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Lost Land Setting: 10 vicariant marine animals...

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This is most probably the final addition to my Lost Land setting. I decided that the invertebrates and fish of the Lost Land lacked a tiny little something. Most other clades had a good variety of speculative, fictional or shall we say vicariant forms, which had illustrations. So I dived into my archive of unfinished projects, some of which I had already shown on here. I found quite a few vicariant-looking forms which would fit, all that it took was transferring them from one setting to another. Here they are... - A tiny, planktonic ammonite that is found drifting in the open ocean in large swarms. Diameter of the shell is no more than 3 millilemtres in diameter. A small, wriggling lobopod which catches prey actively in the water column. About 10 centimetres long. A moderately-sized brittle-star which is adapted to swim actively in the water column, in order to move about. An over-sized descendant of Callichimaera, which reaches a leg-span of about 20 centimetres. An actively swimming

Lost Land setting : Creatures of Myth

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Hello again, I decided to make another addition of speculative creatures to my Lost Land setting. This time, I am adding some animals which work partly as reasoned-fantasy, greatly resembling certain mythical creatures of our world. - This creature is the Makara, a 2.7 ton Protocetid that forages on the tropical sea-floor using its elephant-like proboscis. This hare-sized animal is the Jackalope, and is in fact a horned Rodent related to Cavies, not Hares. The giant, gold-digging ants of  Herodotus are in fact a kind of giant, tusked Mole-cricket, reaching similar sizes to the largest Wetas. These burrowing insects feed mainly on plant roots and make extensive tunnels in their mountain-slope habitat, leaving spoil-piles dotted about that can sometimes contain specks of gold. The Chimaera is a kind of open-country Mesonychian predator that combines the features of Carnivorans and Artiodactyls. Reaching as much as 70 kilograms in weight, they hunt in family groups of up to 7, their resem

Yet more orphaned concepts - Happy Spectember!

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Hello again. Another blog post, another batch of orphaned concepts from the vault. - This one was supposed to be a descendant of the Kiwi, perhaps in a timeline where conservation managed to prevent its extinction. This particular form is a bit bigger and bulkier, and feeds upon crustaceans and other invertebrates on the shores of beaches and estuaries. This is some sort of Palaeozoic shark, bearing denticles and long, semi-retractable jaws. This was a concept that Raymond Tobin and I came up with for the Speculative Dinosaur Project before it died off. A kind of false-ground-sloth with a prehensile, trunk-like lower lip. This is a re-draw of a series of nondescript, blind sand-burrowing creatures from more than a decade ago. I think this one could be a mammalian burrower from a very far future, many hundreds of millions of years after humans. A turkey-sized palaeognath bird that is a predator, mainly dispatching prey with its large clawed, plume-less wings. A fast-swimming, endothermi

More Orphaned Concepts - Crocs, Monotremes and Ungulates

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Hello again, I managed to scan some re-draws of very old concepts that I had from more than a decade ago. They cover a few different kinds of animal generally, so I will cover them by group.. - The first are a set of various crocodiles, mostly Ziphosuchian/Notosuchian. The idea was a world or timeline where Crocodiles are the dominant land animals instead of non-avian Dinosaurs or mammals.   This is a bipedal browsing Notosuchian, with a tapir-like trunk.   This idea was basically one-upping Kaprosuchus, though I am not sure why it would need such long teeth, sexual selection?     A large, omnivorous land-croc with a bulky head and heterodont teeth.   An ungulate-convergent, quadrupedal Notosuchian with a small beak.   A giant, theropod-shaped bipedal Sphenosuchian, based partly on Macelognathus as an ancestor.   Another ungulate--like Notosuchian descendant, this time with cheeks and heterodont teeth.   A wolf-sized predatory Ziphosuchian with a large head and heterodont teeth.   Ti