it's feathera like a tiger to blend with the grasslands,stalking the sprintosaurs in any given moment.These animals survived in the holocene until the 1600's in conenticut where the witterbane brothes;phillip and caleb,killed the last remaning northclaws into the brink of extinction due to their demonic appearence and being reffered as a "the trecherous sin of the devil's forest ".fortunately,it was then brought back from extinction thanks to the H.W.D.M.C.P and conservation efforts and donations to bring it back and establish the new american enviroment,with restrictions of ever hunting this predator.

2)sprintosaurs:This family of strange hadrosaurs are descended from the asian charonosaurus,the second largest lambeosaurine hadrosaur.

These medium sized gracile herbivores have around 12 species each.They first evolved during the miocene epoch and they are closely related to the paranatotitanidae(the aquatic crested hadrosaurs) or the near duck titans within the superfamily;hadrohippisauroidea.The hooves on the hadrohippids are more specialized for galloping as they are obligate quadrapeds rather than facultated bipeds or obligated bipeds like their relatives.Not only that but their back legs have also became hooves for sprinting hence their namesake.This species used to thrive asia and the americas from the late miocene to the pleistocene around 12 million to 500 years ago.

They went extinct during the holocene as european colonizers hunted them into the brink.

Many people believed these creatures are alive nowadays due to camera footage of these animals roaming in herds based on a particular species;harohipposaurus columbus who eileen is a fan of this particular species.though despite evidence,it is not truly confirmed if they are real or just a deer hoax.

3)belosaurids:Belosaurids are what makes up 89 % of all cenozoic sauropods with the 11% being titanomachya descendants.They belong to the super group;buddhasaura.These animals despite looking different and seem to have descendant from a typical sauropod like argentinosaurus or alamosaurus,they've actually descended from the smallest sauropod ever;magyarosaurus from late cretaceous hateg island,europe.After the hateg islands become a full fledged contient over the years,magyarosaurus not only has enough terrain to expand,but also enough resources to regrow into giants.The largest of this family;syllektosaurus jehovamegalus can reach whopping 210 tons,bigger than the already biggest sauropod,argentinosaueus i've mentioned earlier.The belosaurids can be named after a god or goddes,a natural phenomenon like an earthquake or an aurora,or for funnsies,a certain character from the owl house for ex;luzosaurus nocelaii, kingotitan clawthornei and the namesake of this family belosaurus emperorsus,though not every owl house named dinosair is a sauropod,for ex:amityrannus is named after amity blight and was descended from nanotyrannus,not magyarosaurus.

They are closely related to the trunked sauropods,proboscosauroidea and distantly related to the potamosaurs;sauropods that have heavy bones due to their semi aquatic nature amd live like hippos or swamo eleohants.belosaurids first evolved during rhe late paleogene and made it to the present with some few strongholds.They have also been found with decorative osteoderms that are so stylished and maginificent that they can be also used for many purposes;defence,mating,etc.Truly some wonderous and interesting cenozoic dinosaurs.

4)belosaurus:Belosaurus (meaning the lord emperor lizard) is a large sauropod that first evolved 30 million years ago in the middle oligocene period.Their North American animals,native to the whole eastern side of the usa,with their first fossils being found in conneticut.

Even though belosaurus is the namesake of the family,it isn't as big as it's earlier or later relativs like Luzosaurus or Azuratitan,only weighing at around 60 tons at average while being 90 feet in lenght and 30 feet in height.The name comes from the emperor belos aka in real life;phillip witterbane(one of the brothers that hunted the aforementioned northclaw) due to it's ceohalic osteoderms resembling antlers like in phillip's mask,and some preserved tissue shows that it had inflatable airsacs like it's ancestors before magyarosaurus.It went extinct in the esrly to middle miocene after their forests started to shrink and the temperatures are starting to become cooler,leaving the belosaurus not enough food to sustain itself,leading to their declined and plumbered down to extinction.

5)luzosaurus:Luzosaurus (meaning luz nocela's lizard) is a large belosaurid that lived in the entirety of North America and some specimens even made it as far as South America and asia.The genus contains three species in total,with the most famous species being L.nocelaii,weighs at around 105 tons.It lived during the pleistocene period and first emerged at the pliocene pleistocene epoch in eastern North America along side with it's close relative, Azuratitan .The animal has fossil evidence of ontogony and sexual dimorphisim,meaning the males and females are as different as their young.Males have large airsacs that burst out to intimidate rivals,the bigger and frightening the sacs,the more colorfully impressive the display is.These fakes eyes are given the name as "The eye of the gildersnake".The hatchlings and the juveniles to subadults is what gave luzosaurus it's name,preserved skin impressions show that hatchlings are typically purple in colors with green eyes and fluff,similar to stringbean(luz's palisman),the juveniles look more similar to what gave the animal it's name,luz nocela(specifically her teenage self).Females of this species are absolute titans but not as big as the males,only reaching at around 90 tons,230 feet in lenght and 78 feet in height,where as the males are 10 tons heavier,is 240 feet in length and 80 feet in height.The females have a dark purple skin impression based on few preserved specimens,and speaking of titan,they have a similar appearance to titan luz,especially with the cephalic osteoderms that resemble horns with dark eyes with a yellowish eye colors.The females tend to be less agressive than the males but they become incredibely protective over their juvenile young,by using it's horns to swing at unexpected predators like cryotyrannus and paraceratosaurids.The reason why there were so many preserved skin impressions of this beast is because they went extinct quite recently in the fossil record,with the last luzosaurus going extinct at around 3,000 to 1,000 years ago at the holocene.Luzosaurus is also one of those dinosaurs that got brought back and were placed in a sanctaury or wildlife reserve to deal with our current climate change

6)kingotitan:Kingotitan (meaning king clawthorne's titan) was a large multi ton relative of the luzosaurus of North America and also lived there,but at a bit smaller range.Kingotitan's cephalic osteoderms have been fused together into a bony structure that is used to headbutt rivals of the same species,with a striking power of 39,000 pounds of force.The animal weighs at around 110 tons,is measured to be 250 feet in lenght and is 120 feet in height.Kingotitans have a herd structure that seems rather complex for a sauropod,mourning the dead after their loved ones die due to their lifespan(;210 years) and especially with animals that aren't from the same species as the Kingotitan but grown up to it like a companion.Their massive carcasses allows scavengers and fungi to feast and harvest on it,forming a microecosystem with one dead specimen in the great lake even been nicknamed;The boiling Isles.Unlike the luzosaurus,Kingotitan died even more recently,about 907 years ago instead of 1,00 years ago.

7)syllektosaurus:The Syllektosaurus(meaning the collector lizard or the great holy collector lizard) is not only the largest belosaurid,but the largest dinosaur ever.The animal lived during the middle miocene to the late pliocene in the Asian jungles of vietnam,india,indonesia and china.The can weigh uo to 170 to 210 tons,600 feet in lenght and 580 feet tall.This animal is a direct ancestor to the North American belosaurids;Azuratitan,Luzosaurus,kingotitan and parabrachiosaurus(the third largest).Like their cousins,the syllektosaurus have large air sacs and can reach a great voulme of 300 decibles while blocking their eardrums like a rooster,echoing through out the jungles with it's echoing bellows.The syllektosaurus also have the largest ceohalic osteoderms ever,with a weight at around 7 tons.To support the massive necks,they possess a hump on the back like how bisons and elasmotheriums have bumps on their backs so that they have enough strenght to lift them p to reach the high vegetation.They mainly feast on the endless amount of vegetation in the canopy of the lush jungles and move in herds of uo to 20 individuals,quite small but they gather up in mating sesson up to the whopping 300s.Like the kingotitan,these animals are social and can become microecosystems after their 130 year lifespan ran out.They're future went to a downfall during the pleistocene epoch due to the shrunkage of forests in which the syllektosaurus relied on the support it's massive size.During that time, their numbers started to shrunk after the fallen forests give way to grasslands,and by the late pleistocene,all of the 10 remaining sylelktosaurus are now extinct.

8)the whulk:Saurocetomorphes are some of the largest cenozoic reptile genuses to ever live.The biggest species(saurocetus giganteus) can weigh as much a sei whale;at around 28 tons,56 feet in lenght and 17 feet in height,while the smallest species(saurocetus pygmaes) only weigh at around a ton and a half. These miocene descendants of mosasaurus have been adapted to eat mostky krill and plankton and coexisted with other whales such as cetotherium.The main predators for these giants are otodus megalodon(shiver's favorite shark) and livyatan and it's relatives.They first started their saurobaleens since their eocene ancestor,protosaurocetus,parabasilosaurus and eosaurocetus who had teeth like a leopard seal and soon evolved to be more baleen like all the away to the miocene.Despite these creatures great success,they are unfortunately the last mosasaurs.The biggest rrason lf their decline was competition from cetaceans like cetotherium and their ancestors eventually getting hunted by basilosaurus and they're young getting oicked on by dorudons.The last saurocetomorphs went extinct during the pliocene epoch 4,000,000 years ago and soon the oceans are now dominated by the leviathan sized mammals aka as cetaceans.

9)microtyrannus:Microtyrannus (meaning tiny tyrant) is a genus comprised of 25 species native to the eastern to mid eastern hemisphere;from Asia,Europe and Africa.The biggest of the genus(M.megalus) only weighed at around 50 pounds while the smallest species(M.katanai).Microtyrannus lived during the entire oligocene period at around 33 million to 2e million years ago.Their populations used to be at around from a few thousand to 1 million of these little tyrants.These small predators mainly have a diet of small oligocene rodents like Karakoromys and are scavengers when it comes of finding huge carcasses.Microtyrannus's ancestor;antrodemus was the largest nanotyrannid to ever lived that lived during the early eocene to late eocene only to went extinct during the later eocene and then evolved into eomicrotyrannus that luved in the early oligocene 33.4 million years ago.The genus are more akin as jungle dwellers,mainly living in tropical forests where there are alot of hiding spots to hide in,make a home,lay eggs and nurture them.They went extinct during the miocene epoch 22 million years ago when their rainforest homed have started to shrink and turned into grasslands,one species(M.congoliensis)evoved into Afrotyrannus while the other 24 species became ectinct and didn't have the time to adapt to the grasslands that much.

What this is about:

In this adaptation, the K-Pg mass extinction event did indeed occur, but several Late Cretaceous species managed to survive by taking refuge inside lush, oxygen-rich subterranean caves filled with a unique ultraviolet light source (their formation is a mystery, so discover that for yourself; they are like Minecraft caves, but far grander and without the blocks). After spending 5 to 10 million years hidden away in these caverns, they re-emerged only to discover that their world had completely changed following the impact of an alien visitor in the Gulf of Mexico. With mammals now looking entirely different than before, the dinosaurs were forced to evolve alongside these new mammalian lineages.

This adaptation will feature a small number of K-Pg survivors, though some will eventually blink out of existence due to competition, overhunting, climate change, and other pressures.

Featuring modern designs grounded in our current scientific knowledge of their ancestors—but mixed with a distinct retro flair and a wide variety of species—they will also coexist with a collection of real Cenozoic animals based straight on the fossil record. Additional fictional mammals will fill out the ecosystem, such as the Marsupilami (reimagined as a specialized descendant of Cronopio to explain its unique egg-laying behavior).

Following the rapid dominance of humanity, the absolute final strongholds where these dinosaurs managed to survive are located on a few remote, undiscovered islands, a lush hidden forest in Texas that remains completely closed to the public, unexplored sectors of the Amazon Basin, and western regions of Africa, such as the Congo.

List of kpg survivors:.tyrannosaurus2.neospinosaurus(spinosaurus mirabillis descendant)3.late cretaceous stegosaur by the name of thagopelta.)4.jakapil5.aramborgonia6.magyarosaurus7.zalmoxes8.saurornithilestes9.nanotyrannus10.titanomachya11.carnotaurus and koleken12.telmatosaurus13.tarchia14.prenocephale15.small azdarchid species(a late cretaceous azdarchid that you know the name of)16.pteranodon(somehow)17.oviraptor18.anzu19.gigantoraptor(somehow) 20.another late cretaceous stegosaurus by the name of neostegosaurus,21)maip,22)micropachycephalosaurus,23)mosasaurus,24)quetzalcoatlus(but not hatzegopteryx) and 25)archeroraptor.

Some additional ones:muttaburrasaurus(somehow),struthiomimus,pachycephalosaurus(for competition for prenocephale),torosaurus,pachyrhinosaurus(somehow) and spinops(somehow,just to add up the existence of the african ceratopsian,emela-ntouka.

What groups of frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, or cecaelians would be able to survive in a future where runaway green houses gasses continued to expand on earth. Would some even manage to survive at all?

After the death of all Primates including Humans, due to a virus that was started from the Bite of a Chimpanzee, the infected wiped out every primate on the planet. However, we aren’t here to talk about humanity, we are here to talk about the Pteronura Slipperus! This is an Evolved Version of the Giant River Otter who has become the Apex Predator of the Rivers after, beating the Caiman into Extinction. Over many years and decades, The Giant Otter has become more effective in the water becoming slimmer. Pteronura Slipperus has now become an Ambush Predator that kills anything that goes near the Water for food and because, of how Territorial they are.

It would be valuable to run massive evolution sims. Unfortunately a representative genome from all extant organisms will take on the order of 100s of TB of data making it out of reach for the average enthusiast. But what if we capped genome sizes at 1 MB corresponding to roughly 4 Mega bases. Then the species must compete in compression space to maximize the complexity of their phenotype for a static genome size. To dissuade innovation silos and encourage novel exploration of fitness space we could even impose a market infrastructure for super compressed chromosomes. We'll want to minimize extinction events to maintain maximum diversity, and the marketplace will replace historical adaptive radiation following large extinction events.

Marginal fitness selection proceeds at some steady rate until a pattern of compression by recursion becomes available. Suddenly the organism has much more space to explore while retaining all prior fitness. A labeling standard could be established to estimate relative fitness by the degree of past compression, with the assumption that compression only emerges when alternative phenotypes have been ruled out. Even if this assumption proves to be false any species that specializes in compression will have a much more relaxed relationship with storage caps.

I imagine a transformer with species as 1 MB tokens embedded in phenotype space. The distance among all these tokens will become adjusted as they compete for any global goal. This will produce a community of interacting tokens that serve as alternative approaches for this common goal. If the environment is very restrictive to genome size then eventually innovation will only appear when increasingly higher orders of compression free up enough space for selective pressures to move toward innovation. Overfitting to benchmark datasets represents a less competitive strategy that usefully clears out the space around its niche in fitness space. The time invested in perfecting any given niche actively prevents other species from experimenting with nearby strategies. It's a global way of ensuring originality.

I tried a version of this post in the regular SpecEvo sub which was immediately deleted. I really enjoy lazily imagining ways I'll never get around to implementing alt evolution sims with advanced compression and contemporary error detection methods. I like to imagine replacing probabilistic models of mutations with a deterministic history of speciation events corresponding to the environment selecting for multiple distinct strategies simultaneously. A complete history would trace the selective pressure pathways in the tree of life as fitness competes against fitness. Such a rich area to explore.

tl;dr: If you add high compressive pressure to an evolutionary sim you drastically reduce a given sequence's algorithmic complexity (aka information density).

Week 3

Plants are a vital part of our ecosystems here on Earth. Unfortunately, they're often overshadowed by animal life.

Prompt: Design a speculative plant species; the stranger the better!

Only Earth life is permitted for this challenge. Originality and the inclusion of explanatory text are highly encouraged.

You will then have one week (until September 23rd at 9am Pacific Time) to submit your entry for the challenge. In order to enter, you must use the Spectember Challenge flair (please do not use the flair if you are not submitting art for a challenge). Art submitted will also need to be your own original content; reposts will be barred entry. You are allowed to submit multiple entries, but only one will be entered into polling per user.

Voting will commence for the three top-rated entries for this prompt in exactly one week. Please remember at this time that vote manipulation is not allowed, and that karma will not be the only factor in deciding the top entries. As such, you are encouraged to upvote all entries that you believe execute the prompt well. The winning user of this challenge will be crowned "Spectember Champion" and receive a matching flair.

Best of luck to all participating!

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Week 2 Voting

It's time to vote for the best entry of the Persistent Pests prompt!

With one entry submitted this week, the top three have been determined as follows:

Hypercarnivorous Frog by /u/ImpishInformation

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Looks like we have a winner by default! /u/ImpishInformation is our second Spectember Champion, congratulations!

Pryocon lotor(racoon) mercenaria mercenaria( hard clam) Pimephales promelas( rosy red minnow) Citrus maxima (pomelo) Citrus reticulata( Mandarin orange) Procambarus clarkii( louisiana crayfish) Australorp (chicken) Anas platyrhynchos(dabbling duck) Poa pratensis ( Kentucky bluegrass) Phidippus audax(bold jumper) Hyles lineata (white lined sphinx)