Lost Land Setting: Whither they came? - The depths of time...

 Hello again,

As another expansion for my Lost Land setting, I had a good think about speculative critters again, then an idea struck me. The Lost Land is a place where organisms are thrust from disparate parts of Earth's timeline, into a new frontier where all these various creatures have managed to attain a kind of balance. We have creatures from the past, present, and future, but what about the idea of non-linear timelines? If earth's fauna had taken different turns based on other circumstances than what we have now. So that formed the basis of me adding 10 new speculative creatures to the setting, as seen here.

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A chimp-sized predatory Omomyid primate, from a timeline where primates did not become extinct in North America.

A primate-like, intelligent Phalangeriforme  marsupial which is common in Australia. From a timeline where the Miocene cooling never happened, and Australia/Sahul remained covered in Rain-forest.

A 2.5 ton sapient, civilization-building species of Elephant. From a timeline where Hominids never attained a state of being human at all.

A goat-sized, omnivorous terrestrial-Placoderm, with a tripodal stance. From a timeline where Bothriolepid Placoderms managed to colonize land in the Devonian, and prevent the rise of the Tetrapods.

A 25-centimetre-long predatory-invertebrate descended from Rotifers, which eventually colonized land in a timeline where the Cambrian Explosion went completely differently.

A draught-horse-sized cursorial, ungulate-like browsing Dicynodont. From a timeline where the Permian-Triassic "Great Dying" extinction never happened.
 
A penguin-like flightless marine Pterosaur, from a timeline where the colonization of the oceans by Sauropterygians was not absolute.

A lizard-shaped, foot-long terrestrial shark, from a timeline where sharks managed to colonize land before Tetrapods did.

A 6-meter-long 1.4 ton Iguanian lizard with an upright gait. From a timeline where the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum did not happen, and large lizards competed successfully with early ungulate herbivores.

A burrowing, mole-like Alvarezsaur, from a timeline where mammal diversity was severely reduced by the early Cretaceous, and many Theropod groups had miniature species.

Through unusual rips in time originating in alternate timelines, these creatures have been inadvertently added to the biomes of the Lost Land. We can assume that these particular holes in time were more unstable than the usual ones, as so few alternate creatures have made it this far.

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And that's it, I hope you enjoy this selection. I am willing to say that this is the last big update to the roster of species for the lost land, as I was setting the cut-off point at about 450 and its there now.


All images, designs and writing on this blog are the property of Timothy Donald Morris (unless otherwise indicated), do not use, reproduce, or copy them without my permission.
© Timothy Donald Morris 2024

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