Specevo - Tumblr Posts

I can't sleep😵 I drew some turkey vultures (top row) and a harpy/siren (bottom row) today (still a work in progress). Think I'm getting on the right track of where I want to take my harpy/siren design, sort of a very speculative-evolution/cryptid/animal misidentification way, but keeping some mythological/fantasy aspects to it. There's two morphs of the harpy; one mainland based, the harpy, and one marine/island based, the siren. Still working on details and origin story for them. Due to a catastrophe, the harpy, relative of turkey vultures with a pair of inflatable chest sacks and a beautiful call, was forced to inhabit a chain of fey-touched, small islands. The lack of predators and abundance of easy pickings in form of island creatures and miles of shoreline to comb for washed up creatures, made the harpy grow in size, and ferocity. When island resources declined, and competition rose, the harpy sought after food at sea, where the only abundant creature were weary sailors. The fey-touched islands' arcane radiation made the now ferocious and once again desperate harpy, rapidly evolve to take advantage of this resource. And so they developed behaviours, enhanced by their features, to charm and lull sailors into shipwrecking or to ket them close enough to slash and tear at their throats. #harpy #siren #mythology #greekmythology #specevo #fantasy #fantasyart #creaturedesign #fantasyzoology #worldbuilding #turkeyvulture #vulture #fantasyevolution #evolution #cryptozoology #art #sketch #sketchbook (at Stall Myra)

Behold! The revised design of the modern harpy! Revised my design from yesterday and realised that the previous post featured the "classic" harpy, the harpy that inhabited the archipelago and lived like a pretty normal vulture. This version is the man-eating, "temptress" of the sea, and the scurvy arial thief, stealer of feasts of the mainland. This is the modern harpy. You can see that the classic harpy's display features have changed slightly to look like a female humanoid, like its beak flaps have turned more vibrant in colour (not illustrated) and luscious, resembling lips, and its inflatable chest wattles have grown proportionally bigger, and gained more detail as to mimic breasts. #harpy #creaturedesign #art #fantasy #speculativeevolution #specevo #fantasyart #greekmythology #dnd #bird #vulture #turkeyvulture #animaldesign #monster #conceptart #sketchbook #artistoninstagram #artistofinstagram #evolution #worldbuilding #siren

Harpy design is getting along now. Started painting the tiny full body profiles, and am on 2nd layer of paint for the head profiles. If you look in the bottom left and right corner you can catch some bird tidd- aah inflatable display wattles..

I keep finding pictures I thought I posted a long time ago, but didn't! This creature here is called a Napuuna. They are huge, mammalian creatures resembling duckbilled dinosaurs in physique, although they "only" reach up to 5 meters in length, and 2-3 tonnes. Mainly quadrupedal, they can rear up on their powerful hind legs to for example brows tall foliage, intimidate rivals and threats, and to move faster. They are related to the smaller, gracile PinPin (see earlier post), stemming from the same line, however they are not closely related. #creature #creaturedesign #creaturedesigner #sketch #sketchdrawing #drawing #art #artistsoninstagram #artistofinstagram #artist #sketchbook #conceptart #worldbuilding #grayscale #blackandwhite #zoology #fantasyzoology #fantasybiology #specevo #speculativefiction #speculativeevolution #evolution

Future post... tease? I've worked on the natural, and unnatural, origin of the unicorn for a personal project of mine that I should really work more on (other than frantically writing notes at 3 in the morning) so I can share more creature designs and beastiary entries. Here's a small collage of some headshots, in no particular order, of the majeatic beasties coming up. Fellow world builders..what to do if the only name you have for a world is specific to ONE (1) of the many stories set in said world? #art #artist #artistofinstagram #artistoninstagram #paleoartist #fantasyart #conceptual #conceptart #unicorn #speculativeevolution #specevo #fantasyscience #fantasycreature #fantasticbeasts #fantasyartist https://www.instagram.com/p/B33_vYiFXGu/?igshid=d9vk0gh7r46o

Color wheel challenge spec evo edition! 

Massive collection of creatures from different projects as a color wheel challenge i did on twitter! This was super fun and im glad i could express my biiig love to this community in such way

Here’s my personal recommendation of a YouTube channel to check out:

YouTube

Keenan Taylor's Tales of Kaimere

I'm Keenan Taylor, a scientific illustrator and fantasy author. This channel will mostly be centered around Kaimere, the setting of my liter

In the speculative evolution community, there are three generally accepted top picks for the prospective evolution of nonhuman sapience: dolphins, crows/ravens, and –you guessed it– cephalopods. These little dudes are fucking incredible, and the ONLY thing holding them back from racing to civilizational sapience is their lifespans. Typically they have little to no generational overlap, preventing learned behaviors from being passed down and advanced. Fix that up and sprinkle in a little bit of communalism (which the gloomy octopus already has significant traces of) and they’d be well on their way to a technological civilization comparable to that of humans.

(fun fact: my world Sphaera has all three of these nonhuman people and more! merfolk are dolphins, gryndulos are octopi, and kenku are ravens!)

Oh I can probably answer this!! I love spec-evo!

the simple answer (i.e. columnar vertical bipedal build) is that our spines would probably be much more straight vertical and likely a bit more rigid. I’d imagine our pelvis and lower legs would be considerably more reinforced, and the arches of our feet would probably be nonexistent.

however, a more interesting route would be a convergent bauplan to theropods (i.e. balanced-fulcrum horizontal bipedal build)... imagine a human but with the spine aligned roughly parallel to the ground and a long, stiff tail like coelurian theropods. freaky, right? but hey, much less stress on the spine!

hey yknow how the human lower back sucks caus it hasnt had time to adapt yet to walking on two feet rather than all fours? how would our back look if it was made for walking on two legs would it be shorter, taller, wider, would we have more supportive bones between the ribcage and pelvis, how the fuck would we look

The idea of the kraken as an immense nektonic barnacle is one of the best takes on any mythical creature I’ve ever seen. I may even borrow this idea.

The Kraken could be an enormous lobster that has very long spindly legs and whiskers. Their claws have become extremely shortened giving the appearance of jets like an Octopus.

The kraken is quite and interesting one, not only is it one of the few legendary creatures closer to my home region, having grown up at the North Sea coast, but also because its name is used for any regular octopus over here, due to which it is usually thought to simply be an octopus or other cephalopod of monstrous dimensions.

And after all it is not far-fetched, as sightings of the kraken might have been caused by giant squids which can be found all over the ocean, while colossal squids usually reside in Antarctic waters. These cephalopods reach with tentacles the length of a Tyrannosaurus and are among the largest living animals.

Inthe Encyclopædia Perthensis of 1816 however the kraken has been describedto be a crab-like creature with tentacles akin to a polyp which does not matchup with later depictions.

Now the crab-like part could be attributed to a shell,the polyp-like tentacles to simply a higher number of tentacles without suctioncups which as a whole resembles a nautilus, a cephalopod that has split off farearlier on the family tree.

A shell partly surfacing might have resembled anisland as has been described in a number of kraken encounters and thereforewould make a giant nautilus a possible candidate; however a nautilus of suchenormous size is not yet known.

Ammonites, another subclass of shelled cephalopodshave developed some enormous forms, such as the Parapuzosia shown above, thelargest known ammonite with a diameter of 1.8m (5.9 ft) in this specimen whichisn’t even the complete shell and would have additional 75cm if complete.

However it should be noted that ammonites are notdirectly related to nautiloids. Instead ammonites are more closely related tocoleoids, the subclass which includes all other modern cephalopods.

Overallthat shrouds the identity of the kraken just in further mystery. And that wasonly the cephalopod section; crustaceans are a whole other brand of tea.

Crustaceans are simply amazing in their diversity.There are the ones that look “usual” and crab- or lobster-shaped and thenthere are the ones with a cyclops eye, the ones that look like worms and theones that look like some kind of vascular system and live as parasites insidesea stars.

And not to mention that insects are included on thefamily tree as well.

Oneinfraclass of crustaceans would make an absolutely weird and interestingversion of a kraken. Barnacles are practically everywhere as masters ofsurvival, while usually small they have a shell, “tentacles” and well… beinga crustacean somewhat counts as crab-like I guess.

Andthus I hereby presentthe mighty kraken, a ginormous nektonic barnacle that rules the North Sea,accompanied by an entourage of small fish, bringing either fortune to afisherman with a plentiful catch or demise as it rams the boat.

(All photos taken by me)

The Dragon myths actually came from dinosaur fossils that Europeans and Asians thought were fire-breathing beasts. So what dinosaurs do you think are the closest to resemble eastern and western Dragons?

There is actually more to that

Dinosaur bones have been interpreted as dragon bones in the past but they may not be the origin of dragon myths themselves

The 4th-century Chinese historian Chang Qu has written of dragon bones found in Wucheng over 2000 years ago

Wucheng is located in the province Sichuan which is famous for its fossils of Jurassic dinosaurs, mainly sauropods

This has simply reinforced “proof” in the existence of dragons for people of this time

In Europe however the likelihood of coming across dinosaur bones seems lower, while it is more likely to come across the bones of Pleistocene megafauna

People may come across the skull of a woolly rhinoceros and, not being familiar with these in modern European view exotic animals, interpret them as something monstrous

A fountain sculpture of the lindwurm of Klagenfurt has been inspired by one such skull

The rhinoceros skull which has been found in 1335 has been interpreted as the lindwurm which is slain in Klagenfurt’s founding tale and has served as base for the sculpture in 1583

Its true origin hasn’t been revealed until 1840

The true origin of dragons however may lie within human psychology

As anthropologist David E. Jones writes in his book “An Instinct for Dragons”, the belief in dragons is so widespread among cultures of ancient history that their origin may lie within our own evolution

An among monkeys deeply rooted common fear of animals such as snakes, big cats, elephants and birds of prey may be the origin of our image of dragons and in fact snakes especially seem to be the design base of dragons in most cultures

The instinctive fear of these animals which were regular threats in the daily life of our ancestors has morphed into the dragons of folklore

A powerful creature that may be feared or worshipped by mankind and to this day stays relevant in our culture from novels to games

All this may in the end explain why it’s actually rather difficult to pinpoint which dinosaurs resemble dragons the most

Popular picks are Pachycephalosaurus as the ontogenetical variant “Dracorex” or the scansoriopterygid Yi, although the status of its patagia is debatable

These however resemble more modern depictions of dragons which themselves have been inspired by modern depictions of dinosaurs as pointed out in this post by @suicunesrider: http://suicunesrider.tumblr.com/post/177332621980/i-appreciate-how-as-our-understanding-of-dinosaur

Dragons in classic depictions are usually blends of serpentine and mammalian features and thus barely resemble any dinosaur if at all

But as one group of animals which have blended into the dragon stew are birds of prey I may say the dinosaurs resembling dragons the most are the ones that aided in their creation

This is highly useful since I’ve had Sphaeran faeries pegged as trochilid sophonts for years now but could never find too much online about their palaeohistory.

Could fairies actually be a crafty species of Hummingbird that defends their nest using cleverness instead of aggression?

I have already done fairies

https://stolpergeist.tumblr.com/post/181978211964/a-fairy-is-an-omnivorous-shrew-whose-fingers-have

However they are such a waste basket group of magical beings you can go for multiple interpretations

Hummingbirds would however pose an issue as in this day and age they are native only to the Americas

Sometimes people may claim seeing hummingbirds in Europe but those sightings are usually hawk-moths of the species Macroglossum stellatarum

Hummingbirds do however have ancestral roots in Eurasia, splitting from the swift family tree during the Eocene, possibly evolving from a nocturnal ancestor after the split from Strisores, the order that also includes nightjars, frogmouths and the beloved potoos in case their nocturnal lifestyle didn’t evolve independently multiple times

Swifts and hummingbirds form the clade Apodiformes and are active at day unlike their relatives

Primitive hummingbirds diverged from a group called jungornithids by the end of the Eocene

One ancestral almost-hummingbird of this time is Parargornis messelensis with a size of around 5 cm

Parargornis has a swift-like beak, reduced humerus length, short and broad wings and long tail feathers

Along with Argornis it represents a very early stage of hummingbird evolution

These animals show us that a large part of hummingbird evolution took place in Eurasia

At the dawn of the Oligocene forms like Eurotrochilus emerged with elongated beaks to consume nectar

Eurotrochilus like its modern relatives is a relatively small bird, the skull having a length of 34 mm

While all extant hummingbird species are native the New World, the two species within the genus Eurotrochilus have been found in Germany, France and Poland which further suggests an Old World origin for hummingbirds

Why exactly hummingbirds went extinct in Europe afterwards is unknown

One possibility may be competition with specialized bees, another may be climate change making it more difficult to retain their body temperature due to their small size

Either way if fairies were to be interpreted as hummingbirds they would be prehistoric survivors with an origin that lies 30 million years ago

 A bit of a little sketchs done in base of a creation done in Ganbreeder a while ago and then I tried to make something from these mixes of organisms.

in orden starting from up:

The Caridocoyotl of the length of a coyote is a piscivorous inhabitants of estuaries of an Alternative Earth where the dominant animals are an unusual group of Panarthropods that have adopted tetrapod features which this species belongs, including internal skeleton but which still have characteristics of arthropods. It is bipedal, with only two long legs protruding from the lower part of the body, although it has 3 other pairs under its fuzzy coat; most of its body is quite shaggy, except for its upper part that is protected by a plate armor made of osteoderms. Its cephalothorax is mostly elongated, being a part of the front just occupied by the jaw, with eyes on the tip of it, while a second pair are in the middle. What appears to be a second tail protruding below this is actually an oviduct which grows in the females during laying time.

The Strigipugs are small mammal-like two-legged creatures of about 20 cm long, inhabitants of a temperate planet that has gone through a mass extinction event only a couple of hundred thousand years before humans developed civilization. It is one of the few creatures that has begun to thrive in its post-mass extinction world, being active omnivores that feed on small caterpillar-like creatures, these are able to move underground easily using their long protuberances on the sides of its legs. The body is rhomboid and entirety covered by a fibrous fur similar to spines on the back and adopting a smoothed texture in the front. Its owl looking face posses 2 enormous eyes, of which in front of these are what appear to be termoreceptor structures similar to the pit vipers, and in front of this are the nostrils; Its mouth hidden by the fur is divided into 5 parts, 3 divisions in the upper part and 2 in the lower part.

Minotetras are an 50 cm long extraterrestrial lifeforms inhabitant of a tropical world convergent to a terrestrial tetrapod reptile, although unlike these they did not arise from a type of lobed finned fish but from a group of creatures similar to gastropod mollusks, and besides not having the same anatomical arrangement of a vertebrate; their legs were not derived from some sort of limbs or fins but from some suckers that developed from a pair of tentacles, its tail is actually part of its respiratory system, with a membrane that acts as a type of lungbook, while the head posses most of of the digestive system, being in the middle brain located alongside other important organs.

Hoplogallis turns out to be a visually bizarre creature, being inhabitant of a planet of gravity 40% higher than the Earth of quite low temperature, is an omnivorous that feeds on dead matter, small creatures and carrion, It presents a varied intelligence capable able to recognize and remember places and individuals, as well able to produce different varieties of sounds and chirps thanks to its capacity for echolocation, it has several tiny eyes around what can be called its frill, which mix with the color patterns of its scales armor around its body, these form a some sort of large compound eye that help it to visualize objects.

it’s killing for sport!

What if corvids convergently evolved with tyrannosaur's?

Just because we’re the first technologically advanced species on this planet doesn’t mean we’ll be the last.

literally cannot stop thinking about that article talking about how crows are starting to use tools and pass down that knowledge and someone said they were entering the stone age. the stone age. bro. imagine when we entered the stone age there was just some other species already having built their shit looking at us going like “oh fuck humans are using sticks for stuff and teaching their kids how to do that haha cool”. this is the premise of a sci-fi novel. i can’t even think about it without feeling like personally responsible for the development of crows on a species level over the next several thousand years

Wayne Douglas Barlowe

Ok so, here’s a funky fact: in the early evolution of fish, the claspers (reproductive organs still present in modern sharks) actually began as a genuine third pair of limbs. Sooo what if instead of becoming purely reproductive, the claspers instead developed into full on legs.

Basically what I’m saying here is six-finned fish -> hexapedal early tetrapods -> hexapedal temnospondyls -> hexapodal tiny weirdo arboreal dendrerpetids that develop membranes to glide -> amphibian dragons

they have little grabby hands and spurt venom out of their mouths and they are my precious new babies

Ok so, here’s a funky fact: in the early evolution of fish, the claspers (reproductive organs still present in modern sharks) actually began as a genuine third pair of limbs. Sooo what if instead of becoming purely reproductive, the claspers instead developed into full on legs.

Basically what I’m saying here is six-finned fish -> hexapedal early tetrapods -> hexapedal temnospondyls -> hexapodal tiny weirdo arboreal dendrerpetids that develop membranes to glide -> amphibian dragons

they have little grabby hands and spurt venom out of their mouths and they are my precious new babies

Reposting because I think a few people didn't realize what I did there yesterday. Centaurism is here not a biological state but a social one. Females can and will move on their own but are usually sitting on the males. Juveniles don't show this behavior until adulthood. Both parties are looking for food and share it, but the females main purpose up there is to be on the lookout for predators that stalk the tall grass. But these mated pairs also defend the group and females are known to use basic tools for that while males have enlarged fangs.