Welcome to my Metazoic site! This site discusses the existence of the creatures to come along after humans will be extinct. I first became interested in a world after man when I acquired my first copy of Dougal Dixon's After Man: A Zoology of the Future in 1992. However, I unwittingly created creatures that did not exist from the time I was about 8 years old. But it was after I obtained a copy of that book (now a collector's item) that I decided to take these same creatures I created as a child and make them more realistic in an evolutionary sense. Though it may be hard for a lot of us to grasp, humans will soon become extinct. One of the biggest factors of how this will happen is the current overpopulation rate. Which is why I don't contribute to the population. I created this world with little more than mammals fulfilling all ecological niches with the help of some friends. I even gave the era of the age after man a name, I called it the Metazoic, derived from the words for "After-era" (Meta, meaning after, and zoic meaning era). We are now in the Cenozoic era. To view all the animals I have created since I began this project, you can go to the "Meet the Mammals" section of this site. To discuss your own ideas about what you think will happen in the future world, and share your ideas with others, please feel free to leave a comment.
One more thing, some of you may find this site quite offensive, and you have a right to your own opinion. But please respect my right to have an opinion too. I'm not saying there is no GOD, I believe it was HIM who got the ball rolling. But I believe after that, evolution took over. There is so much more evidence of evolution than there is of creation. Even that going on right under our noses. Other than that, enjoy yourself and visit our many links.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

All Your Tuataras Are Belong To Us


Has anyone seen this story yet, about the baby tuataras found at the Kaori Wildlife Sanctuary in New Zealand? I think this is fantastic news, it means that tuataras might, just might, rebound from their past losses and be around in our future for our children and grandchildren to see. And they should be around for our children because tuataras are, quite frankly, fascinating creatures. They evolve faster than any other creature at the molecular level. They can live for over a century, and still be sexually potent. Not to mention they are the last of the sphenodontians, an ancient group of reptiles that look the place of lizards through much of the Mesozoic.

Tuataras have another features that makes them even stranger; a third, or parietal, eye in the center of their forehead. If one was to look at the head of a baby tuatara, there would be a third black eye centered in between the other two in the middle of their head. Really. And this eye isn't just a freak mutation or a non-functioning part, it can actually sense light and ultraviolet radiation. However, as the tuatara ages, the eye receeds into the head, and becomes covered in flesh and bone. In fact, all tetrapods have a third eye, even humans, but we lose ours inside the embryo. Our parietal eye goes deep inside our body, where it becomes our pineal gland.

But more to the point, think of the evolutionary potential of an animal with a third eye. In one of my favorite television shows, Doctor Who, there was a race called the Silurians (more appropriately termed the Eocenes) that had evolved on Earth long before humans and practically screamed sphenodontian, with a large third eye in the middle of the forehead (see picture above). While the powers possessed by the third eye were not exactly plausible, shooting neural lazers which could open doors and stun or kill people (but it was still good television), it does seriously open the possibilities of what could an animal do with a third eye. For example, animals living in the trees or having predatory behaviors tend to develop binocular vision. Well what about trinocular vision. The possibilities are endless, and rather unexplored.

2 comments:

Dee TimmyHutchFan said...

So what is the function of the pineal gland?

Metalraptor said...

It produces melatonin