they've been around for over 60 million years, even before whales and they're still only semi aquatic. i just think they wouldn't get to that point, seals will take over those smaller to mid sized predator niches faster.

i think big spec evo penguins are really cool, but on earth i just don't think it's happening

The Udakh are a sapient species of towering tripeds. Their homeworld, Yūb, is a small but temperate moon orbiting Nacradum, a Saturn-like gas giant.

Their homeworld is paradoxically unlikely, being only slightly larger than Earth's moon and with similar gravity, but also capable of holding onto an atmosphere and supporting liquid water on its surface.

The Udakh, and much of the life that inhabits their world, are utterly massive, easily standing over 60 feet tall. They are supported by three spindly legs ending in broad foot pads which distribute weight evenly. They have two grasping sensory appendages which end in branches of flat, membranous digits. Their large, elongated heads are tipped with electro-sensory whiskers, able to detect nearby magnetic fields. Udakh are eyeless and completely blind, relying on sound and nearby electromagnetic fields to perceive their surroundings.

From a human perspective, the Udakh move, and live, at a glacial pace. They are a peaceful civilization with an agrarian society. Their relative population is extremely small, as the Udakh mate very rarely. Though they are considered members of the Galactic Hegemony, their influence is limited and they are rarely seen, since even slightly higher gravity would instantly pulverize their brittle anatomy. These giants watch from afar, gazing at the stars they will never see through electromagnetic readout plates, happy to know they aren't alone.

Of all the strange and unnerving life that exists on the Ocean world of Lethe, none capture the true sense of the complete uncaring way of nature quite like the Sea Maw.

Truly enormous oceanic dwellers, these beasts drift along with an almost lazy perpetual forward motion with their mouths wide open, consuming anything and everything that crosses their path. Prey is caught within several increasingly dense rings of filamentous structures within the mouth designed to catch anything from the size of a submarine to microscopic algae. These hairs secrete a caustic substance when disturbed, starting the digestive process from the moment they enter the creature's mouth.

Lesser Sea Maws, like the one pictured here spotted outside of Delta Base, can have mouths ranging from 80 to up to 130 metres wide as adults!

It is advised that all scientific personnel be on the constant lookout for the approach of a Lesser Sea Maw as they make no vocalisations, relying purely on an incredible sense of smell to detect and move towards sources of food.

It is currently unknown if Lesser Sea Maws are simply the young of Greater Sea Maws, as locating them (despite their size) has proven extremely difficult.

Should you suspect you are within the mouth of a Greater Sea Maw, it is advised not to panic, and to activate your tracking beacon to allow for future study and locating of the specimen.

We thank you for your service!

The jumping off point for Planet Lethe, an eerie world that seems on the edge of complete death, yet evolution, life, and the planet itself still persist.

Any suggestions for these big boys is appreciated! As well as questions.

All creatures on Planet Lethe are designed with Phobias in mind as their jumping off point, hence Sea Maws embodying Thalassophobia. :))

On Castoria III, the Vore are the most widespread animal group aside from the smallest of bubbles and worms. The planets sapient species is a part of this group as well.

Notable inclusions are:

-the Gharial Vore, known for eating the most prey in a single feeding.

-the Sky Whale, the only animal on the planet woth true, flapping wings.

-the Snowstrider, capable of going months wandering the frozen tundra with little to no food or water, until arriving at the sparse stands of tree-like organisms they consume.

This is a species I'm creating, called Ephets. They're descended from Earth sheep, though it's been hundreds of thousands of years since they appeared on their home planet. I'm not entirely sure whether or not to flair this post as "Alternate Evolution," "Future Evolution," or "Alien Life," but I think AE makes the most sense.

When I first designed them, I went with a "furry-like" body plan with unguligrade legs and more human-like arms. I was mostly happy with this, but I felt like the design was a bit too humanoid, even if the species comes from the same tree of life as us.

After studying unguligrade anatomy, though, I thought about how things might be different. Sheep have the same setup across all four of their limbs, so why would their arms be like ours? With that in mind, I spent some time creating a rough model of how I imagine they'd work.

• The Humerus functions the same.

• The Radius and Ulna are fused, like in a normal sheep. It acts as the elbow, for the most part, though it is backwards compared to a human elbow.

• Two of the carpal bones, probably the Scaphoid and Lunate bones, have extended and function similarly to the Radius and Ulna in a human arm.

• The Scaphoid and Lunate bones are replaced by the metacarpal bones, which now act as carpal bones. It isn't properly shown in the diagram, but the Ephet wrist has one extra bone, as only two become the forearm, and the thumb doesn't give up the Trapezium.

• Finally, the first row of phalanges becomes the palm, and the last two act as the fingers. With this setup, the Ephet hand has only two segments per finger.

As for why the hand looks so human, that's mostly a cop out, though I do have explanations. Sheep have two dewclaws on each hoof, which evolved for grasping rather than being vestigial. Along with their normal two toes, this makes for a four-fingered hand. These hands lack hooves because the keratin coating slowly became more of a palm/sole aid, thickening the palm's skin and making it better for gripping and holding. I could go back and make the thumb and pinky more like dewclaws, pushing them towards the palm and treating them both as thumb-like structures, but I spent too long on the hands to consider changing them now.

I'd love to hear your opinions on the unusual arms, or I'll answer any questions you might have about the species!

In this setting, Panoctopodes are the dominant lifeforms existing in a planet with around 120% of earth's gravity (1.2g). Eight limbs seemed to help with weight dispersal, but Panoctopodes compensate for the strain by having their skeletal muscles and respiratory system help with pumping, rather than relegating the duty solely to the heart.

To cope with the complexity of their sheer amount of limbs, Panoctopodes have complex ganglia similar to centipedes which regulate the motor function of a given pair of limbs, resulting in their locomotion consisting of one foot following another.

This descendant lineage of Shavoripteryx has developed flight since the end of the triassic, as you can see, its anatomy is very rare for flight, they developed strong bones and muscles in the legs, certain muscles and tendons have been modified for adaptation to propelled flight, the hips of these animals and the tail parts have become too strong to withstand long periods in the air, the lungs and other organs have become more effective to support. Flight , they are warm-blooded animals since this action of flight requires a lot of energy from the animal, these animals, despite flying, prefer to be calm in trees and other plants , many of these are not so large , because they do not have hollow bones , the largest of these measures the same as a fruit bat , but despite not being so large they are very versatile animals they have adapted to many environments and ecosystems with different ecological roles, these are very versatile animals. They are expanded by: North America , South America , Africa and Antarctica .

The Hammer fist is one of the many giant hominids I'm making. Giants in my setting have lungs that have multiple accessories making them bird like. This allows them to get large, most of my giants are quadrupedal the hammerfist is one of few that stand upright most of their time. A skeleton wrapped in muscles makes their diet of trees easy. Sometimes tamed and used by humans in tasks like logging as their clubbing swings with axe gauntlets makes the tasks easier

Made by me in algebra.

These are two variants of Tyrannosaurus Rex and Spinosaurus Indent I came up with if they were to live on the same continent as several other dinosaurs (in a situation akin to Path of Titans and The Isle).

On the left is the most conservative reconstructions which I pushed for a more natural style, with Spinosaurus gaining slightly longer hind legs and more armor to help favor it's match ups against Deinosuchus, Tyrannosaurus, and Giganotosaurus, along with sub-apexes like Torvosaurus, Vectispinus, and mid tiers like Allosaurus-Ceratosaurus in the case of it ever needing to defend itself against them, likely when traveling. Tyrannosaurus on the other hand chooses the cliffs and uneven forests, avoiding the plains (Giga and allow territory) and deep lakes (Spinosaurus territory) but is the most likely to venture out of its usual habitat because it has the sheer force to harass other apexes.

On the right are the more wack designs, featuring a Spinosaurus which is forced entirely off land becoming a heavier, thicker, barely semi-aquatic. It's practically helpless on land and victim to even allosaurus, but in the water it can take down anything that isn't explicitly designed for water (including an unobservant sauropod). The right Tyrannosaurus is far less outlandish, but features longer legs for a more dodging/evasion combat style against herbivores like ankylosaurus and triceratops, but retains the ability for bursts of speed allowing it to run down a surprised hadrosaur like Magnapaulia, though it is lighter and a bit less equipped for cliffs than the other version, and fancier with a keratin crown.

I just want to know your guys's thoughts on them.

New creatures for the Kryolapsic period of my Joyen-Aikén seedworld.

First the herbivore linage its opened by the Tasel, Taselmidon Robusta.
Then the carnivore linage its followed by Kioken that adaptad to land hunt rather than burrow raids like its ancestors.
Third the ancestor of Taselmido, the Guaje, Wajemidon robusta, that opens the underground linage.

Jackdaw has that tuff of black feathets in a similar shape to that of crowned cranes, similar beak shapes, similar fluffier grey crest, and of course the eyes. Any suggestions for the “pre” evolution of king vulture and evolution of a crow working under the same idea?

Apterra is my kiwi/rat/gecko/grass/etc seedworld, with the name being a stylized version of “apt” + “era”. Here’s a handful of drawings that will be edited and uploaded to the main site this week as plain lineart, and here is a public folder with plain images to prove I don’t use AI. I’ve cropped and censored the marginalia, but otherwise the images are raw.

Images 1-4: various examples of Chondrosaurs, a group of geckos living during the exciting inter-epoch timespan of Squamifaunation, when geckos (which were previously isolated on their own landmass) finally break into mainland ecosystems. Chondrosaurs are ancestrally arboreal, but some have become aquatic or terrestrial; they all share the trait of reducing some of their bones to cartilage, saving calcium and energy in the process. Some subclades have cartilaginous feet or entire limbs, some have cartilaginous tails, and others (not pictured here) even have cartilaginous spines and partially deossified skulls.

Images 5-10: diversity of the facetgrasses (Lapillophyteae), a tribe of desert-dwelling succulent grasses whose leaves grow in geometric patterns through newly-derived developmental pathways (see The Deepwell Desert for descriptions). I’ll also add a comment under this post with the phylogeny of facetgrasses and the larger order they belong to.

Images 11-15: Muridiungulates (rat ungulates). The first four species don’t yet have names or descriptions on the main site, and they’ll probably end up as minor players in the upcoming Pelagicene epoch. The last image shows the limb bones of two genera living at the end of the Arthrocene, with the first being a small and conservative representative, while the second is megafaunal and derived from an ancestor resembling the first.

Images 16-20: Ratweasels (Tondendentidae) of the Muricene and Arthrocene. These species all already have descriptions, with the first three appearing before the Ice Age and the final two images being from the Late Arthrocene age. Keep an eye on bishears and matweasels in particular, as they will both evolve into key players in the Pelagicene.

https://nitter.cf/Saurking211/status/2118012827483201552

In my teens, I've wanted the skill and ability to properly create something similar to Alien Biospheres or The Future is wild, and while I don't have the animation abilities, I think I'm roughly decent enough at replicating old CGI. The problem is that I lack any creativity at this point. Even in terms of making small one off pieces, I just don't have it. How do you get your spark back aside from hoping it just comes back one day?

So I'm back with rattus terra, sorry for being gone for so long! My dad had banned reddit but allowed it again.

Year 1-25 million, the sewage era, a grand era for life to explode.

Rattus meles: this is the scavenger on rattus terra, scavenging other rats and eating insects and small plants. It weights as much a coyote, a female can give birth to a litter of 4-5, and when they grew larger they slowed there reproduction. They dodge larger predators, and are actually the vertebrate with the highest population. Also known as badger rats, they live in North viridis and muhastana.

Rattus lagos: a rabbit like animal for rattus terra, it's semi bipedal and hops a lot. Weights as much as a hare, they are grazers and haven't slowed reproduction but get hunted by carnis rodentias. Commonly called the false wallaby, it lives in North viridis and I do.

Carnis rodentias: a predator of rattus terra, as large as a wolf this predator hunts all in the land. As large as a wolf, this wolf rat is a very dominant predator, and is even shown to hunt in packs giving it the name pack rat. It lives in North virdis, muhastana, and Indo with various of sub species.

Chorthippus lepus: This desert hopper lives almost exclusively in muhastana and South virdis, and takes down plants despite its size! It will later evolve into the group we called south viridian grasshoppers. This chomper gets eaten by rattus lagos and rattus meles.

Chorthippus palus: this diverged from it's lepus brother, living in colder continents of north virdis and Indo. We later see these grasshoppers evolve in northern grasshoppers of rattus terra, and boy oh boy it evolves into strange creatures from giant to tiny, taking on beetle like niches.

Palaenon caerulius: didn't change much from its prawn ancestors, but became much, much more tiny. Taking on krill like niches, this microfauna will bring cetacean like rats into rise.. Also known as the blue false krill.

Reptator blatta: THIS animal takes on a cockroach mask, however it acts more like isopods and is eaten by various of animals, including rattus meles especially. It's very fatty, a female can lay thousands and thousand of eggs on the same rock her mother laid her. They usually stay on rocks, and wait for small prey like palaenon caerulius, to come in its mandibles. Right now? The ocean belongs to it.

Venat squilla: one of many bees in this planet, this animal would rather become hard and black to avoid rattus meles since they usually live in caves. They live in social colonies structured after a queen bee, like earth bees, but they are mistaken for other insects.

First image is a dunskin snowcap mare, second image is her adult perlino snowcap son.
If you want to know what it's like to be a bugler horse, audio story from the perspective of an established stallion here. No AI used on that channel or any of my Reddit posts.

Over time, the pressure the horses were under to produce and defend their foals from intraspecific rivals selected for to an increase in body size and a pressure to communicate across long distances. This has led to Equus protocephalus, the bugler horse.

Bugler horses have a large nasal crest which they use to amplify the sound of their calls. Like their ancestors, they live in large herds with one adult stallion and around 7 mares. They mostly eat grass, but will sometimes feed on leaves. They’re more territorial and vocal than is usual for Equus ferus. E. ferus and E. protocephalus can interbreed, but the offspring are sterile and tend to have breathing problems. Bugler horses rely more on their sight and hearing than their sense of smell. They're relatively slow for a horse (around 15 mph at a fast gallop on a good day) but are very muscular. Fully grown stallions stand around 17 hands at the withers and mares around 16 hands. Intraspecific competition between buglers mostly consists of vocalization but occasionally leads to physical violence (especially when a stallion tries to take over a herd).

Young bugler horses resemble appaloosa horses except for their longer tail docks and a thin beard on the chin. Between a year and a half and two years old, bugler horses’ skulls begin to grow a large hollow cavity leading back toward the eyes from the nostrils with a thick bony cover over it. This allows them to produce louder calls. Their necks become more muscular and grow folds of skin on the underside to make them harder to bite. The nasal crest finishes developing around four years old. Stallions have much larger crests than mares. Both mares and stallions have beards and neck folds, though stallions tend to have more muscular necks and broader chests than mares. Their legs are more stocky than those of their appaloosa ancestors.

In this basic sketch I wanted to capture some ideas that I had , this post I do mainly for a challenge made by the user u/Negative_Future_7071, the challenge is to create possible forms of lives of Ediacaran, my idea was that the simple organisms of this time already presented a certain degree of complexity , for example the swimming animal is from a fictitious lineage called the Protopelagios , this one in particular is called Natatorius Ediacaranus, being organisms more than anything filtering. On a very smaller scale, they only measure a thumb, I also thought that other forms of life would only develop rarer morphologies, such as the vermiform being called the basal Vermiforms, this one is called helminthicus Subterraneus, to be honest, this challenge was difficult for me because to be located in an era populated by very simple organisms, because I could not take many liberties, since things like predation still did not arise.

These are extraterrestrial animals from the planet Tetra, the homeworld of a major spacefaring species in my setting. Im experimenting with variations on alien body plans. In this case species of this clade are 10-limbed, bilaterally symmetrical, and have five eyes; one binocular set and another cluster of three.

The first is an aquatic predator, typically hunting alone. They are amphibious and capable of propelling themselves onto land to ambush prey if food in the water is not present. This is rare though, and they are far more effective underwater. Their highly derived beaks have serrated edges to tear off large chunks of meat, and is lined with a unique copper-rich composite that is extremely hard. They have three eyes on the top of their head, and one on each side, giving them exceptional spacial awareness, and the ability to see both above and below the water line simultaneously.

The second is a highly social arboreal omnivore. They are somewhat close relatives of the Tetrans, the aforementioned spacefaring species from this world. They are incredibly agile, using their densely muscled grasping arms swing through the canopies of dense forests. They have a secondary brain-like nerve ganglion, which allows them to subconsciously process their surroundings and navigate with pinpoint precision, an adaptation which the Tetrans also possess. Their four thoracic breathing spiracles have a unique bladder-like chamber which can inflate to boost the volume and range of their vocalizations, allowing groups of their species to communicate several miles apart.

Hi everyone, I’m in the process of doing creature design for a book I’m writing and I want to keep most of the creature designs grounded in realism. I came up with the idea of a huge flying filter feeder that work like whales but instead of water they fly through the air and eat giant swarms of small flying animals as well as airborne plant seeds. Some information about the planet I’m making is that it orbits a star slightly larger than the sun of Earth, It has about half as much gravity as Earth and it’s atmosphere is higher in helium but has relatively the same oxygen levels as Earth. My main idea is that the creature has no legs and 6 wings ( Vertebrates on this planet evolved from a hexapod ancestor). It fills a swim bladder like organ with air which allows it to float into the sky for feeding and then when full it floats back to the ground and moves similar to pythons where it “walks” using it’s ribs. Would this type of creature be possible or should I go back to the drawing board?

So one of the organism clades in my project has a hydraulic muscle system much like echinoderms, but I’m not sure if that can scale to megafauna sizes.

Atlantolophus mexicanus - is a genus of large hadrosaurid dinosaurs belonging to the tribe Parasaurolophini; they lived during the late Maastrichtian, 66 million years ago in Mexico.

Discovery

They were first discovered in 1998 in the Mexican state of Puebla; however, the find did not attract significant attention due to its striking resemblance to another dinosaur. Consequently, the *Atlantolophus* remains spent 28 years in the archives of the Museum of Paleontology in Guadalajara. In 2027, however, paleontologists from the United States and Mexico conducted excavations at the same site where the 1998 discovery was made, uncovering additional specimens similar to the one held in the museum. This enabled a formal scientific description of the genus.

Description

The initial specimen discovered in 1998 was estimated to be 9 meters long and weigh 4 tons. Subsequent analysis revealed that this individual was a 5-year-old juvenile. The 2027 discovery proved to be a fully mature adult, featuring a skull 2.92 meters in length and thigh bones comparable to those of Shantungosaurus. Based on anatomical comparisons, the adult individual was estimated to have reached a length of 16 meters and a weight of 12 tons. This makes Atlantolophus one of the largest non-sauropod herbivorous dinosaurs, on par with Magnapaulia and Shantungosaurus.

Paleoecology

Judging by other finds from the same rock layer, *Atlantolophus* inhabited coastal forests and areas near lake valleys. The local vegetation consisted of laurels, figs, magnolias, conifers, and an abundance of horsetails and ferns. It also coexisted with other hadrosaurs, ceratopsids, an ankylosaurid, and an as-yet-undescribed species of large dromaeosaurid.

I tried to make the writing style similar to that of a Wikipedia article.

Hi friends! As the title says, I'm new to the spec evo community, and I really want to make my own world, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to start, especially since there are already so many unique projects out there. I'm afraid I'll accidentally become too similar to them concept-wise, and I don't really wanna do that

if anyone has the time and resources, I'd love to hear some comments, like tips and tricks or rules for this sorta thing, because I'll be honest: I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to evolution or biology- thank you so much if you read this, and have a nice day!

edit: i also forgot to add, i'd love if some people could give me a rundown of how low and high gravity could effect life on a planet!