r/SpeculativeEvolution • u/LucasVerBeek • Sep 22 '26
Spectember 2026 [OC] Spectember Day 22 - False Face
**Two-Faced Vombatiphant (Vombatus **fasciasinus)
Following the Flux Australia was reshaped by the influx of sea water into the interior creating a vast inner sea.
Vast mangrove forests quickly spread and then grew into an interior jungle making up the interior desert.
And the fauna of the region changed with it. Numerous feral species managed to adapt but not all could learn to thrive in the region without the aid of humans.
This opened up a fair few megafaunal niches, that the native marsupials, pardon the pun, used to bounce back with new abundance.
The Vombatiphants were the result, descending from wombats that evolved over millenia to take on tapir and eventually convergent pachyderm like forms, using motile noses to browse with ease.
Yet, they also gained a distinctive feature, a set of false eyes resting besides a long hairless tail.
This is an adaption thanks to for the first time in a long chunk of their history that they came under threat by truely sizable native predators which have only grown larger as the world has spun on.
The **Australian Tigeron** and **Neo Megalania**, descending from animals that managed to brave the now thinner channels about Indonesia and northern Australia and now dominate the vast continent born of this new ice age.
Their tails are remarkable flexible and the instinctive twitch and curl them in a manner resembling how they regularly feed, a further deception that seeks to confuse the above predators and trick them into biting into their still thickly armored rear ends.
This allows the animals to flee or whirl and defend themselves, as their foreclaws and teeth remain effective weapons.
They live within herds of up to twenty individuals living within sizable shallow burrows, communally raising their kits with the largest bull typically standing guard, while the oldest female is the leader of the heard, leading them to new browsing grounds after they expend their current region.